“Belief gets in the way of learning.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
Over the years I have met many people of strong faith and in most cases it has filled my heart. I don’t mean the dogmatic faith of a born-again true believer because that often feels hypocritical. It seems to me that anyone who feels the need to defend their faith by insisting that everyone else has got it wrong and should be somehow punished for it has a somewhat shaky foundation to begin with. I am talking about those who can accept anyone no matter their beliefs because they are centred in themselves and their universe. They have no need to defend because they are so sure of it. These are the people who have shown me what a divine unconditional love can truly be.
I have exposed myself over the years to as many belief systems and schools of thought and philosophy as I could. As I have stated here many times, I want to understand where the commonalities lie and try to get a glimpse of the biggest picture I can. One side effect of this avocation has been that while I notice certain tendencies towards a greater truth, there is none that has been put into words that I could grasp onto and call my own. Never completely. It has been an awesome journey that I have found fulfilling in countless ways. I know that the universe as a whole is conscious and aware and once or twice I have even touched that awareness and felt its echo within myself. I have nothing to defend not because of the security I have in my understanding but because I am open to all discussions on the subject. Especially ones that will deepen my understanding. It has been a strange wonderful dance and it continues.
Blessings, G
“But the past cannot be changed, and we carry our choices with us, forward, into the unknown. We can only move on.”
― Libba Bray
The past created me
and I return the favour
I add colours and textures
that at the time got left out
of the memory stream.
I can see why poets call it golden
so much of it seems blinding
and tho it has led me here
it is the paths untaken I notice
Oh the present is nice enough
with many paths and songs yet unsung
The future comes ever closer
yet in my mind I travel down
those roads long shut down
and I see possibilities.
There must be a way
to connect what could have been
to what will be
the moment ever changes
and the spiral still unwinds…
— G A Rosenberg
“There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught.”
― Hermann Hesse
We read and we study. We analyze with critical thought anything that comes our way. We seek perfect understanding yet all too often we avoid the self-work that may bring it closer. It feels like we circle the outer rim of ourselves while the centre remains many layers down. What can bring us inside? Oh exposure to new ideas is fantastic, don’t get me wrong. I love new paradigms and new ways of looking at things. Yet who is doing the looking? Is what we are exposing ourselves to bringing us closer to our truest self or leading us in circles. Perhaps we can take what we have learned and journey inward with it, adding awareness to our knowledge and knowledge to our awareness.
Blessings, G
“When we love, we always strive to become better than we are. When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.”
― Paulo Coelho
For you
I will become better
My words chosen with more care
My actions will flow with my words
I will be kinder more meditative
and strive to love the other
in everyone I see.
For myself
I will become fulfilled
I will find my purpose
and seek my will
My being will flow with the all
I will be truer more honest
and strive to live the truth
that I have yet to learn,
For the All
I will become integral
I will find the patterns
and seek the divine
in everything I see.
I will be compassionate more hopeful
and strive to teach the heart
that beats in each of us
— G A Rosenberg
“I’m going to break it down for you. Disappointment is when you expected something and got something else. It’s right there in the word. An appointment (expectation) you had was dissed. The appointment may have been with yourself or another person or even with an event. If you hadn’t had the expectation in the first place than the disappointment would not have happened. Not that disappointment is a bad thing. A lot of our expectations can be pretty dumb”
— Randall Wolfe
We all go through life expecting things. It seems we build a picture of the way things will be or should be and all too often we end up disappointed. When that happens we have two choices. we can enjoy the moment or we can wallow in the fact that we didn’t get what we wanted or expected. All too often it seems we choose to hold two snapshots in our head, what we wanted and what we got and spend hours comparing the two. It’s like we’re children who asked for a chocolate ice cream cone and got a rocky road one instead. We may love Rocky Road and the chocolaty goodness is still there but we expected chocolate. We spend so much time bemoaning the fact that the ice cream melts away and we never get a taste. How amazing it would be if we could bite into each moment and enjoy it for what it is even if it doesn’t match our expectations. Who knows it may end up tasting better than we ever imagined it could. The universe tends to do that.
Blessings, G
“Face your life, its pain, its pleasure, leave no path untaken.”
― Neil Gaiman
For each of us there is but one path. On the physical, it begins when we draw breath and continues to when we draw our last one. Oh we may believe we’ve leaped from path to path, perhaps as we’ve made radical jumps either in our belief systems or our lives but that is illusory. No matter what path we follow, it is merely one who’s trail we parallel for however long we do. The best part of that is that it means we can never lose our way. Indeed with each step taken we blaze it. At times our paths take us to some pretty dark places but then for most, the light shines eventually. Others learn to appreciate the darkness for what it is.. Let’s all follow our way with spirit, humour, honour , gratitude and style and remember we can always change direction but never truly leave our path just veer off in new directions.
Blessings, G
“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”
― Rumi
Trade your riches for magic beans
take the offered adventure in innocence
Climb the hill to see what’s there…
Show compassion to a stranger
Show compassion to a friend
Show compassion to yourself
Open yourself up to a new outlook.
Imagine what the world would look like if everything you knew was wrong…
Introduce yourself as a stranger
See yourself as pure, unchanging…
sacrifice something that no longer suits you
Mditate and be
Surrender it all to be who you’ll become…
“Being challenged in life is inevitable, being defeated is optional.”
― Roger Crawford
Lessons Loom Large. We get tested and refined in the fire of life. Sometimes it seems so hard and despair seems to come easy. We go to a dark place and carry it around inside of us. Reality has kicked us in some of our most tender spots, the spots where we erected towers which we thought impregnable but were really constructed of tissue paper and now they crumble in the rain. That’s ok though. That they would one day crumble was inevitable. At the core what’s left is what we started with. We have our divine beings, now armed with the gift of knowledge and hard won wisdom that we did not have before. From this we can build anew. Perhaps we will make another soft edifice, fated as before to crumble but it will be made out of the truer substance of our newly refined being. The important thing is to keep rebuilding for what we are truly building is always a purer more complete being.
Blessings, G
Dancing From Her Centre by G A Rosenberg 
Challenged Earth (R)
