“To be in harmony with all things would be a wondrous thing, tho just as we learn best when we are outside our comfort zones, it is the points of cacophony from which our lessons come.”
— Randall Wolfe
Many of us strive so hard to feel at harmony with life, with ourselves and with all things. We dislike feeling out of harmony or out of balance with our loved ones or our surroundings. Yet quite often it is in the areas where we feel disharmonious that we can learn the deepest lessons and grow the most. If anything those points of disharmony are our shadows given form. Sometimes in order to feel that harmonious flow, we have to find the disharmony and discover in what way it has taken us out of balance. Sometimes just like tuning the keys of a piano or the strings of a guitar we have to play around with the point of imbalance until the flow is repaired. Sometimes to do this we have to go more out of balance first one way and then another until it feels just right. If we try to force it the string might break so instead it is a gentle tuning.
Take for example if we feel anger towards another, first we have to identify the feeling and see what may be causing this. Perhaps in doing this we may become overly permissive towards the person or behaviour that made us upset in the first place. We have to recognize we are doing that until we come to the realization that either the behaviour was ok and we were overreacting or it was not ok and we communicate this and work out the problem. We tune too high, then too low and fiddle until eventually harmony is restored.
Understanding where we become imbalanced can bring a truer harmony than we had before.
Blessings, G
I rose and talked with angels
In my mind I walked with demons
I overcame so much
Yet now I fall
heading back down to a reality
I sought to escape
I have much to learn there still
each lesson empowering me to rise again.
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein is one of the most amazing novels I’ve ever read. It tells the story of Michael Valentine Smith, as a child lost on Mars then found a few decades later. The novel explores many aspects of what it means to be human and also how our world may be seen through the eyes of a stranger. It most importantly introduces the word grok and the concept of groking. I use the word quite a bit because I don’t know that there is a current word in the English language that expresses the idea as well.
To Grok something is to understand it so fully that it becomes part of you. To grok a chair for instance would mean that you understand the very essence of what the chair is, what its purpose is and how well it performs its purpose. To Grok a concept means that you understand it so fully that you can inhabit it and vice versa. Something that is often lacking. To Grok a person means that you get them on every level possible and carry them within you.
At various times in the novel Michael Valentine Smith talks about groking something or someone in their fullness. That is total and complete understanding and empathy. He talks about waiting and sitting with something before he can grok it in its fullness and won’t speak of it except to ask clarifying questions until he does. I only wish that I and many others I knew had the patience to sit with something or someone until groking in fullness came. Do you grok groking?
Blessings, G
Click on images to see full-sized:
Thoughts Falling like Rock and Rising Like Butterflies by G A Rosenberg
“There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside of them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself.”
― Hermann Hesse
Does anyone here feel that what they perceive is reality for anyone else but them? The more I interact with others even the ones that I am closest to the more I realize we all hear things, see things and react to things according to our own filters. We can stretch and imagine what reality is being perceived by them but still we miss the mark from time to time. That’s ok though. As long as we realize that and know that none is experiencing things as they are to anyone but them, we can handle misunderstandings. It is only when we start to believe that we have the ONLY clear line amidst everyone else’s static that we miss out. Wars and Divorces have started over less. Friendships and relationships estranged. The best we can do is become as clear as possible both in our perceptions and our communication. Also, we need to remember to always always always enjoy the show.
Not that I’m saying objective reality does not exist, merely that we are unable except possibly in very rare moments, mystical and peak experiences ever to know it. That too is subjective tho.
Blessings, G
Lost in dreams
I sacrifice myself to nightmare visions
Like Odin, I hang
subjecting myself to what may come
seeking insight, seeking answers seeking myself
“If one is lucky, a solitary fantasy can totally transform a million realities.”
― Maya Angelou
Hoping where hope is not possible
can change everything
knowing a better way can exist
even in the darkest hour
can make living tolerable
A dream of freedom
when one’s life is chains
can make one fly
to many lands
pushing joyfully against
the binds
knowing that it can happen
Knowing that love exists
when stuck among loathing
can keep the dream alive
yearning for the day
when one’s heart is answered
Knowledge in the face of ignorance
that something imagined can be real
can build the dreams
and break the chains
and open the heart
to new being.
— G A Rosenberg
“We’re often wrong at predicting what will transform us. Encountering certain people, books, music, places or ideas at the right time can immediately make our lives happier, richer, more beautiful, resonant or meaningful. When it happens, we feel a kind of instant love for them both deep and abiding. It can be something as trifling as a children’s book, a returned telephone call, or a night at a seaside bar in Greece.”
— Jonathan Carroll
Around our house we throw the word transformative around quite a bit (sometimes it bounces off of walls and smashes china). We talk about books, plays, talks and conversations with people as transformative experiences. What part of us changes? Perhaps its just the part that hears a new point of view for a first time, that sees something in a way that we haven’t before. On occasion, the transformation is a bit more radical. We see something that changes our approach with how we deal with our lives, our jobs or our family. The Greek philosopher Heraclitus suggested that we cannot step in the same river twice because both we and the river are continuously made different by whatever we experience. I hope that I always be open to being transformed by my surroundings rather than clinging like a barnacle on a rock in said river afraid to flow with the changes and I wish happy transformative experiences for all.
Blessings, G
“The interior of our skulls contains a portal to infinity.”
― Grant Morrison
Opening up the mind and imagining different lives. Not so much as an escape to my own but as an addition. Who knows? In living another existence if only for the space of moments or hours, I may learn compassion. What is it like to be a single mother of three in a rough area of New York City? What challenges do I face? What is it like to be twenty-three years old and wondering and fearing what the future may be? What is the life of a housecat or a fly or a planet or a God? Can I truly picture myself inside the life of another? How real can I make it? I entertain myself by traveling from life to life and I wonder who may find themselves traveling in mine? What is the continuity of existence? Have I imagined myself to be another being or am I imagining myself to be me a good deal of the time and if so can I imagine better? How good can I make this life? In an internal universe where we could be anything why limit our dreaming or our becoming?
Blessings, G
“When people get immersed in a culture with strong new memes, it tends to be a sink-or-swim proposition. Either you change your mind, succumbing to peer pressure and adopting the new memes as your own, or you struggle with the extremely uncomfortable feeling of being surrounded by people who think you’re crazy or inadequate. The fact that you probably think the same about them is little consolation.”
–Richard Brodie, Virus of the mind
According to Wikipedia, “The meme, analogous to a gene, was conceived as a “unit of culture” (an idea, belief, pattern of behaviour, etc.) which is “hosted” in the minds of one or more individuals, and which can reproduce itself, thereby jumping from mind to mind.” In other words its a catchphrase, a slogan, words with images attach that we spread like lol catz on these inter webs. I love Richard Brodie’s book on memeology, Virus of the Mind tho the implications of this quote has my mind reeling this evening.
There have been several political situations in recent memory that I have felt were at an impasse because at their basis they were competing narratives. Two competing historical stories that were at war with each other. Unfortunately I was mistaken. What was really happening was a battle of the memes that the narratives bred.
Competing narratives can be resolved with critical thought and acceptance that neither side carries the whole truth. However once slogans and catchphrases become part of the armament that two sides carry into battle, there can be no real winner because memes tend to turn off any possibility of critical thought whatsoever. You can recognize the process easily enough. Instead of trying to understand multiple sides of a dispute, people start shouting statistics at each other or slogans or half-truths that everybody knows. As soon as people do this, then they are spreading memes not trying to solve problems. Occasionally one set of memes will overpower or gain more support than the other and that may resolve things but usually a war of memes leads to mutual destruction either quickly or slower. The main problem with memes is that they are forever reproducing themselves and tend to loop where critical thinking tends to be open ended (Thesis, antithesis, synthesis which leads to a new thesis etc..)
We have the ability to decide what memes we expose ourselves to or at least which ones we chose to replicate. Some memes are positive, life and thought affirming. Tho almost always when we start quoting statistics and spreading slogans they replace our thought processes.
Blessings, G
From a Distant Sea by G A Rosenberg
An Alien Nature by G A Rosenberg 
