“Much of magic as I understand it in the Western occult tradition is the search for the Self, with a capital S. This is understood as being the Great Work, as being the gold the alchemists sought, as being the Will, the Soul, the thing we have inside us that is behind the intellect, the body, the dreams. The inner dynamo of us, if you like. Now this is the single most important thing that we can ever attain, the knowledge of our own Self. And yet there are a frightening amount of people who seem to have the urge not just to ignore the Self, but actually seem to have the urge to obliterate themselves. This is horrific, but you can almost understand the desire to simply wipe out that awareness, because it’s too much of a responsibility to actually posses such a thing as a soul, such a precious thing. What if you break it? What if you lose it? Mightn’t it be best to anesthetize it, to deaden it, to destroy it, to not have to live with the pain of struggling towards it and trying to keep it pure? I think that the way that people immerse themselves in alcohol, in drugs, in television, in any of the addictions that our culture throws up, can be seen as a deliberate attempt to destroy any connection between themselves and the responsibility of accepting and owning a higher Self and then having to maintain it.”
— Alan Moore
There is something inside of us that calls to us no matter how hard we resist. We can drink, do drugs, watch violent movies and sports, treat each other like shit yet still even when we try to quiet our inner self it speaks out. Perhaps it is in acts of self-sabatoge as that inner self tries to rouse us from our self-induced slumber. Perhaps we have an experience where for just a second we are connected to that higher self and know beyond mere belief that what we have been running from all this time is both fierce and beautiful. It may be just the right conversation at just the right time that does it but few of us can resist it when it happens. For at least a brief time we wake up knowing that there is something more to strive for. Tho we may choose to hit the snooze button and return to our slumber, once heard that voice cannot be fully ignored.
Blessings, G
Click on images to see full-sized:
The Path Leads Inward on Many Levels by G A Rosenberg
“Every moment is a new and shocking transvaluation of all we have ever been.”
— T.S. Eliot
More than the sum of each moments part
I strive to become
not other for that way lies sadness
but authentically more the being
my true self knows itself to be
and tells me in whispered silence.
Like a sculpture I chip away
at the marble block of self
releasing the masterpiece within
I can sense the art from the artifice
and if I mistakenly take
too much or too little
the art is not lost
merely transformed
into something new.
Each moment less separation
from the finished piece
and I start to perceive
the shape inside my stony self.
— G A Rosenberg
“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.”
— Jonathan Safran Foer
I enjoy the life I’m living. As it is I feel truly fortunate and blessed. At times tho I hear echoes of all the other mes out there on the paths I chose not to walk. Lives of adventure and unpredictability where I am less settled. Lives on the road where my Kerouacian adventures on the road lasted beyond my thirties where I did not have a partner or kids. Lives that might be on the surface freer but also with less depth and meaning than what I feel I have now. These lives and selves call out to me especially at times when I feel weighed down and lacking. They are friends and give me signposts and hints about aspects of my life I may need to work on. At times I can meet them at the crossroads of dreams and they meet me halfway. Still I prefer not to trade with them even at the roughest times yet I value their advice. They give me the knowledge and confidence that other paths are always available. The choice is always ours
Blessings, G
“You consider yourself odd at times, you accuse yourself of taking a road different from most people. You have to unlearn that. Gaze into the fire, into the clouds, and as soon as the inner voices begin to speak, surrender to them, don’t ask first whether it’s permitted or would please your teachers or father, or some god. You will ruin yourself if you do that.”
— Hermann Hesse, Demian
Breaking away from convention is never easy. There are so many messages around us from childhood telling us that we need to conform in thought, word and deed and not wander too far astray from the herd. Yet as I’ve discussed in the last few days, it is a myth that any two people think and act exactly alike or even believe in the exact same things. When we believe otherwise and spend our lives trying to fit into a common cold, cognitive dissonance arises and builds. The more we try to fit in the stronger the dissonance becomes until our mental, physical and spiritual beings suffer. Not to mention the rising cost on society itself as it becomes sicker and sicker. It is only by breaking away and embracing our uniqueness, despite what our religions, our schools, our media and our politicians tell us to do that we can start to discover what true health means.
Blessings, G
“The normal is that which nobody quite is. If you listen to seemingly dull people very closely, you’ll see that they’re all mad in different and interesting ways, and are merely struggling to hide it.”
― Robert Anton Wilson
I know an accountant who can and will tell you statistics about stamps from 96 different countries with the occasional odd fact about the number of people who were poisoned through the licking of stamps. I also know a prim and proper secretary who bowls every tuesday night who has a hope chest filled with a collection of whips and manacles of various kinds. There is a banker who believes he is the second coming of jesus and who likes to wear woman’s underwear every day underneath his three piece suit. There is a woman who goes home every night, feeds her three cats and then watches tv. She takes good care of her cats because she loves them and believes that they give her lottery numbers that will one day win. Normal is a flexible term at best and it is what no one is. We are all deviants. Some of us have learned to admit it freely and others, poor souls nurse their strangeness in secret yearning for the right person to share it with. We are all becoming and the universe is a stranger more delightful place than many of us will ever know.
Blessings, G
“There is no exquisite beauty without some strangeness in the proportion.”
— Edgar Allan Poe
You flower before me
so beautiful, so unique
like nothing I’ve seen before.
Ordinary beauty is just that
a comment on a sunset
or a mountain
but you are strange and wonderful
To compare to anything else
seems a betrayal of the quality
that exists solely in your being.
— G A Rosenberg
To truly appreciate beauty, it helps to appreciate uniqueness. For something to stand out, it must be different from the every day. The more we can love the unique and the strange, the more beauty we can perceive in the world. It is only when we abhor the different that our lives start losing hue and our worlds fade towards a uniform grey.
Blessings, G
Click on images to see full-sized:
In a Strange Forest Their Dance Is Witnessed by G A Rosenberg
“It is discouraging to try to penetrate a mind like yours. You ought to get it out and dance on it. That would take some of the rigidity out of it.”
― Mark Twain
Reject and transcend anything that has become dogma or creed. It seems that every conversation and thread that I have had today has to do with keeping one’s path a living one by not stopping at any fixed place. As soon as something becomes scripture, it needs to either be looked at in a new way, more deeply understood or rejected and transcended. Otherwise we are not following our path but merely decorating it to fit in with others. New gardens of thought and conceptualizing must keep springing up from the purifying remains of older ones that proved to be not as viable.
Blessings, G
The Art Gallery- 2014 page has been created and updated with the pictures from September . Please browse through and if you have an interest in purchasing any prints please contact me at rambled@mac.com or my webshops at http://wakingspirals.deviantart.com and http://www.cafepress.com/wakingspirals
Click on image to go to the 2014 Art Gallery Page:
The Path Leads Inward on Many Levels by G A Rosenberg 
Wired Eye by G A Rosenberg
Spirit of the Dark Wood by G A Rosenberg 
