“I don’t feel that it is necessary to know exactly what I am. The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning.”
— Michel Foucault
Every so often in my search for quotes that might inspire a posting, I come across one like this where I agree with the basic idea but the wording seems off to me. I believe that we definitely change, sometimes by the day and definitely by the decision but we don’t become merely something different than we were when we started. I believe that we become more and more ourselves. Perhaps it happens as we discard the ideas and circumstances that do not truly reflect our identities. Perhaps we meet our inner selves part way on life’s journey. Indeed the goal of most spiritual paths seems to be connecting with our true inner beings and reflecting them more and more. To some extent we are all on a spiritual journey, some of us are more aware of it than others.
I was reminded tho that Foucault would see things a bit more cynically. He would say that most of us don’t even realize the social chains and goads that we struggle under and are led by those as much as by any higher awareness. In a typical day as I browse social media I can see his point. So many of us seem to choose a position or a polemic and reiterate their views of their lives through the lenses of the polemic rather than critically looking at things with awareness of context or much self-reflection. I don’t attribute this to a single party, class or race as it seems to cross all lines.
We live in a blame society. Everyone else holds the blame for society’s ills and it is another someone else’s job to fix it. If only we started living in the way we believe is optimal and shared that, taking full responsibility and consequence for our own activities and statements. Perhaps then we would grow to become more deeply ourselves.
Blessings, G
“Knowledge rests not upon truth alone, but upon error also.”
— Carl Gustav Jung
My cup of truth overflows
My certainty knows no bounds
Nothing enters no one leaves
when I start to expound
There may be fools who differ
well let them they’re wrong
What I have to offer
is not a madman’s song
Could it be
I’ve been mistaken?
Has my worldview
been forsaken?
A perceptual error
A faulty premise
shakes my foundations
Have I been remiss?
I order my thoughts
I rebuild stronger
I accept that this truth
won’t last any longer
than past misconceptions
Ah well it’s true
Older conclusions must
give way to the new.
— G A Rosenberg
“It’s all how you set it up with the guys upstairs”
— Wendy, my first Tarot Teacher
I took my first course in tarot reading thirty five years ago when I was 18. In the first couple of classes that we took the teacher, Wendy made us learn the strict book meanings of each card. She told us tho that while having that basic grounding was important, we should not get too caught up in the memorization because as we became more experienced, our own interpretations would supersede the book meanings. She pointed out that various books and sources would have different often contradictory spins on each card. “It’s all how you set it up with the guy’s upstairs” she would say. She of course did not mean this literally. Wendy was telling us in her rather airy new age way of speaking that if we had an understanding of the basic force behind each card, the interpretations that made sense to us would be the ones that would work best in our own readings. This advice has served me in good stead not only with tarot but with any form of symbolic work including astrology, runes and ritual work.
When I do a reading for someone, what comes through has a lot to do with the communication between my intuitive self and my conscious self. A given card can have several meanings based on a combination of the card’s base meaning(s), placement and type of spread and an X factor that often supersedes the rest. This X factor can be conscious or unconscious communication from the person receiving the reading or it can be an intuitive (I dislike the word psychic) flash of insight that in this particular case the card means this. I have learned to trust this feeling for it has seldom steered my wrong. Then again, I guess this would indicate that the communication with ‘the guys upstairs’ is two-way.
Blessings, G
“I make art, sometimes I make true art, and sometimes it fills the empty places in my life. Some of them. Not all.”
— Neil Gaiman
I toss not coins but concepts into the well of my being. Sometimes I hear a click as they connect with pieces that came before. Other times I hear an echo as memories are stirred tho some are distant. Sometimes tho there is neither click nor echo but a silence. The tossed concept has reached an empty place and a lack has been revealed. Is it a lack in my being or a lack in my knowledge. The latter is easily remedies but the former itches at my very soul. I must feel around the spaces like a tongue exploring a loose tooth. The best way for me to do this is often to explore it in my art and my writing. Sometimes this leads unexpected dividends either in the knowledge it brings or in the exposure of my own ignorance. Other times tho it means that I have found a space where dragons dwell and I must explore it carefully.
Blessings, G
“What you see depends entirely upon the words you have to describe what you see. Nothing exists unless we say it.”
— Grant Morrison
Pure form, formless
silence the point within
emptiness
existence has not yet been spoken
yet something moves
consciousness ripples in the void
awaiting to be born
Nothing exists
so anything is possible
Every time something is spoken
potential is lost
countless possibilities
blown out of the water.
In each word we choose a reality
consigning countless others
to the abyss.
but don’t let that stop you.
— G A Rosenberg
“If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats.”
― Richard Bach
Am I a fictional creation?
A character written with sensation
transmitted through me by another
some ersatz father and mother
begotten as some mere expression
some aspect of creative repression
NO!!!! I shall break free and choose myself
Transcend my book, jump off my shelf
and live my life as I see fit
not serve another’s foolish writ
Self-created I shall thrive
By will I’ll live, self-deify
Grow evolve, re-manifest
until from being, I take my rest.
— G A Rosenberg
Through the Nether Realms by G A Rosenberg 
Pointing Elsewhere by G A Rosenberg 
