Tag: biography

Just Stories?

 

“Just stories. You and me, everybody, we’re a set of stories and what those stories are is what makes us what we are.”
“It’s all those stories and how they braid together that tells us who and what and where we are”
— Charles de Lint

 

The stories that we tell ourselves about our lives are amazing. We write ourselves as heroes or victims and then go on living the roles that we have created. If the stories we tell of our lives are unhappy ones than we go on living unhappy lives. If the stories we tell are of fulfilment and joy than that is what we live. What happens tho if we change the story we tell? What if we take the unhappiest chapter of our life and reframe it as a valuable lesson learned that brought us joy? What happens if we take that one thing we always blamed ourselves for and change it so that while we accept the responsibility for our reactions, we accept that we were living according to who we were at the time and it wasn’t our fault.
When it comes right down to it, very little in our lives is our fault. It is our responsibility tho to deal with the consequences, to learn and then move on. This isn’t always easy. But if we change our tale, we can create a new story for ourselves and ultimately a much happier life.
Blessings, G

 

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Three Pillar ExerciseThree Pillar Exercise by G A Rosenberg

 

Buried SeedBuried Seed by G A Rosenberg

 

Breaking Social Restrictions (or perhaps just Bending them a might)

 

“No person of quality ever remembers social restrictions save when considering how most piquantly to break them.”
― James Branch Cabell

 

It started in my Junior year of High School. My parents sent me to a private school that had an amazing number of rules that seemed to govern every aspects of our time and behaviour. It seemed so much more restrictive than the public school I had been in the year before. Fairly early on tho I began to gain a new understanding. Because there were so many rules to keep track of, the part of the faculty responsible for discipline were kept on their toes. As in any bureaucratic system the more rules there are, the easier it is to manipulate the system. Because I showed an aptitude for math, they wanted to move me up one class. They told me it was up to me to decide where I felt most comfortable. I could take the lower class third period and have fourth period free or I could take the more advanced class forth period and have the third period free. It really was an easy decision. I told my forth period teacher that I was taking the easier math and the third period teacher, I was taking the advanced class and for three months, I enjoyed a double free period. By the time they had caught up to me and decided to keep me in detention for quite awhile, I had left to see if there was life outside of high school. Five months later when I came back, the heads of the school were rather dumbfounded and allowed me to take two classes during the summer and graduate with my class the next year. To be honest they didn’t know what hit them..
Since then I have learned that breaking and bending rules social and otherwise have consequences, yet not all of them are necessarily negative ones. Its a matter of self-honesty (Bob Dylan said that if you lived outside the law you have to be honest and he was correct) , understanding the reasons why the rules are there in the first place (not all rules are bad–there are as many rules are in place to promote safety as there are rules that benefit the convenience of those in charge). If we rebel for the sake of rebellion only than we are still being controlled by others, in that we are reacting to them rather than following what is right for us. Figuring out what is right for ourselves and following that is of primary importance. Didn’t William Shakespeare say “Above all else to thine own self be true”
Blessings, G

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Pulling the MoonPulling the Moon by G A Rosenberg

 
The Beating of WingsThe Beating of Wings by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – January 25, 2013

“Scared and sacred are spelled with the same letters. Awful proceeds from the same root word as awesome. Terrify and terrific. Every negative experience holds the seed of transformation.”
― Alan Cohen

 

Peak Experience – A Punching Walls Story

 

It was quite possibly the worst week of my seventeen yr old life. For the past five months I had been in a religious cult, trying to shape my life to fit their paradigm.
My best friend had joined with me and how he was gone–taken by his parents because he was underaged. I spoke to him a few times and he told me that there was more to where I was then they were saying. I had started doing some covert research and found out that it was true. Bible verses that their tenants were based on were misquoted or taken way out of context.
When I went to the state head of the group to tell him about my questions, he told me that at seventeen, I should be more interested in baseball than spirituality. Then when I was in the kitchen, I ‘accidentally’ opened his private cupboard and saw a couple of six packs of beer there. This in a group that professed that any intoxicants brought you closer to Satan
Anyway, since I was asking so many questions they sent me to their farm for what amounted to re-indoctorinization. These were the intense beginner’s lectures that lasted all day every day to teach the new people drawn in the tenets. THere were also nature hikes among other things. I was to stay on the farm hearing the lectures for weeks on end till they sunk in..
Anyway, it was the 2nd week back at the farm. I did love the land there some of the best and most beautiful forest and farm land that could be found in Mendocino County, California.
THeir was an older woman with the new group called Edna. She must have been about seventy and walked with a cane. I think her children had joined up and she wanted to check it out.
She was kind and wise and amazing. Our group went on a hike and we were walking amongst some beautiful green hills.

All of a sudden my surroundings fell away and I felt if not pulled out of my body as if it just didn’t matter… I felt part of everything and that no matter what happened I was loved and that everything just fit. It was a feeling of ecstasy like I had never felt before. I knew the universe loved me because I was it’s reflection. Before that point I was almost at the end of my rope. Afterwards well it subsided but I felt renewed.

I left the Moonies that weekend but that’s another story

 

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  Ruby ThursdayRuby Thursday by G A Rosenberg

 

EmissionsEmissions by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – August 9 2012

‎”Biographies bore me. I don’t care how insightful a biographer is, no one knows what’s going on inside someone else’s head. Autobiographies bore me, too, because we lie to ourselves even more than a biographer does. Here’s what I think the bottom line is: if you’re looking for truth, try fiction…. I’ve always believed that the lies we use to make our fictions reveal the truth with far more honesty than any history or herstory or life story. ”
— Charles deLint

Tell me a story.

What kind of story?

How about one where we can believe that heroism exists and that love survives and thrives. How about a story about life in a kingdom who’s rulers are just and care about the land and the people. One where in the end people grow and change and noone goes to bed hungry and alone and no one has to worry that their neighbours will hurt them because they can and they take everything. How about a story where happiness exists and can be realized, recognized and honoured?

Oh I see. You want fiction, a fairy tale

No I want a real story about the life that I live in my heart…

Blessings, G

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Opal Infinitude by G A Rosenberg/h5>