The Forest Where the Pieces Lie

 

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’
‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.
‘I don’t much care where -‘ said Alice.
‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.
‘- so long as I get SOMEWHERE,’ Alice added as an explanation.
‘Oh, you’re sure to do that,’ said the Cat, ‘if you only walk long enough.”
― Lewis Carroll

 

Wandering in a spiritual desert
searching for a destination.
I was told the truth was around here somewhere
tho the signs pointed in all directions.
I started out finding pieces scattered
like tired dreams
yet they shone true as the summer sky
yet like blue sky puzzle pieces
they didn’t seem to fit
so I changed my road
and found still more
so I kept on
grasping for pieces of blue sky truth
and brown mud truth
and angel eyed truth
yet few details emerged.
The big picture eluded me
tho I got hints of its final shape.
Now millions of pieces and
thousands of roads later
I know it still eludes me
I may never get where I’m going
yet this forest will always be my home.
— G A Rosenberg

 

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Chaotic MisdirectionChaotic Misdirection by G A Rosenberg

 

Lost in a Fractal ParkLost in a Fractal Park by G A Rosenberg

 

To Turn Again

 

“There are no wrong turnings. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk.”
— Guy Gabriel Kay

 

Backtracking through my life and exploring roads not taken. There are so many lives where I see myself happy. There are others where I see myself dead. In some I have found fame. My art and writing are appreciated by many. That road does not always lead to happiness. In some, I have found solace in drugs and sex. I throw the cards up in the air and I pick and somehow I end up back where I started.
You see, there have been so many times in my life when I’ve been desperately unhappy. Sometimes the only thing that kept me going was wondering what could happen next.
I find myself approaching a crossroads. So much of my earlier life was about external changes. Now tho I have to focus on internal ones. Changing what I can so I have the ability to put myself on the path that I desire. I know that I have the strength to do it. It is just a matter of pulling it together.
I may be taking a break from this blog for a week or two soon so that I can focus on the road ahead and the turns that it may take.
Blessings, G

 

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SekhmetSekhmet at Sunset by G A Rosenberg

 

Blue-Flamed WelcomeBlue Flamed Welcome by G A Rosenberg

 

Spoken Reality, Broken Potentials

 

“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

 

Blessings, G

 

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Into Her KingdomInto Her Kingdom by G A Rosenberg

 

ReactionReaction by G A Rosenberg

 

Life With Doors

 

“Philosophy is like trying to open a safe with a combination lock: each little adjustment of the dials seems to achieve nothing, only when everything is in place does the door open.”
— Ludwig Wittgenstein

 

Sometimes my life seems like a series of doors. Each one opens and I am faced with new treasures and new challenges to face. The next door will open only when I have faced the challenges and my life has reached a new configuration. This may take minutes or years and sometimes the two may seem interchangeable for time is nothing here but a measure of process. I must meet, love and have conflict with people and must come to certain realizations in order to make it through. Sometimes there are two or more doors waiting for me. Which one opens all depends on how I choose to handle things in the present. Some doors will return, others will disappear forever leaving only a faint afterimage on my soul of the road not traveled. Still there is that in me that enjoys the game and wants to make the most out of every room I’m in. Yet there is that in me that also wishes to find an exit as I walk through the last doorway.
Blessings, G

 

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Envisioning - Held in SpaceEnvisioning-Held in Space by G A Rosenberg

 

On Top of ThingsOn Top of Things by G A Rosenberg

 

Choices and Responsibility

 

“Choices may be unbelievably hard but they’re never impossible. To say you have no choice is to release yourself from responsibility and that’s not how a person with integrity acts.”
― Patrick Ness

 

There are always choices whether they be good, bad or indifference. We choose to act in one of several ways or not act at all and each choice influences our trajectory in a different way. That trajectory will lead off into several different choices and several ways. If only we could see clearly ahead on the path our choices will lead us. Alas even with guidance we make the choices we do and then with hindsight we may see how each choice has led us to here. We can accept the responsibility for our choices and use the insight to guide the next ones we make. Learning from our missteps is possible and I have even known it to happen once or twice in my own life. Denying our culpability tho is to make ourselves a victim, helpless to the whim of others or to some agent of fate itself. Not everything is necessarily our fault but it does come from our choices.
Blessings, G

 

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FallingFalling by G A Rosenberg

 

1-BaelBael (#1 in goetia series) by G A Rosenberg

 

ConvergenceConvergence by G A Rosenberg

 

Interacting With the Paths Not Taken

 

“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

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Receiving VisionsReceiving Visions by G A Rosenberg

 

Dream State ComencingDream State Commencing by G A Rosenberg

 

Choices Informed

 

“No matter what choices we make in life, we still carry our beginnings with us. Perhaps its in something as simple as our choice of breakfast or how we wash our hands. But if we choose to be truly free than we ignore the influence of our beginnings at our own peril.”
— Randall Wolfe

 

I have been stumbling across a certain meme a lot lately. I have even used variations of it myself. It says something along the lines that we are not composed of where we came from but of choices we have made along the way. Now I do believe that our choices contribute a lot to who we are but do we choose freely? Are our choices dictated at least partly by the environment we grew up in and the way we watched our parents do things? Perhaps we have chosen to reject everything about our homes as many who have come from far less than ideal environments have. Does our rejection of our past mean that we choose our futures free of their influence or does choosing the opposite of something in rejection still mean that we are influenced by it? Are we perhaps programmed by our childhood influences in ways that we might not even realize?
It is only when we look deeply at our pasts and its programming that we can make conscious choices and know that we are choosing not out of blind acceptance or rejection but out of the people who we truly are. Even then our past influences can turn around and bite us when we least realize it. But then perhaps on a deeper level we made the choice of where when and to whom we were born in the first place. It is food for thought for sure.
Blessings, G

 

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Wandering Through Lunar TidesWandering Through Lunar Tides by G A Rosenberg

 

Crystal MeshCrystal Mesh by G A Rosenberg

 

A Generational Thing

 

“Every Choice eventually leads to wisdom”
— Dan Millman

 

One of the most difficult aspects about having teenage kids is the knowledge that they are at a point in their lives where their choices are their own and not all of them will be the ones that we would chose. At a certain point the training wheels are off and while we can help to guide, we can no longer direct. Sometimes knowing when our roles change can be difficult.
With my son I try to look back at my own teenage years. I did some amazingly screwed-up things and yet here I am. Each mistake brought me a bit closer to where I am today and gave me a bit more self-knowledge and understanding. . Some of them I had to repeat multiple times yet I like the life I have now so somehow all the ways that I learned to do it wrong have brought me to a place where I get it a bit more right everyday. I hope my son’s life will flow smoother than mine did at times and when it does I’ll celebrate and when it doesn’t I’ll be present. Our presence, our compassion and our love are the best gifts we can give to our kids. In this, I learned from the best.
Blessings, G

 

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Opening of the WayOpening of the Way by G A Rosenberg

 

Star WeaveStar Weave by G A Rosenberg

No Pre-Packaged Choices

 

“These ideas can be made more concrete with a parable, which I borrow from John Fowles’s wonderful novel, The Magus.

Conchis, the principle character in the novel, finds himself Mayor of his home
town in Greece when the Nazi occupation begins. One day, three Communist
partisans who recently killed some German soldiers are caught. The Nazi commandant gives Conchis, as Mayor, a choice — either Conchis will execute the three partisans himself to set an example of loyalty to the new regime, or the Nazis will execute every male in the town.

Should Conchis act as a collaborator with the Nazis and take on himself the
direct guilt of killing three men? Or should he refuse and, by default, be responsible for the killing of over 300 men?

I often use this moral riddle to determine the degree to which people are hypnotized by Ideology. The totally hypnotized, of course, have an answer at once; they know beyond doubt what is correct, because they have memorized the Rule Book. It doesn’t matter whose Rule Book they rely on — Ayn Rand’s or Joan Baez’s or the Pope’s or Lenin’s or Elephant Doody Comix — the hypnosis is indicated by lack of pause for thought, feeling and evaluation. The response is immediate because it is because mechanical. Those who are not totally hypnotized—those who have some awareness of concrete events of sensory space-time, outside their heads— find the problem terrible and terrifying and admit they don’t know any ‘correct’ answer.

I don’t know the ‘correct’ answer either, and I doubt that there is one. The
universe may not contain ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ answers to everything just because Ideologists want to have ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ answers in all cases, anymore than it provides hot and cold running water before humans start tinkering with it. I feel sure that, for those awakened from hypnosis, every hour of every day presents choices that are just as puzzling (although fortunately not as monstrous) as this parable. That is why it appears a terrible burden to be aware of who you are, where you are, and what is going on around you, and why most people would prefer to retreat into Ideology, abstraction, myth and self-hypnosis.

To come out of our heads, then, also means to come to our senses, literally—to live with awareness of the bottle of beer on the table and the bleeding body in the street. Without polemic intent, I think this involves waking from hypnosis in a very literal sense. Only one individual can do it at a time, and nobody else can do it for you. You have to do it all alone.”
― Robert Anton Wilson

 

I have always mistrusted one size fits all answers. Whether it is about the right way to educate children, what is the best method for helping people with disabilities or even what is the correct political or moral choices to make. Because when dealing with individual people or individual decisions there is no one right answer because the key word is individual. It’t not as easy or convenient to sit with questions and actually choose moment to moment what is the correct choice but it is necessary if we are to break out of our own internal and cultural programming and make choices from the heart.
Blessings, G

 

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Warrior SpiritWarrior Spirit by G A Rosenberg

 

Green and Flame Spiral OutGreen and Flame Spiral Out by G A Rosenberg

Happiness On the Menu

“Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert

 

I have met many people who deserve happiness and by and large I agree with them. However quite often these people feel act as if they are in a fancy menu and it is someone’s job to bring them happiness, exactly the way they want it. I guess I see my life as more of a buffet. Happiness is always on the menu but we need to get out of our seats and go up and choose it. There are other things on the menu as well, guilt, doubt, regret, sorrow. Too often we become so enticed by either the smell wafting up from those dishes or by the bright colours and containers that they are served in that we choose those things instead. All the time we do so we insist that what we want is happiness. When we find something else on our plate even when it is of our own choosing, we tend to blame the restaurant or perhaps the people we are dining with. Didn’t the choice we made look so good when it was on their plate?
Happiness is out there. It is not up to anyone or anything else to bring us happiness, we have to choose it. When we choose something else, that’s fine, after all variety is great every now and then but let’s take responsibility. We made the choice. After we’re finished we can always make room and grab some happiness afterwards. Perhaps with a nice bottle of delight. I hear it’s a good year for it.
Blessings, G

 

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Flowering GraceFlowering Grace by G A Rosenberg

 

Masked ConfusionMasked Guidance by G A Rosenberg