Accepting Responsibility

 

“Accepting responsibility for your life is your first and most essential act of empowerment; you cannot grow in awareness if you are full of conditions and reasons why you cannot attain whatever you desire.”
— Barbara Marciniak

 

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Ophidian LassOphidian Lass by G A Rosenberg

 

Chaos ExpansionChaos Expansion by G A Rosenberg

What Makes Us Present…

 

“Opportunities? They are all around us … There is power lying latent everywhere waiting for the observant eye to discover it.”
–Orison Swett Marden

 

There are so many moments in each day that I find empowering. Anything that can make me laugh or smile or lift me out of whatever has entrapped my thoughts and brings me into the present moment. It could be the way a bird is flying through the air. It could be children playing or animals living up to their nature. It could be the attractive way that someone walks by me or a particularly beautiful pair of eyes. I see the light hitting the side of a building or hear waves rushing against the sand. I love those sublime moments and I realize for everyone I see that there are a thousand others that I miss because I am caught up in anywhere or anytime other than where I am. Anything that makes me present empowers me. I am grateful.
Blessings, G

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Storm God in the Night ForestStorm God in the Night Forest by G A Rosenberg

 

Following the Trail to the Diamond WithinFollowing the Trail to the Diamond Within by G A Rosenberg

Today You’ve Shown Your Power

 

“We tend to disempower ourselves. We tend to believe that we don’t matter. And in the act of taking that idea to ourselves we give everything away to somebody else, to something else.”
– Terence McKenna

 

So mighty
each one of us
anyone of us
capable of wonder
writing songs,
Planting gardens
wiping tears away
from the face of a child
building bridges
singing songs
that will echo in the throats of many
Never forget we are mighty
you’ve made a difference today
in the words you have said to a stranger
in the heart that you held of a friend
in the wake of something created
you’ve shown your power
rejoice in it
and know it can never be taken away…
— G A Rosenberg

 

Blessings, G

 

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Getting Myself Together Before I Go OnGetting Myself Together Before I Go On by G A Rosenberg

 

HyperSpace AwaitsEntering Hyperspace by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – February 15 2013

“You’re always free to change your mind
and choose a different future, or a different past.”
— Richard Bach

 

How can we change our pasts? Isn’t what happened incontrovertible?  Perhaps so but then even if I can’t change the events that happened, I can still change how I view them. Did I get taken advantage of by people or did I seek out people who would teach me certain lessons in exactly the way that I needed to learn them? So many times when I think of my past, particularly situations that turned out to be either dangerous or damaging or a combination of both, I realized very early on perhaps even before I entered into them, the possibilities of where they may lead. Part of me knew the adventure would be worth it. Looking back now from the perspective of the present, I believe that I was right. I choose not the path where I am time’s victim but the one where I am time’s student. Over and over I choose the path of learning even when the lessons were painful and so become empowered rather than weakened. What of the future? The future I choose each instance.
Blessings, G

 

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Bringing the StormBringing the Storm by G A Rosenberg

 

Expansion4
Expansion 4 by G A Rosenberg

 

Quote of the Day – January 13, 2013

“We tend to disempower ourselves. We tend to believe that we don’t matter. And in the act of taking that idea to ourselves we give everything away to somebody else, to something else.”
– Terence McKenna

 

Today a friend of mine posted a video on FB entitled “An Incredible Act of Love” This video shows an actor pretending to have a flat tire and a good Samaritan stopping to help out. The guy helping refuses to accept money and the camera crew watching this became flabbergasted. This depressed my friend who posted it bemoaning the state of humanity that has brought us the point where a basic good deed that almost any one of the people reading this would do was seen as “An Incredible Act” My friend really wanted me and a few other people to offer our take on it. After pondering it for a bit, this was what i wrote..

“Well a couple of things come up.. I think that the person who titled it has an extremely negative viewpoint of humanity. I also believe that we have been trained by the media to have the most suspicious negative view of our fellow humans possible and that feeding into it, spreading this view increases the damage.
Humanity has achieved much in its history. We touch on the divine. Shakespeare said
“What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how
infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and
admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like
a god!”
and its true in potential we hold so much that we have yet to realize tho its happening slowly and hopefully we will make a huge leap before we close down this shop in our immaturity.
We do more by building each other than giving into despair

I don’t mean not to be real. There are immature selfish dark agendas out there but kindness DOES exist and SO much potential. Which do we want to build on

In my experience any day you can look and find at least one example of someone going out of their way for another person. It’s there but never quite as ‘flashy’, ‘cool’ or ‘remarkable’ as someone being truly shitty to each other…
Again the media plays into it… think of the news each night showing one feelgood story amidst as many stories of tragedy as they can…and then acting as if that is the ratio in the world…
I admit that thanks to media there are more people that is easier for many of us to describe ten ways of emotionally or physically torturing another being than people who can instruct you in giving a really awesome back rub.. I know which one of those is the most useful… and I believe its catching on… This is definitely a situation where if we’re not part of the solution we are increasing the problem… Sorry about the soap box but this is where ‘Be the change you want to see comes in’ for me. I would rather inspire people by being this person who will help. It may just be contagious.
Why I always recommend not only committing random acts of senseless kindness but acknowledging those of others in an everyday sense…
I’m fixing to be a full out rapturist”

Blessings G

 

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Seven of Swords
Tarot – Seven of Swords by G A Rosenberg

 

Techno McArthur's Park
Cosmic McArthur’s Park by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – December 15 2012

“Everyone does magic all the time in different ways. “Life” plus “significance” = magic.”
― Grant Morrison

 

Empowerment. To invest with power? That seems silly. Aren’t we all pretty powerful? Sometimes we need to be reminded of it, tis all. Like the song says “Oz didn’t give nothing to the tin man, that he didn’t already have”. In the Hindu Ramayana the deity Hanuman has many abilities but he can only use them when others believe he can. Ultimately we all have amazing abilities and powers. Most of us tell ourselves we are powerless. We even come up with elaborate stories to explain why we are powerless and who it is to blame for our lack of power.
That isn’t to say that we’re not capable of doing pretty horrible things to each other. Unfortunately many of us know what its like to be scarred by another. Of course, many of us also know what its like to scar in return.
Empowering tho is different. Somewhere inside of us we realize what we’re capable of and it scares us witless. If we have these abilities, isn’t it our responsibility to use them to help each other? Responsibility can be a pretty frightening thing, can’t it. So we put our fingers in our ears and sing “la la la” very loudly whenever someone dare tells us what we are capable of.
What would it be like if we all took things in our hands, woke up from our complacency and started using our powers to help and heal each other? That would be pretty significant in itself, wouldn’t it?
Blessings, G

 

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KIng of Wands

Tarot – King of Wands by G A Rosenberg

 

purple sojournPurple Sojourn by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – October 3 2012

“Why is it that the word ‘an­oth­er’ is the crulest word in the lan­guage, Pop?”

“How d’ya mean?”

“Well, when he’s alone with him­self a man may get re­al hon­est and ac­knowl­edge—and ac­cept—that he is a fool. But no­body wants to be ‘just’ an­oth­er fool. ‘An­oth­er cou­ple of dumb At­lases,’ he called us, and of all the things he said that hurt the most.”

“Here now—easy! Here, use this here bar rag. Be right back.”

While Fred­dy wiped his eyes, the old man quick­ly filled a tray of or­ders for the wait­er. By the time he re­turned Fred­dy was un­der con­trol and had be­gun re­pair­ing his make­up with a hand mirror.

“See here,” Pop said, “if you’re hip deep in used food, well, maybe you could climb out. But if you see a whole oth­er bunch of peo­ple hip deep too, then the chances of you be­com­ing the rare one to climb out seem to go down dras­tic. But you see, that’s a kind of op­ti­cal il­lu­sion. All those oth­ers don’t af­fect your odds atall. What mat­ters is how bad you want to get up out of the shit, and what pur­chase you can find for your feet.”

— Spider Robinson

 

I can’t see to escape it. I enjoy talking and listening to people and the one thing that keeps coming up for me is that nobody gets through life unscathed. Some people had horrible traumatic childhoods with history of various kinds of abuses, physical, sexual or what not. If not in their childhoods then in their teenage years, if not then as they hit adulthood. I get it I do. However I see more and more evidence of a phenomenon that disturbs me. More and more people seem to fall into the role of victim, willingly imprisoning themselves in their past. We get a lot of validation for doing this. The media is filled with shows where people are encouraged to drag up every ounce of pain they ever felt and display it for others to see. Again, in no way do I belittle what anyone has gone through. However part of me wonders especially when I look at my own past. Do I let myself become disempowered by constantly displaying my wounds and using them as an excuse for abdicating responsibility or do I try to face them and move past it?

I do know people who have done it. Some people get crushed by the pain of their past and others integrate it and use it to become magnificent. I know a woman who was born with cerebral palsy who despite only having movement in one hand and her mouth has become an incredible artist who sets goals for herself and achieves them more often than anyone I know. I’ve seen people who hurt who use their pain to understand others, sometimes even the ones who caused the pain, faced it and have become, what one friend of mine would call Buddhas. I know victims of rape and incest who have become councillors teaching others how to empower themselves.

Looking at both sides and again not belittling anyone’s past, I wonder what can be achieved by not looking at my past as a curse or a blessing but seeing it as a challenge, something that I can move beyond if I but have the determination to do so. That way to me lies enlightenment. So I leave it to those of you who’s comments I treasure. What has helped you move beyond your past?

Blessings, G

 

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Tiger Warp by G A Rosenberg

 

Electric Mandala by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – April 1 2012

““The beauty of empowering others is that your own power is not diminished in the process.”
— Barbara Colorose

Wow. It seems so easy to find quotes about relationships that reflect disempowerment. People talk about how they have been dumped on, hurt and diminished by connecting with people. It seems relatively harder to find quotes that talk about empowering and being empowered by others in our relationships.

What does it mean to empower others? How can we learn to build on the strengths of people we love and enable them to feel like they can accomplish anything they wish? How do we say ‘I believe in you and mean it’?
Perhaps the question might be better phrased. Why don’t we say it more often? It seems so easy to feel over-sensitized in our relationships especially our long-term ones. Little things build up day by day and we not only diminish our partners in our eyes but we diminish ourselves. Resentment seems easy and praise difficult.
We even justify it in our minds. We aren’t harder on them than we are on ourselves or Wow look at all the things that bug them about us. But perhaps like so many other things, the answer is contained in the question. It’s easy.
It’s so easy to settle on the traits we love and hate that we have seen many times before. It’s like there is a checklist in our heads. Yep there he is being kind again, He forgot that again. Yep, she’s complaining about this. Yep, she’s so organized. How much more difficult it is to look at our partners as if we were seeing them for the first time with fresh eyes. When was the last time you noticed a new quality to admire in your partner? If you don’t have a partner how about friends or family members? If it takes us a lifetime to know ourselves completely than I can guarantee that there are qualities in each person you know who you have yet to discover.
Blessings, G

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Masqued Response by G A Rosenberg