Quote of the Day – July 4 201

“You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.”
― Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon

What weighs us down? From early on my generation was told to ‘get a life’. After many years of wandering, studying what I would, travelling I met the person who fit with me and together we’ve raised kids, pets and hopes. Still every so often I start feeling chained down and that my life is not my own. Even the relatively few demands I have on me feels like too many. Then I realize that it is not my family that weighs me down as much as my attitudes about my family. In reality, they also give me the stability I need to fly.
So much of what weighs us down seems to be our expectations of ourself and what we perceive of as other’s expectations of us (really the two become synonymous when I realize that my biggest expectation of myself is that I don’t disappoint the people I love). If we can let go of those expectations then we will be able to fly free. By this i don’t mean let go of our areas of responsibility. As the old zen master said, “Before, enlightenment we chop wood and carry water, after enlightenment we chop wood and carry water”. When we see our responsibilities as part of the cycle of our life, our wings grow.
Blessings, G

Click on image to see full-size

Night Field Under a Full Moon by G A Rosenberg

Origami Rose by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – July 3 2012

“I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

 

I love Robert Heinlein. In a way he along with a few other writers raised me to think for myself through a stormy adolescence. I learned it was ok to be myself no matter who i was and it was ok to love always. In his books, he also introduced me to both the idea of sentient computers and libertarian ideals, which I still lean towards many years later.

 

A few more Heinlein quotes just because :

 

““Always listen to experts. They’ll tell you what can’t be done, and why. Then do it.”

 

“Secrecy is the keystone to all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy and censorship. When any government or church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, “This you may not read, this you must not know,” the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man who has been hoodwinked in this fashion; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, whose mind is free. No, not the rack nor the atomic bomb, not anything. You can’t conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.”

 

“Being right too soon is socially unacceptable.”

 

Recommended books by Robert Heinlein:

  • Stranger in a Strange Land

  • Time Enough For Love

  • Moon is a Harsh Mistress

  • Number of the Beast

    Blessings, G

    Click on image to see full size

    Ankh Appearing by G A Rosenberg

    Hall of Being by G A Rosenberg


Quote of the Day – July 2 2012

““The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can’t be any large-scale revolution until there’s a personal revolution, on an individual level. It’s got to happen inside first.”
― Jim Morrison

I am the rewritten song
taken from a melody
written long ago
adapted for modern times
charged with modern crimes
yet totally my own.

 

I am the movie
based on a book
taken from a legend
told around a long ago campfire
yet still myself
no matter how many changes ensue.
— G A Rosenberg

 

Click on image to see full-size

 

Contoured Texture Mandala by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – May 31 2012

“Please consider yourself, now and henceforth, and no matter what anyone else ever asks of you, free to do any damned thing you want that doesn’t hurt someone else unnecessarily”
–Lady Sally McGee (Spider Robinson)

Another one of those quotes that not much has to be said about it. In some ways to me it is our self-evident right, in others it is more freedom than most of us ever feel we have.
I’d like to think its how I lived my life. I left home when I wanted to explore, I went where and how I wanted to. I got myself into tricky situations and extricated myself, often without help.
I freed myself from people who wanted me to believe what they believed and people who wanted me to be their idea of me rather than who I was. I might not be sure of who I was but each time I learned a bit more about who I wasn’t.
Of course it is always that last part, the part about not hurting others unnecessarily that tends to be the tricky part. It takes awhile to gain that discernment over the unnecessarily part and even longer to realize that someone else can include myself as well. Still gradually I learned it and found out as I’ve gone along that each part of the statement gets tested. I guess that’s true of us all.
Blessings, G

Click on image to see full-size

Magickal Child by G A Rosenberg

Vision Play Mandala by G A Rosenberg

Back to Freedom and Responsibility

‎”There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

– Carl Jung.

I’ve run from many things in my life. I have avoided a lot more. So very often, I’ve run from seeing parts of myself that I didn’t want to see. It seems I didn’t  run very effectively.  I would run, geographically and consciously into new circumstances that would bring another part of myself that needed to be faced, usually something I had been even more reluctant to deal with. If I decided to stay and deal with that part of my shadow, a feeling of amazing liberation would occur. Then the original thing I had run away from would show up in a new guise so that I would have to deal with it again.
I believe consciousness will out and that one’s shadow can only be suppressed for so long before it emerges.
I feel several themes in this blog seem to be converging and perhaps a more personal approach may be necessary. In the next few weeks, depending on my own high level of distractibility, I will be sharing more about my own experiences of facing and avoiding responsibility and my own shadow.

 

Travel notes. Today we fly back to Vancouver. I find that this trip has been fruitive on many levels. England and Ireland have amazing beauty and my spirit is renewed. Blessings, G

Click on image to see full-size

Knight-Time Watch by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – March 19 2012

“Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility. ”
–Sigmund Freud

Fear of responsibility has been one of the biggest blocks in my life. I used to believe that taking on responsibility not only meant that I might be failing others but would also seriously limit my freedom.
Luckily since then I have gained much more of an idea of what both words mean.
It sounds cliche but none of us can have true freedom without helping as many others as possible find it as well. True freedom is self-actualization. Part of reaching our full potential is developing our compassion and realizing how interconnected we all our. In other words our responsibility to ourselves is interconnected to that of others.
Somewhere along the line too many of us have been taught that freedom comes mainly with money. If we earn enough we can be free to do whatever we want. Let’s see how that works. It seems far too many have done what they wanted distancing themselves more and more not only from other the suffering of others but from the suffering of the planet as well. Still, they find that they don’t have enough. They are not happy. They don’t feel free. But then how can you be free if you have locked away every bit of your true self? To Be Continued …
Blessings, G

 

Click on image to see full-size

Stonehenge Visions by G A Rosenberg

I got some amazing pictures of Stonehenge today and the above picture came from a bit of play with one