Gabriel Garcia Marquez - Waking Spirals

Creative Pessimism

“Don’t struggle so much, the best things happen when not expected.”
— Gabriel García Márquez

My mind seldom stops. This has its positive aspects and its drawbacks. Learning to meditate was a challenge. Even now, I tend to overthink most things. Going into new situations I tend to look at them from all angles trying to consider ways in which they can backfire and coming up with possible solutions ahead of time. At times it becomes something of a game, somewhere between chess and mental masturbation. Still there are times when none of my disaster scenarios play out no matter how prepared I may be for them and I get surprised. This happens often enough that I extol the virtues of creative pessimism. It’s not that I expect things to go wrong as much as I try to be prepared. Yes I realize how neurotic this seems yet I often find that working through a mishap can be ever so much more rewarding than things going right from the beginning. At least it keeps my mind occupied.
Blessings, G

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Conscious Navigation by G A Rosenberg

Reflective Mandala by G A Rosenberg

At the Edge by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – July 7 2012

“He allowed himself to be swayed by his conviction that human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but that life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.”
― Gabriel García Márquez

When we make a choice to recreate ourselves, how do we do it? How do we identify ourselves? More specifically who do we identify ourselves with and how much of who we are do we allow to be submerged within the framework of this group or identification?
When i was seventeen and had a brief sojourn with a religious group, I tried to make myself over into a mold of a perfect member of the group. I would pray the way a member of the group was supposed to pray, eat what they ate, fundraise in the way they fundraised, sleep etc. I did my best (rather unsuccessfully) to subsume myself within the group. I believed or tried to make myself believe that being a member of this group made me better than everyone else. I put the cult’s interest above all others including my own.
Gradually I left the cult. I found too much cognitive dissonance creeping in and my own individuality started to emerge and I left. My mother had called it correctly when she pointed out that when I was there I wasn’t writing. “As soon as he starts writing poetry again, he’ll come home soon after.” Indeed I left within forty-eight hours of writing my first poem since i had come there. The lady knew here children.
What makes us need to define ourselves in terms of other people? What groups do we identify ourselves with? What happens when we start to feel that our group is so special either because of things people belonging to the group have done or because of the way our group was treated in the past that it deserves preferential treatment? What happens if we lose sight of the fact that our group is just one part of a greater whole, a collective of being?
I have lots of questions around this area these days and wish to explore it further.
Blessings, G

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Falling Towards the Light by G A Rosenberg

Eyeful Spirals by G A Rosenberg