Building the Tower

 

“From the beginning I felt the Tower as in some way a place of maturation–a maternal womb or a maternal figure in which I could become what I was, what I am and will be. It gave me a feeling as if I were being reborn in stone. It is thus a concretization of the individuation process”
— Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

 

In my work with the tarot, I tend to focus on the Tower archetype as the Blasted Tower, where our false reality collapses under the weight of its own preconceptions when confronted by that which is greater and more authentic. In the above quote Carl Jung describes the positive aspects of the Tower and how and why we construct it in the first place. When we reach a certain point in our adolescence many of us realize that the reality that our parents and our teachers have described to us no longer fits. We react to this by building our own edifice out of the materials at hand. In this process of individuation we tend to make our reality as different from our parents’ as we can. Often it is only after experiencing the flaws in our own reality tunnels firsthand that we can appreciate parts of what has come before and incorporate it into our own models.
Blessings, G

 

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Bard Travelling to Interdimensional CastleBard Travelling to Inter-dimensional Castle by G A Rosenberg

 

Exploding Dark Star MandalaExploding Dark Star Mandala by G A Rosenberg

Beyond Opposites

 

“Our mind is capable of passing beyond the dividing line we have drawn for it. Beyond the pairs of opposites of which the world consists, other, new insights begin.”
― Hermann Hesse

 

Where are your lines? Where are your boundaries? Where is it that you demarcate between what is something you believe in and what is not? What defines you? Have you ever blurred the line, even for a moment and pretended you believed something else, that you are someone else as so many of us define ourselves by what we believe.

I enjoy stretching myself. I talk to someone new and I try to imagine what its like to see the universe as they see it. I ask questions and learn and I find myself falling into their reality. Oh quite often I’ll find it to be a garment that doesn’t quite fit but the wearing of it has given me something precious and I can now remember what it was like. It has made a permanent impression on how I will see things from now on and when I talk to my friend from that point on (and when you have shared something as intimate as a reality, how can you not be friends?) it will be with a greater understanding of where they are coming from. Of course they may be evolving also so perhaps once again I’ll dive in and learn.
Blessings, G

 

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That Was Just A DreamThat Was Just a Dream by G A Rosenberg

 

Ra Hoor KhuitRa Hoor Khuit by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – July 12 2012

“We say nothing essential about the cathedral when we speak of its stones. We say nothing essential about Man when we seek to define him by the qualities of men.”
–Antoine de Saint-Exupery

So once I have agreed on the importance of being honest to myself and in my expression how do I define myself? Am I my gender or my sexual preference? What does that mean anyway? If I like other men does that mean I group myself automatically with everyone else who prefers the same sex and like what they like and act with the same mannerisms? What if I occasionally like looking or being with women? Does that give me another set of rules?

Am I the religion I was born into? Does what I believe make me better / different /chosen / more worthy of being saved than anyone else? How about where I was born? Wow people seem to think all kinds of things about others based on geography.

Sorry, Neither my religion, my nationality or my sex or preference can or will define me. They may give me perspective but I know what a trap that can be. Perspective limits and so from my point of view, we can only benefit from seeing life from as many different perspectives as possible. I guess in a way you can say I collect boxes tho I don’t take very good care of them and I find any one dissolving under me after awhile.
Blessings, G

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Doorway? by G A Rosenberg

Samurai Reflects by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – June 22 2012

“Reality is whatever you can get away with. If you can’t get away with it, it’s not real.”

–Robert Anton Wilson

So often we forget that what is going on around us is not reality but is simply our take on it. But what I want to talk about is only slightly tangential to that. I want to talk about ice cream. A friend of mine wrote today something along the lines that God is not colour-blind that indeed he enjoys all of the flavours like a full range of ice cream flavours at Baskin Robins.

 

Everything is part of the whole. Colour blind is such a poor choice of words and yes words matter why do you think such emphasis is put on spell-ing. The problem comes, as he stated, in believing that one colour or one anything has greater value than anything else….
That doesn’t mean we, as humans don’t have preferences.. choosing one thing over another is part of the human condition. It’s when we try to justify our preferences as value judgements that things start going awry and things totally go to messed-up-ville when we start insisting that everybody should share our preferences because they are BETTER.
Forget that noise.

 

Could you imagine going to war for rocky road or persecuting anyone who doesn’t like chunky monkey because you KNOW what They’re like. T. hat doesn’t mean the flavours are the same…or that vanilla is peaches and cream…of course that’s absurd. Yet we tend to have so much trouble acknowledging that there can be other valid choices, other flavours also good that so many of us become Almond Creme Supremacists , convinced that because another flavour is chose, that the person choosing it is inferior in some way. Of course we somehow miss the fact that this is because we doubt our own choices. It’s almost enough to make one lactose intolerant.
Blessings, G

 

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Riding the Eye Way by G A Rosenberg
Coral Spiral by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – June 20 2012

“A single ego is an absurdly narrow vantage from which to view this–this experience.”
— From the movie Waking Life

I could quote from the Verve and say I’m a million different people from one day to the next but that is a hopeless exaggeration . Still it seems easier and easier to switch hats especially when something is bothering me and view it from a different vantage point.
I’ll give you an example. Lately I’ve taken for me an unnaturally large interest in politics. It’s very easy to look at what’s going on in the world today and become angry and frustrated. I did and several other emotions besides. However when I step back and look at everything as part of a whole that beyond time and space shines like an infinite jewel than everything I see today is part of a large unified beautiful whole. Things will play out as they will play out and things may shift but it is all complete. It helps
That’s not to say that we shouldn’t do what we can to make the world a better place. While that ‘lofty’ balance definitely lends perspective, it does squat for the development of compassion. Nor are those the only two possible perspectives. Indeed it is helpful to shift gears and look at things from the ‘reality tunnel’ or point of view that is radically opposed to your own or one (or a few) in the middle. Little by little the more I have done this the more relative reality seems to me.
Blessings, G

 

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Abstract Lovers by G A Rosenberg

Purple Torch Mandala by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – April 27 2012

“It is by going down into the abyss that we recover the treasures of life. Where you stumble, there lies your treasure. ”
–Joseph Campbell

And some lessons we just have to repeat over and over until we can fully appreciate the wisdom gift they have for us. I call it rabbit hole time in my mind. An idea or someone with a unique point of view I can learn from comes along and I have to jump submerging myself into another reality until it crashes into my reality tunnel or it no longer fits. Oh nothing’s wrong with it in principle, it’s the total leap into the abyss that can be problematic. Yet without leaping how do we fly? Without fully embracing another reality how do we integrate it?
Besides, vacationing in someone else’s reality tunnel can be amazingly refreshing. I’d say couch surfing has nothing on it as a matter of fact. Integrating new realities can be tricky however. Our belief systems do tend to have strong defence systems.
Blessings, G

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Battle Dance by G A Rosenberg

LT6 by G A Rosenberg