The Return of Monday Mandalas (and other unfeatured art)

 

“One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams.”
― Salvador Dalí

 

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Blue Flame MandalaBlue Flame Mandala by G A Rosenberg

 

BurstBurst by G A Rosenberg

 

Phoenix Flame MandalaPhoenix Flame Mandala by G A Rosenberg

Real Characters

“If you will practice being fictional for awhile, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats”
— Richard Bach

 

There are times when I lie awake at night and have conversations in my head with characters from books. Malachi in Edgar Pangborn’s Still I Persist in Wondering, never bored and asking the question Why do we love when we know it will end up hurting us. Sometimes in my mind I find myself trading bad puns with the denizens of the Callahan stories by Spider Robinson and sometimes I find myself sharing some of the rougher problems I’ve had with them and thereby lessening the pain. When my mother passed away I found myself receiving solace from the personification of Death as written by Neil Gaiman. THere are so many characters I’ve read over the years that they have taken on a life of their own at least in my mind.
Does that seem far fetched? Do you have friends who you’ve only spoken to on the internet? How about casual acquaintances and distant relatives who most of what you know about each other is myth that you’ve used to fill in the blanks. How real are they to you? How real is the clerk at your local grocery store whom you smile and joke with? Do you even know their name?
At best, the amount of matter we give to a person or thing in our lives whether fictional or corporeal varies based on our mindfulness and our interest. Yes I have loved fictional characters and given them more life than I have the casual strangers I meet each day. Doing this has allowed me to have more appreciation for other beings in general and a keener appreciation for the real.
Blessings, G

 

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Dream Journey MandalaDream Journey Mandala by G A Rosenberg

 

Exploding MazeExploding Maze by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – December 4 2012

“Creativity is contagious, pass it on”
– Albert Einstein

Do you believe that magic exists? that spells may be woven, that things may be changed through sheer will? Well of course you do. We’ve all read of parents able to lift cars off endangered children and speed records being broken. We do the unusual every day and sometimes the miraculous just takes longer. Just think, every day, every minute we create our reality and see others creating theirs. This doesn’t mean that there is not an underlying objective reality after all the elephant exists no matter how many different parts of it we grab. But the perspective we have at any given moment and how that changes, that is miraculous. We can go from villain of the story to hero or backwards, we can become mighty or week, our mates can be the most amazing people we know or the most horrible. We create every moment we can’t help ourselves and yes it is contagious. You’re it. May I never be cured.
Blessings, G

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Building the Mystery

Building A Mystery by G A Rosenberg

The Empress

Tarot Trump III – The Empress by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – November 28 2012

“A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien

Without the dream, how would we know it was possible to change our reality? Without the fantasy how would we be able to shape our dreams? Imagination becomes a strong currency indeed as we stretch from what is to what can be and make it so.

Apologies for the brevity of the posting tonight. I am once again on the road travelling, this time to Long Beach California.
Blessings, G

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…And I Went Into A Dream by G A Rosenberg

Arachne Spins by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – August 7 2012

 “We become slaves the moment we hand the keys to the definition of reality entirely over to someone else, whether it is a business, an economic theory, a political party, the White House, Newsworld or CNN.”
― B.W. Powe, Towards A Canada Of Light

 

Life pressures build up quicker and quicker these days. We become encouraged by the media and by our peers to do more and more fit more and more into the day (usually while eating food that is more and more unhealthy but after all who has time to cook?). So how do we keep informed? Whom do we trust to keep us up to date on what is going on in the world outside of our lives and gods help us if its reality shows.
It all starts to feel pretty convenient. Luckily we have the internet available to us where we can find almost any viewpoint on reality that we want at any moment. We can balance out our world view and not get locked into another’s reality. We may have to take a few minutes to exercise discernment and judgement and critical thinking but what’s the alternative? Either we choose our story or it gets chosen for us. We can have fast reality to go along with our fast food if that’s what we wish and do to our brains what many of us have done to our bodies… It’s good to have choices.
Blessings, G

 

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Quote of the Day – June 25 2012

“The you that you think of as you (and that thinks of you as you, and so on) is not you, it’s just the character that the underlying truth of you is dreaming into existence. Enlightenment isn’t in the character, it’s in the underlying truth.”
–Jed McKenna

Compare this to:

“Perspective – Use It or Lose It. If you turned to this page, you’re forgetting that what is going on around you is not reality. Think about that.”
–Richard Bach

Sometimes its so easy to get caught in our lives like a fly on a fly strip. We take things so very seriously. We forget that the play’s the thing and we are here to work things out, experience it. We find ourselves in relationships with kids and it becomes so easy to believe that that is us. When things go wrong, we bemoan our fates or at least I do and have…I feel glad that I can also shift perspectives..eventually and realize it is all an act. Funny I have done the same thing in parenting moments with Zev. I start out by giving him a talking to and then at some point we both realize that father and son are roles we are playing and we start smiling. Then the talk resumes but at a much more comfortable level.

I have also fallen prey to the opposite effect. Getting so into trying to live the underlying reality that I forget that quite often the people around me are taking things a lot more seriously than I am. That can as I’ve realized in others and myself can come off as quite insufferable. So I strive for balance and hope one day to achieve it in this as in so many other things. At this point I figure the point of balance will probably come about five minutes before I leave this body. Perhaps that’s the way it should be.
Blessings, G

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Fire Nymph by G A Rosenberg

Radiating Spectrum by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – January 19 2012

“The totally convinced and the totally stupid have too much in common for the resemblance to be accidental.”
–Robert Anton Wilson

I envy the ones who know. I find that level of conviction amazing and perhaps on some level intimidating as all get out. Faith can and does move mountains. It adds charisma and of course far too often it keeps one in a box. It may be a box with room for expansion but still the borders can be felt. “Reality ends here. Anything beyond this line will be considered False. If you start believing what’s false or even considering it anything CAN and WILL happen. Here there be DRAGONS”
Yet without people refusing to believe in the borders of the box, who question their certainty, what new can ever be discovered? In an infinite universe, more always remains. So perhaps, even if conviction can not be counted among my strengths, at this point, I’ll still do ok. Namaste, G

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DNA Playground by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – January 6 2012

“No word matters. But man forgets reality and remembers words.”
― Roger Zelazny

We use our words to paint reality, not only our own but what we can of other’s worlds as well. What palette do I find available to me today? Well what subjects have come up in conversation and what depth do we find ourselves swimming in. Shallow words stay in primary colours. As we switch to weightier topics, the colours become more muted so as to not overwhelm and become garish. I may also try a finer and more subtle line making suggestions and allusions that direct rather than drag the audience. Namaste, G

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A Storm of Fish by G A Rosenberg

Fantasy Subdued by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – September 10 2011 Perspectives

“Intelligence is the capacity to receive, decode and transmit information efficiently. Stupidity is blockage of this process at any point. Bigotry, ideologies etc. block the ability to receive; robotic reality-tunnels block the ability to decode or integrate new signals; censorship blocks transmission.”

   –Robert Anton Wilson

 

Thinking about perspectives
part of it still seems to involve how to act
when interfacing with other people’s reality tunnel’s
(most of the time if we’re not hermits)
and yes, how they interface with mine..
i do believe there are limits to how much rudeness
one should be willing to accept from another
By rudeness, I mean someone who insists on trying
to supersede my world view with their own by insisting
that theirs is the only way….
I become weary when i hear terms like “should” and “should not”
“always” and “never” tend to make me a bit queasy also
Tho i realize my own hypocrisy with the first. I have used the word should
but then I too am greatly ignorant
I have yet to meet a person whom I can learn nothing from
So many wonderful teachers
but then one thing I have been slowly learning.
If I see the world as being beautiful and interesting
more and more it becomes so
The more love I conceive and perceive
the more I receive
The more open i become to others, the more my life opens…
Little things, perhaps obvious
yet so easily taken for granted at times,
I know I have…
— G A Rosenberg

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Eye Wood by G A Rosenberg