No Wrong Turns

“There are no wrong turnings. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay

 

Different turnings…10 yr old with red wagon delivering newspapers in the rise of the Connecticut sun with his dog walking alongside…the night before he dreamt his parents fought and split up and somehow he ended up first with his mother than with his father…15 yr old in New Jersey kissing his first girl friend, his mother and step-father say they have to have the bedroom door open at all times..17 yr old walking with his buddy down the road to adventure. They want to hitch hike out of Connecticut and see what life there is outside of high school. His parents watch them go and are not particularly surprised when he ends up in a religious cult in California…25 yr old hitchhiking with his lover across the US. In Utah they watch the two kids who gave them a ride wiping their prints off the car and he knows they must move quickly. 28 years old and giving tarot readings in Toronto .. 36, back in CT doing web design and he meets the love of his life online…43, he picks his son up from pre-school and takes him for ice cream. 46, a new spiritual awakening and a new career as an artist in Vancouver.
Funny, how each turn in the path when you look back on it seems inevitable. They have all led to this moment in this place. Yet who could have looked ahead and seen them? Still during the darkest moments, what has always kept me going is wonder. Wondering at how much I’ve come through so far and even more curiosity and wonder at what may come next.
Blessings, G

 

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under arch rock formation in MoroccoDate Night 2 by G A Rosenberg

 

Spreading The Signal AbstractionPropagating the Signal by G A Rosenberg

Any Given Path

“It was the straying that found the path direct.”
–Austin Osman Spare

 

Certain themes seem to keep coming up for me. One of them is definitely the idea that one’s path is unique and that whenever we are following a defined (whether religious, social, political or philosophical ) road that others have set before us, it is not that we are following that path as much as that path has temporarily become part of our own. It may seem a minor distinction but it is a crucial one. By Temporarily, it can be years but even in a case where we have joined a monastic order, we will not hold exactly the same beliefs or interpretations of that belief as any other person there. Nor will we be coming to it with exactly the same background so even then our path is a unique one. Often the farther we stray from any GIVEN path, the more we find our own.
Blessings, G

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DreamScape17Dreamscape 17 by G A Rosenberg

 

Magenta ContemplationContemplation by G A Rosenberg

A Colourful Business…

“In many shamanic societies, if you came across a medicine person complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they would ask one of four questions: When did you stop dancing? When did you stop singing? When did you stop being enchanted by stories? When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?”
–Angeles Arrien

 

Where would we be without a sense of wonder? Occasionally I interact with people both in real life and online who seem to have had their imagination shot off in the war. They speak flatly and argue flatly usually for what seems like a flat earth but is in actuality just a reality that stops either at the border of what they have seen or experienced for themselves or sometimes stretches to encompasses writers who tell them that indeed reality does not stretch that far. So in a universe of infinite colour and hue they restrict themselves to sixteen colours and see themselves as fanciful that they do not stop at eight.

How do you describe to someone colours that they have never seen? How can you make them believe that there are complete palettes of shades that do not exist on their colour wheel. Especially when they have always been more than satisfied with their sixteen thank you very much and see as thriftless nutters anyone who could possibly see more than thirty-two. Perhaps if they were open to the idea that such hues existed you could help them to see in their minds eye at least but all to often they have erected a grey wall against it. Eventually you just have to share your colours only with those who have the courage to paint their dreams.
Blessings, G

 

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Dreaming in TandemDreaming in Tandem by G A Rosenberg

 

Gem VortexGem Vortex by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – March 25 2013

“Live life fully while you’re here. Experience everything. Take care of yourself and your friends. Have fun, be crazy, be weird. Go out and screw up! You’re going to anyway, so you might as well enjoy the process. Take the opportunity to learn from your mistakes: find the cause of your problem and eliminate it. Don’t try to be perfect; just be an excellent example of being human.”
― Anthony Robbins

 

I read this and I just want to say YES. How often in my life have I second guessed myself or stopped myself from doing something because I was worried either about what someone else might think or that I would not do it correctly? How many experiences have I avoided not because I did not want to experience them but out of fear or avoidance.  Honestly tho, I’ve let myself do a lot and I’ve made huge mistakes and can look at them now and laugh from the other side.

I can guarantee that not only myself but everyone reading this will make several mistakes between now and when we go on. That’s awesome. Mistakes are there so that we can plumb the depths of our ignorance and learn. They are necessary parts of our journey and we should rejoice in them. They may suck at the time particularly the ones where we or others who we care about get hurt but in the mutual healing there is much that can be learned. These mistakes are part of the human journey and wow am I grateful for that.

I’m going to leave off with two questions tonight that I’d love to hear answers from. What inspires you? What feeds you and allows you to go further faster? What is one thing you would like to try that you haven’t yet?
Blessings, G

 

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INGMRF-00005584-001Ripples of Remembered Love by G A Rosenberg

 

LifenetLifenet by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – February 10 2013

“Always ask yourself, why does this story matter? Ask and keep asking. And be as frank in your answer as all your courage will allow. When it comes to storytelling, life’s too short to waste it on stories that don’t matter.”
– Billy Marshall Stoneking.

 

I read the above and I feel a bit humbled. In my writing, I try to make what I say to people relevant. When I write of my past, I choose not only the stories I need to tell but the ones that I hope are meaningful, that matter. I know that a story that matters has life beyond the storyteller and in truth matters more than a storyteller ever can. Do I succeed? I don’t know. I’d rather stay unsure as overconfidence much like in parenting too often means failure.
Blessings, G

 

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Crystal Works

Crystal Works by G A Rosenberg

 

Jellyfish OrgyJelly Fission by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – August 11 2012

“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”
― Rumi,

 

Cleverness never seems to get me as far as I would like it to. Oh there’s something to be said for being witty, being quick, having the right answer but in the long run the fastest way to avoid learning at times is the belief that I have all the answers. Thank you universe for sparing me from that at least most of the time. Still I see it surprisingly often. People so convinced they know that they close themselves off to what could be learned from others. I kind of find that self-limiting tho I guess it is a way to have an unchallenged world view.
Blessings, G

 

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Eddy in the Neon Stream by G A Rosenberg

Tarot Card – Eight of Cups (Two Versions)

Long have I stayed here
drinking deeply of the pleasures offered
Now my soul longs for more
Cups lie empty strewn around me.
Surely there must be more!
I look out and feel a yearning
a calling- some message
telling me…what?
that I can be more than this mundane creature
with neither needs nor ambition
that there is purpose and meaning
once I give it such.
I know I will be changed
by what lies ahead
Do I have a choice?
Stay here and become not
bur remain that which I’ve been
or follow the pull
on mind heart and being
no choice at all
I reach out and
I’m gone
— GAR

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Eight of Cups by G A Rosenberg

(side note: After seeing this depiction, a friend of mine who knows quite a bit about the tarot and things esoteric suggested that traditionally the cards are stacked… Looking at given meanings for the card, I could see his point. Sometimes before finally given up, we make a show of trying to put the chaos in our lives into order.  I did a second version of the card to reflect this (and leave a neater beach):

Eight of Cups (Version 2) by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – May 4 2012

“Like those in the valley behind us, most people stand in sight of the spiritual mountains all their lives and never enter them, being content to listen to others who have been there and thus avoid the hardships.”
–Robert Pirsig

For too many years this described me. I read so much about spirituality. Castaneda, Crowley, Blavatsky, Leadbeater, Alice Bailey, Eliphas Levi, an endless list. Yet I never meditated or did any real work on myself. I fooled myself into thinking that I was discovering answers and gaining insight. It was pretty funny actually. At one point I grew disillusioned with, well not so much what I was learning but with myself. I acted in ways that felt a lot like self-betrayal so I left my studying behind. That was when I truly began to climb the mountain. Oh for years I circled the base learned much about relationships, much about my own capacity for self-deception and slowly with much time and much practice quite a bit about love and compassion. Then I started to meditate and create and other things to work on within and the climbing began. I look at the few steps I’ve come since then and look up and up and up at the inner mountains ahead and I smile and I climb.
Blessings, G

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Volcano by G A Rosenberg

Fireworks from the Inside by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – March 27 2012

“Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.”
–Mahatma Gandhi

 

This reminds me of the Richard Bachman quote, “Argue for your limitations and sure enough they’re yours” It seems for so long I’ve told myself that I could not do certain things and worse yet believed others that I could not do them that I never really tried.
Three years ago I would never have believed that I would be consistently creating visual art that people liked. I had some talent with Photoshop but saw it as an extension of my computer skills not as anything visual.
Then I started feeling some awakenings of consciousness. Then I started hanging out and talking to some very cool people who encouraged my writing efforts and told me that self-expression was of great importance. I started meditating more and creating more. I didn’t think much of it. I have always done some writing and now I had more to express than I had in years. I even started making youtube videos. Out of this came more amazing friendships, more roads to exploration of myself, the universe and our interconnectedness and more need for self expression.
One day in order to avoid writing an essay, I decided to start a new project. I had always practiced meditation and reading with the tarot. What would it be like to do a poem or haiku for each of the cards. I would do one a night, choosing the card at random for 78 nights, just to see if I could do it. This was my project in 2009. You can find some examples here (http://grosenberg.wordpress.com/page/100/ ) and the pages surrounding it.

The project was completed successfully and then I started considering if, properly illustrated this collection of haikus might make an interesting book.  I decided to start using my Photoshop skills to start doing collage work. I surprised myself by actually being quite good at it.  It satisfies a need of self-expression in me like few things I have done before and that some of my work has touch others amazes me in ways I never thought possible.

If I had continued telling myself that I couldn’t draw or I couldn’t do visual art than none of that would have been possible. What other ways have I limited myself  by never tryings? What ways do you do it? More and more I believe it is our destiny to self-actualize in as many ways as possible and very little is impossible.

Blessings, G

 

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Heart Shine by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – March 17 2012

“The disciple is not hankering for knowledge; he wants to see, not to know. He wants to be. He is no longer interested in having more knowledge; he wants to have more being.”
–OSHO

When I was younger and reading everything in sight, I wanted to know as much as possible. “Fill me up” The subject matter did not matter. All I wanted was more knowledge. Then as I entered young adulthood I began to realize the futility of that ambition. Our knowledge was always opening up further and there will always be more to know.
At that point my questions became deeper. I wanted to understand. I wanted to understand our purpose for being. I wanted to understand how such suffering can exist in this world and what I could to stop it and why only some people seemed to suffer? I wanted to understand other people as I understood myself. I wanted to understand how I came to be, how others came to be and why we all feel so isolated when we are part of the same thing? I wanted to understand the heart of another being. So many things i wanted to understand. Even when I thought that i had left the path i kept on it, still struggling to understand.
These days once again changing my intentions. Knowledge is awesome. Understanding is bliss. What I want more than anything else these days is to be. I wish to be myself in full potential. I wish to shine forth the divine spirit from within myself and inspire others to do the same. I wish to remove all the nonsense that blocks me from being myself and I wish to be in full alignment with the highest truth and the greatest good.
Blessings, G

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Purple Cloud Lattice Mandala by G A Rosenberg