“You’ve got to know yourself. You’ve got to know what ignites your magic, what fires your soul into performing majestic acts of love. You’ve got to know yourself so much that not even a hundred voices will drown yours. You’ve got to own yourself, this journey is all yours. All yours. No one can do it and you decide whenever you are ready to embark on it. Unlearn, learn, master yourself and love yourself or else they will define you and that’s a poisonous kind of life. That’s death.”
— Ijeoma Umebinyuo
I will not be a victim. Oh there have been times in my life where I’ve been hurt by the actions or thoughts of another and I have faced betrayal. In some cases I saw it coming and I let it happen anyway. Even when I hadn’t tho I learned to move on. I cannot let myself be haunted and poisoned by the actions of others. I have seen that happen too often. Not that I necessarily forgave them. There is for me a space of acceptance in between acceptance and continued self-victimization from the deeds of another. Not so much “I forgive you” as “It happened. You had your reasons and the script was played out. I hurt but I won’t carry the hurt because neither you nor I deserve it.” Finding this space has been a hard won victory for me. Yet for me to live in the realm of past pain is to deny myself both the present and the future. Likewise I have learned that past triumphs neither guarantees nor entitles me to present and future ones. Each moment is a new test of the spirit that requires coming to it as clean as possible.
Blessings, G
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein is one of the most amazing novels I’ve ever read. It tells the story of Michael Valentine Smith, as a child lost on Mars then found a few decades later. The novel explores many aspects of what it means to be human and also how our world may be seen through the eyes of a stranger. It most importantly introduces the word grok and the concept of groking. I use the word quite a bit because I don’t know that there is a current word in the English language that expresses the idea as well.
To Grok something is to understand it so fully that it becomes part of you. To grok a chair for instance would mean that you understand the very essence of what the chair is, what its purpose is and how well it performs its purpose. To Grok a concept means that you understand it so fully that you can inhabit it and vice versa. Something that is often lacking. To Grok a person means that you get them on every level possible and carry them within you.
At various times in the novel Michael Valentine Smith talks about groking something or someone in their fullness. That is total and complete understanding and empathy. He talks about waiting and sitting with something before he can grok it in its fullness and won’t speak of it except to ask clarifying questions until he does. I only wish that I and many others I knew had the patience to sit with something or someone until groking in fullness came. Do you grok groking?
Blessings, G
Click on images to see full-sized:
Thoughts Falling like Rock and Rising Like Butterflies by G A Rosenberg
“Balance every thought with its opposition because the marriage of them is the destruction of illusion”
— Aleister Crowley
Neils Bohr said the opposite of a fact is a falsehood but the opposite of a profound truth is another profound truth. R Buckminster Fuller said that the universe can only be apprehended asynchronously. In other words there is no way that we can understand the complete universe at any one time. Therefore at any given time we can only have a partial understanding of the truth. How then do we go about getting closer to the truth. The way that Aleister Crowley suggests above is a good one.
Testing what we think and believe with their opposite is extremely useful tho for some people challenging. Many of us identify so strongly with our thoughts and beliefs that when they are challenged by someone, we take it as being a challenge to our very being itself. Instead we should welcome it and yes, challenge ourselves. If we are correct, than the opposing view will obviously fall apart. If we are mistaken than the opposite thought will enlighten us. Far more often tho, the truth lies somewhere in between and it is by synthesizing the two that we can reach a higher understanding. Of course than occurring to Hegel, we should then look at the opposite of our synthesized view and keep on going until we reach a total breakthrough beyond thought.
Blessings, G
“A pilgrimage is not a conquest, it is a surrender. It is a way of getting yourself out of the way.”
–Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev
Getting out of my way…Not second-guessing or build up rationalizations for the emotions I’m feeling but just letting it flow. Giving up worries and rationalizations and concerns about how others are seeing me. Surrendering to myself and listening to what my spirit is saying. Stepping back. Too often when I try that I tend to trip over my feet. How can I make each day a pilgrimage of understanding; of growth? It means surrendering my world or at least my world view. So difficult yet so so necessary. What new vistas can open up in our understanding and awareness if we could only live in flow.
Blessings, G
“The charm dissolves apace,
And, as the morning steals upon the night,
Melting the darkness, so their rising senses
Begin to chase the ignorant fumes that mantle
Their clearer reason.
Their understanding
Begins to swell: and the approaching tide
Will shortly fill the reasonable shores
That now lie foul and muddy.”
― William Shakespeare
Understanding is a precarious thing and coming to it may be torturous. Oft times we think we have a handle on things and at best it is a compromise. We’ve settled on a position because it is easier than accepting that the universe is a wondrous complicated place with no easy answers yet many competing right wrong ones. Most of us need more security than that it seems. So we make our compromise and choose our positions and argue for them as if they were absolute truth. We may even get into fights both verbal and physically over them.
Which belief is the right one? Who’s deity is stronger? Who has the right to what land and with what justification? Who has the right to retaliate and how hard and under what provocation? Who has the right to exist and under what circumstances? People who have made similar positional compromises band together and drag others along with them. Innocent bystanders get hurt in the process. The water becomes muddier and muddier and all hope of a greater understanding vanishes. Yet sometimes in the midst of all this there is hope.
People not fully indoctrinated to a position start to realize the folly of the extremists. Little by little they walk away from the conflict and seek a new better way of being. It may happen slowly at first with a conversation or two but somewhere in there remains the hope of clarity. Therein lies the road to wisdom that we are capable of. Until then innocence will always be threatened, if only our own.
Blessings, G
“Spoon feeding in the long run teaches us nothing but the shape of the spoon.”
― E.M. Forster
all too often when people have attempted to teach me something, they teach it by rote a bit at a time. How much better it would be if they were to present something fully and let me reason it out or plant seeds of understanding and show me how to grow them. It seems all too often people are in the habit of imparting knowledge instead of fostering understanding. This is somewhat akin to JFK’s famed expression of feeding a man fish rather than teaching them how to fish. By showing someone pathways to understanding, they can not only gain tools that will help them in all areas of their life but they will be able to grasp what they are being shown in a much more visceral way.
Blessings, G
“One should use common words to say uncommon things”
― Arthur Schopenhauer
One of the qualities that I have been working on in myself is to have the clarity necessary to speak deep truths in a simple way. Understanding is wonderful but if I can’t convey what I understand in a simple way to others than it is next to useless. What’s more if I can’t explain it simply do I fully understand or am I just intellectualizing? In these days of internet connection, knowledge is easy to come by, understanding much less so. It is the difference between having a warehouse full of food and feeding people.
Blessings, G
“When focusing only on one’s credentials one boasts his own incompetence in his capacity for discernment of the individual.”
― Criss Jami
I met this old professor.
He wore his degrees like medals.
He would talk for hours of
all that he had learned thirty years ago
yet when I asked
what he had learned since
or what made his heart sing
he gave me a blank stare
“Hearts do not sing”, he scoffed
“I have learned all I need to know long ago.”
He walked away as there was nothing he could teach me.
He was right.
I met an old street woman.
She was a Princess in the land
she was from
or so she said.
She had only three tobacco stained teeth in her mouth
and her eyes shone.
She had dreams dancing there
and each one brought her from day to day.
She said for five dollars
she would tell me a secret
I handed her the money and she said.
“Love, Dream, Learn, Share”
I longed to forever here her teachings
I saw a child playing
He ran up to me and said “Play”
He did a little dance
I said “I must complete this project”
and then perhaps I will.
He looked at me and did a little dance.
He hugged me and then skipped and said “Play”
Totally in the moment
One day he would grow
and worry about yesterday and tomorrow
but today he was present.
I joined the Teacher in the moment
and danced in the now.
— G A Rosenberg
“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”
― George Bernard Shaw
The family gathers
and the shadow play begins.
Odd feints detectable only to those
old hands in the game.
Each move choreographed in steady rhythm.
Each practiced tone pronounced.
More of the heart revealed with every thrust
of witty rapier.
So much love looking to expand the old worn currents
so many shaded ways to show it
yet the message is always delivered
and the understanding grows
— G A Rosenberg
Blessings, G
Click on images to see full-sized:
Strange Sky Mountainside by G A Rosenberg
Abstract Fractal Caress in Green Space by G A Rosenberg
“In a universe that defies description, all systems of belief can only be false.”
— Austin Osman Spare
Buckminster Fuller said the universe was asynchronously apprehended which means that it cannot be fully comprehended all at once. At most when we contemplate the vastness that we live in we can only achieve a partial comprehension. I believe it is possible to have a peak or mystical experience where we can catch a glimpse of the totality but those tend to be notoriously difficult to put into words. Therefore any system of belief that is written or spoken is only a partial approximation and thus on some level flawed. With that understanding tho we can look at many belief systems (and lets not kid each other, there are probably at least as many systems of belief as there are people. Even people who believe in as structured a religion as fundamentalist christianity will differ in exactly how they interpret the ‘literal word of God’ and what that means in their lives.) any one of them will be false or at best partial. Of course since I believe we live in a universe of infinite possibility I also agree with Ken Wilber when he says that everyone is right (but partial).
Blessings, G
Rainbow Goddess by G A Rosenberg 
Wheel on Fire by G A Rosenberg 
