Month: July 2012
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 – July 11 2012
“Your only obligation in any lifetime is to be true to yourself. Being true to anyone else or anything else is not only impossible, but the mark of a false messiah.”
― Richard Bach
It’s funny really. I began this collection of quotes about identity this week thinking I would quickly reach a destination and yet it seems that the journey like most has taken me down some routes I didn’t quite expect. Yesterday’s reflection on authenticity vs social expectations was one and it started both externally (through some brilliant comments) and internally some side streams that are still ongoing.
Nicholas Ambrose (http://nicolasambrose.com/) was one of the commenters and he offered this quote from the book Illusions and that book so connects to this topic that I included it as tonight’s quote. One of the biggest issues that Donald Shimoda, one of Bach’s main characters in Illusions has to resolve is the relative importance of other people to his mission in life. For me of late similar issues have come up. How can I balance the relationships I have in my life and still be true to myself? Both of Bach’s main characters in Illusions were loners mainly living solitary lives. This is not true for me and while my relationships challenge my sense of self they also provide the stability necessary for me to pursue inner discovery. What is the higher truth? When we know the answer to that question how do we act on it? How do we learn to trust it? These questions and more have arisen and many feel unresolved. Resolution exists tho of that I am sure.
Blessings, G
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Atomic Chamber by G A Rosenberg
Phoenix Blood by G A Rosenberg
Quote of the Day – July 10 2012
“Never try to do anything that is outside of who you are. A forced smile is a sign of what feels wrong in your heart, so recognize it when it happens. Living a lie will reduce you to one.”
― Ashly Lorenzana
For only the second or third time since I started doing the daily quote I am including a quote that I am having a difficult time with. Oh the basic idea I agree with that ideally we should live our lives in such a way as to express honestly who we are at any moment. Yet in the lives most of us live there seem to arise times when it is necessary to smile. Showing anger at your boss in social situations does not lend to job security. Becoming frustrated around in-laws is not conducive to harmony in marriage.
I am not advocating phoniness. In these types of situations I try to find reasons to smile. It’s all a matter of focus. Do you pay attention to your boss belittling you in subtle or not so subtle jabs or do you enjoy the decor of the resturant or the beautiful hillside and sunset? There is always something positive to focus on tho sometimes it can be difficult to do it. Tho with practice it becomes easier. For me it comes down to this Do I want to be the guy who is usually and easily frustrated or the guy who finds something to enjoy in most situations?
Blessings, G
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Forces at Work by G A Rosenberg
Monday Mandalas
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Blue Wheel Dissolving over Crimson by G A Rosenberg
Radiating Star by G A Rosenberg
1 AM Questions (Redux)
So if I take off my art and my quotes and my poems
if i stand exposed before the world
and speak my truth
will anyone care?
and why should that matter?
Do I have a truth worthy of expression?
one that hasn’t been said better by others?
What is my voice?
Can I teach as well as learn?
Can I talk as well as express?
What if I step out from behind my masks
and show nothing?
where does all this fear come from?
Could it be?
that I need to be this open
to heal myself and thus heal others?
How can I counsel jumping to others
without making the leap myself?
Can I let go of fear
and being alone?
Shall this caged bird fly free?
— G A Rosenberg
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Meditation by G A Rosenberg
Quote of the Day – July 9 2012
“You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.”
― Philip K. Dick
How do I identify myself? What is my identity? Is each I AM statement that I make something I must surpass? Can that be seen as the betrayal or curse that PKD speaks of in this quote? I identified myself as a member of the Unification Church. For months I tried to make myself into the model of a church member even as evidence against the church’s teachings started piling up both internally and externally. Eventually I left betraying many of the teachings subsequently. This pattern has repeated with almost every aspect of my life as self-chosen identity after self-chosen identity became discarded like a pile of outgrown clothes. Now I find even the current identity and familial paradigms that I live with coming into question and I struggle betwe see full-sen obligation and authenticity.
So when my identity, the life roles I have chosen for myself come into conflict with the core of my being, how do I resolve this? What other issues are involved in living a life of authenticity and what must I betray in order to be my true self? Time I know will resolve this as it does most things so then I figure out what the priorities are. The way out always brings us to a higher part of the spiral.
Blessings, G
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The Offered Key by G A Rosenberg
Quote of the Day – July 8 2012
“If you understood everything I said, you’d be me”
― Miles Davis
My first thought when typing this quote was “or perhaps telepathic” but thats not quite it. Even if we could read each other’s minds and know what we meant, it would take years of knowledge and experience in order to understand (or innerstand as a few of my friends would have it) from where the emotional content of what I said arose. We could understand the content but not the source.
Perhaps that is how it should be. If we are, as I suspect a good deal of the time, the universes way of understanding itself then perhaps it should be at least as difficult as self-understanding is for us. Perhaps as well, understanding may be a goal that we always approach but never quite reach, much as grasping absolute truth while in the physical body. For if we do contain multitudes and universes within us, absolute universal truth and the heart of another may not be that far different.
Blessings, G
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Water Om by G A Rosenberg
Prairie Dusk (photo)
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
Song to the Wise
Wiccan women calling down the moon
seeking to travel
seeking to learn
Does it speak to the heart?
Does it speak to within
Does it speak to virtue
Does it speak to your sin
and what have you done
for what do you grieve?
You have lived, nothing less
than what you believe
Medicine man singing the sun
seeking to guide
seeking to heal
Does it come from spirit
Does it speak to your soul?
Does it bring us together?
and make the parts whole?
and what have we done
what do we believed
With you love, we have grown
A new life we must weave
–G A Rosenberg
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Expressio3 by G A Rosenberg (2010)