Month: September 2012

Quote of the Day – September 30 2012

“Only by examining our personal biases can we truly grow as artists; only by cultivating empathy can we truly grow as people.”
― Jen Knox

Can we cultivate empathy without examining our personal bias? I’ve come to believe over the last several years that to ensure better and clearer communication, one must clear out the communication room specifically in this case our minds. The clearer we become about our particular perceptual filters, the more we can understand what others say to us and the more we can pick up their emotional states and being.
What does empathy mean tho. I have met many people who consider themselves empathic and they pride themselves on how well they can understand and truly feel the pain of those whom they see as victims. However that is the easy side of empathy. Much more difficult is empathizing with those we see as being the perpetrators or victimizers. Until we can do that, then we have not fully learned empathy.

When I was a junior in high school students in Iran took over the American embassy there and held fifty four Americans hostage for over a year. I remember in Current Events Class standing down all the other kids as I debated on the side of the Iranian students. A few months previously my family hosted a young persian couple who were staying in the states for awhile and they gave me an understanding of the grievances that Iranians would have with American imperialism. They felt that they had suffered under the Shah (who was backed by America). I tried hard to understand both sides and was surprised at how many people seemed to think it was one-sided

I keep running into situations that are similar. People able to empathize with people who feel the way they do without even attempting to understand the other. Occupy Wall Street might be more effective for instance if the protestors tried to see life from the point of view of the bankers, definitely vice versa. By understanding, i do not mean condone or agree with, i mean simply trying to put yourself in another’s head space.

Blessings, G

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Tarot Trump II – The High Priestess by G A Rosenberg

 

Treatment for High Priestess Card by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – September 29 2012

“Her mother had been wrong. Love wasn’t a grand explosion. It didn’t blaze onto the scene like a comet; it crept in like a spy in the night, muffled and disguised, worming its way in, not revealing itself until it was too late to do anything about it. Love didn’t attack; it infiltrated. The poets had gotten it wrong.”
— Lauren Willig, The Orchid Affair

 

Emotional responses will do that won’t they. Creep up on you when you’re least expecting it. Wham love, compassion and insight there when you didn’t even sense them growing. Anger as well…tho luckily eventually we can step back and monitor what emotional weather we’re going through and adjust accordingly. Tho may we all be lucky enough to be snuck up on by love and find that its been growing for awhile.

Blessings, G

 

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Stone Throne by G A Rosenberg

 

Peaceful Purple Mandala by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – September 28 2012

“…an optimistic mind-set finds dozens of possible solutions for every problem that the pessimist regards as incurable.”
― Robert Anton Wilson

 

Most people see this world as hurting badly. Anyone can point to any of a dozen or more really dire problems and dire they would appear for sure. Could they be growing pains of a species in its adolescence? Could this with all of its problems be the path that we set ourselves? True villains appear plentiful but any story needs its antagonists, it’s problems to solve. Ultimately I will always be a hope fiend because I see hope as a necessary ingredient. I see it as being a will to continue even in the face of insurmountable odds. We may lose this planet. We may not survive as a species tho I believe that our spirits will continue.. Energy can’t be created or destroyed but beyond the constructs of time and space, we are eternal… The universe like the dude abides.

Blessings, G

 

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Cosmic Dance by G A Rosenberg

 

Jade Ray Mandala by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – September 27 2012

“We were the people who were not in the papers. We lived in the blank white spaces at the edges of print. It gave us more freedom.
We lived in the gaps between the stories.”
― Margaret Atwood

 

Verse spins from the quote :

 

Crawling out from the edges
of the stories you told
You were the star
I was merely the extra or at most
the friend, the lover
there to understand
but not to act
but then once your staged moved on
I found freedom
I could act in any way I chose
I chose…not to act
but to be..
Living and alive
able to see in with insight
and out again
your story moved on but then you came back
only to find I no longer fit your script
but that’s ok
I’ve been too busy living my own

 

Blessings, G

 

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A Prayer For Peace by G A Rosenberg

 

Masqued Mandala by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – Spetember 26 2012

“The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them, over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day.”
― David Foster Wallace

The question comes for me is how to balance that freedom of responsibility where so much attention, awareness, discipline and effort are needed, freedom of the self, time to meditate, create, and integrate.  It always strikes me that the answer will probably be more easy than I make it. I seem as capable as most people I know at overcomplicating things but somewhere that balance exists. I believe it is probably different for each person.
Blessings, G

 

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Purple Lazer Mandala by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – September 25 2012

“Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you’re not really losing it. You’re just passing it on to someone else.”
― Mitch Albom

Sometimes you have to take time out from things in order to become re-centred inside yourself. This blog has been ongoing for the last four years and I have gone 15 months without missing a night, something I may take what may be an inordinate amount of pride in. I seem to be hitting a crossroads tho where I need to find a new balance. The balance may mean some time away from Waking Spirals. Definitely a little less focus here and a lot less on Facebook. More time spent meditating and figuring out some next steps. Also literally putting my house in order. Perhaps the streak will continue and I will have more art, stories and just talk to share. Here’s to balance.
Blessings, G

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Sacrificial Totem by G A Rosenberg

Emerald Chamber by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – September 24 2012

“In most of our human relationships, we spend much of our time reassuring one another that our costumes of identity are on straight.”
― Ram Dass

I see this in others so it reflects back to myself. I fall into this role of I. Not how I am but how I wish to be seen. That changes day by day and person by person, after all few of us are the same with friends as we are with family as we are with strangers. We have our social masks, our seductive masks, our polite and open masks. Some days I get so tired from taking off masks that I forget what my real face looks like at all.
Little by little I have been dropping the masks a bit. Letting my true face breathe. It’s a bit easier when I’m alone but around others it happens more and more naturally..I wonder at times if it is possible to walk around mask less in today’s world. Heck 2000 years ago it could get you crucified or outcast..
People would rather see someone walking around without clothes than without a social identity. After all someone without a mask makes us all that much aware of our own..
Blessings, G

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Spirits in Flight by G A Rosenberg

Rose Cross Mandala by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – September 23 2012

You can’t stand up to the night until you understand what’s hiding in its shadows.
–Charles De Lint

Of late I’ve become more comfortable with my shadows. Everyone has them, these parts of ourselves that we try to repress, hold back. We become whole as we learn to accept our shadows, ask them in for a cup of tea, have long conversations with why they do the things they do and why we resist them and dance with them. Finally with any luck we may learn to integrate them. Of course there will still be shadows cast but fewer and fainter. Only when we resist our shadows do we run the risk of them biting us in the tail.

On a different note, today we started cleaning out our bookshelves, 30 boxes donated and counting. Saying goodbye to some old friends, well not goodbye as such, many of the characters I’ve internalized. There are a few that I have long conversations with but the covers that once contained them have gone to new homes. It is a cleansing of sorts.

Blessings, G

 

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She Wears the Night by G A Rosenberg

 

Circles by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – September 22 2012

“You People always hold onto old identities, old faces and masks, long after they’ve served their purpose. But you’ve got to learn to throw things away eventually.”
–Neil Gaiman

 

Let’s try an exercise just for the heck of it. Take a piece of paper and in big letters make a list, one per line of all the ways you identify yourself. Use both the ones that you love and the ones that you find troubling . Then tear the paper into strips, each strip holding one face or identity that you use to identify with. Put all the strips into a big glass bowl and burn them. As you burn each one, imagine yourself being freed from that identity. When you’ve finished, take three deep breaths. Repeat the exercise using whatever new identities have come up for you and the old ones that still feel attached. Tear the paper into strips and burn it, imagining  yourself freed from each of those identities. Do it all a third time. As you burn the papers this time say out loud. “I free myself from all preconceptions of who I am and who I will be. I am now free to make my own way.” Take three deep breaths and start thinking of  the person you’d like to be, the identity you wish. Picture yourself doing what that person does and behaving in the way they behave. Open your eyes and realize you’re free to choose. Realize that there is nothing wrong with choosing the same identity you felt trapped in before. At the very least now you are taking it on by choice

Blessings, G

 

 

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Falling To by G A Rosenberg

 

Star Quest by G A Rosenberg