Surviving

 

“Sometimes you climb out of bed in the morning and you think, I’m not going to make it, but you laugh inside — remembering all the times you’ve felt that way.”
― Charles Bukowski

 

Time after Time I have found myself in the muck of life having to deal with situations that in one way or another I set myself up. Call it lessons or call it carelessness or lack of mindfulness or perhaps at times just circumstance. I find myself neck deep in it and treading water. I sometimes wonder how will I get through this. I meditate and I pray and agonize. Tho time and time again, the answer that comes back tends to be the same. In my life I have survived many such lessons. If I survived that than I can get through this. Sure enough I get through it.
We are by nature survivors. If you don’t believe that this is true than ask yourself this? If you’re not a survivor, how did you ever make it this far? This should quiet those particular shadow voices long enough to do what you have to do. We are all infinitely strong if only we let ourselves be. We have all made it to this point in our lives no matter what we have had to live through. We all have roadblocks but rarely are there insurmountable obstacles.
Blessings, G

 

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Forest at Night

Forest At Night by G A Rosenberg

 

Expansion2Expansion 2 by G A Rosenberg

Opening to the Universe

 

“Of course I’ll hurt you. Of course you’ll hurt me. Of course we will hurt each other. But this is the very condition of existence. To become spring, means accepting the risk of winter. To become presence, means accepting the risk of absence.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

 

Courage takes many forms. For some it may mean doing something for the first time. For others it may be attempting something that they don’t believe they can be successful at. Courage can also be daring to step outside the truths that they have always accepted and daring to see the world in a new way even if that somehow invalidates what they have always believed. For my money though, the bravest act is when we open ourselves up to another person. This often involves pain for when we do this, we become vulnerable. We expose the armour of constructed self and let the other inside where all our wounds lie open to examination. They see us in our truest form. Would that we could lose that armour altogether and open ourselves up in love to the universe in that way, ever present, ever vulnerable. In our vulnerability we may become more than we have ever been before.
Blessings, G

 

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Reaching OutReaching Out by G A Rosenberg

 

Window on Blue FireWindow on Blue Fire by G A Rosenberg

No Time to be Bored

 

“Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don’t be sorry.”
— Jack Kerouac

 

Have you imagined everything you could ever imagine?
Have you seen everything of beauty there is to see even in your own backyard?
Have you learned everything about yourself there is to learn?
Do you truly know your lover / brothers / sisters / friends / spouse as well as you could?
Have you read every book that can interest you?
Surfed every site you could?
Traveled to every place you could get to?
Have you healed yourself of all wounds both psychic and physical?
Have you sung every song in you to sung?
Have you created everything there is to create?
Have you explored the totality of your relationship to the universe?
There’s so much to experience in life,
how can any of us find time to be bored?
Blessings, G

 

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Mulitcoloured Mountain DwellingMulti-Coloured Mountain Dwelling

 

Admiring the Life MaskAdoring the Life Mask by G A Rosenberg

Midnight

 

“We sense that ‘normal’ isn’t coming back, that we are being born into a new normal: a new kind of society, a new relationship to the earth, a new experience of being human.”
― Charles Eisenstein

 

Midnight
and something new waits to be born
Growing below the surface
beyond understanding
yet palpable in its being
The night continues
its darkness touching my heart
or perhaps it reflects my heart’s darkness
that shadow being with whom I contest
fighting to accept it’s reality
as I fight to accept my own
Still we midwife and parent
the new beginning to come
and through uneasy partnership
comes a growing acceptance
as new life pushes through
— G A Rosenberg

 

Blessings, G

 

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KepheraKephera by G A Rosenberg

 

Coral AwakeningCoral Awakening by G A Rosenberg

 

Stepping Off

 

“We always know which is the best road to follow, but we follow only the road that we have become accustomed to.”
― Paulo Coelho

 

There is something in our nature that is prone to follow the path of least resistance. I know of many people who exist in lives that they don’t enjoy and may even hate only because it is what they are used to. They may even realize that they have to make changes in order to have a more fulfilled happier lives and yet they stick to the same routines no matter how self-injurious they may be. About the only way for them to get off that merry-go-round is to shock them out of their complacency in some way. Eventually the universe, our sub-conscious or our spiritual selves (depending on your paradigm) will set events in motion to snap us out of it. Either we meet just the right teacher or our lives fall apart in just the right way to effect an awakening that this is not how our lives have to be. When this happens we have a choice. We can either try to reassemble our lives in the pattern that we’ve been following or we can step off of that road and find another one. One that may be truer to what our inner voice tells us is a better life. All too often we chose the former out of a fear of the unknown. However, if we can grasp the vision, our lives can be so much better if we just step off.
Blessings, G

 

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Star ReachStar Reach by G A Rosenberg

 

IndigoGreenIndigo Green by G A Rosenberg

Treating Myself With Compassion

 

“What if I should discover that the poorest of the beggars and the most impudent of offenders are all within me; and that I stand in need of the alms of my own kindness, that I, myself, am the enemy who must be loved — what then?”
― C.G. Jung

 

A strange thing about actively seeking one’s own shadow self is how difficult it becomes to criticize others. I see in myself the cynical jaded parts, the sarcastic parts, the parts that may wish another ill or wish to take advantage of others. I seldom, if ever, act on these impulses but still I know they’re there. I also have a painful awareness of the criticism I have cast upon others for this very trait. At times I catch myself becoming critical of someone else’s unkindness. I have the temptation to be derisive until I sense the echo of myself and realize that the unkindness is something that has come up for me too. Oops.
As I said I catch myself. I cannot deny the negative parts of myself because all too often denial is the nourishment that the shadow thrives on. Still if I come down too hard on myself it is no good either. How can I learn compassion for others if I have not yet learned compassion for myself? So I step back and observe the process. I practice kindness, if not gentleness on myself..acknowledging even the rough parts that will one day shine.
Blessings, G

 

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Origami MandalaOrigami Mandala by G A Rosenberg
 

intertwinedIntertwined by G A Rosenberg

No Pre-Packaged Choices

 

“These ideas can be made more concrete with a parable, which I borrow from John Fowles’s wonderful novel, The Magus.

Conchis, the principle character in the novel, finds himself Mayor of his home
town in Greece when the Nazi occupation begins. One day, three Communist
partisans who recently killed some German soldiers are caught. The Nazi commandant gives Conchis, as Mayor, a choice — either Conchis will execute the three partisans himself to set an example of loyalty to the new regime, or the Nazis will execute every male in the town.

Should Conchis act as a collaborator with the Nazis and take on himself the
direct guilt of killing three men? Or should he refuse and, by default, be responsible for the killing of over 300 men?

I often use this moral riddle to determine the degree to which people are hypnotized by Ideology. The totally hypnotized, of course, have an answer at once; they know beyond doubt what is correct, because they have memorized the Rule Book. It doesn’t matter whose Rule Book they rely on — Ayn Rand’s or Joan Baez’s or the Pope’s or Lenin’s or Elephant Doody Comix — the hypnosis is indicated by lack of pause for thought, feeling and evaluation. The response is immediate because it is because mechanical. Those who are not totally hypnotized—those who have some awareness of concrete events of sensory space-time, outside their heads— find the problem terrible and terrifying and admit they don’t know any ‘correct’ answer.

I don’t know the ‘correct’ answer either, and I doubt that there is one. The
universe may not contain ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ answers to everything just because Ideologists want to have ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ answers in all cases, anymore than it provides hot and cold running water before humans start tinkering with it. I feel sure that, for those awakened from hypnosis, every hour of every day presents choices that are just as puzzling (although fortunately not as monstrous) as this parable. That is why it appears a terrible burden to be aware of who you are, where you are, and what is going on around you, and why most people would prefer to retreat into Ideology, abstraction, myth and self-hypnosis.

To come out of our heads, then, also means to come to our senses, literally—to live with awareness of the bottle of beer on the table and the bleeding body in the street. Without polemic intent, I think this involves waking from hypnosis in a very literal sense. Only one individual can do it at a time, and nobody else can do it for you. You have to do it all alone.”
― Robert Anton Wilson

 

I have always mistrusted one size fits all answers. Whether it is about the right way to educate children, what is the best method for helping people with disabilities or even what is the correct political or moral choices to make. Because when dealing with individual people or individual decisions there is no one right answer because the key word is individual. It’t not as easy or convenient to sit with questions and actually choose moment to moment what is the correct choice but it is necessary if we are to break out of our own internal and cultural programming and make choices from the heart.
Blessings, G

 

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Warrior SpiritWarrior Spirit by G A Rosenberg

 

Green and Flame Spiral OutGreen and Flame Spiral Out by G A Rosenberg

Hard Won Lessons

 

“You haven’t yet opened your heart fully, to life, to each moment. The peaceful warrior’s way is not about invulnerability, but absolute vulnerability–to the world, to life, and to the Presence you felt. All along I’ve shown you by example that a warrior’s life is not about imagined perfection or victory; it is about love. Love is a warrior’s sword; wherever it cuts, it gives life, not death.”
― Dan Millman

 

Sometimes the hardest thing to do is surrender to life and be vulnerable. I have tried in many areas to control the flow of my life, second guessing my every word and action and worrying about the result only to end up totally tied up in knots. I believed that doing this would make me a better partner and father only to find that it puts unimagined strains on relationships. Little by little I am learning to let go and trust a bit more. Letting my son make and learn from his mistakes (as long as they are not endangering the life of himself and others) strengthens our relationship the more that I can do it. This extends to my relationship with my partner and my relationship with my life as well.
The less I resist in my life, the more flows through. Its amazing how much my constant questioning and over-thinking of things has impeded my quest to be more authentic. I have spent so much time trying to figure out what i want that i have stopped living it. When I give that up and let myself be and shut down the endless yammering of thoughts for awhile, I find my life a much happier place to occupy.
Blessings, G

 

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Facing ShadowFacing Shadow by G A Rosenberg

 

Interference2Interference 2 by G A Rosenberg