“Sometimes maybe you need an experience. The experience may be a person or it may be a drug. The experience opens a door that was there all the time, but you never saw it. Or maybe it blasts you into outer space.”
— Melvin Burgess
I needed joy in my life
and so I met you
I drew you in beautiful colours.
Hours of laughter and love ensued
Who needed drugs when we had each other.
I needed stress in my life
and so the bills came
We found careers with much success.
Hours of work to make ends meet
We needed each other but had no time
I needed to know sorrow
and so you were gone
Too much time apart and too tired.
Hours of loneliness ensued
What’s needed now I don’t have a clue
— G A Rosenberg
Amazing how no matter what emotional or spiritual button we need pushed, we find a way to draw it to us. Perhaps our understanding grows and we grow wiser with each experience as we come to understand each nuance of emotion. Sometimes we just need to let them rain.
Blessings, G
“The happy ending of the fairy tale, the myth, and the divine comedy of the soul, is to be read, not as a contradiction, but as a transcendence of the universal tragedy of man. The objective world remains what it was, but, because of a shift of emphasis within the subject, is beheld as though transformed. Where formerly life and death contended, now enduring being is made manifest—as indifferent to the accidents of time as water boiling in a pot is to the destiny of a bubble, or as the cosmos to the appearance and disappearance of a galaxy of stars.”
— Joseph Campbell, The Hero With A Thousand Faces
The world is shaped by our experience of it. Any two of us can have a day where we experience the same events, practice the same activity and see the same things yet have two very different descriptions of it.
“Wow I got to interact with so many people today and got to respond to their needs!”
“What a day! So many people kept bothering me with their problems!”
“The weather was beautiful. The sun kept shining through the window and it brightened my day”
“That f*king sun kept shining in my eyes and it was so hot.”
“The music was so great! I just closed my eyes and let it take me. I was in a meditative state for hours.”
“I was so bored”
Imagine then when we go through experiences that transform our lives. Where once we experienced life in one way, we now experience it in another. What in one context is a problem in another becomes an opportunity or a challenge (occasionally this happens in reverse). Our experience of people changes as well. The more we come to know ourselves, the more we come to understand others and can relate better to them. It’s the same world on the outside yet it is our perceptions (and our choices) that make the difference.
Blessings, G
“Begin each day by telling yourself: Today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill will, and selfishness— all of them due to the offender’s ignorance of what is good and evil. That people of a certain type should behave as they do is inevitable. To wish it otherwise were to wish the fig-tree would not yield its juice.”
— Marcus Aurelius
What is your reality box made out of? Some boxes are made of iron and nothing can get in or out. Whatever is in there will stay the way it was even after the world turns to dust around it? Those who keep their views of reality in a box like that will never have to be concerned about change or growth. It is a prison cell for their evolution with no time off for good behaviour.
Some boxes are made of reinforced cardboard. Anything that is within can be carried and until the box is unsealed, its contents will stay secured. They can’t stand a lot of rough handling tho. If something outside the box wants in, it will get there eventually. Someone who keeps their reality in a box like that is capable of change and might even enjoy new things. If only they could get through all that damn packing tape.
For me, the perfect box would be made of some kind of permeable plastic. It can be easily opened and its contents exchanged and there is air and room inside for them to breathe. Oh they may get stale after awhile but that’s ok, most viewpoints do when confronted by the outside air. The container only starts to smell bad if there is unwillingness to exchange the contents for others that work better. A good cleaning every now and then helps.
Blessings, G
“I saw all the mirrors on earth and none of them reflected me.”
— Jorge Luis Borges
I reflect on my reflection
and realize no connection
to that pasty pale complexion
that I see
I remember me as younger
and my body lean with hunger
yet the belly hanging under
won’t agree
Still the years have been much kinder
then I deserve, its a reminder
of the truth I’ve been a finder
and I seek
yet the body has a balance
mind and spirit more a challenge
that I chose, that was my talent
I won’t weep
I’ll put it all together
make my whole self much better
to this challenge that I’ll weather
I will leap
— G A Rosenberg
“Life always begins with one step outside of your comfort zone.”
― Shannon L. Alder
Just for a minute, I’d like you to imagine something. Nothing you say or do ultimately matters. Imagine it doesn’t matter to you or anyone else. Now this might seem depressing for a moment where it may feel pretty dark but then somewhere in the murk of futility a light may shine. If nothing we do ultimately matters, then we are truly free to do or try anything. If it doesn’t matter whether or not I sing out in public, I can burst out into song or try Karaoke. I can go mountain climbing or take that risk because win or lose it doesn’t matter.
This freedom that comes from releasing the matter of our lives is incredible. So much of our safety zone is designed around our beliefs of what other people think or need or want or expect from us or what we expect from ourselves. If we drop those preconceptions then the risk factor goes down. We can try new things that we never would have tried and find possible success doing them. Ultimately we may find ourselves having lots of fun in the process. Fun, joy and delight in our lives to me are a few of the things that ultimately matter most.
Blessings, G
Click on images to see full-sized:
Time Melting in a Fractured Landscape by G A Rosenberg
“Between the person I want to be and the person I am supposed to become I find that I am trapped in between the perfect expectation and the ultimate disappointment and that makes me lose the only person I have at the moment, myself.”
— VàZaki Nada
I am the road that I travel
my history engraved on sign posts
and my future somewhere miles beyond
the setting sun
Many are the exits I have passed
leading both to dead ends
and thriving cities.
My road is littered with graffiti
cast off songs and playbills
filled with magick sigils
I have enjoyed the company
of many others
who’s roads ran parallel for a time
than diverged widely.
Travel upon me for awhile
and experience a world like no other
Ride upon my road
and see what we both become.
— G A Rosenberg
“The attitude that nature is chaotic and that the artist puts order into it is a very absurd point of view, I think. All that we can hope for is to put some order into ourselves.”
Willem de Kooning
“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“How wonderful that we have met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making progress.”
Niels Bohr
Create from chaos a new order
like sand castles doomed when the tide comes in
A fun game that symbolizes our lives
we create temporary structures of thought and deed
one day the tide comes in and those structures vanish
while we build another
never realizing the friendship of entropy
for without it we could not create
Eternity would pass and we would stagnate
in castles that have become prisons
yearning for destruction’s kiss
so we could create anew.
Blessings, G
Click on images to see full-sized:
Desire Burning by G A Rosenberg
Caught Up Within the Elements Within by G A Rosenberg
Projection of Consciousness by G A Rosenberg 
Warrior of Shadows by G A Rosenberg 
