Author: grosenberg

Long Strange Trips—Quotes

“Sometimes the lights are shining on me. Other times I can barely see. Lately it occurs to me……What a long strange trip it’s been.” What an amazing week. Has felt like my heart has been opening up I’ve been really up and centered. Today I brought Zev to his aunt’s memorial service with strange energy (from my perspective) abounding then got home and now i feel off-center tho I can see the road back to there.

“My life is just so good, I’ve lost the right to sing the blues”– Karen Drucker
Great attitude Great song

Video of the Day


Karen Drucker- I Lost the Right to Sing The Blues

The Lovers Reading

1-How have I experienced love in my life
Wheel of Fortune (Rev)

Wheel of Fortune

 2-What has it shown?
Knight of Wands

Knight of Wands
5-What does love ask of me?
III of Swords

III of Swords

 6-What does love give me?
The Empress

The Empress
3-What do I desire?
The Devil
The Devil		 4-What holds me back?
Temperance
Temperance

Interpretation

How do I experience love in my life?Wheel of Fortune (Reversed) “It may also show someone who begins the difficult process of self-examination, of learning to stop blaming bad luck for whatever disaster his or her life has become””a struggle against events that have already happened” Deep in-breath. This makes more sense than I would like to admit. Struggling against the love in my life and also accepting that I need to create the love that i need (not the sex but the love ) . This past week has been amazing feeling in love with the word itself. Tonight I feel pulled off-center.

2. What has it shown? Knight of Wands “Adventure daring, someone energetic and forceful. As a person he can be very charming confident. This can be a card of travel” I’ve traveled for love and I’ve been creative and adventurous in love. Day to Day working on feeling it…

3. What do I desire? The Devil “The Devil can mean illusions of any kind, mistakes, errors, clinging to values, situations or people who can harm you””the chains are big enough to be slipped” This may be reaching, but beyond the looking to punish myself aspect of love, i would guess that i am looking for chains that I could slip easily?

4. What holds me back? Temperance “…can indicate creative problem solving” battling compulsions”. .. hmmm, almost sounds like I keep pulling myself back from the brink. I get attracted towards a negative person or situation and then think better of it

5.-What does love ask of me? III of Swords “Sorrow with the hope that by accepting it, we can go beyond the pain. Conflict in a group, such as a family or at work. Understanding the quality of your own mind. ” I may need to meditate on this one for a bit Part of this reading doesn’t seem to fit, part of me screams out in denial and part of me believes that the reading points to love as being the unseen hole in the bottom of my boat.

6. What does love give me? The Empress “The Empress can indicate love and desire, not necessarily for a specific person but simply the power of love itself” So in the end to quote John Lennon “the love i take is equal to the love i make” Love gives me love gives me the ability and the desire to love. I love freely without cause on impulse. My choices as far as who and how i love seem questionable but loving is a necessity.

That’s how i would interpret those cards. I would question their relevance to my life at this space-time as they do not seem to reflect my current relationship tho past patterns are reflected for sure. Lots to meditate on. 4 major cards in itself seems of interest. with the Devil and Temperance providing an interesting balance almost indicating strength at a higher level. With the Wheel reversed balancing out the Empress. hmmm “Love is the law, love under will”. If i look at the cards from a point of view of archetypes rather than book meanings it gets kind of interesting. The Devil standing for willfullness, that love (The Empress ) is under. Would almost think of the combination of the two as that old comedy cliche of waking up after a wild night of passion only to find a wedding ring on your finger.

Expression is Key

Thanks to an online fellow traveller on the parallel converging spiritual paths (i love mixing metaphors and find it almost impossible not to when talking about this stuff. There exists One Path yet each entity must travel his/her /its own ;D) i believe i have found a new mantra / affirmation. Thanks Mayan Monkey
But what meaning attaches to it? It uses a form of “to be” so Aristotelean identity would say that there is a key-ness inherent in Expression. What does a key do? It unlocks…doors, locks, codes… hmmmm so what code does expression provide the key to breaking? well it seems that One provides the answer to almost any question 😉 there exists only one code so how does expression provide the key to it.
Old Zen story: The tale goes like this: A student went to visit a famous Zen master. The master served tea and rice while the student talked about his desire to learn Zen. The master filled up the rice bowl up to the brim until it overflowed. Finally, distracted, the student blurted: “It’s too full! No more will go in!” The Zen Master sighed, saying: “You are like this bowl. How can I show you Zen until you first empty this bowl?”

That seems surprisingly clear. When I have absorbed experience, knowledge, information, wisdom, music, art (not sure bur I find several, if not all of the above words synonymous with each other) how do i empty my bowl? hmmm could it be…..Expression? (bells, whistles, a duck comes down) 🙂

hmmm I sense truth here.

Hierophant Reading

1-How has tradition affected my life? The World (reversed) RWWorld
2-What have I learned?>/em> V of Pentacles V of Pentacles
3-How have I broken with tradition? III of Swords RWSwordsThree
4-What effect has it had on my life? VIII of Wands (reversed) RWWandsEight
5-What do I have to teach others? VII of Cups (reversed) RWcupsSeven
6-How can I fulfill the role The Emperor RWEmperor

How has tradition affected my life? The World (Rev)“Stability to the point of stagnation, things have gone stale. The Potential for fulfillment exists but first one must break out.”hmmm, sounds like my formative years and also a warning. I can easily fall into the trap of believing that such a thing as capital-T truth exists . In other words it seems that Agent Maulder might have been mistaken. Also when I was younger, I went to a private hebrew school where traditions and beliefs have calcified.

What have I learned? V of Pentacles“People helping each other especially if society fails them; possibly finding greater meaning in the daily struggles of life”My family was culturally jewish. Hillel, a jewish scholar stated “If I am not for myself, who will be for me. But if I am only for myself then who am I?” The meme of helping others in rough stages of their life was ingrained in me at an early age, as was finding significance in struggles.

How have I broken with tradition? III of Swords“Sorrow with the hope that by accepting it, we can go beyond the pain. Conflict in a group, such as a family, or at work. Understanding the quality of your own mind”I have always quested, always sought, always wanted to learn and understand more. That at times has caused difficulty with members of my family who tend towards more conservative modes

What effect has it had on my life? VIII of Wands (Reversed)“Situations remain unresolved, unstable… It could mean breaking a pattern”So many patterns and traditions broken by me in my lifetime…so much running away and when it stopped ..having to learn to build.

What do I have to teach others? VII of Cups (Reversed)“The need to take action on fantasies. Love might not be returned. A choice might have to be made.” WOW. and maybe that we don’t love for love to be returned, we love because loving works better than not loving. Our choices define us but making a different choice is always possible. All of these things have come up in the recent past.

How can I fulfill the role? The Emperor“Sometimes only the Emperor’s toughness and structures will work in a situation””At its best the emperor represents energy and desire”Hmmmm. comments anyone?

Shalom (Peace)

Enjoy the beauty that you take part in. Walk along by streets and flowers. It it storms, enjoy that too. Storms happen, internally and externally. We can watch the storm without getting caught up in it, without hating it, while acknowledging that they exist. Identify more with the season that the storm takes part in rather than with the storm. Identify with the cycle of the seasons, the year and the progression of years. Identify with the planet-form that the climate takes place in and the universe that contains the planet.
Somehow the storm now seems…if not insignificant, part of an amazing beautiful whole.

Random Thoughts

I hoped to get more writing done today. Oh well. Today Zev had his Sims 3 day. I enjoyed the game more than I thought.

Story idea:Someone using The Sims game as a tool for sympathetic magic. I could see it working successfully if other ritual elements were brought in. For story purposes, it would work.

My experiment with using english prime as much as possible continues. Have my perceptions changed due to the language paradigm shift? I find myself choosing my words a lot more carefully (some might say an improvement in itself) I speak in the active voice more often, also. I still might vlog about this tomorrow.

Read and listened to three different sources today all saying that absolute truth does not exist. Tho I suppose that also applies to itself.

With Aaron away for a few days, I hope to write more, vlog more, blog more and get some serious cleaning done. There the universe holds my intention 😉

I feel I need a new name.

Books that I’m Reading

Books that I’m Currently Reading

There seems to be a serious case of what appears to be ADD as currently my attention shifts between four or five different books, all of them quite amazing in their own way. Oddly enough, for me only one of them has the classification of fiction tho tonight I read what I considered a brilliant short story by Charles DeLint Coyote Stories

Prometheus Rising by Robert Anton Wilson : Wilson writes this, to me, amazing synthesis of Timothy Leary’s work on programing the neurological circuits , Genreal Semantics, Crowley’s magical teaching and around five or six other areas all with humour and exercises for self-development/self-programming.

Serpent of Light Beyond 2012 by Drunvalo Melchizedek: I had been reading and hearing about Melchizedek and his Flower of Life workshop for about a dozen years now and this is the first book that I have read by him. It seems to be a good example of things coming to us at the right time. This book talks about the 13,000 year cycle that according to many different calendars is coming to an end and a new one beginning and how it represents the shifting of the Kundalini energy of the earth.

Tarot Wisdom: Spiritual Teachings and Deeper Meanings by Rachel Pollack: I’ve probably said this before, I haven’t yet found a writer on the Tarot who writes books that I find as interesting as I find Rachel Pollack’s I have used her book 78 Degrees of Wisdom as a major reference book for readings i have done for the past 30 years. In this book, she conveys most of what she’s learned since then in amazing concise fashion.

Virus of the Mind-The New Science of the Meme by Richard Brodie This book has brought me a lot of enjoyment. A meme , according to Brodie and several others is “a unit of information whose existence influences events such that more copies of itself get created in other minds” . In other words, the way i understand it a thought construct such as a slogan, a piece of music or an idea that once it gets in your head, you start humming it or passing it along. Could be anything from the first notes of Beethoven’s Fifth (DA DA DA DUH) to “Bush is a moron” to “Everything is One” It occurs to me that i definitely need a greater awareness of which memes are running loose in my brain.

In the Earth Abides the Flame by Russell Kirkpatrick The second book in what was intended to be a trilogy and now has grown to series, i find the writing and characters great which at this time in my life is what i look for

The Emperor Reading

Continuing on with the spreads for each of the Major Arcana trumps suggested by Rachel Pollack in her book Tarot Wisdom.:

1)How am I an Emperor King of Pentacles RWPentaclesKing
2) How am I not an Emperor? King of Wands (Reversed) King of Wands
3) Where do I need to take charge? King of Cups (Reversed) King of Cups
4)Who Will Help Me Do This? 2-The High Priestess(Reversed)</strong RW_HighPriestess
5) How am I weak? Knight of Pentacles (Reversed) Knight of Pentacles
6) How am I strong? 5-The Hierophant RWhierophant
7) What are the rules? 3-The Empress (Reversed) 3-The Empress

Interpretation (or at least definitions)

How am I an Emperor? K of Pentacles“Successful, Secure with wealth and possibly honor and likes it that way””Alexander the Great””benefactor for a project…focuses on material things with satisfaction and pride rather than selfishness or obsessioni would wonder if this is talking about family background? I do know thats not all of it

How am I not the Emperor? K of Wands (Rev)“Tested or in anyway confined, he may react angrily..difficult circumstances may cause him to doubt himself uncharacteristically” well, to quote Groucho “That certainly sounds like me”

Where do I need to take charge?K of Cups (Rev)“blocked creativity, frustration””misuses power” “Coming out with anger or fear revealing long hidden feelings” Again, pretty clear, I need to keep myself creating, deal with things as they come up,express doubts, etc

What will help me do this? High Priestess (Rev)“must get involved in the world especially if one has spent time away” “this card can remind us to be passionate and commit ourselves to something community building, teaching, giving advice .

How am I weak? Knight of Pentacles (Rev)</strong “inertia-allowing others to take advantage. can also indicate taking more chances”> ’nuff said>

How am I strong? Hierophant (Rev)“Unorthodoxy rejects path laid out by society or family and goes his or her own way. Freedom but with freedom comes the responsibility of choosing wisely “

What are the rules?The Empress (Rev) “Reversed the Empress becomes more cautious or more thoughtful”

Both of the last two seem rather obvious but as with the Empress reading where i had trouble figuring out the connections, here they seem too obvious so if anyone wants to comment or otherwise message me to give me insight–it would be appreciated.

A Swim in my consciousness stream

So decided to recreate what goes through my mind when I am at the gym on a typical day….not included are thoughts about weight, reps exercises and sets or random mammalian thoughts about the attractiveness of other people at the gym.

The fnords are real but not literal…”unique reality”…I had to stop free-associating when they started charging by the thought… chronologically older = different reference points and markers.. .Alice in Wonderland was a shamanic journey … the queen of hears represented the establish order– anything that interfered “Off with their heads”. Humpty-Dumpty -general semanticist – “When I use a word it means exactly what i want it to mean” — The caterpillar was the Hierophant (or guide) One side of his mushroom makes you larger –another makes you small — “You’re nothing but a deck of cards” — Time moving at different rates — If symbol was reality and words were real, what would we surround ourselves with? –The map reflects the territory reflects the map — they resonate together– sympathetic magic — I am a spot on the map yet the territory is contained within me–curiouser and curiouser–It’s all one and all a dream–masks & layers = maps & territories = symbols and reality–the only real currency we have is attention–

Hope you enjoyed the dip
Peace

Curiouser and Curiouser

Wow, this week has been amazing.
All week I’ve been given these little insights that have been coming from within-The first, I wrote about here was: “Don’t run from your fear walk with it” The next night in a very similar manner, I was walking Rufus, enjoying the stillness of the evening and inside myself I heard “Give yourself permission to be awesome.” I was thunderstruck by this. I almost felt like I should have been transfixed by joy upon hearing it but it just seemed like a natural thing. Earlier in the week, I had been comparing myself to others and all my old insecurities about not being good enough and not measuring up went through me. All of a sudden with those words “Give yourself permission to be awesome” echoing through me, I came to the realization that I would not be able to recognize the qualities I saw in other people if I did not either have those qualities in myself or the capacity for those qualities.
Last night the message was short and sweet “You need not” and indeed there was nothing that I felt I needed. I felt complete in a way I haven’t in awhile

Tonight was perhaps the most intense. Earlier this evening I was reading the book Serpent of Light Beyond 2012 by Drunvalo Melchizedek and in it I read about the movement of the earth’s Kundalini energy from Tibet to its new home in Peru. According to Melchizedek the energy reached a blockage at the Panama Canal (a manmade break between North and South America). Native people of many tribes and nations came together to perform the Ceremony of The Eagle and The Condor (representing North and South America). This ceremony helped to free the blockage. This occurred in 2001 and was foretold in both the Hopi and Mayan calendars.
After reading about the ceremony, I researched it a bit online and watched a trailer for a film made about the ceremony (see below). I came away from this feeling strangely unblocked and liberated.
I then took Rufus for his walk 🙂 I felt this intense sense of the flow of the universe and my place in it. How vast it all was and how right it all was. and then i realized that on another level the vast universe I perceived was inside of me and felt this weird mental shift that was almost out of Lewis Carroll from feeling inside the universe to feeling the universe inside of me, back and forth. With it, came this feeling of joy.
Sometimes I question my sanity but it all feels right.