“Within my right hand is allness, within my left – nothingness. Crumbling both within my fingers there shall spring forth all the yous in thatness, or not, as I so will. Belief is the lever and fulcrum to lift the world- to shift the axis of being”
— Austin Osman Spare
Who we are is a constant combination of who we have been and who we can be. We choose who we are at any given moment from a combination of everything we have experienced or learned and the infinite wellspring of possibility that is at our core. We have the power to decide who we will be tho much of our decisions are preprogrammed responses from our limbic brain and robot selves. Still if we have both mindfulness of our responses , we can break that programming. It starts with the belief that we can. It’s not easy and at times we screw it up but that’s the amazing thing about us humans. We keep trying no matter how many times we err.
Blessings, G
“Our going forth to find the greater Self is by the path we know least; by losing ourselves until we find ourselves.”
— Austin Osman Spare- The Logomachy of Zos
I know what it is to feel lost. Either through not knowing the right step to take when all the choices look either deceptively good or deceptively bad or by being so flooded by contradictory information that I don’t know which way to turn. As I’ve written before, I have grown somewhat comfortable with not having all the answers and it would be vastly out of character if I was to act as if I did. Yet sometimes the questions feel more crucial. How do I help those I love to feel safe and happy? How can I help others when I don’t know which way to turn? What if after all this time discovering even a part of who I am, I find that that part is not workable in the life that I live? Sometimes it can feel pretty dark yet it is at those times that something astounding happens. I hear a voice inside my head saying “Shhhhhh, it’s not as important as you think and you will make it through.”. That voice, that inner clown mother that tells me I am taking things way too seriously and that the only way to get through anything is just flow through till I make it. If I start drowning, I just need to keep kicking. Either I’ll make it to the surface or I’ll drown trying and that will just be another beginning. Sometimes I don’t have to win, I just have to survive . It’s the giving up that will destroy me. If times are hard for awhile, that’s just what they’ll be. That practical somewhat hopeful side of me is one I haven’t seen for awhile and I’ve missed it. An old internal friend has returned and as long as I keep going will not disappear again.
Blessings, G
Click on images to see full-sized:
Pan in the Techno Jungle by G A Rosenberg
Surrendering Her Passion For Memory by G A Rosenberg
“Anyone is capable of anything (will plus belief is ability) if they themselves create the opportune moment and incentive. Heaven gives no genius to disbelievers and no vengeance worse than the body denied.”
— Austin Osman Spare
With the will to do it and the willingness to be totally focused on the desire at hand to the exclusion of all other things, we can do miraculous things. We can get ourselves out of the worse situations. We can create totally new lives for ourselves. Yet developing the will and the incentive can be a sticking point. Too often, what others may think of us or what we may think or feel for them becomes a consideration. Distraction is always there. This is why almost any spiritual or magic discipline involves the training of the will and concentration. Imagine if we all actively focused on making a better world, no matter our conception of it without worrying what others were doing. We can manifest anything. Despite the inertia that we have built up in our lives.
Blessings, G
“Only Art is Eternal Wisdom; what is not Art soon perishes. Art is the unconscious love of all things. ‘Learning’ will cease and Reality will become known when it comes to pass that every human being is an Artist.”
― Austin Osman Spare, Book of Pleasure in Plain English
What is art but the communication of one’s self through a medium? If this is true then any one who is expressing themselves is an artist. If a janitor is doing their job mindfully it can be art. A caregiver sharing their being with the people whom they help is an artist of the heart. Can anyone deny motherhood is an art? How about accountancy? I believe that a man or woman walking down the street can be an artist if they are engaging with their senses and surroundings. Any form of expression no matter how it may seem small and meaningless can be art if the person creating it is fully present. What kind of art do you make? Why don’t we make more?
Blessings, G
“For I am I:ergo, the truth of myself; my own sphinx, conflict, chaos, vortex–asymmetric to all rhythms, oblique to all paths. I am the prism between black and white: mine own unison in duality.”
— Autsin Osman Spare
I spent today driving through the mountains of British Columbia with my family. I got caught up in thinking of mountains as metaphor. There is the slow climb up and then the drop down into the valley. Dual quests that bring us ever further. More so tho I try to relate to the mountain. That vital energy that lives within the solid rock that can burn so fiercely and ultimately sustains life on the surface of the mountain. So much lies within me. I feel the climbs and the descents and that ever present burning, yearning for life that produces all that I show on my surface. How can I be true to my mountain self? Another lesson to learn for mountains are ever patient enduring cycle after cycle, within and without.
Blessings, G
“In a universe that defies description, all systems of belief can only be false.”
— Austin Osman Spare
Buckminster Fuller said the universe was asynchronously apprehended which means that it cannot be fully comprehended all at once. At most when we contemplate the vastness that we live in we can only achieve a partial comprehension. I believe it is possible to have a peak or mystical experience where we can catch a glimpse of the totality but those tend to be notoriously difficult to put into words. Therefore any system of belief that is written or spoken is only a partial approximation and thus on some level flawed. With that understanding tho we can look at many belief systems (and lets not kid each other, there are probably at least as many systems of belief as there are people. Even people who believe in as structured a religion as fundamentalist christianity will differ in exactly how they interpret the ‘literal word of God’ and what that means in their lives.) any one of them will be false or at best partial. Of course since I believe we live in a universe of infinite possibility I also agree with Ken Wilber when he says that everyone is right (but partial).
Blessings, G
“Darken your room, shut the door, empty your mind. You are still in great company.”
— Austin Osman Spare
Struggling to create
I’ve lost the me time,
Taken up by the know time, the some time, the play time and the prime time
filling me, not killing me, not thrilling me
but NOW
unplug, rewind, refine, unshine
and let go
feel the flow
no row to hoe
no know to know
just slip
detach, connect, unlatch
and BE
— G A Rosenberg
Sometimes we all need to be unplugged heroes. Enjoying the solitude and at peace
blessings, G
“It was the straying that found the path direct.”
–Austin Osman Spare
Certain themes seem to keep coming up for me. One of them is definitely the idea that one’s path is unique and that whenever we are following a defined (whether religious, social, political or philosophical ) road that others have set before us, it is not that we are following that path as much as that path has temporarily become part of our own. It may seem a minor distinction but it is a crucial one. By Temporarily, it can be years but even in a case where we have joined a monastic order, we will not hold exactly the same beliefs or interpretations of that belief as any other person there. Nor will we be coming to it with exactly the same background so even then our path is a unique one. Often the farther we stray from any GIVEN path, the more we find our own.
Blessings, G
Reflecting Inner Skies by G A Rosenberg 
