They chatter away
Caught up in endless topics
Awareness lingers.
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Opal Reflections by G A Rosenberg
Tag: awareness
In A Masqued Dream
“Real transformation requires real honesty. If you want to move forward — get real with yourself.”
― Bryant McGill
Final midnight’s call
and I reach up to tear
the mask from my face
revealing myself to all.
Yet underneath puzzled
I find another mask
I keep peeling away
layer after layer
as the crowd laughs
their masks firmly in place.
each layer still hiding
each face a shadow of the truth.
Where in this pile of facades
is my real face?
How far down does it go?
I reach what I know is the last mask
Now we’ll see what’s real
Behind it there is all and
there is naught.
Blessings, G
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Astarte / Astaroth by G A Rosenberg
Reading Destiny by G A Rosenberg
Simple Understanding
“One should use common words to say uncommon things”
― Arthur Schopenhauer
One of the qualities that I have been working on in myself is to have the clarity necessary to speak deep truths in a simple way. Understanding is wonderful but if I can’t convey what I understand in a simple way to others than it is next to useless. What’s more if I can’t explain it simply do I fully understand or am I just intellectualizing? In these days of internet connection, knowledge is easy to come by, understanding much less so. It is the difference between having a warehouse full of food and feeding people.
Blessings, G
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Window on a New World by G A Rosenberg
Echoes by G A Rosenberg
Down the Rings by G A Rosenberg
Protected By My Armour?
“A wise woman who was traveling in the mountains found a precious stone in a stream. The next day she met another traveler who was hungry, and the wise woman opened her bag to share her food. The hungry traveler saw the precious stone and asked the woman to give it to him. She did so without hesitation.
The traveler left, rejoicing in his good fortune. He knew the stone was worth enough to give him security for a lifetime. But a few days later he came back to return the stone to the wise woman.
“I’ve been thinking,” he said, “I know how valuable the stone is, but I give it back in the hope that you can give me something even more precious: Give me what you have within you that enabled you to give me the stone.”
— Unknown
A friend of mine posted this story today in a FB page on Spiral Dynamics and asked people their perceptions about the levels of consciousness of the two people involved in the story. For the intents of this essay let’s translate his question as “What quality do you believe the woman contained that would allow her to freely give of the stone?”One of the people who commented on the thread gave a thorough tho somewhat tortuous analysis of the story to show that he did not believe the question was answerable. As proof of this he argued that there was nothing in the story that showed A) that the man knew the woman was wise and B)that the woman knew the stone had value. I find both points fairly easy to counter. It is obvious from the last sentence that the man perceived that the woman knew its value. Also wisdom is seldom an attribute we give ourselves. It is normally a quality that is perceived and bestowed by others. The woman is describe by this word twice in the story which to my reading means her wisdom was readily apparent. That is all besides the point.
I have noticed a tendency in academics and intellectuals to avoid questions that involve a certain amount of soul searching by intellectually picking the question apart and attempting to discredit the question rather than answering it. This is something that I struggle with myself. We dance very intricate dances of reason and critique, anything to avoid that plunge into self reflection. Is it fear of losing our objectivity? That seems rather an empty fear as none of us are truly objective. We all have past experiences and learned behaviours that colour our perceptions no matter how we try to distance ourselves. Is it a fear of exposing ourselves and being vulnerable to critique? That feels quite possible. I know there are times when I would rather distance myself from a question rather than appear foolish in my answer. Using our intellect and knowledge are pretty good armour against possible attack. Unfortunately they can be equally effective against insight and growth.
Blessings, G
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Empty Chair People Reach a Meeting of the Minds by G A Rosenberg
Electric Fuchsia by G A Rosenberg
Longing for the Endless Immensity…
“if you want to build a ship, dont drum up the people to collect wood and dont assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
It seems to be out of fashion to love life on this planet. Everywhere we turn, we can discover new reasons why life is difficult and injustice abounds everywhere. There is definitely a lot of selfishness and shallowness and exploitation of others everywhere we look and that can all too easily take the joy out of life. Yet… this world is beautiful and life holds the potential for magick. If we choose to focus on this beauty and the love and see that than we can find ourselves living the old native blessing, “Walk in Beauty” This does not mean that we forget the ugliness or that we fail to move beyond it not only within ourselves but within the world as well. It is a matter of finding that balance and never forget to long for the immensity of existence in all its qualities.
Blessings, G
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Nighttime Memories of Those Who Have Gone Before Us by G A Rosenberg
Monkey Spider? by G A Rosenberg
Quote of the Day – April 15 2012
“If Spirit has any meaning at all, then it must be eternal, or without beginning or end. If Spirit had a beginning in time, then it would be strictly temporal, it would not be timeless and eternal. And this means, as regards your own awareness, that you cannot become enlightened. You cannot attain enlightenment. If you could attain enlightenment, then that state would have a beginning in time, and so it would not be true enlightenment.
Rather, Spirit, and enlightement, has to be something that you are fully aware of right now. Something you are already looking at right now… We are all already looking directly at Spirit, we just don’t recognize it. We have all the necessary cognition, but not the recognition. ”
— Ken Wilber
What is the recognition that Dr. WIlber is talking about? It doesn’t seem to me that it can be reached through cognition or any form of conscious endeavour but rather by letting go of consciousness altogether :
“It was a marvelous morning and you could have walked on endlessly, never feeling the steep hills. There was a perfume in the air, clear and strong. There was no one on that path, coming down or going up. You were alone with those dark pines and the rushing waters. The sky was that astonishing blue that only the mountains have. You looked at it through leaves and the straight pines. There was no one to talk to and there was no chattering of the mind. A magpie, white and black, flew by, disappearing into the woods. The path led away from the noisy stream and the silence was absolute. It wasn’t the silence after the noise; it wasn’t the silence that comes with the setting of the sun, nor that silence when the mind dies down. It wasn’t the silence of museums and churches but something totally unrelated to time and space. It wasn’t the silence that mind makes for itself. The sun was hot and the shadows were pleasant.
He only discovered recently that there was not a single thought during these long walks, in the crowded streets or on the solitary paths. Ever since he was a boy it had been like that, no thought entered his mind. He was watching and listening and nothing else. Thought with its associations never arose. There was no image-making. One day he was suddenly aware how extraordinary it was; he attempted often to think but no thought would come. On these walks, with people or without them, any movement of thought was absent. This is to be alone.”
– J Krishnamurthi.
In that silence, lies that recognition that Ken Wilber talks about. The awareness that lies beyond cognition.
Blessings, G
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Thoughts in Motion by G A Rosenberg
Quote of the Day – March 14 2012
“Thoughts can create such a barrier that even if you are standing before a beautiful flower, you will not be able to see it. Your eyes are covered with layers of thought. To experience the beauty of the flower you have to be in a state of meditation, not in a state of mentation. You have to be silent, utterly silent, not even a flicker of thought – and the beauty explodes, reaches to you from all directions. You are drowned in the beauty of a sunrise, of a starry night, of beautiful trees.”
— Osho
This to me, means many things, On one level, it means that at times I have to stop and let myself experience things. Too often I run around intent on what I see as important and I miss out on seeing, really seeing what is in front of my eyes. Even in an art gallery or a garden when my express purpose is being there to appreciate, i remain distracted. By thoughts of things done and undone and dreams of what I want to do. I am everywhere in my head except at that point where I can appreciate fully what is in front of me.
This becomes truer when dealing with other people. Too often I have thirty other things on my mind other than focusing on that one being in front of me even if that person is one of the most important people in my life. How often do we miss out on perceiving the universe because we are not in the moment at hand with the people in front of us?
Blessings, G
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Lunching in the Ruins by G A Rosenberg
Quote of the Day – February 3 2012
”In your waking dreams when you are hushed and listening to your deepest self, your thoughts, like snowflakes, fall and flutter and garment all the sounds of your spaces with white silence”
— Kahlil Gibran, Garden of the Prophet
The process of going within; letting my thoughts fall away, watching them gradually growing silent as i watch myself watching eventually the thoughts slow down their clamouring and i watch and listen, echoes of the well, answers to questions and moments of deepest still silence…
lately even when awake my thoughts rush here and there, why i love sometimes just letting my consciousness stream, Proust like and go where they will merely typing their flow onto the screen.
The truth flows in between the 1s and 0s of the computers binary consciousness. That I can agree with for yes and no seem far too limiting as choices. Einstein stated that God does not play dice with the universe. Are we to believe that he plays tic-tac-toe? As I type this, somewhat concurrently I find myself having a conversation with a friend on FaceBook where past and future, memory and imagination are set at a strange juxtaposition to each other. It was just implied to me that the two are one and the same if time is a factor. To me, this gives me interesting insight into my art… Makes manifestation, a child of the two.
Can we manifest without imagination and experience meeting somewhere? If manifestation could occur, then would we be able to perceive it. The mind boggles which in its own way generates silence. Namaste, G
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Blue and Gold by G A Rosenberg
Rivers by G A Rosenberg