Tag: happiness

Happy

 

It takes time to be happy. A lot of time. Happiness, too, is a long patience.
— Albert Camus

 

Maybe I’m being shallow and my outlook is almost definitely privileged . I mean when you look at the world and at most of the things that life brings us, happiness seems in pretty short supply. For anyone with an ounce of compassion it is all too easy to feel sorrow, anger and depression at the circumstances not only of our own lives but in the far worst ones of all too many others in this world. Yet what does anger, sorrow and depression give us? None of those help us to better our own lives in any way and they definitely don’t help better the lives of others. I want to be able to help others and better my own life but given a choice I would rather choose to do it happily.
I believe that even in the worst of circumstances happiness is a choice. It’s not always an easy one but if we decide to look at what we have and find purpose in what we’re doing and keep a sense of humour about it (talk about something else that is in all too limited supply) than we can find that happy place and face life through it. Oh the other emotions come and pass through and indeed the things that make us angry can give us purpose yet staying angry clouds our judgement. It is also not an emotion I have ever been able to sustain for very long.
So how do we do it? How do we make happiness a choice? First of all decide that is what we want to be. Next find something in our day that brings a smile to our face whether it be a flower, a joke, children playing or animals. When its time to be sad or angry then feel it but then find the song or event that brings us back to that place. Try it. It can become life changing.
Blessings, G

 

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Destiny CallsDestiny Calls by G A Rosenberg

 

Broken RingsBroken Rings by G A Rosenberg

 

Zoning Out

 

“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

 

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Time Melting in a Fractured LandscapeTime Melting in a Fractured Landscape by G A Rosenberg

 

Mind Field 11Mind Field #11 by G A Rosenberg

 

En-Vision Art

 

Life is your art. An open, aware heart is your camera. A oneness with your world is your film. Your bright eyes and easy smile is your museum.”
― Ansel Adams

 

What images in your day have made your heart sing? What have you looked at that has brought a smile to your eyes? What today for the briefest moment lit your world and made the day just that much better? If we try every day for that one moment, that one snapshot of joy our lives become qualitatively better? Perhaps it is something in the sky, there are always fascinating things to see there. Perhaps it is a never before seen flower? The face of a loved one, the smile of a child, dogs and cats and other pets acting goofy tends to be snapshots I continuously add to my daily roll. When I see an act of kindness such as someone doing something unexpectedly wonderful for a stranger in need or people being helpful when they don’t need to be that tends to be a picture I take and cherish.
Blessings, G

 

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Cavern of Ice and Strange FireCavern of Ice and Strange Fire by G A Rosenberg

 

Reach the Centre and OutReach the Centre and Out by G A Rosenberg

 

AgaresAgares by G A Rosenberg

 

Of Butterflies and Muddy Water

 

“Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

 

We humans tend to be a problem-solving species. When we see a mystery, a puzzle or something that doesn’t feel right our tendency is to work at it until we find a neat solution. Of course one of the biggest puzzles is our own being and why joy and fulfilment seem so difficult to come by. To render it more simply: “Why am I unhappy?” We try probing and prodding at this question and trip over our own feet. We work ourselves into a frenzy trying to find happiness and drive ourselves crazier and crazier. I have found that my happiest, most joyful moments have come when I have stopped worrying about whether or not I was happy and surrendered into the moment. It is almost as if I was pursuing an evasive butterfly that as I drew nearer, it would fly away but when I sat still it alighted on my shoulder. When we surrender our vision of what happiness looks like, we stand a better chance of not only finding it but gaining clarity on what was blocking our vision of it in the first place.
Blessings, G

 

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Traveling LightTravelling Light Over An Empty Plain by G A Rosenberg

 

Blue Fire MandalaBlue Fire Mandala by G A Rosenberg

 

Joy and Sorrow

 

“Life is glorious, but life is also wretched. It is both. Appreciating the gloriousness inspires us, encourages us, cheers us up, gives us a bigger perspective, energizes us. We feel connected. But if that’s all that’s happening, we get arrogant and start to look down on others, and there is a sense of making ourselves a big deal and being really serious about it, wanting it to be like that forever. The gloriousness becomes tinged by craving and addiction. On the other hand, wretchedness–life’s painful aspect–softens us up considerably. Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person. When you are feeling a lot of grief, you can look right into somebody’s eyes because you feel you haven’t got anything to lose–you’re just there. The wretchedness humbles us and softens us, but if we were only wretched, we would all just go down the tubes. We’d be so depressed, discouraged, and hopeless that we wouldn’t have enough energy to eat an apple. Gloriousness and wretchedness need each other. One inspires us, the other softens us. They go together.”
― Pema Chödrön

 

Joy gives way to grief which gives way to joy. Even in the hardest life the two seem to balance each other out. That’s not to say that all of our lives are equally hard. I have met very few people living in the roughest situations who didn’t find things to be joyful about. I have also met many living lives of relative ease who find ways of being miserable from time to time. There seems to be a strange balance of relativity there. Tho if we can see them both, our joys and misery as experience and the ability to experience life as joy, what then? Perhaps neither joy nor sorrow (or to use Pema Chödrön’s word wretchedness) need be fixed locations on our map. Perhaps in accepting them as equal spurs on our journey, we can reach new heights of understanding and compassion.
Blessings, G

 

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Wind Currents Over Shadowed BeachWind Currents Over Shadowed Beach by G A Rosenberg

 

Echoes of A Black LotusEchoes Of the Black Lotus by G A Rosenberg

 

A Curious Paradox

 

“Wake up! If you knew for certain you had a terminal illness–if you had little time left to live–you would waste precious little of it! Well, I’m telling you…you do have a terminal illness: It’s called birth. You don’t have more than a few years left. No one does! So be happy now, without reason–or you will never be at all.”
― Dan Millman

 

It seems to me a curious paradox. On one side the I that is me is currently living the one life that I have to live. I should live each day as if it were my last one and take death as my advisor. On the other side there is a part of me that is timeless, It is beyond ego and nothing this identified self does or will do in its perceived brief time matters as much as the action itself, one more character that this eternal self plays. From one perspective everything matters because each moment is precious. From the other, its all part of a much bigger picture. Actions now may have ripples later on but then events then may affect this one. Few people tho can be in this world and may maintain an eternal perspective without at least living their temporal life at least a little.
Being happy feels better than the alternatives. The chemicals happiness releases into the bloodstream a lot more pleasant.
Blessings, G

 

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Extraterestrial on A Lonely PlanetExtraterrestrial on a Lonely Planet by G A Rosenberg

https://www.facebook.com/thebestoftumblr2/photos/a.195792080581860.1073741828.195763197251415/277963922364675/?type=1&theater

 

RadienceRadiance by G A Rosenberg

Happy in the Now

 

“Happiness, not in another place but this place…not for another hour, but this hour.”
― Walt Whitman

 

If happiness is a choice
why do we choose it so seldom?
Do we feel unworthy
to take our fill of joy
our measure of infinite bliss?
Has our pain been
such a constant friend
that even as it stabs us
it feels so good?
Perhaps its the drama
we fear if we’re too happy
it will grow repetitive
forgetting that joy
finds ways to renew
and the new and delightful
in the ordinary
I choose happiness
or I have let it choose me
I looked in your eyes and surrendered.
— G A Rosenberg

 

Blessings, G

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Point of ConvergencePoint of Convergence by G A Rosenberg

 

Wolves in My CornersWolf in My Corners by G A Rosenberg

Happiness On the Menu

“Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert

 

I have met many people who deserve happiness and by and large I agree with them. However quite often these people feel act as if they are in a fancy menu and it is someone’s job to bring them happiness, exactly the way they want it. I guess I see my life as more of a buffet. Happiness is always on the menu but we need to get out of our seats and go up and choose it. There are other things on the menu as well, guilt, doubt, regret, sorrow. Too often we become so enticed by either the smell wafting up from those dishes or by the bright colours and containers that they are served in that we choose those things instead. All the time we do so we insist that what we want is happiness. When we find something else on our plate even when it is of our own choosing, we tend to blame the restaurant or perhaps the people we are dining with. Didn’t the choice we made look so good when it was on their plate?
Happiness is out there. It is not up to anyone or anything else to bring us happiness, we have to choose it. When we choose something else, that’s fine, after all variety is great every now and then but let’s take responsibility. We made the choice. After we’re finished we can always make room and grab some happiness afterwards. Perhaps with a nice bottle of delight. I hear it’s a good year for it.
Blessings, G

 

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Flowering GraceFlowering Grace by G A Rosenberg

 

Masked ConfusionMasked Guidance by G A Rosenberg

Perpetual Journey

“I tramp a perpetual journey, (come listen all!)
My signs are a rain-proof coat, good shoes, and a staff cut from the woods,
No friend of mine takes his ease in my chair,
I have no chair, no church, no philosophy,
I lead no man to a dinner-table, library, exchange,
But each man and each woman of you I lead upon a knoll,
My left hand hooking you round the waist,
My right hand pointing to landscapes of continents and the public road.
Not I, not any one else can travel that road for you,
You must travel it for yourself.”

— Walt Whitman

 

Do you have joy in your journey? What’s stopping you? Are you sure the journey is your own? Oh it is. If you are on it then how can it belong to anyone else? You can say that someone else chose it for you but then in most cases you chose to listen or go along with that other person’s choices. Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Perhaps it was. I believe that there is a playful part of ourselves that chooses even the challenges as they are the ones we need. Perhaps the greatest of these challenges is to find the fun in decidedly unfun situations. That is not as difficult as it may seem. Wildly exaggerate your sorrows. Play can you top this with yourself. Today was so hard and I just bet this could happen tomorrow. Make it comical. Anything from falling donkeys in your path (to fecal matter from the donkeys flying in the first place 🙂 Find a way to laugh at just how bad things can get. You might find it surprising how much easier laughter and exaggeration can make it. I hope always that I have the courage to choose joy.
Blessings, G

 

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Rising SpiritsRising Spirits by G A Rosenberg

 

<h5 style="text-align:center;"Another StarAnother Star by G A Rosenberg

Tarot Post – Nine Of Cups

Nine Of Cups (Happiness / Fortunate)

G`Nine of Cups (Revised) by G A Rosenberg

 

Wishes have come true
Moments of pure enjoyment
Gratitude abounds.

 

Freeze the moment
ecstasy flowing
like the wine in my glass
almost as sweet
as your lips
in the grass
on my hips
on my ass
all over as my lips on you
the taste the scent
the joy
pure pleasure doesn’t get any better
we have it all
in this time
music so sweet
in motion the beat
the ocean our hearts
our bodies this wine
freeze this moments
of desires fulfilled
may this dream never pass.

— G A Rosenberg

 

The suite of Cups deal with our emotional nature including love, both that as in a relationship between two (and rarely more) people and that of friends and companions. The Nines represent a coming to completion of the energy involved if not the completion itself. Combine these energies and we have a moment of peak fulfilment with joy and pleasure that is near orgasmic. All of our wants are fulfilled, we feel bliss and life is good. No matter how good this feeling is it cannot last. Change is constant and eventually this pleasure too will pass, whether it be into a period of sustained joy or into new challenges ahead.Perhaps knowing this makes this moment all the better and the wine all the sweeter.

 

Astrological Correspondence – Jupiter in Pisces – Jupiter in Pisces energy tends towards compassion and empathy. It has the ability to know intuitively what will make those around feel better and creates the situation accordingly. This is a very fun-loving energy that enjoys life the way a dolphin enjoys the sea. Piscean energy tends to pick up and amplify anything within range so when it amplifies Jupiter’s expansiveness, it wants to show up and be there for everyone. There is a tendency for this energy to become complacent and feel that the good times will last forever.

 

I Ching Correspondence – 48) Jing – Replenishing

___ ___
_______
___ ___
_______
_______
___ ___

 

The Trigram for Water is over that of Wood. Water comes up from the well in an all but inexhaustible manner replenishing those who thirst. It is a time of celebration and enjoyment where all who are in need may be satiated. Water rises up to sustain the life of that above whether it be plants or people. Wells tend to be centres of population where people come to celebrate bounty.

 

Geomantic Correspondent – Laetitia

 *
*  *
*  *
*  *

 

The figure resembles an arch or a rainbow. It means upward movement and joy and almost always means a positive outcome in whatever question is being asked. It resembles an archway or fountain in appearance.

 

In a reading the Nine of Cups has commonly been called the wish card. Depending on its position it indicates forward motion in the subject at hand. This card means good fortune, happiness and enjoyment. Because this card often refers to a breakthrough it can also indicate that there is a lot of celebrating going on, possibly to excess. This card can also mean that for a time weighty matters have been put aside and the simple pleasures of a warm bed, a full belly and a ‘bottle in hand’ can now be enjoyed. This card can also mean that one has abandoned cares and work to sit, enjoy and dream of future glory. Quite often with this card we look for this enjoyment not only for ourselves but for our friends and teammates as well.

 

The Nine of Cups reversed in a reading may mean that we are not getting what we wish, possibly because we have been focusing more on the desire rather than the work needed in order to bring it to fruition. The reversed Nine of Cups may also mean that we are getting what we wanted but not finding it quite as satisfying as we thought it would be. Something seems to be missing. Perhaps we have only been working on fulfilling our own dreams rather than making sure that those around us are also getting their needs fulfilled. This card reversed may also mean that we have the satisfaction not only of our surface needs met but our deeper spiritual needs as well.