“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.”
― Kurt Vonnegut
I dare to move forward without knowing what lies ahead. If I stumble I will get up. No matter what life has thrown at me I have survived and chances are I will survive this next part as well. If I don’t make it then this is as good a time as any other but still I will have made the attempt and I have kept the adventure that is being alive happening. I will endure and I will persist and no matter what happens I will find the humour. For there is little for me that is worse than giving up on life while there is breath in my body and settling for the safe route.
Blessings, G
“Symbols can be so beautiful, sometimes.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
The Moon edges towards full. Wind knocks everything askew. They represent my overpowering emotions and scattered thoughts. A cat gives birth to three kittens, one of them unfortunately still-born. Too bad some of my ideas never make it past the point of expression. I offer a white flower as the only thing that I could find as beautiful as her innocence. It starts to rain as the sky expresses the sadness I keep buried within. I see a star fall and I feel hope.
The sun rises and I know it will all be better.
Blessings, G
“Well, here we are…trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.”
— Kurt Vonnegut
Here we are, trapped in this moment. Luckily we have the ability to entertain both ourselves and each other so its a nice time to share some thoughts. Today was Thanksgiving in the land of my birth so maybe I should say somethings I’m grateful for (besides the fact that I was not a native some 300+ years ago). I am thankful for friends, family and the intersection of both. I have been lucky to have an abundance of love in this spin of the wheel and it is something I try never to take for granted. I am thankful for a mind, hands and spirit all of which work reasonably well and for so many things to learn and do. I am thankful especially for the lessons in compassion and that I can feel so much of what is going on in the world and make things better when and how I can. I am thankful for teachers and for each of you reading these words. I am thankful for the growth that I have experienced in this past year and even the hard lessons and pain I have experienced. But enough gratitude for now. What are your dreams and hopes? In what way do you hope to move outside your comfort zone? What inner demons do you face and can I help you dance with them? Of late I seem to have no end of questions, we live in confusing times where many act strangely and expect everyone to follow along. We live in systematic cultures and the systems are running down as they find that their one size fits all solutions fit very few and that a culture based on scarcity and contrived monetary values will eventually fall apart. As the supposed scarcity increases, the greedy get greedier as people fear loss more than they fear not having in the first place and here I am on my soapbox again. Perhaps we can just enjoy the moment, this time together trapped in the nonmoving now but then aren’t we always?
Blessings, G
“Well, here we are…trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.”
— Kurt Vonnegut
Here we are, trapped in this moment. Luckily we have the ability to entertain both ourselves and each other so its a nice time to share some thoughts. Today was Thanksgiving in the land of my birth so maybe I should say somethings I’m grateful for (besides the fact that I was not a native some 300+ years ago). I am thankful for friends, family and the intersection of both. I have been lucky to have an abundance of love in this spin of the wheel and it is something I try never to take for granted. I am thankful for a mind, hands and spirit all of which work reasonably well and for so many things to learn and do. I am thankful especially for the lessons in compassion and that I can feel so much of what is going on in the world and make things better when and how I can. I am thankful for teachers and for each of you reading these words. I am thankful for the growth that I have experienced in this past year and even the hard lessons and pain I have experienced. But enough gratitude for now. What are your dreams and hopes? In what way do you hope to move outside your comfort zone? What inner demons do you face and can I help you dance with them? Of late I seem to have no end of questions, we live in confusing times where many act strangely and expect everyone to follow along. We live in systematic cultures and the systems are running down as they find that their one size fits all solutions fit very few and that a culture based on scarcity and contrived monetary values will eventually fall apart. As the supposed scarcity increases, the greedy get greedier as people fear loss more than they fear not having in the first place and here I am on my soapbox again. Perhaps we can just enjoy the moment, this time together trapped in the nonmoving now but then aren’t we always?
Blessings, G
“So, in the interests of survival, they trained themselves to be agreeing machines instead of thinking machines. All their minds had to do was to discover what other people were thinking, and then they thought that, too.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
I often try to be agreeable even when I am challenged by the ideas of another. I tend to go by adages such as Ken Wilber’s that “Everyone is right but partial.” If I listen long enough surely I will begin to understand the ways in which they are right and be able to integrate that into my own world view. I even try to do this in my relationships. I know I don’t hold a monopoly on truth (no one does) so surely there are ways in which I am both wrong and correct in most situations. Until I perceive how I tend to agree. At least it keeps the other person talking and explaining when they feel I am open to what they have to say. Eventually tho I ask questions for clarifications. If something at that point doesn’t feel right, I will examine my own biases in my outlook towards life and also test to see whether the person speaking has put any critical thought into what they are saying. Have they considered that they may be wrong? Have they looked at other viewpoints? If they have, have they just leaped from one fixed point to another without considering how to integrate the two? At that point I either reach agreement within myself and have something new to integrate or I disagree. This whole process usually takes anywhere from 30 seconds to a few months depending on how new the ideas are to me, how fixed the person is in their viewpoint and my willingness and availability to continue the conversation.
Too many people find either a person or a group of people with whom they share some ideas and start agreeing with them no matter what they say. They sometimes take it to the extent that they stop examining their own thought processes in their need for approval from this group or leader. This is the type of machine like thinking that all too often leads to ‘one solution fits all’ or ‘if you don’t agree with us, you’re evil’ type thinking and in the worse cases religious extremism, intolerance and war. At the very least it is a form of mental, emotional and spiritual suicide.
Blessings, G
“Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning do to do afterward.”
― Kurt Vonnegut
I’ve learned to laugh at my pain
the exquisite agony
of healing echoes of the past
I save my tears for beauty
naked bodies
of water, forest and human
the kindness done just because
service accepted and given
without a balance
Your eyes in firelight and your skin in moonlight
any of these can make me weep
out of joy, out of love and out of gratitude
tears heal the laughter
laughter the tears
we find balance in life’s stream.
–G A Rosenberg
“Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning do to do afterward.”
― Kurt Vonnegut
It is so much better to laugh at frustration. Otherwise if I can’t laugh or walk away the temptation is to rage or cry and then beat myself up about it. It can become terribly messy and leave scars on those around me but slowly I am learning. There will always be people and situations that can press my buttons and that is a good thing. It shows me where my buttons are. If I have a difficult time respecting myself in certain situations then I will react strongly when I feel disrespected by others. Despite the fact that I know that respect cannot be begged borrowed or even earned… and ultimately is an inner dialogue and not an outer one. Those who show me disrespect do me the favour of pointing this out in a very real way.Too bad I find it so difficult being appreciative at the time. I see people react similarly to with emotions of guilt or unworthiness. So I thank those who show me the areas I still need to work on. Slowly I am getting to the point where gratitude has a stronger balance than anger, sorrow or frustration. Perhaps someday….
Blessings, G
“- Why me?
– That is a very Earthling question to ask, Mr. Pilgrim. Why you? Why us for that matter? Why anything? Because this moment simply is. Have you ever seen bugs trapped in amber?
– Yes.
– Well, here we are, Mr. Pilgrim, trapped in the amber of this moment. There is no why.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
When I was eighteen I met an amazing woman. She was the mother of a friend of mine and I met her about a year and a half after her doctors told her she had a year to live. Delores had an amazing sense of humour and an amazing grace about her and she helped me through what was one of the rougher years of my life.
Among other words of wisdom that Delores imparted to me
“Why me, you say? Why not you? What is so special about you that you don’t get the same amount of shit in life that everyone else has to deal with.”
“Nowhere in any spiritual text does it say that you have to like or even love your family. It says you have to honour your parents.”
“Nothing is more important than finding someone to speak your heart too”
I was to know and keep in touch with Delores for about ten years and she lived on another ten years after that. I only hope she got to pull some of the cool poltergeist tricks she had planned for her funeral.
Blessings, G
“We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down.” ― Kurt Vonnegut
OK. We’ve left our comfort zone. What do we do now? Well, to start off with, look around. What does what we’re doing look like? We’ve never done it before, never been to this place so we have no map. Let’s make one as we go along so that we can either find our way back or to describe to others what we see. It’s amazing how much more real something becomes when we describe it to others.
Since what we are mapping is a new experience, a new headspace and we experience these things through our senses that is what our map is made from. What am I looking at? What sound am I hearing? What am I feeling? What thoughts does it engender in me? Making maps, experiencing new things is fun. If it doesn’t feel like fun it is usually because you are too busy trying to locate yourself on an old map and forgetting the wonder you had as a child when you were experiencing something for the first time.
“And here, according to Trout, was the reason human beings could not reject ideas because they were bad: “Ideas on Earth were badges of friendship or enmity. Their content did not matter. Friends agreed with friends, in order to express friendliness. Enemies disagreed with enemies, in order to express enmity.
“The ideas Earthlings held didn’t matter for hundreds of thousands of years, since they couldn’t do much about them anyway. Ideas might as well be badges as anything.
“They even had a saying about the futility of ideas: ‘If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.’
“And then Earthlings discovered tools. Suddenly agreeing with friends could be a form of suicide or worse. But agreements went on, not for the sake of common sense or decency or self-preservation, but for friendliness.
“Earthlings went on being friendly, when they should have been thinking instead. And even when they built computers to do some thinking for them, they designed them not so much for wisdom as for friendliness. So they were doomed. Homicidal beggars could ride.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
This week I seem to be having a lot of my old issues returning to haunt me and perhaps finally coming to the point where I can put them to bed.
Tonight I lost a friendship (careless of me I know). It seems that my friend Mark considers himself a teacher and somewhat of a guru and was disappointed that I was not ‘sharing his wisdom’ and insights with everyone I knew on the internet. It was a fair point. I haven’t been.
While I have been willing to connect him with people I know, I have not shared that many of his ideas. I enjoy talking with the man and enjoy his conversation. Doesn’t that mean I find his ideas worthwhile? It took me a bit of meditation and sitting with this question to receive an answer. While I do find some of Mark’s insights valuable, I find that many of them have been said before and said better. I also believe that there are some places where Mark widely either contradicts himself or kind of misses the forest for the trees. By saying this, I do not believe that these qualities are not true of my own writing. Like most of us, I learn as I go and I take for granted that all or most of what I say may be superseded by a greater truth.
Herein lies the problem. Mark seems to believe in the absolute accuracy of his vision to such a degree that he has been known to dismiss anyone who disagrees with him without even considering what they have to say or that it may lead to a greater truth. In order to keep the friendship, I have avoided questioning him on his ideas. I could not be dishonest to the extent of endorsing them but I also could not recommend them whole heartedly.
Thus in trying to maintain a friendship I ended up losing it and in the process gained a lesson in integrity. From this point on I will hold the truth to be more important than friendship. Indeed how can you have a true friendship without it?
I am thankful to Mark for driving this lesson home and I wish him well. It’s also refreshing to some extent that not only can I still make errors in judgement at this point in my life but that I can realize them.
Blessings, G
Cubist Priestess by G A Rosenberg 
Alloces (#52 in Goetia Series) by G A Rosenberg 
