Tag: Milan Kundera

Quote of the Day – November 3 2012

“Anyone whose goal is ‘something higher’ must expect someday to suffer vertigo. What is vertigo? Fear of falling? No, Vertigo is something other than fear of falling. It is the voice of the emptiness below us which tempts and lures us, it is the desire to fall, against which, terrified, we defend ourselves.”
― Milan Kundera

 

To me this  speaks of facing our shadows, the parts of ourselves that we needed when we needed them and still can feel like comfortable old friends even as we’re sure we’re past them. Those parts can easily be the spiritual onlookers watching us rise saying “Jump Jump, come back to us. You know us and we can play the games we played at an earlier time. The vertigo can hit like a wave of nostalgia towards the who we were  even as we realize we can not be that again. Well actually we can, we can play those mental photographs and fix the lessons feeling compassion for who we were and acknowledging it as part of ourselves. The past is ever contained within our beings. The Fool always has his bag with him. But then the time comes to face our future as well. That dynamic between who we were and who we will become is magical indeed and is happening NOW at every instance of our being.
Blessings, G

 

Click on image to see full-sized

 

Tree in a Reality Storm by G A Rosenberg

 

Serpentine Doorway by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – July 24 2012

“for there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one’s own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.” ― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

 

If we only focus on the positive do we ignore the voices that cry out in pain? Do we say to a child dying of starvation, “You just need to change your attitude and imagine yourself well fed and the Law of Attraction will make it happen”? Can we ignore evil going on in front of us because we aspire to something better? “How many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry?” Are all these questions ‘blowing in the wind’?
I believe compassion and love to be two of the most important qualities that we need to develop in ourselves in order to grow and evolve. I believe compassion to be developed by feeling and when possible healing the pain of others, definitely understanding it and that cannot happen by only focusing on the positive. There is so much suffering going on in the world today and so much healing needed. Understanding the causes of this pain and suffering is necessary otherwise we are just treating symptoms.
Life on this physical plane tends to be a balancing act. One of the tougher balancing points for me is between perceiving the world from the lens presented above  and the lens presented last night. It may be one of the tougher balances but any way I look at it one of the most necessary ones.
Blessings, G

 

Click on image to see full-size

 

Ghost in the Machine by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – March 18 2012

Three quotes tonight but they all dance around a common theme that has been on my mind quite a bit lately and perhaps more and more in my heart:

“Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.”
― Plato

“for there is nothing heavier than compassion. Not even one’s own pain weighs so heavy as the pain one feels with someone, for someone, a pain intensified by the imagination and prolonged by a hundred echoes.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them, humanity cannot survive.”
–Dalai Lama

For the sake of discussion, let’s define compassion as the ability to put yourself in another’s shoes and thus gain an understanding of them and their needs. Perhaps what empathy aspires to be when it grows up or perhaps when we grow up.
When we feel compassion for someone, it does not mean feeling sorry for them tho it does mean feeling their suffering. It does not mean we give them our agreement as much as our understanding. Often when practicing compassion, it means we are there suffering with them yet we know to spoon feed them what they need to stop their suffering, we are cheating them out of a lesson they will now have to find a new way to learn.
Blessings, G

Click on image to see full-size

Bunratty Castle in County Clare Ireland

One from the archives:

Krishna Playing to the Heart by G A Rosenberg

Still travelling, now back in England. Tomorrow Stonehenge then Tuesday home.. THis trip has been a great one and as I hoped as much an internal one as it has been an external one