Tag: Paulo Coelho

Quote of the Day – November 1 2012

“She wasn’t afraid of difficulties; what frightened her was being forced to choose one particular path.
Choosing a path meant having to miss out on others. She had a whole life to live and she was always thinking that, in future, she might regret the choices she made now.
‘I’m afraid of committing myself,’ she thought to herself. She wanted to follow all possible paths and so ended up following none.
― Paulo Coelho, Brida

 

Wow…this one rings so true for so much of my life. The great illusion of choosing among paths and keeping my options open has controlled so many of my decisions. Recently tho I finally realized that whether I chose a path or not I have been on a path the whole time. And like any other path it has been made up of every step I’ve taken no matter what direction and that’s ok.. Where does that bring me? Well where does any path bring us.. from beginning to end and like any other path, its what I do along the way that matters.
Blessings, G

 

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Purple Tongue Mandala by G A Rosenberg
Eternity Emerging by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – October 29 2012

“We are travelers on a cosmic journey,stardust,swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share.This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.”
― Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

 

 

I have become familiar with both the inward and outward manifestations of the journey. So much of  my 20’s and 30’s were spent moving from place to place, soaking up experiences, learning what can only come from them yet not focused on the inward growth tho I was open to it.  I think if my 25 or 30 year old self was to look at me now, living in the same house for 10 years, married and child-raising, he’d be terribly bemused . Sometimes I hear his voice, quoting Peter Pan. “What happened? You got old.” I think tho we’d like each other. I’ve learned to accept the things about myself at which I used to lash out. Oh I still work at not needing to do or feel certain ways but I accept that they do come up. I like myself now a good deal more than I did then. It’s made it a lot easier to love my family and others in general. I have found truth in the adage that everyone we meet serves as a mirror to something inside of us and now I can enjoy the reflection. Well more and more.

I think my former self might enjoy my company as well. He’d laugh as much as I do when he hears that younger people keep referring to me as wise and not meaning it as either ironic or half a word. I have no advice for my younger self except enjoy the voyage even the painful parts and realize that even when your life is stable, you still continue to journey. It is a moebius strip existance where the internal and external can change positions all in an instance…

Blessings, G

 

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Gold Star by G A Rosenberg

 

Kitty Pride by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – September 12 2012

I realised a long time ago that a warrior in search of his dream must take his inspiration from what he actually does & not from what he imagines himself doing.”
― Paulo Coelho, Aleph

It seems that most of my path the last three years has been about exploration and expression. It has been and hopefully will continue to be one of the most creative periods of my life . It has also been one of growth where new ideas and concepts have been tested against each other and themselves and much has been added to my view. Oh I have no plans to stop tho I have a feeling this next year is leading me towards more practicality in addition to the art and the writing I love. It’s been an amazing  journey and as always I can’t wait to see what comes next.

Blessings, G

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Leaving the Studio by G A Rosenberg

Emerald Vision by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day -August 18 2012

“Tell your heart that your fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And hat no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams, because every second of the search is a second’s encounter with God and with eternity ”
–Paulo Coelho

 

The strange loops that webcam find ourselves caught up in fascinate me.We go out of our way to avoid discomfort and suffering and in doing so we suffer more than we ever could have thought. What is it that we fear so much?
When we dream our lives big, any setback we have will appear smaller by comparison. It is only when we fear failure and shrink our dreams that our perceived setbacks grow in size.
May we all become fearless dreamers!
Blessings, G

 

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Intricate by G A Rosenberg

Mistakes No Mistake

““When you find your path, you must not be afraid. You need to have sufficient courage to make mistakes. Disappointment, defeat, and despair are the tools God uses to show us the way.”
― Paulo Coelho

I’d like to thank my mistakes for helping me become myself and spurring me onwards. I wouldn’t change a one of you. It seems so many of the positive things that exist in my life now (I have much to be grateful for) have come about through the events of my life falling in domino like patterns that have led me to here. I find chaos theory easier to believe in than chance these days with the universe’s dance constantly in motion. I would change nothing that has happened to me so far and if I were to meet myself as a younger man would just listen knowing that what was ahead would be by and large worth it
Blessings, G

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Pyramiding Scraps by G A Rosenberg

Flowerburst by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – May 17 2012

“Don’t be intimidated by other people’s opinions. Only mediocrity is sure of itself, so take risks and do what you really want to do.”
–Paulo Coelho

Why do we care so much what others think? For so long I believed what everyone told me.  It definitely made my teenage years hell. I gave everyone space in my head without charging rent.  I started curing myself of this by running away at seventeen and joining  a religious cult. For five months I tried my best to make myself into what other people who told me they loved me told me I should be. Even when I saw contradictions in their own characters I tried to force myself into the shape of their ‘loving instructions’.  One day I had had enough and had a strong sense of the THIS IS WRONG’s. I left and returned cross country to my home. I was shattered. My belief system had fallen and it couldn’t get up.

Now I was back to people telling me familiar opinions of how reality was. The only difference was that now neither their version nor the cult’s version worked for me. I tried charismatic catholicism. Wow this was cool.  I find few things as attractive as pure faith. However it can be pretty awkward being the only person in church who isn’t speaking in tongues. Strike one more off the list.

Over the ensuing decades I tried to force myself into so many different shapes, each suggested by others. Gradually I came to realize that just by virtue of being open to so many, I was flying in the face of almost all of them. They all seemed to have some truth to them and work (to various degrees) for those practicing them but how could all be right. These thoughts formed in my head quite awhile before I started reading Ken Wilber and other Integral writers. Somewhere along the line I developed a sense of humour about it all that helped. I still might throw myself into something headfirst but now at least I realized that it probably wasn’t THE answer and almost definitely was only part of My Answer but I went into things honouring the people following them and open to whatever would come.

A large part of what I wanted to do was to understand. From very early on I grasped that understanding how a person defined the universe and themselves in relationship to the universe was a key component in understanding the person and so the more beliefs I can understand, the more people. They all can be given a voice as long as my inner voice, the one that speaks quietest remains paramount.

Blessings, G

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Rise by G A Rosenberg

Eye Journey by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – April 26 2012

“I can choose either to be a victim of the world or an adventurer in search of treasure. It’s all a question of how I view my life.”
― Paulo Coelho, Eleven Minutes

On this one, I’ve chosen long ago. While I may have used by people, never have I been a victim. Many times when I have entered relationships I saw in my mind’s eyes where they would lead, both good and bad. The good was love and fellowship and joy in the presence of another. The bad (relatively speaking) was lessons that I needed to learn or perhaps repeat to drive home the point I had insisted on missing before so even the bad was a win. When the time came to move on, rarely cleanly I left feeling properly devastated but never really victimized by the other. Was I victimized by myself? Perhaps so. It all depended on how badly I needed the lesson, that treasure that Coelho talks about. Are there any treasures greater than increased awareness and increased capacity for love? I don’t believe so. I am grateful for my life and all the people in it, even the ones who have challenged me, perhaps them most of all.
Blessings, G

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Heart of the Fractal by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – February 22 2012

“Listen to your heart. Because, wherever your heart is, that is where you’ll find your treasure.”
Paulo Coelho

Listen to your heart yes but even more important as I’ve been learning lately is listening with your heart.

I have always had a reputation for being a quick study. I can usually read what someone is saying within a spoken line or two. I tended to get impatient after that, finishing what they had to say sometimes putting a question mark at the end because tho I was a fool, I didn’t want to think of myself as an arrogant putz. So much for that idea. I missed something in the equation that I’ve just started figuring out lately. It’s not important only that a person be understood but that they feel listened to as well. I’m getting a bit better at it. I still have a ways to go. It’s a funny thing tho the more I’ve been listening, the more I’ve learned that what a person is saying is only part of the picture. The rest you can’t hear with your brains or your ears but only by listening with your heart.

When you listen with your heart, not only do you hear what a person is saying but what they want to say. Not only their words but the feelings, perhaps unspoken to that they’re saying as well. When I’ve listened with my brain, far too often I was looking for flaws in what they were saying. Perhaps I thought I was being helpful, finding ways in which their statement could be improved or corrected but I don’t want to be the person who does that anymore. Sometimes the help a person needs is not to be corrected but to be considered. That doesn’t mean blindly agreeing, It means absorbing their communication and answering back with what I honestly feel and if I do disagree, then state it without equivocation but making them feel that they’ve been heard. That’s who I’m looking to be now. It will take practice and I’ll screw it up sometimes but I feel like I might be on the right track with this listening stuff. Thanks, G

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Initiation by G A Rosenberg

Quote of the Day – January 27 2012

““But love is always new. Regardless of whether we love once, twice, or a dozen times in our life, we always face a brand-new situation. Love can consign us to hell or to paradise, but it always takes us somewhere. We simply have to accept it, because it is what nourishes our existence. If we reject it, we die of hunger, because we lack the courage to stretch out a hand and pluck the fruit from the branches of the tree of life. We have to take love where we find it, even if that means hours, days, weeks of disappointment and sadness.

The moment we begin to seek love, love begins to seek us. And to save us.”
― Paulo Coelho

What would life be like if we approached everything that came our way as if it were for the first time? How can we cultivate that form of observation? Is it a matter of perspective or point of view. Life experience does resemble snow flakes in that nothing ever seems to happen exactly the same way twice. Even when the experience is the same, we, either in outlook, mood, or experience are not quite the same person we were the last time it happened. Of course this type of talk can cause great anxiety in neophobes (people for whom the new causes great anxiety, fear or both).

Namaste, G

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Quote of the Day – January 2 2012

“When I had nothing to lose, I had everything. When I stopped being who I am, I found myself.”
–Paulo Coelho

How do I define myself? What makes me me? Each definition will be but another onion skin layer. I unreal each one slowly for each one while true remains true in the same way that the blind man’s elephant was very much like a tree trunk? Or was it like a fan? Or a snake? In other words, any definition or description I could give of myself would at most expose part of me leaving the rest undescribed or unexplained. Would I tell you a mythical most important part? Perhaps to my mind. In all probability I tell you the part I want you to see. I describe endlessly the parts of myself that I most want to identify with. Too bad they also tend to be the most illusory. Part of that house of cards, tower aspect I like to talk about. It is a part I use more to conceal than I do to reveal. But what if I could surrender that part, give it up. Ah, then something real may finally show through. Namaste, G

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Eyes in the Buddha’s Electric Garden by G A Rosenberg