“Maybe each human being lives in a unique world, a private world different from those inhabited and experienced by all other humans. . . If reality differs from person to person, can we speak of reality singular, or shouldn’t we really be talking about plural realities? And if there are plural realities, are some more true (more real) than others? What about the world of a schizophrenic? Maybe it’s as real as our world. Maybe we cannot say that we are in touch with reality and he is not, but should instead say, His reality is so different from ours that he can’t explain his to us, and we can’t explain ours to him. The problem, then, is that if subjective worlds are experienced too differently, there occurs a breakdown in communication … and there is the real illness.”
― Philip K. Dick
I find that it is getting more and more difficult for me to judge madness in another. Not that I believe that I could or should do so.I have become of so many people who’s beliefs are way off the beaten track from anyone else’s and yet they live totally functional lives. There are so few people who follow what the media and society tells us is conventional thought that I find that the very concept of a sane human being to be as mythological as that of a unicorn, perhaps more so. Yet no matter how mad most people I know may be they have the discernment to not share their mad sparks with the world at large (well with the exception of the artists and writers but then we are given more leeway than most to be eccentric). Perhaps that is the whole reason for social consensus. To give people a baseline for discernment of their public faces.
If only more of us were open to each other’s brand of madness, not to mention our own, social consensus would not be as bizarre as it is…
Blessings, G
“I believe that Magic is Art and Art whether it be music, writing, sculpture or any other, is literally magic. Art, like any magic, the science of manipulating symbols, words or images, to achieve changes in consciousness… Indeed to cast a spell is simply to manipulate words, to change people’s consciousness, and this is why I believe that an artist or a writer is the closest thing in the contemporary world to a Shaman.”
— Alan Moore
“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use the words.”
— Philip K Dick
Entranced in the spell of your words and art
I came along for the vision
Together we created clouds of wonder
and invited friends to join in
but one can’t live on clouds for long
without the substance to back it up.
Maybe we need to weave the spell again.
Enlivened by the height of the tower
we built upon the sandy beachfront
Together we felt when tragedy struck
and washed it out to sea
For how long can a castle last
without a good foundation
Perhaps we need to build it up again.
Magick can create wondrous things with
word and art combining to make them real
Yet words fail without effort to back them
leaving fading images behind.
I want to build a life with you
together with effort we’ll see it through
We’ll work and create the dream anew.
“The basic tool for the manipulation of reality is the manipulation of words. If you can control the meaning of words, you can control the people who must use them.”
― Philip K. Dick
“There exists, for everyone, a sentence – a series of words – that has the power to destroy you. Another sentence exists, another series of words, that could heal you. If you’re lucky you will get the second, but you can be certain of getting the first.”
― Philip K. Dick
It all comes down to words doesn’t it? “In the beginning was the word…”The word is spoken or writ and reality forms around it..Words of power..words of control…and we and the universe manifests the words in form and actions.A picture may be worth a thousand words yet it is the words that come to mind . We move beyond words into silence which is broken by a new word that comes even from the deepest of meditations. What’s the word? What will the word be today?
Say the magic word…I have been sentenced twice according to Dick… and yes one tore me apart and the other healed or came close to it…It’s only words yet they have power…or maybe I am just having one of my spells. If you can discover the words that can destroy or heal before they are used on you than you have a powerful talisman indeed tho there is always the next sentence…
Blessings, G
“Fear can make you do more wrong than hate or jealousy… fear makes you always, always hold something back.”
― Philip K. Dick
Fear maybe our biggest enemy. It causes us to not take chances, to play it safe. It stops us from telling people we love them and risk rejection. It stops us from standing up for ourselves when facing bullies, even the ones in our own heads. For fear of what others think of us, we withhold opinions that we know may be unpopular or we react totally the opposite and say things we know will be unpopular, daring others to reject us. When we do this we withhold the part of us that may actually agree but then this too is out of fear. Feeling fear is normal but if we cause it to freeze us in our tracks than we severely limit how far we can travel..It is only when we say “I fear that this will happen but I will do it anyway” that we exceed beyond our greatest expectations.
Blessings, G
Click on images to see full-sized:
Facing the Cosmic Drama by G A Rosenberg
Entering Darkness to Find the Light Within by G A Rosenberg
“There is no route out of the maze. The maze shifts as you move through it, because it is alive. ”
― Philip K. Dick
There is no escape from the life maze. Oh we can end our physical existence anytime we wish yet from all indications, life doesn’t stop there. Whether we find ourselves in Odin’s Halls or Gehenna or at gates of Pearl or whether we start it all again in another cycle of physicality life is still there. Even if those fundamentalist atheists are right, still our bodies nourish the ground that will yield plants and we still remain part of life. There’s no leaving the game so might as well learn to play it. There seems so many rules to it and countless variation. The rules may be broken at whim and we can always fall back into earlier games and earlier times. We can flow along the river or against the current, we can willingly sink deeper and find more control. We can enjoy the maze at will and keep on moving through it and who knows perhaps in time we will discover that we are the ones who built it in the first place.
Blessings, G
“There are no private lives. This a most important aspect of modern life. One of the biggest transformations we have seen in our society is the diminution of the sphere of the private. We must reasonably now all regard the fact that there are no secrets and nothing is private. Everything is public.”
― Philip K. Dick
Would this really be true and privacy not a possibility than we would be on our way to being telepathic? How much effort do we put into our secrets, whether they be secret thoughts or resentments we don’t even want those closest to us to know or things we do that we’re ashamed of? In a world where privacy was truly lost, forgiveness would grow. How could we stand naked, all of our foibles extant and not forgive those of our neighbour? Yet still it seems with the fiction of privacy we all throw brick missiles from our glass towers, perhaps feeling in our primate way the need to find sins and secrets somehow worse than our own. This, then is the era of privacy diminished and shattered glass and many slivers will we each get before we lose shame and learn compassion. Perhaps we need to start clearing the fields now, live openly so that what is lost will never be missed.
Blessings, G
“So books are real to me, too; they link me not just with other minds but with the vision of other minds, what those minds understand and see. I see their worlds as well as I see my own.”
― Philip K. Dick
Feeling my heart open
feeling my wounds bleed
My blood spilling out
of view and precious need
to reveal what’s inside
That spark of truth
that separates bifurcates
my age from my youth
I lied to myself
so easily when young
seeing myself in the lyrics I sung
or the books that i read
heroic tales
grandiose successes
dramatic fails
the passage of time
did honesty bring
those old half truths
no longer would fling
so now I can bleed
confessions and truth
I no longer need
the protections of youth
— GAR
Wow, where did that come from…Partly the wish to be more open and then realizing that its easier to be honest with time… There is both less reason and less desire to hide… Not that it was ever necessary. Hiding sent me on some amazing adventures as did eventually facing myself…
Blessings, G
“Reality denied comes back to haunt.”
― Philip K. Dick
Hidden thoughts, hidden actions…the refusal to realize what is in front of us…we insist that 2 + 2 = 5, that we are better than we are, happier and more together and a string is pulled, and it all starts falling apart… that secret heart under the floorboards… the raven crying out nevermore… Poe understood reality denied … we all learn it in time… as we build up our house of cards… the way I feel when I am with him / her surely means they feel the same… its ok if I do it this once.. nobody saw me… its ok… but it never is , just our denial grows stronger as we add another brick…yet we can blast through these bricks… if we don’t the universe is kind enough to do it for us…tho it is a cruel kindness that leaves devastation in its wake..yet from the devastation we rise naked, vulnerable with denials and lies revealed…then we can choose how to clothe ourselves again…
Blessings, G
“The true measure of a man is not his intelligence or how high he rises in this freak establishment. No, the true measure of a man is this: how quickly can he respond to the needs of others and how much of himself he can give.”
― Philip K. Dick
There is a gift in being able to be there for others. Part of it may be an ego thing. It feels good to help. The trick sometimes is in knowing how to help. An alcoholic may appreciate money for booze when he has none but are you giving him what he needs or are you increasing his dependency? We give true help when what we do empowers another rather than makes them weaker. It seems so often that its easy to give a quick fix. Heck it takes less time than actually helping a person work through their problems. So often tho, we could help so much more by not opening our wallet but opening our hearts and our ears and learning what will truly benefit another. Perhaps it is a job offer, perhaps it is just a sounding board and sometimes it is knowing when not to help so that another can find their own way out.
I have helped in the wrong ways. I have learned that generosity with money all too often can foster dependency and resentment. I want to strengthen others with my help not weaken them. I hope to be strengthened by others in return.
Blessings, G
“You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.”
― Philip K. Dick
How do I identify myself? What is my identity? Is each I AM statement that I make something I must surpass? Can that be seen as the betrayal or curse that PKD speaks of in this quote? I identified myself as a member of the Unification Church. For months I tried to make myself into the model of a church member even as evidence against the church’s teachings started piling up both internally and externally. Eventually I left betraying many of the teachings subsequently. This pattern has repeated with almost every aspect of my life as self-chosen identity after self-chosen identity became discarded like a pile of outgrown clothes. Now I find even the current identity and familial paradigms that I live with coming into question and I struggle betwe see full-sen obligation and authenticity.
So when my identity, the life roles I have chosen for myself come into conflict with the core of my being, how do I resolve this? What other issues are involved in living a life of authenticity and what must I betray in order to be my true self? Time I know will resolve this as it does most things so then I figure out what the priorities are. The way out always brings us to a higher part of the spiral.
Blessings, G
Alien Shaman Studying Shadows by G A Rosenberg 
Roadways Abstraction by G A Rosenberg 
