Meaning , More or Less

 

All phenomena are real in some sense, unreal in some sense, meaningless in some sense, real and meaningless in some sense, unreal and meaningless in some sense, and real and unreal and meaningless in some sense.
— Robert Anton Wilson

 

If you believe that your life is the be all and end all of meaningful existence:
Imagine if you were a housewife in Tennessee how you would see your current priorities. An owner of a retail business in London would have a whole different set of priorities. So would an accountant in Madrid. A voudon priest in South America would see things totally different than any of them. For each of these cases, what is real, what is unreal and what has meaning and what doesn’t would be very different. This is not necessarily a measure of their spiritual progress or ours. It is just a case of the relativity of experience that most of us miss out on.
Yet in this kaleidoscope of experience we can change our perspective and find a totally different picture or several.
Blessings, G

 

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Warrior Spirit2Warrior Spirit by G A Rosenberg

 

A Fractal IllusionA Fractal Illusion by G A Rosenberg

 

A Truer Gift

 

“There is no meaning in life. The meaning is in sentences, meaning is in symbols that symbolize life. Life itself does not have a meaning because that’s what meaning refers too, meaning refers to life. To look for meaning in life is like looking for trees on a map. You can find squiggles that represent trees but you won’t find the trees there. The squiggles only represent the trees or the rivers. You can’t wash in a river on a map, you gotta find a real river”
— Robert Anton Wilson

 

Do you know what I mean? Do you grok what I’m saying? Do you stand under my words and comprehend them? When you look at a picture or read a poem what does it reveal to you? Is it what the author or artist intended to convey or have you found something independent of their intentions that allows you to take ownership because it has brought you to something or something to you that no one else has seen?
I get real pleasure when someone points out something in my pictures that I had not consciously put there. Oh often when they point it out, I see it but somehow they have taken something that I created and breathed new life into it. In this small way my art has grown beyond me. So when someone says “I love the face that you put in there”. I smile and thank them for being so observant. They have revealed to me something that I had created without realizing it. I can’t image a truer gift.
Blessings, G

 

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Power From the CentrePower From the Centre by G A Rosenberg

 

MurmurMurmur (#54 in Goetia Series) by G A Rosenberg

 

‘Normal’ People

 

“The normal is that which nobody quite is. If you listen to seemingly dull people very closely, you’ll see that they’re all mad in different and interesting ways, and are merely struggling to hide it.”
― Robert Anton Wilson

 

I know an accountant who can and will tell you statistics about stamps from 96 different countries with the occasional odd fact about the number of people who were poisoned through the licking of stamps. I also know a prim and proper secretary who bowls every tuesday night who has a hope chest filled with a collection of whips and manacles of various kinds. There is a banker who believes he is the second coming of jesus and who likes to wear woman’s underwear every day underneath his three piece suit. There is a woman who goes home every night, feeds her three cats and then watches tv. She takes good care of her cats because she loves them and believes that they give her lottery numbers that will one day win. Normal is a flexible term at best and it is what no one is. We are all deviants. Some of us have learned to admit it freely and others, poor souls nurse their strangeness in secret yearning for the right person to share it with. We are all becoming and the universe is a stranger more delightful place than many of us will ever know.
Blessings, G

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Inner ImagingInner Imagining by G A Rosenberg

 

Fractal BroadcastFractal Broadcast by G A Rosenberg

 

Puzzled on the Journey

 

“The journey is what brings us happiness not the destination.”
― Dan Millman

 

As the King in the King and I would say, “It is a puzzlement to me.”I believe that what Don Millman says in the above quote about the journey being more enjoyable than the destination is true. I have heard enough similar things stated that I believe many at least pay lip service to this. Yet so many people seem dedicated to convincing others that they have arrived, that they have climbed the mountain and reached the pinnacle of wisdom. What’s even more astonishing to me is that this is true of many on a spiritual path, which is one that to me is never-ending. There is always more ways to grow and develop that I don’t see a destination point in sight, nor do I wish one. The journey may be difficult at times but as hard as it may be it is also joyous and rather fun.
So why then the need to convince others or ourselves that we have reached understanding, that we have become Masters of the Temple or enlightened or any of the thousands of other ways that people describe it. I hope that I will always find myself to be mainly ignorant to have as Robert Anton Wilson said “no certainties but some suspicions” about the true nature of things and there are far worse last words than Aleister Crowley’s “I am perplexed.” As I said a puzzlement. Then, my journey has barely begun.
Blessings, G

 

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Serpentine LoveSerpentine Love by G A Rosenberg

 

Dragon's RetreatDragon’s Retreat by G A Rosenberg

 

Rambling Weirdness

“In conlusion, there is no conclusion. Things will go on as they always have, getting weirder all the time.”
— Robert Anton Wilson

Entranced by the strangeness
that passes for the every day
People act in ways not expected
as we do
and we act and react in return
we give kindness
and see it returned
How strange is that?
There is beauty in everything
and yet there is something I’ve never seen before
and it calls to me, beckoning
caught in the siren song of novelty
I follow along
and find myself walking
in strange places
I never knew
I return home a stranger
seeing through new eyes
and come again to know
familiar altered faces
for the first time
a homecoming for every day
and thus nothing gets taken
for granted.
— G A Rosenberg

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Astronomy LessonAstronomy Lesson (Stolas) by G A Rosenberg
Interlocking Crystaline PiecesInterlocking Crystalline Pieces by G A Rosenberg
In His KeepIn His Keep (Asmoday) by G A Rosenberg

A Fleeting Prayer

“Intelligence is the capacity to receive, decode and transmit information efficiently. Stupidity is blockage of this process at any point. Bigotry, ideologies etc. block the ability to receive; robotic reality-tunnels block the ability to decode or integrate new signals; censorship blocks transmission.”
–Robert Anton Wilson

Ganesh break me through the barriers
of the quicksand in my mind
Hermes free me
from crippling beliefs
and help my thoughts fly mercurially.
Oh cross road beings
widen my mind
so I can see that other roads exist
and honour them as I wish mine honoured
and see them as valid choices I may one day make.
Let me speak when others put their hand to my mouth
and that bars of thought are all illusion.
May I use what I have to free others
and may my travel be swift.
Aughm HA!
— G A Rosenberg

Blessings, G

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Golden HummingbirdGolden Hummingbird by G A Rosenberg
WrathWrath by G A Rosenberg
Approaching the Unknown with Totemic AspectsApproaching the Unknown with Totemic Aspects (Bael)  by G A Rosenberg

Quotes, More Quotes and a Few Stray Thoughts

Tonight some rapid fire quotes and comments just to mix things up a bit:

“You are precisely as big as what you love and precisely as small as what you allow to annoy you.”
Robert Anton Wilson

So many reasons for working on our shadow selves and this is one of the best.. What good is it to love the universe (love universally) if you become irritated at little things that parts of it do and say? The cognitive dissonance that this can bring up alone makes it a good idea to deal with those raw parts of ourself.

“It is a thousand times better to make every kind of mistake than to slide into the habit of hesitation, of uncertainty, of indecision.”
— Aleister Crowley, Magick Without Tears

Uncertainty and Hesitation tend to be parts of my own shadow. When choices seem equal and they almost always do, it becomes difficult to choose. Still gradually I am learning to lead with my chin and choosing rather than leaving it to others or to the universe. It is my own learning to take responsibility.

It’s done by hurling yourself into the abyss, and discovering that it’s a feather bed.
There’s no other way to do it.”
— Terence McKenna

In combination with the quote above, it is sometimes better to take that leap towards self-knowledge and empowerment and be willing to risk the changes that it may bring rather than to stall out at the edge. It might be a featherbed or I might end up like a Loony Toons character running on air and falling but I will make those leaps and if I fall I will rise again.

Blessings, G

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In Search of Lost TreasureIn Search of Lost Treasure (Valac)  by G A Rosenberg
Abstracted Vision 62Abstracted Vision 62 by G A Rosenberg

Open Questions

 

“Intelligence is the capacity to receive, decode and transmit information efficiently. Stupidity is blockage of this process at any point. Bigotry, ideologies etc. block the ability to receive; robotic reality-tunnels block the ability to decode or integrate new signals; censorship blocks transmission.”
— Robert Anton Wilson

 

Are you letting your life flow? Are you remaining open to possibility? Do you accept every person as they are as a gift that the universe and or your higher self has given you? Can you shut off the inner voice that all too often is saying “yes but…” and turn it around to say “yes and…?” Do you reject dreams and hopes or do you encourage them? The intellect tends to discern and discriminate showing us the differences between things, breaking them down. Our intelligence operating at peak capacity accepts all and encourages us to bring it all together. How open can we be? How open can we afford to be which also begs the question how open can we refuse not to be?
Blessings, G

 

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TeacherTeacher by G A Rosenberg

 

Frosty CoronaFrosty Corona by G A Rosenberg

 

No Pre-Packaged Choices

 

“These ideas can be made more concrete with a parable, which I borrow from John Fowles’s wonderful novel, The Magus.

Conchis, the principle character in the novel, finds himself Mayor of his home
town in Greece when the Nazi occupation begins. One day, three Communist
partisans who recently killed some German soldiers are caught. The Nazi commandant gives Conchis, as Mayor, a choice — either Conchis will execute the three partisans himself to set an example of loyalty to the new regime, or the Nazis will execute every male in the town.

Should Conchis act as a collaborator with the Nazis and take on himself the
direct guilt of killing three men? Or should he refuse and, by default, be responsible for the killing of over 300 men?

I often use this moral riddle to determine the degree to which people are hypnotized by Ideology. The totally hypnotized, of course, have an answer at once; they know beyond doubt what is correct, because they have memorized the Rule Book. It doesn’t matter whose Rule Book they rely on — Ayn Rand’s or Joan Baez’s or the Pope’s or Lenin’s or Elephant Doody Comix — the hypnosis is indicated by lack of pause for thought, feeling and evaluation. The response is immediate because it is because mechanical. Those who are not totally hypnotized—those who have some awareness of concrete events of sensory space-time, outside their heads— find the problem terrible and terrifying and admit they don’t know any ‘correct’ answer.

I don’t know the ‘correct’ answer either, and I doubt that there is one. The
universe may not contain ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ answers to everything just because Ideologists want to have ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ answers in all cases, anymore than it provides hot and cold running water before humans start tinkering with it. I feel sure that, for those awakened from hypnosis, every hour of every day presents choices that are just as puzzling (although fortunately not as monstrous) as this parable. That is why it appears a terrible burden to be aware of who you are, where you are, and what is going on around you, and why most people would prefer to retreat into Ideology, abstraction, myth and self-hypnosis.

To come out of our heads, then, also means to come to our senses, literally—to live with awareness of the bottle of beer on the table and the bleeding body in the street. Without polemic intent, I think this involves waking from hypnosis in a very literal sense. Only one individual can do it at a time, and nobody else can do it for you. You have to do it all alone.”
― Robert Anton Wilson

 

I have always mistrusted one size fits all answers. Whether it is about the right way to educate children, what is the best method for helping people with disabilities or even what is the correct political or moral choices to make. Because when dealing with individual people or individual decisions there is no one right answer because the key word is individual. It’t not as easy or convenient to sit with questions and actually choose moment to moment what is the correct choice but it is necessary if we are to break out of our own internal and cultural programming and make choices from the heart.
Blessings, G

 

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Warrior SpiritWarrior Spirit by G A Rosenberg

 

Green and Flame Spiral OutGreen and Flame Spiral Out by G A Rosenberg

The Only Box That Fits Is Infinite

 

“The most thoroughly and relentlessly damned, banned, excluded, condemned, forbidden, ostracized, ignored, suppressed, repressed, robbed, brutalized and defamed of all ‘Damned Things’ is the individual human being. The social engineers, statisticians, psychologists, sociologists, market researchers, landlords, bureaucrats, captains of industry, bankers, governors, commissars, kings and presidents are perpetually forcing this ‘Damned Thing’ into carefully prepared blueprints and perpetually irritated that the ‘Damned Thing’ will not fit into the slot assigned it. The theologians call it a sinner and try to reform it. The governor calls it a criminal and tries to punish it. The psychologist calls it a neurotic and tries to cure it. Still, the ‘Damned Thing’ will not fit into their slots.”
― Robert Anton Wilson

 

You gave me a box
with my name on it
beautifully lined and the shape fit me
well…almost
“Slip it on”, you whispered
“it will grow on you”
I knew that was true
for if I was to spend time
in the shape you saw me in
it would become me
the parts that didn’t fit
would wither away
but those parts were intrinsic
to who I am
“No thank you, I’ll pass”
you got angry
as so many did before
Family, school, work,
religion, and most friends
all so helpful with their boxes
each one slightly different
and none of them my own.
The only box that fits is infinite
with infinite room to grow
Any other is a container
and I will not be contained
— G A Rosenberg

 

Blessings, G

 

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He Followed Me Home Can He Keep MeHe Followed Me Home, Can He Keep Me? by G A Rosenberg

 

Butterfly InversionButterfly Inversion by G A Rosenberg