“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
— Carl Jung
Too long have I been blinded
by sleight of hand candles
held by charismatic fools.
I was a moth diving in
losing myself in their flames
Badly singed I turned away from all
within my darkness I found the true light
calling from within
empowering, enabling
I discovered self pride and self will
and a light brighter than any candle could be
Pulled within I could find myself outside the well.
— G A Rosenberg
“And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”
― T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land
The dust of broken memories
shows me strange dreams
scattered and strewn
of happy children
and shadowed times
Too many tears shattered
over dim futures
and a yearning for a time
that never was.
I feared to tell you how I felt
and your hurt silence echoed mine
We walked for hours not holding
and then it was time for the sun
Maybe someday but that will be the dust
of another’s hand.
— G A Rosenberg
“Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness.”
— Allen Ginsberg
Don’t you sense it? That feeling that no only are you different than everybody else but that if people were aware of your difference they’d think you were crazy? Oh maybe not locked up danger to yourself or to others but nuts all the same. If they only knew the thoughts that went on in your head. Everybody has the gibbering madness behind their eyes. Some of us get better at not showing it. Some of us get so good at it that we convince ourselves its not there. It’s a bit of a shame tho. That spark of madness tends to be our creativity and our true self. The more we let it out the more we create beauty whether it be in art, writing or our lives. Oh some of it can be pretty strange and frightening yet the more of our madness we let show the more we become fully ourselves. It is not in the sun that we shine the most but in the light of our inner moon. For that is where our shadows contrast it. Indeed, they are inextricably wed.
Blessings, G
“I earnestly confronted my devil and behaved with him as with a real person. This I learned in the Mysterium: to take seriously every unknown wanderer who personally inhabits the inner world, since they are real because they are effectual.”
— Carl Jung
Gods and Demons walk among me
wearing each other’s drag
often in the same being
They speak with heroes
and hold debates
each one illuminates my process in some way
Archetypal imaginings
more real in some ways
than those I meet
outside my head
As I get to know them
they teach me
elements of being
they then move on
to be replaced
by talking space dogs and the like
Parts of me not yet realized
New shadows yet to cast.
— G A Rosenberg
“Be silent and listen: have you recognized your madness and do you admit it? Have you noticed that all your foundations are completely mired in madness? Do you not want to recognize your madness and welcome it in a friendly manner? You wanted to accept everything. So accept madness too. Let the light of your madness shine, and it will suddenly dawn on you. Madness is not to be despised and not to be feared, but instead you should give it life…If you want to find paths, you should also not spurn madness, since it makes up such a great part of your nature…Be glad that you can recognize it, for you will thus avoid becoming its victim. Madness is a special form of the spirit and clings to all teachings and philosophies, but even more to daily life, since life itself is full of craziness and at bottom utterly illogical. Man strives toward reason only so that he can make rules for himself. Life itself has no rules. That is its mystery and its unknown law. What you call knowledge is an attempt to impose something comprehensible on life.”
― Carl Jung>
I offer little resistance to my dark side. I let my madness move within me like a snake crawling and flexing where it will. Oh that’s not to say that I will randomly start harming people. How I express my insanity is up to me. I can let it move through me in odd thoughts or wild imaginings or I can turn it into art. Still in meditation I let myself feel it all, the torrents of emotion well up and subside and the dark mirror shows me my face. Occasionally it is a hall of mirrors where through the distortions I can see the me’s that never were or that might be but not yet. As an artist and writer I value these trips of both light and dark. It offers both inspiration and lessons in tolerance. How can I have problems with anyone else’s shadow if I can accept the darkest parts of my own. If the question comes up, which it does about who I really am at my core, the only honest answer is “All of this and more yet to be revealed”.
Blessings, G
“Invisible connection is stronger than visible. To arrive at the basic structure of things we must go into their darkness.”
— Heraclitus
I reach out to your touch
something unspoken pulls back
connection falters
Your touch caresses
my back as I rub your feet
Connection is made
Something inside me
pulls away from your embrace
connection is lost
I touch inner wounds
with my own scarred memories
Connection is real
— G A Rosenberg
So many of us hide our shadows and our scars not only from others but ourselves as well. We put on our game faces even with those we love and keep so much buried. What happens then is a connection of masks and many judge the strength of their relationship on how well their personas interrelate without ever going deeper. Since many of us change our personas over the years as life happens, the relationships fall apart because neither one has met the true being of the other. It is only by delving deeper and making ourselves vulnerable that true inner connection can happen even if that means showing the less savoury parts of ourselves. You can always tell when that happens between people as it results in healing and self-knowledge rather than a feeling of holding a telephone to one’s ear long after the other person has hung up their line.
Blessings, G
“The process of delving into the black abyss is to me the keenest form of fascination.”
— H.P. Lovecraft
Dancing from light into dark and dark into light
seeing how far the pendulum swings
Becoming your shadow to see how it feels
revelling to see how deep they go
when perceptions can’t be trusted
and then reversing it
jumping from the darkness into the day
feeling the sun and the surface
enjoying the senses and the joy
and that rising feeling
and then reversing it
the push and the pull
the false and the real
the depths and the shallows
the flow and the ebb tide
as you’re washed to the sea
and crushed beneath the waves
and then rise up surfing the next crest
only to sink again
making the dance a conscious one
bringing wisdom in its sway
— G A Rosenberg
“We live with our archetypes, but can we live in them?”
— Poul Anderson
Who are we? Who do we want to be? Are we the businessman / Emperor archetype who somewhat benevolently brings order to our underlings existence? Are we the rebel / Punk who wants everything torn down? Are we an artist or a Mother Nature expanding in self expression? Do we try so hard to live inside our chosen archetypes that we deny expression to other aspects of ourself that run counter to them? What parts of ourselves do we keep hidden in the shadows because they don’t fit our internal image of who we should be?
In my experience, the more we make ourselves into something that only partially represents, the more we deny our own identities. We can’t defeat our shadow by denying it, it will always win in the end. It is only by embracing everything that we are, giving it all full expression that we can fully self-actualize and truly know what our purpose in life may be.
Blessings, G
Click on images to see full-sized:
Serpent by G A Rosenberg
Celling Out by G A Rosenberg
The Serpent and The Sword (Botis) by G A Rosenberg
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
Click on images to see full-sized:
In Search of Lost Treasure (Valac) by G A Rosenberg
Walking Through the Fire (Redux) by G A Rosenberg 
Elemental Shaman by G A Rosenberg 
