Farewell and Thanks For All the Fish

 

“Don’t be dismayed by good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.”

-Richard Bach

 

Well this is it folks, Sometime in the next 24 hours, this site will vanish. Rising from its ashes tho will be http://wakingspirals.com . The site will evolve over the next few months. It will feature the quotes, poetry, short essays and artwork that I’ve had here plus a web shop where you can buy prints of my art and order tarot readings among other things.
I want to thank everyone who has commented and liked my work or even those who just stopped by. Here is hoping we meet again over at the new site.
Blessings, G

 

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Winding Paths by G A Rosenberg

 

Understanding

 

The beginning of knowledge is the discovery of something we do not understand.
— Frank Herbert

 

Innocence is often the price we pay for knowledge and often it is a worthwhile exchange. When we encounter something new we often try to connect it with something that we have known before. When we can do this, we often avoid delving deeper as there is no reason to. We feel we understand it already. It is only when we can’t make an automatic connection that we seek more knowledge in order to reach a level of understanding. However once we grasp something we can no longer claim innocence of it.
Blessings, G

 

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The Other Side of the Garden by G A Rosenberg

 

Tossed in the Cosmic Storm by G A Rosenberg

 

Name It

 

“To name something is to wait for it in the place you think it will pass.”
— Amiri Baraka

 

Name your fears
Name your hopes
Name your dreams
Name your loves and your hates
for to name something
gives you power over it.
You can call on something that has a name
You can invoke it and evoke it
Draw it out into the open
and deal with it openly.
Compare that to a nameless dread
or a feeling of hope
or a breath of love.
Naming it makes it real.
— G A Rosenberg

 

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Penguin Keep by G A Rosenberg

 

Floating Within the Stream by G A Rosenberg

 

Creative Pessimism

 

“Don’t struggle so much, the best things happen when not expected.”
— Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez

 

My mind seldom stops. This has its positive aspects and its drawbacks. Learning to meditate was a challenge. Even now, I tend to overthink most things. Going into new situations I tend to look at them from all angles trying to consider ways in which they can backfire and coming up with possible solutions ahead of time. At times it becomes something of a game, somewhere between chess and mental masturbation. Still there are times when none of my disaster scenarios play out no matter how prepared I may be for them and I get surprised. This happens often enough that I extol the virtues of creative pessimism. It’s not that I expect things to go wrong as much as I try to be prepared. Yes I realize how neurotic this seems yet I often find that working through a mishap can be ever so much more rewarding than things going right from the beginning. At least it keeps my mind occupied.
Blessings, G

 

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Conscious Navigation by G A Rosenberg

 

At the Edge by G A Rosenberg

 

Reflective Mandala by G A Rosenberg

 

Fear of Dreaming

 

“Why do we stop believing in ourselves? Why do we let facts and figures and anything but dreams rule our lives?”
— Cecelia Ahern

 

Frank Herbert said fear was the mind killer and he had a point. Even more tho, fear is a dream killer. How many more of our dreams would become reality if not for fear. We fear that we are powerless and become disempowered to realize our dreams. We may fear the consequences of accomplishing our dreams and that too leaves them still born. We wrap up our dreams in our fears and hide them both away. In order to have any chance of our dreams becoming real, we have to first unwrap our fears and face them head on. At the very least we have to acknowledge them and let them out. Only then do we have a chance of freeing our dreams and possibly seeing them through as well.
Blessings, G

 

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Ram Sees by G A Rosenberg

 

Night Flame Flower by G A Rosenberg

 

Expanding Understanding

 

“It is difficult to understand the universe if you only study one planet”
― Miyamoto Musashi

 

It’s an easy mistake to make. In order to understand a topic one must study it exhaustively without distracting oneself by other areas of knowledge, right? You might believe that to gain knowledge of magick or psychology or mathematics one should focus only on those things not just in a book sense but in an experiential sense at all. However you would be wrong. That will at best give you a two dimensional understanding, one with no context to place it in. What good is an understanding on how to make changes in one’s environment if one has no knowledge of the environment you are trying to change?
I have learned a lot about psychology from studying religion. By understanding what a person holds sacred, I can understand him or her. I have learned a lot about archetypes and magick by having a good knowledge of mythology. An understanding of Herbology or Fashion can increase your knowledge in so many fields.
Basically if you want to gain true understanding in one field, yes learn and do as much as you can in that field. Take the time tho to learn as much as you can in a variety of other fields as that will bring your understanding of your topic into a whole new dimension.
Blessings, G

 

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Patterned Medusa by G A Rosenberg

 

Finding Her Way Home by G A Rosenberg

 

October

 

“October Country…that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusks and twilights linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal bins, closets, attics, and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain…”
— Ray Bradbury

 

 

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Guarded Dreams by G A Rosenberg

 

Spatial Distortion by G A Rosenberg

 

Artists of Life

 

“You have to have the guts to engage with your own spiritual journey, which is what life is for. It can be reflected in art, but art won’t take you there on its own. It’s not good enough. You actually have to use your inquiring mind and question yourself and the bullshit of things. You have to avoid getting tied up in intellectual and ironic gameplay, which will not liberate you. We want freedom, we want liberation, and you’re not going to get it in postmodernism. You’re going to get it through authentic engagement.
Postmodernism is always making a joke or a reference to originality. It’s worried about originality, but the only thing that matters is authentic response. Authentic response means you need to be in your heart, in yourself, because then you can respond authentically. You don’t need to try find new ways unnecessary, innovative ways of taking art forward. Everything is already here.”
— Billy Childish

 

Art serves as a fantastic mirror. For the artist, it can be both self-reflection and self-revelation. What is inside is evoked and made manifest. When we look at art it may also be revelatory and connective as we see ourselves through our senses, our understanding and our emotional connection to the work.
Mirrors are fantastic tho if we spend all our time looking into them we can easily fall prey to narcissism. It takes more than that tho to reach true understanding. It takes a willingness to question what we see and act on whatever answers we may receive and then question some more. It means opening ourselves up in new ways to the world around us and dealing with even those parts of it and ourselves that we may not wish to because it feels yucky. It means being naked emotionally and spiritually in ways that many of us never have before and in that vulnerable exposure lose any fear we may have. Perhaps that is when we become more than just artists of the pen or brush or computer and become true artists of life.
Blessings, G

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Gem’s Reflection by G A Rosenberg

 

Psychedelic Test Pattern by G A Rosenberg

 

Storm Watcher by G A Rosenberg

 

Neural Net by G A Rosenberg

 

Rewriting the Past; Rewriting the Future

 

“You do not even think of your own past as quite real; you dress it up, you gild it or blacken it, censor it, tinker with it… fictionalize it, in a word, and put it away on a shelf – your book, your romanced autobiography. We are all in the flight from the real reality. That is the basic definition of Homo sapiens.”
— John Fowles

 

“You are led through your lifetime by the inner learning creature, the playful spiritual being that is your real self. Don’t turn away from possible futures before you’re certain you don’t have anything to learn from them.
You’re always free to change your mind and choose a different future, or a different past.”
― Richard Bach

 

There is very little externally that we cannot change about ourselves. We can change our hair or eye colour. With lifts we can change our height. With a little bit of creative imagining we can and do change our past It’s all in how we choose to remember it. Many of us use our pasts to justify our present. We colour it in hues darker or lighter than they really were so we can say. “This is what has brought me here. This is why I do do things” Yet, we can by choosing to look at things in a different way use our pasts to bring us further than we have come before. We can remember the worst days that we ever had where people treated us badly or we can remember and focus on the best days of our lives and the times we were treated well and accept that as our birthright. We all already slant our pasts. Why not slant it in a way that works for us?
Blessings, G

 

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Harlequin in the Machine by G A Rosenberg

 

Exploding Gems by G A Rosenberg

 

Within the Jewel by G A Rosenberg

 

Imagine The Solution

 

“The secret to change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”
— Socrates

 

We keep trying to attack the qualities and habbits in our lives both external and internal that don’t work. We want to quit smoking or get rid of this or that and make our lives right by focusing on our problems. Imagine instead if we took a different tack. Imagine what you would like your life to look like. Who would you be? What qualities would you have? Who would be there with you? What would you be doing? In other words imagine your perfect life then start building towards it. Make the picture happen. In this way, the focus changes from a problem-cantered approach to a goal oriented solution approach. In the long run, I have learned that this works a lot better.
Blessings, G

 

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In His Lair by G A Rosenberg

 

Mystic Walnut by G A Rosenberg