silent thunder

no doubt! Lately I generally prefer to not let go until my feet are firmly rooted.

Nice, although, the secret for me is letting go... and exhaustion seems to be my chosen means to this end...

I really appreciate fasting. I pursued it originally for the affect on consciousness, vibration and body awareness, but soon realized that what I had heard about fasting as an effective means to aid the body in healing old, persistent injuries is wonderfully true. In addition to also providing many benefits to blood ph, sugar, cholesterol levels as well as the rise in awareness, it has become part of my routine. It's also changed how I relate to food in general. When I read about intermittent fasting I realized with just a little more attention to some snacking, I was already living this way as a natual occurence of listening to my body and not just eating because it was a cultural mealtime. I generally am not very hungry in the mornings so have usually eaten all my food in a twelve hour window anyway. Now my body routinely craves emptiness and so fasting happens regularly. Usually four days. It is very natural. I set no goals for it like I used to. I no longer seek to extend a fast with intense willpower. I fast as long as I am joyful about it. During the fast there is no problem cooking for and sitting with others as they eat. I am joyfully empty and really enjoy it. There is no sense of being deprived. When it's time to end the fast... that in itself is like a mini festival. And I find eating less often, two things manifest naturally. 1) Whenever I do eat, it is with more awareness and presence in general now. Something I appreciate immensely. and 2) When I eat less often, I become much more selective for what I am willing to eat, when I do eat. More and more I am turning away from old favorites, in favor of foods I know will leave me feeling energized and light after eating. I generally choose meals based on how I will feel after, than for taste. It's a win win. The body gets so many benefits from being empty for a time: sugar, cholesterol, pressure, some weight loss and healing. Mind and body awareness expands in a lovely manner... and the return to food when it's time, is simply ecstatic. Joy all around. I highly recommend it.

What bird is screeching? Fools talk and Sages listen. Whose voice is that now? oh mine... right. well then... carry on my wayward suns

I'm going to pick up a copy, thanks for sharing. That looks like a fun ride.

"I don't explain anything. In beingness I am nature and my own nature... explicitly, completely, saturatedly... unfettered, collosal and infinitesimal simultaneously. there is no truth, or untruth to be grasped... no understanding, no comprehension to be gained or lost. sit here with me, or not. nature is"

the untruths and false teachings and outright lies I have encountered, believed and rejected in my life have served me as much as the truths... Truth is served when untruth is revealed, so for me, there is no sense of wasted effort, or lost time, or ruined... anything in the teachings that came and have dropped off due to their nature.

Yea, I'm with you on that Brian... long ago I stopped wearing any corporate or commercial logos on my body. They are often energetically nauseating and nearly always dampening. On my last few vehicles, I've taken to removing all dealer stickers as well as the company logos as well. Though my wife prefers I leave her vehicle alone, so I comply.

There are two forms that flow through me which have a fixed set of movements as they were shared with me... and my intent is to always allow those movements to flow through me in the order they were shown to me when I play with them. These forms were taught to me for a purpose, were designed for a purpose and as such, I have not intentionally altered them... though as I go back through my journals and original notes (usually review them once or twice a year), I often note there are points of the form that have become personalized without intent or my conscious directive. I usually note them in my log, then with intent, go back to the original series of movements as taught. Over the last few years, a series of Wu Wei'esque movements have begun to arise and flow through me spontaneously. These flows arise without any intention or warning and there is a very natural progression to them, one naturally flows to the next, but there is no forward anticipation, expectation, nor guiding, or willful direction of any kind. I would like to point out that these impulses of wu wei have never manifested during my forms work. This sort of thing always comes upon me outside of my forms work. I will suddenly embody the impulse to breath and flow with Qi and the flow dictates very naturally the cycle of movements and as quickly as they arise, they express, then dissolve. While this is Qi Gong, it is a living embodiment of structureless structure. The movements that manifest, the hand positions, hip rotations, footwork, arm position and flow are all familiar, yet they manifest without forethought and arise seemingly from the body itself. Thankfully I work in a field where I am supported in my random behaviors and so I can freely embrace this and allow it without much more than some curious stares and sometimes a question or two... (and it's particularly fun when it pops up at say the grocery store, and I do with it and there I am, a modern Viking, flowing around the produce section with avocados in my hands while giggling). I imagine what it must look like from the outside which causes the giggling and I remember this quote... " and those who were seen dancing, seemed insane, to those who did not hear the music." In the end, it's all vibration, frequency and resonance. Every movement, breath, word and thought. All the way up and all the way down. As above, so below. As within, without.

I have a memory, perhaps it's self created or corrupted, but it related to an Egyptian mystery school and used the term Djedi. Something about pillars of light, keepers of light or some such. Perhaps this influenced Lucas' choice of his Jedi name as well. Prior to that, I had only noted the links to Samurai culture.

brown teeth with white skin... I sit and hide from the sun then dance in the rain

aye... I seem to be made entirely of small things. while always part of something large. while I would rather remain silent or say something better than silence. I fail at this consistently. accidentally, gloriously... rarely silently though thunder like light persists the intention abides... idly persistent, despite beliefs oh look, it's raining

I swear... sometimes I get in my elevator and it just giggles at me while we sit there...

While it peaks my curiosity from time to time to go to an old thread and not see all that was originally contributed due to later edits and deletions, any annoyance from that has faded and I now embrace it. No one owes me anything here. I have received far more than I have offered already and will never be able to balance those scales. As one insight can liberate the ignorance of prior decades and lives... then this too may drive one to to remove, or alter words and interchanges. And while the original exchange will always remain with those who co-created it... what a grand opportunity we have in the written, ammendable word, to go back and alter our piece to suit the new realizations we arrive at on our paths.

"number nine..." ~ John Lennon

Hey there. I seem to fit your criteria and am curious about the survey. Send one my way and I'll fill it out. Cheers and welcome to the Bums.

7 years of riding a bicycle through NYC traffic taught me the intrinsic value of timely movement and full patience concurrently and set the stage for the later development, not taking the world peronally. Then 17 years of LA traffic made impatient desire to get anywhere faster dissolve eventually as survival matter... it was either that or go insane and harm my health with rage. And one of the pivotal realizations that allowed patience to really manifest and bloom for me was to stop taking the world personally. Nothing is happening to me, conditions are flowing around and through and with me, not at me. And I'm just as much a part of it as any other part. That, or perhaps it's still another fallout of the sheer spiritual/mental exhaustion brought on by decades of seeking. More and more I suspect this exhaustion to be the catalyst to much of my current state of awareness and being. So there's a release and in that, patience just is... it is not sought, or maintained, or propped up and no effort or doing is required.

The Red Turtle Animated feature. No dialogue. Yet a powerhouse of a story. I highly recommend it.

A day of mourning, never celebration for me. War is failure. I'm with Harry on this topic, today and all days.

I recently (just a few weeks ago) discovered in a conversation with my wife... after nearly 30 years of marriage, that my wife has aphantasia. She cannot form images or visualize anything in her mind. When I say to her, imagine a red ball. She does not see a red ball in some manner in her mind. She has a sense of a ball that is red, but sees no virtual color or shape. This gob-smacked me... Didn't know this was possible, except in cases of brain damage, which is recorded. But evidently for as many as one in fifty, folks are simply not able to form pictures/images, sounds, smells... nothing in their mind's eye. Something I didn't even know was a thing in human constructs... It absolutely horrified me and has been weighing on me as I consider how other's meditate and dream... and think or even conceive of ideas and concepts. It came about when I was really pegging her down over a dream she had had and how the building she was in was created... and she couldn't describe it in concrete terms. She then revealed that she does not and has never in her life visualized any sight or sound of anything in her mind... that she indeed cannot and has no idea how to go about visualizing or creating any images in her mind... no sound, no sights, no smells... nada... only feelings of things... the overall sense of them. She dreams, but only through cognitive intuition... she feels the settings and the events... she does not experience them in the manner I do, by standing in a location, where I see, touch, feel, taste and smell all that is transpiring around me. We are both utterly awed and stunned by how the other processes images and by how the other's mind works. I told her, no wonder math and geometry were so challenging for you... for me, math is almost all visualization of groupings and relationships.... So anyway there's that... aphantasia... third eye blind.

that is one powerful statement imbedded in powerhouse of insight. *deep bow* thanks mate!

I take my name here from an experience of the inner silent thunder my wife and I encountered together deep in the desrt one afternoon while resting after hiking miles up a canyon in the Bad Lands on our honeymoon. We had stopped to rest and I recall thinking, I had never heard anywhere so quiet in my life... it seemed suddenly to me, that she and I were the only two things for a long way in any direction that were making any sound. Zero wind. Nothing. It was so potent we just stared at each other in growing awe both gradually recognizing the awareness in the other while the silence just palpably reached deeper and spread wider.... We became aware of a silence so profound... it was unbreachable. Not even the sounds of our heartbeats or breath. It was like I could have roared into it and not heard my own voice. perfect calm... total silence. I'll never forget the sensation. It changed us both. and then this low rushing, like water, so low and far off and yet, still silent, though absolutely clearly perceptible... rushing and it steadily grew even as the silence became more enfolding. It rose into a roaring thunder. In complete silence. There seemed to be no end to the growth, it was deafening and rather terrifying because at one point it crossed my mind that this sound were I to surrender to it, would utterly dissolve any essence of me. I don't recall how it passed, only that we looked at each other in complete dual recognition, awe and shock, then simply walked out of the canyon and back to camp in a daze.

i absolutely will, thank you.