silent thunder

Can you just imagine the unyielding swordplay of words and concepts he would wield in its critique? funny... that thought is as delicious to me as it is useless...

I really appreciated you sharing this... we have an awesome herb/tea shop that just opened in town... you have me thinking...

Well this seems certain, there sure is no, and likely will never be a shortage of opinions, surety and dogma over what is a helpful herb and what is harmful... and what is and what is not a drug is the more interesting question to me. I have noticed there is considerable variance in what folks consider to be a 'drug'. And one thing I think folks miss out on, is how many drug like influences they have in their lives that have nothing to do with what they put in their mouths, or what they smoke or drink... It's what they allow themselves to think and what they subconsciously habitually do, that cause just as much hormonal reward as any of the 'drugs' that are so easily pigeon holed as the source of societies woes... And then even among what are openly classifed as the drugs... there are those that are good for us and those deemed bad... I'd be interested to get the firm numbers of people who die, or suffer long lasting injury from prescription meds vs street drugs. I recall looking into this some two decades ago while taking a class on street drugs prior to trying some of them out. My findings then caused me to stop just taking any pill my Dr. offered me without looking into it myself. But then, I was in that class for the same reason... always curious to learn what others knew about entheogenic and street drug's I was interested in trying... always needed to look into it and read up on it and make up my own mind. That process resulted in me having a personal definition of a drug. To me a drug is anything that causes an 'affect of my experience of perception or life', A drug to me is anything that can affect my awareness... plant essences and secretions, animal products, pills and injectibles from the dr, activities (sex, eating, exercise, meditation, qi gong...) image media, books/ideas, conversations, thoughts, emotions... all of these have a drug like affect on me and then become an avenue where I may seek them in a manner that is deemed 'out of balance'. and can inculcate addictive behavior.... I then saw that for me, all phenomena, in any form was like a drug and thus held the potential for me to relate to it in addictive manner to very interesting and beneficial results. When I realized for instance, the daily, bodily manifestation and influence of broadcast television and radio on the state of my mind and body... I got rid of it the next day. Television for me, was far more harmful to my experience of life than anything I've ever smoked or ingested or done naked in a bedroom, (or 30 feet up a tree for that matter)... Most of what I've encountered in the notion of drugs and which ones are accepted and which ostracized stems from nothing more than the old school we all attended in one form or other... the school of 'that's how it's always been' in our culture, so that's what's normal... The cutlural social indoctrination we all receive and that creates our foggy yet oh so firm, subconscious notions of normal. It sets right alongside our culturally created notions of correct sexual orientations and what pursuits and activities normal folks are supposed to engage in. It covers such broad and undetailed topics about you know... how folks 'should' behave when they are 'normal' and 'decent'. All perfectly normal and unavoidable... the cultural waters we all saturate in from birth, before the age of critical thinking. you know... normal. But back to herbs proper... even among herbalists, there is so much flexibility and opinions and debate... some seem helpful in small amounts and harmful in large doses... others are helpful when steamed and fatal when raw... some are good when we are young and others are only beneficial as we age. Drugs are everywhere... coffee, sugar, sports and internet seem like the big four in terms of most accepted, politically supported and prevalent in my culture, but that's just my little corner. Far more potent than any street drug, pill or grocery store item I've ever tried is a tie between pranayama breathing... and lucid dreaming. In my experience, anything that causes a reaction, a response in awareness, that we then can duplicate and come to rely upon is a drug capable of having an addictive relationship with... Pranayama breathing and lucid dreaming are far more addictive to me than any drug I've ever used. Posting comments on an internet forum can be another example of a potent drug desired emotional payoff for an action in my world. Fluid questions... concrete answers... fluid answers... life stuff. oh look... it's time to go breathe i wonder if there will be any smoke in that breath, or if the fog within is really without? maybe the hermetics know... where are they now I wonder?

*exhales and sinks down... thanks mate! that was powerful and well timed!

whoa... Seekerofhealing... your words often display a pain that indicates you are indeed a seeker of and not a dispenser of healing. Your pain is evident, it is yours and you alone have created it as you have created a need to seek healing from it. Do you like its flavor? You may tire of it someday, then the healing will likely manifest realization that the healing was present within you all along, only untouchable through all the self inflicted pain of seeking and seeing others as the source of your pain. I gave up seeking some time ago... what a powerful liberation... I would wish it on anyone... much benefit. It was exhaustion that brought it about for me... simply couldn't *thankfully* maintain such energy any longer and it all just sort of fell apart, and away leaving in its wake... awareness and beingness... with some strong side emanations of gratitude and contentment. How can one experience the present or be healed when one is seeking? How simply abide in presence and awareness when the source of one's inner state and wholeness is dependent upon something one considers to be outside their own self? Such slavery as this is a travesty of the highest order and ironically, seems to always be self imposed. To be a seeker is to be seeking, not present. To not be present is to separate oneself (within one's mind chatter). Its very name alludes to its energetic action which is to project outward with the intention to discover in some assumed external place, or medicine, or teaching, a source of healing what lies within... which implies that the seeker assumes they lack something in their present state at this present moment. The very declaration of one's self as a seeker says 'i don't have it yet. i suspect it's not part of me and I must seek it out. out there...' In my experience seeking is seeking, being is being One need not seek, the anchor of the universe is there in you in every ephemeral atom of your form... you are as close to the source now as you were in the womb as you were prior to the womb... All one need to do is release all the extras picked up on the way. Abide in being, let all else fall away.

Religion and Science both attempt to answer the big questions... just by different processes. They each have their merits and they're both prone to falling out of the presence of now and filtering little more than preconceived notions and biases of aversion and desire through dogma. Though science does seem to have a bit more flexibility in its adoption of changing views based on new insight/data than religion does... but this is only my opinion, based on my exposure to them. They are both processes of human energetics and thus seem to have more in common to me, than they do in distinction. I wonder what Chuangzi would make of CERN and quantum physics, or the Judeo=Christian model if he were exposed to it...

Interesting stuff... but I can't swim in these waters long of late... left, right, center... so much to investigate... so many things to consider as right and wrong. I can't make much of it any longer, thankfully... even when I'm inclined to try... there are so many very intricate and well crafted avenues of spin now regarding any information... and there is such mastery over the art of persuasion in so many mediums that it has rendered my relationship with news media all but unpalatable... it all comes with equal flavors of unreliably transmitted data saturated with intentions and biases, rendering it down to unpalatable, untrustworthy noise. There was a time when I could read five or six sources and feel I was getting some semblance of workable data... nowadays... my ignorance of all such matters just continues to grow, thankfully. I confess, lately I keep my shen firmly pointed inside myself, or deep in the earth a lot recently. when it's not there, it's then most likely aimed as far out into deep awareness as i can tolerate and cultivate.

I'm feeling a strong draw to this as well lately, increasing draw particularly over the last few years. Thanks for posting the question!

As I see it, the potential downside.. you spend some time in a pursuit you show interest in, that doesn't pan out and you move on. Potential upside... meeting a teacher of an art that can utterly transform your experience of life in the present. If you have any draw to the teacher or the style... go. go.

I would advise to jump in and see what comes of it.

I've been intrigued and drawn to the I Ching since the early 90's... but it's been a slow, arching spiral process that still hasn't manifested with me pulling a book from a shelf to engage with it actively. Eventually the right book will jump off the shelf, or someone will drop it in my lap. Until then, I sure do appreciate what I gleen from those who've already jumped in the waters... thanks for sharing!

I would recommend Dr Yang Jwing Ming's book, The Root of Chinese Qi Gong for some good theory. I also got picked up some good theory from a couple of Damo Mitchell's books... Dragon Dao Yin exercises and Daoist Nei Gong.

release is great with these things... things of that nature stay just where I drop em whether i remember or not... now... why did I walk in this room?

I'd get all hung up on how to correctly identify bozos... probably end up becoming one without even meaning to.... I just let it go... but that's really my goal of late. release it all that which remains is...

One will never arrive at their destination if they stop to throw stones at every barking dog.... ~ Winston Churchill.

I only shared a couple of details regarding my time with Wang Liping in two different threads that were specifically asking questions about him and the retreats he holds... I don't recall their names. One of those details was my realizing a few days into the retreat that my far-sightedness had corrected... when i hadn't even thought to list it as something I was seeking healing for when applying for the retreat. The rest was just so intensely personal, even if I could put it into words, I don't know what possible value it would be for anyone else... more distracting than helpful I would think. My time with both Master Wang and Master Zhou was paradigm shifting... paradigm shattering. I've shared many details, (mostly when in my early days posting), across various threads regarding my time with Zhou Ting-Jue and the experiences I had through him, though nothing comprehensive as in one thread, or one summed up comment.

... wow. that series of posts was the mental/spiritual equivalent to standing in the ring with my master for a few seconds... heady stuff and deep waters. so much treasure here... thanks again bums. I am deeply grateful for you all and for this place. and to think, 13.something billion years of elements spinning in awareness for this moment to congeal in this manner...

I wonder, how can one with any surety, assume to know what the ends of all, or any other school's teachings will be for those who follow them? How can one know what another's path will or will not lead to? smells like projective presumption to me... but that's my own stink, or ours... after all, where do I stop and you begin? are we in trouble? are we saved? who saves whom, he wondered as he wandered...

what is value? an idea. one that varies with individuals and depends on perspective what has value? whatever individuals determine, seemingly based on desires, needs and aversions what is money? paper with numbers on it and metal coins. is money valuable? only in so far as I and others agree it has value and thus can exchange it for things that are useful. value is an idea... money is an expression in form of this idea. what is this paper and metal compared to a moment of expanded awareness? compared to balanced health? We all value money according to our solvency and our own principles of personal value and our personal story. 100 to me may be 10,000 to you... 10 to you may be 1,000,000 to me. who knows? who is wrong or right? To experience what I was 'taught' by Zhou Ting Jue and Wang Liping, I would pay 10x10x10.... but that is its value to me... no one else can tell me what that value is worth... they are not qualified observers. Nor can I tell another what a teaching is worth, nor its real value to them, as I am not a qualified observer. This goes for people who study different lineages from me, or no lineage at all. Who am I to determine the value in another's life of their experience, or lack thereof? Such presumption... Looking back, what just these two men taught to me, is not necessarily what I learned, or took away from their teachings. I have no idea what they set out to teach me... only what I gleened from my perceptions in their presence and through my shift in awareness. Though I experienced being 'healed'. I don't say they healed me. The more perspective i garner by being removed from the teachings through the passage of time, it was not so much they were dispensing teachings to me, more like, in their presence, there were conditions that contributed to my awareness shifting and I am now aware of behaviors and practices that lay a sustainable foundation of health in my life, so that health is supported and maintained in every action. Health and vitality naturally manifest and the imbalanced state is not present so no healing is required. for me, this expansion of awareness... value beyond measure... how would I put a number on it. I'd say it's worth is equal to love carried to the exponent of imagination. How about all the lessons I've learned from sources that I cannot pay in money? The root that saved my life while rock climbing, when it held my weight as I was falling to my death. This root looked old and rotted and yet held my weight and supported me as I climbed to 'safety'. It taught me not to assume by appearances the strength inside of something... what is this worth? Worth. Value. Money. Insight. Awareness. Clarity. Experience. Gratitude. Health. All of everything is shared every day in through and by a million sources inside and outside of my apparent self. Value? Yours...? mine... ? we all belong to each other... we all are each other. edit: to reword opening statements.

For many, it seems they suffer when they encounter other teachings and paths that are different from those they are attached to, or that are unfamiliar or that they have an aversion to... I have compassion for this... suffered it myself for some time. It's really a hard state to occupy... to look all around and see wrong and bad and useless everywhere, it induces much suffering.

taking the world personally... that is one rough condition.

Matrushka Dolls! Good buddy of mine went on a solo 3 month trek through Europe after college, back in the early 90's. Wife and I dropped him at the airport, so he spent the night at our place... he snuck one of our internal matrushka dolls into his bags and came back with a crap ton of photos of her posing all along his route. He called it the 'tour of the motherland tour'. lol good times.

I cannot (and have no desire to) shake the very palpable sense that space is as sentient and alive as i myself am.

i should clarify that my above response isn't meant to convey a sense of having no connection or responsibility for the imbalance. I don't just leave it to nature. I absolutely refuse to litter. and haven't taken a single walk in almost twenty years, without bringing a bag with me to pick up trash as i go... the habit started in the early 90's when I would walk through Prospect Park in Brooklyn and continues to this day. I was at one point in my younger life, a hairs breadth away from being this gal...

I used to think that something like this was unnatural. Lately, I no longer believe unnatural exists. Though the things I used to consider unnatural I would now describe as seeming to be out of balance. Humans used to seem unnatural to me along with all their various by-products... but now that all seems part of nature albeit a strange one to me, and as has been shown at places like Chernobyl, nature doesn't waste anything, not plastic, not radio-active waste, nothing. Nature is never wrong, it is just always flowing toward balance, without effort or any bias. These images though and what they represent does still seem out of balance though. But only because I have an opinion, based on a perspective. Not because I am right. Wolves are thriving in Chernobyl, where it was supposed to be a desolate wasteland for generations and... turns out humans are harder on some aspects of nature than severe radiation. And isn't there a fungus there that is also processing and cleansing the radioactive elements, or was it a bacteria? The ocean is already working on that island of garbage... something will be making use of it in some way.