silent thunder

:wub:FUNK!

that sums up much of my spiritual pursuits and experience over the last thirty years... *deep bow* thanks for sharing.

Here is what I heard, from Wang Liping in person. "get ready to sit.... everybody sit well. palms on the knees. look into the distance... further is better. bring the gaze (shen) back to between the eyebrows area. gently close eyes. straighten the spine. gently tuck the chin. lips closed. teeth touch, tongue behind the front teeth."

So much gratitude to have met and studied with two 18th generation masters out of Wudang. Zhou Ting Jue and Wang Liping. Remarkable, awe inspiring and paradigm shattering these true humans.

One of my very close work mates and friends says 'shine love on it'. When I've brought up dealing with harsh, dark, or elusive emotional patterns. I've come to appreciate this. It used to imply action and effort which I found not so helpful and while I appreciated the senitment, it didn't stick for me. Lately though, I've come to resonate with it on a deeper level and realize that there is no effort needed and the word love is synonymous with awareness for me and it is a potent manner of acknowledging and releasing simultaneously, the energies involved to very healthy and benficial effect.

It seems to be a natural response... there certainly is a convincing seeming correlation between deep silence, stillness and this awareness/experience. when all processes either fall away out of exhaustion or are thrown from and released me in exasperation however that happens, when it happens it seems then awareness shines through unimpeded radical acknowledgement of conditions and release of expectation or reaction seem to be involved whether that is due to my dililgent spiritual pursuits of effort and striving... or from the inevitable exhausted dropping of them when i grow exasperated with them... or from some alltogether unintelligible and unremittable process or force... i just don't know my experience, the parts i can try and talk and share about seem to indicate that the awareness is abiding, foundational and never waivers... yet my experience of that awareness is often occluded, clouded over, shrouded or obscured by senses and mind stuff.

i seem to have the repeated experience of constantly seeing solid (seeming) objects... i seem to reliably see objects with colors and shapes and in apparent positions relative to what I call my body. Yet this is saturated in fallacy and assumption. While being very convincingly and repeatably experienced as 'real'. mysterious. Even though, my vision remains convincingly and repetitively confirmable, it is rife with fallacy and assumption. take for instance: i say to you "i see a coffee mug on that table." and you look and see it and agree with me... a moment later. we both see a coffee mug... or do we? I accept (based on the descriptions of the nature of light) that i have never seen a single coffee mug, or indeed any object ever... even though i have had countless experiences of seeing many coffee mugs, the priests of science have convincingly demonstrated and explained, much to my satisfaction, that by the nature of light... what i actually perceive as a mug, is the process of my eyes processing the lightwaves that bounce off the mug... and not the mug itself. Important? i don't know... but interesting and intriguing and so important to me, in a manner. so... i do not see objects, i perceive the light that bounces off of objects... never the object actually, directly... next up, i have never seen anything as it is now... as with all perception... i only perceive the past. never the present as it is... this is always driven home poingantly whenever i look up at the stars... the knowingness that many of the stars I see now, no longer exist, or certainly don't exist in the positions they appear to be in... i see only the past. i perceive only the past. To see an object, light must bounce off of it, which lends to the belief in things being solid (seeming). So light bounces off a solid seeming object and then must travel through space and time to the back of my eye. Here the lightwaves stop, or bounce, or absorb... they interact with the rods and cones of my eye, but the lightwaves stop and are not reflected, transmitted, or transferred any further into my brain. At this point the lightwaves are transduced by my eyes into electrical signals and these signals then travel to the area of my brain where they are interpreted as my vision of an object. This all takes time. So this experience of seeing an object in the present moment is again saturated in fallacy and assumption. Even though my experience of seeing an object is in the present moment, the process of vision relates the objects not as it is now, during the experience of seeing it, but as it was when i experienced the conclusion of the visual process... there is a separation in time of what I see vs what is now... be it furthest stars of the universe... or the coffee mug on the table, the difference between is only a merely a matter of degrees and again the process while saturated in very convincing experience is riddled with fallacy and assumption. all perception is of the past and is based on interpretation, filters and gamble... Husserl, Robert Anton Wilson.... so many have refuted naive realism so effectively. It is very easy to operate on the false assumption that we 1)accurately perceive 'reality' and 2) that we accurately interpret what we pereive. My vision (never of the 'solid' object itself, but the light that bounces off) and my experience of the process of vision, while in the present moment, is never of the object in the present moment, but my interpretation of the process of the past. By the time I then open my mouth and say to you, 'pass me that coffee mug'... which presumably you will be able to do, by perceiving/transducing and interpreting its reflected lightwaves yourself, allowing you to very accurately assume its place in space relative to yourself and to me... reach out, grab it and then pass it to me... all this is interpretation of the past.... yet transpiring in the present. all perception is the past.... and all perception is saturated with assumption. so much has transpired before my mouth even creates the sounds that attempt to convey my experience and subsequent desire to have the coffee mug passed to me by you... that the original experience is past. Yet my experience of it, is still present and i still end up holding in the present a mug in my hand, even though the sensations of holding said mug, are of the past, having to be transduced into electrical signals and interpretation... hopefully accurately enough so i don't drop the mug and spill the prescious hot scalding treasure inside... Not to mention the subsequent transduction of your ear drums, with the audible sound waves made by my voice, which are transduced into electrical signals which then travel to the place in your brain where you interpret them as recognizable symbols of speech and you agree that you also see a coffee mug. Add to this the fallacy of the color of the mug. say there are two mugs on the table and I ask you for the red one, not the blue one... again so much assumption and fallacy, however useful and reliably replicable i seem to have an experience of seeing a mug that is red... yet again the priests of science have lovingly rendered to me an understanding that red is the only color that the mug is not. Red is the only lightwave reflected by the mug. So not only do i not see the mug itself directly... eye only perceive the colors that the direct mug is not... curious... and convoluted. i'm off to go look at the past of the ocean waves is the ocean solid? it reflects light... ah fuck this is awesome and painful and fun and highly annoying all at once. thanks again bums... you rock my worlds...

This talk of what it means to be solid and 'real', reminds me of the Tesla quote: "if you want to pierce the mysteries of the universe, think in terms of resonance, vibration and frequency." any more, the notion of solid is pure illusion to me... that said... it's amazing how much it hurts, when I smash the vibrations of my non solid hand, with the frequencies of a non solid hammer.

the essence of wolf, is the pack and the hunt glorious, sacred and healing and all about love, especially the hunt love beyond measure

some people feel the rain others just get wet

So many places. So many incredible, awesome, energy loaded spaces... Boundary Waters in Minnesota. Hardly anyone goes up there... it seems like it's virtually unknown based on the numbers of people encountered. Bring a kayak or canoe and a compass and then say goodbye to people. No boats with motors, no RV's, no cabins and not far away, the Ely International Wolf Center... responsible for reintroducing Wild Wolves all across America for the last 40 years or so... Nothing quite like floating on the glass waters at dawn, with the otters, beavers, eagles and ravens all singing their songs of life. I'll also heartily second the recommendations of Big Sur and Sedona as energetic powerhouses. The jade stone cliffs and the constant pounding of the Pacific make Big Sur an energetic powerhouse and Sedona is like a smorgasboard of vortices. Or for transcendent energy like no other... the great groves of Sequoia and the staggeringly lush valleys strewn all across King's Canyon country. I think the family and I are heading back there this year, when I find a suitable person to care for our feline family for us when we go... I also recall with potent joy, the energy of the stones on Cadillac Mountain out in Maine. The first spot to be touched by the sun each day in North America, with its view of the Porcupine Islands, it's in the top five for me as well.

GOAL! jesus saves.... he passes to Gretzky Gretzky shoots... HE SCORES!

Neo: So we need machines and they need us, is that your point Councilor? Councilor Hamann: no... no point... old men like me don't bother with points.... there's no point. Neo: Is that why there are no young men on the Council? Councilor Hamann: Good point. this may be a slight veering off topic in which case... good that's the point. interconnectedness... perspective dependent values... systemic conditions beyond our control... maybe not so off topic actually.

never taken a multi vitamin for a short time I took vitamin D... and fish oil for another short time... not any for years now sometimes, I'll pop a b12 under my tongue when I'm sluggish and have another 4 hours of hard work to grind out otherwise my vitamins come with my food or they stay wherever they are...

my feet sing and drink drink every vibration of earth they resonate upon and sing to the earth... the very resonance of my bones resonating with the song of my own moving bones into her form, the form of our mother the bones I've borrowed for a time and drink my feet are gladfully thirsty drinking the very dew of the grass drink the vibrations of the stone and the soil the soil my parents in the soil all the many many songs of the soil my feet drink and sing

so potent! these glimpses, tastes... momentary and shining and resonant and upon fading. yes... more... again... more of this... compulsion to strive at seeking to create it how do I create it? where is it? what is its source? how can I make/have more? I took up seeking and working and striving and creating and trying, always the trying and with that the judging of the trying and the striving and the work and the quality of the seeking when exhausted then in stillness, in silence another glimpse now rather than strive and work and create I allow I breathe let go of noise and action and seeking let go of all of it that which remains is awake

if you let everything else go awareness remains

I'm saturating myself in Morroccan Mint tea of late... I drink it all day for quite some time now. though there is a new blend around... she's a blissful deep redhead. Rosehips mixed liberally with mango. *blush* she is amazing.

When I want my spine to rotate spontaneously like liquid light, I turn this up nice and loud and just swim through it.

*deep bow* thanks for sharing mate... that is profoundly potent stuff.

My experience growing up is similar to what your friends have done Spotless. It's really a savvy way to build capital and to enjoy a lovely lifestyle without needing to be a slave to loans. My Father was an avid boatsman so it was a given that he was going to have a boat somehow, someway... and my stepmother was an accomplished, although amateur architect. She designed and built her first home before meeting my Dad, saving herself a ton of money in the process. Doing this, she ended up with a tiny mortgage and a fine house right on the banks of the Mississippi. My Father then went hunting around and purchased our first small houseboat for "a song and a handjob" as he used to put it. It was run down but sound, so all it needed was some elbow greese and a bit of know how to turn it into something beautiful again... and that they did. I was four. That Spring and Summer we spent every spare minute at the dry dock where he and my step mother hand sanded and refinished her entirely, while I played with my trucks and ate giant apples in the shade of the boat. They tuned up the engine, we used it for a couple years, heading as far south as Missouri on one trip, then he sold it for a profit and moved up to a fiberglass model. He did say, he'd never go back to wood because of the upkeep, but I still recall the glow of the wood under the sealant with love. That boat veritably glowed. Being savvy and always alert for deals, he was able to upgrade his boat every couple of years, while never needing to stretch his budget. In boating communities, there are always folks needing to downsize, or wanting to upsize, so boat deals abound, but particularly when the rest of the economy is tanking. I have another friend (now passed) who lived on his boat for the last twenty-some years of his life. When he wanted to earn some extra cash, he'd port here in LA and build scenery with us for a time, then get back in his home and sail it away again. (He was one of the most grounded nomading nomads I have ever known, btw) Eventually they ended up selling her original home and buying a smaller condo. With the extra capitol from that sale, they built a small cabin on the north shore of Grand Cayman. Indeed, they had enough capital to organize several other land owners and ran the utilities along the then undeveloped North Shore of the island. My Dad purchased two lots for $7,000 each. He sold the extra lot some twenty years later for $250,000. Again, the family now all grown, we all chipped in and knocked out the construction saving cash once again (it also wasn't a tough sell to get us to go down there for a month to help, build in the morning, scuba in the afternoon). My stepmother being brilliant designed and poured the entire structure (aside from the roof) out of concrete, so hurricanes were a non-issue. Many options abound for those with the impetus and who aren't afraid of some good strong labour. edit: why i spell so bad still so late in life?

I can't say I agree that the chinese have the one inroad to comprehension and experience of dao. Dao is eeeeeeverywhere... even in my toilet. edit to add: ironically though, I think our toilet was made in China... go figure

After the Beatles broke up, someone posed the question to John about one of Paul's recent singles. John hadn't heard it yet and responded "oh, what's he done then... wrote another silly love song?" Paul hearing this wrote this in response... one of my favorites of Paul's silly love offerings

Your words and experience resonate deeply with me Yueya. The prohibitions and endless rules have always resonated in a very tinny, and superficial manner. To focus there, has always seemed to me to be looking at the finger and missing the Moon. The words that keep arise to describe my experience with this are saturation and transcendence. I veritably saturated myself in the experience of my desires and pursuits... the seeking. Always seeking for something external to validate my instinctual process and to reveal the truth of my inner essential nature. Yet this effort and saturation, this pursuit and expenditure of energy cannot be maintained and thus has its own resolution built into the very fabric of its process. As the Dao says... "a drawn bow settles in balance" and in line with 3bobs' quote from the bible about temptation not exceeding the level of our endurance... when my desires finally peaked, when I was saturated utterly, they were transcended. They didn't dissolve per se, as they still resonate somewhere in my process, yet they have no gravity and have lost their teeth so to speak. They no longer pulse with the gravity to used to draw me out of the truth of my essential beingness into the mind stuff of their make up, or ifand when there is still some sway from time to time, they no longer have the teeth to hold me in this and I simply release them and settle in my own essential nature. simple being.

For me it's mostly fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds now. My body no longer responds well to most grains, any dairy, or processed foods... sugar is still desired, but continues to fade. This has developed naturally over a period of recent years... along with the body regularly giving strong impulses that it would prefer to stay empty and I am enjoying regular 2-4 day fasts.