silent thunder

Wow, never knew I had so much in common with old Friedrich. We usually only hear the dark stuff. Nice one mate!

“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all”.

I walk everyday, barefoot now that I live in Southern California.

Really enjoying the conversation. I don't get too hung up on contradictions of this nature; I find when teachers use enough words, contradiction is nye on inevitable; especially when dealing with states and concepts outside of duality. As for the dead end concern... I have yet to experience anything that was a dead end. They just don't exist as far as I have experienced. Everything is grist for the mill. Nothing is wasted, lost, nor unused.

Water flows downhill.

If you are to watch that film, please do yourself a favor and watch the original by Tarokovsky. The 1972 version. What an amazing film. The recent American rehash was a mess of modern hollyweirdisms. Incredible concepts handled with mastery and skill. His other film Stalker, is my #1 favorite sci-fi film of all time, with only one special effect shot, right at the very end. Brilliant.

I find there to be something of an epidemic in human consciousness now. If a person thinks something and has a strong feeling about it, it must then, be true and real. My life experience has consistently shown me that this is not the case. Perceptions of sensory information are not exact, they are interpretations. Naive Realism is alive and well in our current world, indeed we are rife with its strong and often overpowering scent.

Fascinating topic and one that has been with me much of my life. I have long had the unshakable sense that one moment, I will awaken within the 'real world' in a manner similar to that in which I have become lucid in the dream states, a multitude of times. This sense is not one that I sought. It is with me unsought, without desire and it is persistent in a way that few other things in my life have been... I am agnostic and open mindedly, skeptical by nature due to a heavy religious upbringing and many experiences that are beyond the scope of the materialist paradigm to explain; indeed the reality I lived as a child, with its invisible man in the sky is one I woke up out of one moment, to become the man I am now, one level of awakening out of a dream in which I lived for the first 10-15 years of my life... and this fluid sense of how my consciousness and awareness relates to sensory information and the conditions of 'reality' around me... it is unshakable this dream-like quality and experience of all sensory life. It remains with me and has been reinforced through the decades, through my direct life experiences. On several occasions I have had paradigm shifting experiences of the fully conscious, tangible and fluid nature of space. Each left me with the resonant, indelible sense that space is far from empty, ever, even in the vacuum, and that everywhere it is fluid, alive and intimately relating to us on many levels at every moment. I have one particular samadhi experience I'm intending to share here as soon as I get some time when this current project ends, it occurred while I was sitting at the Getty sketching... but many times space has become a living, palpable part of me, or I have in a sense, awakened into a wider range of senses of self. My body becoming vast, or expanding to the parameters of the room in which I sat, or stood. Space in these experiences is intimately part of me and I am a physical part of it. I can feel it as clearly as I can feel the cotton of my shirt on my skin or the keys under my finger tips. Something Joseph Campbell said always resonates whenever this topic comes to mind for long. "Dreams are private myths. Myths are public dreams." This sense for me is unshakable, even as I am skeptical about the nuts and bolts of it. Reality seems like a communal dream state to me. Subjective experiences of time and space have constantly reinforced this for me. However, this state does not respond whimsically and instantly to the intentions of one consciousness. It being a slow, dense and shared state, it remains malleable and fluid, but slow to alter compared to the instant reflections of intent in the high vibrational state of the individual dreaming. Great topic. Great discussion. Thanks.

desire's embrace

That's awesome. Thanks for sharing.

perhaps we should rename this thread to what is the source of the pyramids? I'm still of the thought that the origin of man is the origin of the universe... since there is a direct line of causation from that point to the present. Little more specifically, I'd say, in the more recent past, it'd be the supernova that was the source of the heavier elements essential to the conditions of life as we know it on our little wet ball of dirt.

Humans arose from the conditions of the universe and as such, are as much a part of the origin of the universe as the universe is the origin of humans. We are the origin and we are the product. Humans, planets, stars, all of it, are a fluid, unfolding process... not things.

A really great series of films. Thanks for the reminder, haven't thought of them in many years. I was invited by a friend and workmate to go and see Koyaanisqatsi while living in Brooklyn. They screened it at BAM in the late 90's with Phillip Glass conducting a live orchestra of the soundtrack. That film and the experience shook my little snow globe of life and motivated me to seek out the others. I really appreciate art, people and experiences that pose questions, rather than attempt to provide answers. Almost all answers seem to me now, to be attempts to describe a universe that is entirely fluid, in concrete terms. And enough questions inevitably lead me to quiet. Perhaps that's the only answer. Silent observation. Simple being.

Just breathe mate... Nothing is wrong in the universe... you are spotless, cannot be shamed, wronged, broken, stained, nor distilled in any fashion. Let go of the fear and simply be. Life is the greatest drug there is and it's utterly, brilliantly, self sustaining and complete. oh and incidentally, it's a drug

Sure, anything to avoid doing my taxes... In one experience with Pranayama, a few minutes into the process, I realized my face was buzzing. It was dramatic and very intense. Similar to, but much more intense than the feeling when you have a limb that is going to sleep, only this was not leading to numbness. As the initial shock receded, I reminded myself not to get attached to the sensations and to just let go of my attention to my face and go back into the breath. The moment I dropped the attention on my face, my entire body lit up with the most intense buzzing it had ever experienced. I felt weightless, as if floating and the level of energy flowing through my body felt as if I had been plugged into 220v of pure blissful electricity, not the jolting, painful, joint separating type that happens with true electrocution. Being utterly unable to separate from the attachment to these powerful sensations, I focused on the voice of person leading the process and slowly the abiding all over body buzz gave way to... me suddenly coming back to consciousness. As I became aware again of being conscious, I immediately wondered how long I had been unconscious. I wondered if I'd fallen asleep, but knew that wasn't the case as we had transitioned from lying flat on our backs, to being propped up on our elbows and staring forward toward our feet. I assume now, that I had gone out of body again and simply did not retain the memory of it, but perhaps it was merely the shutting down of the conscious process in lieu of the process. I don't know and it really doesn't matter. At this point the all over body buzz had given way to a mild body tingle, deep relaxation and still a feeling of having no real mass or body weight. The next thing I became aware of and what probably drew my consciousness back was a strong, pulsing, magnetic seeming vibration in my liver. This pulse coincided with my heartbeat, had a palpable internal sound associated with it and was orgasmic in a new way, being simultaneously deceptively intense while very mild. This continued to the conclusion of the process. Upon the conclusion of the exercise and my sitting up and going into stillness, I became aware of an overwhelming, intense heat in my lower back, centered around the Mingmen point. It felt as if there were a basketball/volleyball sized circle of coals under my skin, emanating heat from that point. It was very comforting to my body, yet felt so intense at one point that it caused my rational mind alarm. The thought, 'can I burn myself with this? will my shirt burst into flames?' landed on my thought pond briefly. For the next hour or so, perhaps longer as the rest of the class moved on, I simply sat, unable, or unwilling to separate too much from my body awareness. There were intermittent flows of energy throughout various meridians and organs. The bottoms of my feet would suddenly erupt as if they had been subjected to, or plugged into raw electrical current. Whirling heat cycles in the chest and abdomen, vibrations and magnetic pulses. The sensations of air and liquid flowing under my skin out my hands, and then back in up my arms into the head space. Two weeks later, I attended another, much smaller class sponsored by the same group and was pleased to see the woman who had been lying next to me during the experience. When I shared how intense my experience was and asked her how her experience was, she regaled me with her rather terrifying experience of being in a very blissful state of confusion at one point, only to suddenly realize that she was staring at the roof of the building we were all lying in, from several hundred feet above it. She had never done any formal breath training or even meditation. She was a nurse attending this conference for the required learning credits and was a materialist, prior to the experience. We can go for weeks without food, days without water, but only minutes without breath. Breath is one of the quickest inroads to affecting conscious states and body awareness in my experience. It's one potent drug.

Teacher. Guru. Drug. Entheogen. Breath. Plant. Stone. Crystal. Human. Animal. Reptile. Algae. Fish. I can't conceive of a single thing in our entire universal environment, nor a process, or organ within my body, nor a dream or thought stream of 'my mind' that is not a guru. In fact, to me, there is no separation of teacher and student. There is just relationship. I no longer perceive teacher/student, guru/follower. I experience relationships. Either I participate, or withdraw. Our human culture of late seems so obsessed with teachers and teaching. Particularly of becoming a teacher. In the West it seems a plague of the mindset of needing to 'teach what I know' to everyone around me, particularly after having some impacting experience. I need to teach you something. You need to learn something. There is this assumption that my experience must be distributed to the larger masses. I'm a great teacher. You're a great teacher... so and so is a bad teacher. what a load of b.s. that all is to me where I am now... there is no thing and no one to me now, who isn't a teacher and student simultaneously. There is life. Of which, we are all an integral participant. How aware we are of that process... determines much. The level of my participation in an active relationship will dictate how I define and what I call teacher and what I will derive from the process of being in the presence of anything. To sit under a tree for an afternoon and watch the wind blow the grass, the birds hunting insects, the ants disassembling a grasshopper corpse and the bees bringing life to everything around them... very instructive for me, if I'm participating, but who is the teacher? More and more, I sense that the only guru is within and it is not a thing, it is a process. I have in the traditional sense, been a teacher. I had 'information' that I offered to others in a formal setting. Whether or not the 'student's learned, I had no control. In reality, I offered of myself and if they were inclined to enter actively into the relationship, the participants, perhaps gained or lost something within their experience that could be defined as beneficial, or useless. But to strictly define me, or anyone as the teacher is an obtuse and clumsy oversimplification, it's lazy. There was not a single instance of this traditional process of me being 'the teacher' where I myself did not learn. As for substances. All 'things' have medicine. They have within the very vibration of their essence, in their nature, lessons that I may derive if I am inclined to seek, or listen, or simply participate in a relationship with them. Crystals are powerful teachers in this sense for me right now. The whole 'drugs are bad... mm'kay' mentality is pedantic to me of late. It's usually an indicator of someone's lack of experience, a projection of social programming. Herbs, plants, fungi, entheogens have tremendous and powerful medicine that can impart potent lessons when we enter into a relationship with them. How those relationships affect us is part of the process called life. Not all of life is pleasant. Not all lessons I have learned were fun, but even the unpleasant lessons were helpful. It is just as helpful to learn what I am not. Anything that affects an effect can be classified as having a drug-like quality. Breath is by far the most potent guru/student relationship I have and is hands down the most potent drug I have ever encountered. Adjusting and altering my breath rate and depth/shallowness has induced states far more powerful than any 'traditional drug' I have ingested or smoked. Quiet observation I would classify as my second most potent guru. Just to sit and open up to what is around... student/teacher/drug/medicine/beneficial/harmful... labels of processes and reactions. There is a universe, apparently without, yet experientially as much within. All life is a guru, if I'm willing to participate in an active relationship. Yet, life isn't the same without me, in the process, so who then is the true guru, and who is teaching whom?

*deep bow of respect*

toroidal sphere

I think Taomeow put it well... perhaps for some no technique is required, just the litterbox... in the end game, I sense that release and not effort is the ultimate way to diminish mind. Any grasping or trying is, counter to the goal. Even a goal is counter. Just be. Release. But for years, to get to the simple point where I could let my feet go, so to speak, in my specific case, yes, training and intention were both absolutely necessary and instrumental to break the inertia and diminish the obsessive and parasitic process of mind. Somewhere in my travels I came across a great quote on this topic... loosely paraphrased it is: Where sensory information is available, it will tend to dominate awareness. For me, to break that obsessive dominance of awareness, technique and intention were instrumental.

I nearly spit my coffee all over my wife's laptop when I read that cat analogy! Pure brilliance... litterbox, omg, scooping, sifting... sometimes the residual and lingering scents. It's brilliant. I often rake patterns in our litterbox when I finish attending it... lmao, the zen scoopy box... Some time ago Hawk Medicine was brought to me and as medicine often is, it was when I was quiet and not seeking anything. It was a crystalline and palpable experience/awareness shift of being a hawk in flight and having no feet. Pure flight and action/reaction to the wind. Pure being. Free. And until the moment of the landing (or the strike), the feet were simply not part of my process. I sifted it into this poem: like hawk's feet in flight folded, closed and forgotten until the landing This is the direction I'm moving in having a relationship with my mind, treating it like hawk's feet. When conditions require attention, they attend to the process with deft flexibility and adroit precision. Yet when I take flight (in the moment, clarity of being), they veritably disappear, utterly tucked away and forgotten, or maybe not forgotten, but outside of the process of flight, the simple act of flight/being. Unnecessary and not to return unbidden. I really love that in our language, the word light is contained in flight. Hawk Medicine. She's been circling my heart from my earliest memories. Another stunning thread. By the Gods... this place. Such treasure.

"... round the mind." I really like that and it reminds me of something I want to share... I work with some awesome, creative, intelligent and often, very wise people. I'm fortunate and very grateful for that... here is how a seemingly 'normal' moment at work, turned into a very helpful practice for me that I use in interrupting the emotional triggers that cause me to go into repetitive and useless drama loops that I'm so tired of in my life. A coworker and buddy of mine Scott, who exudes all of the attributes I listed above, has a particular pet peeve and tends to get worked up and pissed off when we are working on set, he goes to his hand crafted, old school, wooden toolbox to get something to finish a task, only to find someone has thoughtlessly/lazily dumped stuff/trash on it. It's an annoying habit that many people have developed on tv and film sets. "I'll just set this here, as I pass by..." anyway, here's where he embodies the awesome, creative, intelligent and wise parts I was alluding to... One day, rather than revel in resentment, or rant in anger at the garbage and carelessly left bullshit on his box, he comes over to me and says "I should make a dome that sits on top of my box.." Then he goes into his baritone super villain voice and strikes a world crushing pose and at the top of his lungs screams out... " Bam Bitches! Set something on that!", and he laughs and stomps away, like a super villain crushing a city underfoot. Problem solved. I laughed, did my own stationary, arm pumping imitation of his stomp of victory and then after saying, 'that is a good freaking idea mate!', went on with my day and seemingly 'forgot about it'. However, the idea took root in me and sprouted in a very spontaneously unexpected and wonderfully effective manner. I found this dome, coming to me unbidden during emotional triggers, during shenpa moments and everyday encounters when those people who carelessly try and set their projected garbage on me; cut me off in traffic, or settle their random careless impressions and opinions on me. This dome appears quickly in my mind and along with the image and association of my buddy Scott, the trigger slips passed without engaging me. It happened spontaneously, someone cut me off on the freeway and I started to get pissy and begin my usual internal monologue/drama loop of ' The Uncaring And Lame Assholes Who Make The World Lame With Their Lame-Ass Lack Of Thought For Other People' rant, the exact same rant that I so often, mindlessly go back to... that tired old loop that I have memorized and performed countless times, the rant that leads to the exact same solution-less emotional conclusion of solution-less emotional spewing... only this time, just as I was about to get all wound up in it... the image of a white glowing dome flashed in my mind and I smiled instead. I thought of Scott's tool box with a cup of coffee sliding off of it, splashing onto the floor, followed by Scott's face saying, "Bam Bitches!" and his awesome super villain stomp of victory... The moment passed, the emotional trigger slid along with it, utterly abolished by the potent image and I was left, smiling to myself thinking... "Yea! Bam Bitches! Set your shit on that!". It was awesome! So I've now planned out how I'm going to make him a hand made, wooden dome lid that will match his box and give it to him at the end of the show to say thanks. A gift inspired by my gratitude for how he has helped me by helping himself not wallow in anger for just one moment... to turn what could have been a mindlessly easy rant of justified anger, into a moment of humor and creative love and in the process, seems to have given me so much more. We are interconnected in so many ways... life is fucking awesome.

this belongs to a genre of music I call 'liquid spine'. and it's a great piece for re-entry into body after a brief hiatus

always seemed to me that bodies manifest in fields of energy

dark room, headphones, me lying on floor, this entire cd now... dissolve into sound