silent thunder

“If you prefer smoke over fire then get up now and leave. For I do not intend to perfume your mind's clothing with more sooty knowledge. No, I have something else in mind. Today I hold a flame in my left hand and a sword in my right. There will be no damage control today. For God is in a mood to plunder your riches and fling you nakedly into such breathtaking poverty that all that will be left of you will be a tendency to shine. So don't just sit around this flame choking on your mind. For this is no campfire song to mindlessly mantra yourself to sleep with. Jump now into the space between thoughts and exit this dream before I burn the damn place down.” Adyashanti

No way .... that kung fu is too strong for me

that is flipping beautiful. thanks for sharing!

I wouldn't freak out about chocolate, nor anything else, as long as it's in balance. You'll be aware when you're not within balance with your self. I went through a freak out on food for a while, for good reason. My intake was nasty and it affected my health. It was out of balance. I did a cleanse some time ago and after it was done, my body started very clearly letting me know there were certain things that we were not going to be eating anymore. I say we, because my stomach and body took a path that my mind didn't fully agree on at first. Coffee/caffeine are gone entirely, along with dairy. I no longer miss the caffeine, but cheese (opiates structure) my mind is convinced it still loves that. It's been about 13 months since I stopped caffeine and it was only recently the desire for it vanished. Dairy hasn't been so long, so I'm expecting soon I won't crave it either. Processed sugar still tugs, even on the body level, though my mind knows it's crap. Around this time, while coming to these revelations and enjoying the new benefits of my body clarity and health, I was getting pretty fundamentalist about food in general. Highly judgmental and emotional, gabbing at those around me, educating them while I reinforced this new structure for myself. Highly annoying. That, I'm happy to say, didn't last more than a couple months. Because I realized... ' well, if I'm trying to be really pure with food... I guess it's time to move into the woods and grow all my own food and have no electricity, nor running water, nor power lines, nor auto traffic, nor exhalations from tainted people polluting their bodies... lol. What a fun ride the fundamentalist train is... Laughed at myself, again and released. So yea, I breathed about it and released it. I didn't reject my new path, I just relaxed. I still listen to my body about what we will take in, but I have the occasional cookies or such. I'll eat some processed foods when they're made by people who love me and I simply bless anything from the 'tainted' schools before I eat them. Treat it as a bit of a test. Ok body, let's see how your new gong fu handles this glass of ale. lol. So love your chocolate, really sink into it and enjoy it. I enjoy it so much more, when I live, eat and breath relaxed. Anything taken to extreme is a burden on the system. First I cut out all the nasty stuff to bring balance to the body. Then I had to relax the mind on the topic to bring that into balance. Now, it all feels natural and effortless. Cheers.

Anyone recognize the mantra?

Pure, random, awesome!

Yea, they appear uncluttered by baggage in that respect.

death like sleep? or death like being awake, but locked in a box? or death like nothingness, no ideas, no self? death like a blanket? death like birth unremembered relax

That sits comfortably on a very deep level.

Had a finch take up residency IN my house for about an hour on wednesday. She landed on my jasmine bush, a few inches above my cats head. Cat exploded, finch freaked out and took an extended tour of our house: behind the fridge, on the tapestries along the hallway, on the hangers in my son's closet, in his toy chest, the tops of his wall hangings, behind the dresser, into the hermit crab tank, before finally she finally settled in a box and I could get her out the window. Was cute as soon as I'd let her out, three of her buddies all landed next to her on the power lines, fluffing, chirping and bitching at me. They seem to have forgotten all about it as they gathered at the line today again for feeding time. Life is good.

I've been watching Pigeon Porn while doing Qi Gong all this week. Every day like clockwork, I get into 'holding the stamp' and they get into each other. Same spot, same roof, same time.

Ok

Well, Wallmart pays well, good, decent, fair.... hmm.

Speaking of overthrowing systems... I dig the way Iceland handled their economic crisis. Fire the current government. Rewrite their constitution. Jail the bankers. Big bullocks to the rest of the international banking community. Interested to see how it pans out.

When relaxed in the now, the experience of being, it's like I can feel the current of a river. When relaxed, being in presence, sensing this flow, my choices are so clear, they aren't really choices. When not thinking about how it should be, or could be, the natural way is so obvious. A great wide path. Following it is effortless. I don't make a lot of choices, unless I'm resisting conditions.

No matter how far I seek, or how much I find, just more of the same. Win and lose both have a rancid taste. One day I just stopped. No seeking. Being. Now.

Nicely put. Money is a neutral tool, although it's rather abstract. Basically, money equals options.

Seems to me. Food = drugs. Some help, some harm. Like pretty much every other chemical, mineral, action or thought.

It's easier than the previous method: Pick a spot on a blank wall and stare at it. There's a little more to it, but that's the gist. I happened upon it when I started doing my practice eyes open. I was usually practicing at dusk in low light and to give my monkey a banana, I chose one spot on the wall and stared at it. Painted a really tiny yin/yang on my focus wall in my meditation room. So small in the low light you can't really see it. Other than that spot, the wall is bare. So I relax and settle into staring at the spot. No matter what distractions come along, I just keep my focus on that spot. I stand about 9 feet from the wall so that it pretty much fills my vision, but it's not that important. I don't find the things in the peripheral vision like my book shelves and the couch to be a distraction. What I've noticed is that keeping focus on one spot is really helpful. As the eyes naturally get tired of holding this spot, you relax into soft focus, but hold the spot. Other spots will suddenly start to pop out, as my mind struggles for something 'new', I just hold the spot. Sometimes my eyes will quickly shake for a moment or two, I just let them go back to the spot when they stop. I do end up leaving my eyes open for quite a while now, but not intentionally, so just blink normally. Eventually the shadows will started to shimmer and oscillate a bit. Very soon after this, the patterns emerge and then the full blown images appear. Faces, very detailed, mundane places, forests. It was pleasantly shocking the first time. I've wondered about that as well. Some of the images are so detailed while being so mundane. Like the front porch of an old house with a broken railing, a rusty swing and well pump. I haven't tried guiding the images at all no. All organic and spontaneous. Very cool! Thanks!

What is Damo's cave? I'm intrigued.

Here is an exercise that can help triggering third eye, or inner visualization. It's the black box method. To do it, you need to create a dark room environment... no visible light at all. I use a box that is big enough to sit in comfortably. I keep the box in a closet. I blanket the window in the room, go into the box in the closet, shut the closet door and then pull another blanket over the opening of the box, then I close the box itself. Pitch dark. Once in a pitch dark environment you simply sit with eyes open until visualization starts. Be patient and relaxed. No effort, just relax and breath. Boredom is your friend here, soon your bored monkey will be giving you a light show. The signal of sitting there with your eyes open plays on the conditioning of expecting to see something when our eyes are open. After a bit of time, that conditioned response is what I suspect triggers 'the lights'. For me it started with flashes of colored light. Flowing inward and outward. Then it quickly shifted to streaming colors tunneling out or in, flowing from the center, or to the center, changing color in a seemingly random flow. Then all hell/heaven broke loose and the images were full stories, or snapshots of places or faces, creatures, patterns, you name it. I tend to be a very visual person anyway, so this method really blew the doors off the car for me. Recently, I've been getting pulsating, organic, multi-layered, radiant, geometric forms, or characters that appear to be sanskrit or tibetan, cascading, spiraling and oscillating. Pretty intense stuff. I'm thinking of building myself a lying down version of my dark box, which is awesomely like a coffin and can provide dual duty as a death contemplation chamber. lol My ideal would be to make a full sensory deprivation chamber. drool. I've got another method for inducing visions with eyes open, let me know if you want that one too. Enjoy the trip!

I've been enjoying a few retention cycles, followed by some deep sublimation/relaxation.

The concept of channeling really seems to bring out some emotions. I like that. I enjoy finding what triggers my emotions and to then sit with that. Those triggers are often indicators of where I can focus to release conditioning. I really dig the breakdown of the complete persona. I haven't heard it put this way. higher mind conceives physical brain receives physical personality mind perceives I know from experience that any time I can release that sense of control on the perception level, there is expansive relaxation and greater energy flow. In my practice, when I am utterly relaxed, I am not breathing, I am being breathed. When not tied into the need to feel in charge and that I must control everything and understand how it's happening... I am free to perceive the process. Free to be the process. The physical brain, as I sense it, really seems more like a receiver than a generator. It can tune into various frequencies, but ideas come out of the gap between thoughts and that place is no mind/higher mind/whatever name you want to give it. That gap is Tao and Source for me. When I stop trying to use the brain as a generator, that relaxation actually allows for finer tuning by the receiver, to receive more clarity from source. Once it gets to perception level, the process is already complete. I either remain in the process, in the moment and the flow is amazing, or I shift into analyze, attack, defend, glorify, or persecute mode and the energy splays out all over the energy-scapes like some pollack painting. Good stuff. Thanks!

Very nice. I used to think of myself as a qi bucket or a battery and was trying to fill myself up and make a larger bucket to have more energy. (edit* This also led to the clinging mind nature of trying to horde my energy and not wanting to give it away easily or waste it. This increased tension and had the opposite effect, decreasing the flow.) That pretty quickly gave way to realizing I am much more like a hose through which energy flows. As I cleanse the system and relax/sung, the meridians and channels open and flow increases.

It's illegal in some US cities to collect rain water from your own gutters. I mean wow. Rain falls from heaven free and unregulated,