silent thunder

wow... to happen upon these words. wherever you be Deci... merci

@mrpasserby

@Wells

@Mudfoot

@Gunther

@ChiDragon is missed. I've shared texts with another still present Bum over CD's potential wherabouts few years back...

Take care what you allow yourself to think, ruminate on, read, talk about, watch and listen to... this is your experience of reality.

So this awesomeness just landed in my mind pond... been having a good run of healthy news lately instead of the usual bog/swamp. This article and the series of photos taken inside a German honeybee nest are really ringing the bell today. Photos reveal intimate lives of Bees The link is to a National Geographic article. Here's the snippet that got me thinking about group Tummo.

ooh very nice... Nunners. I was wondering if it was going to be all mororse and sad. But it's jiggy n soulful n awesome. Just the way I'm missin all these awesome buggers... not sad, but dance like n celebratory.

and for me... that cave, lies within.

Ha! true story. The thread already exists, thanks for the reminder

@OldDog

I see you Brother! Respect. Gratitude. *deep bow*

@Mal @Aaron @Songtsan

My guess is that @sean is handling DB as one would handle a large nation, or a small fish... Don't over-meddle and things will sort out to their natural order. Some folks will leave, others will arrive. Trolls will come and bluster and then leave. Others will arrive. Will our constant meddling fix them, stop them? I tend to ignore and walk away, except when I don't, then I engage fully and as sincerely as i am capable. Mostly i tend my own garden and protect what i find precious. I find more strength in striving to protect what I love and appreciate... than in slinging shit toward what i despise. muddiest waters undisturbed by meddling rest in clarity I've found that the most vehement of trolls do not linger over long. Anyone remember Isimziz Biri? or Hancock? or ______? Just as the most violent storms soon blow themselves out, trolls cannot maintain such virulent passions for long. They cannot maintain the inertia on their own. Fire requires three things to burn. Fuel, Heat and Oxygen. Remove any one and the fire dies quickly. Trolls I have found, to thrive, require Acknowledgement, Engagement and to be taken Personally. Remember that not everyone who talks to you, sees you. Remember not every comment, merits a response. Remember that the universe is not happening to you, but through you. one of my most potent realizations this life was to stop taking the universe personally. qualified observers. Perhaps alongside the Bums I am Missing thread, we should have a Troll Hall of Remembrance? To honor the path we've walked together and the bogs we've walked through and come out again. our true nature is spotless... we can't by words or deeds be sullied, tainted or broken. who can drive a nail into the sky and hang a picture on it claiming 'the sky is retarded and fucked"? I'd love to levitate physically again, i'm exponentially more grateful for learning to levitate internally... Sincerity, Silence, Clarity, Emptiness... awake is not 'out there somewhere'... it's right here, now if anywhere. and it's utterly bouyant Shunryu Suzuki's description of Waking resonates. "Enlightenment is just like normal life, only two inches off the ground." Levitating for me, is an internal process.

I'm grateful when my delusions are managed to be brought into focus by one compassionate enough to stick around and endure it, and capable enought to get me to see it from within the lensing distortion of my own process. it's so hard to garner from within the process this is why qualified observers are so precious to me. Most walk on by and can't be bothered to reach in and hold up a mirror. The reason we use Directors in theater, is not to have a boss to run things... but to have an external perspective of the fish bowl to provide qualified observations of the actors and the action. As an actor, I may be feeling and experiencing all sorts of fantastic process... but how it's presented externally, how it sounds and how it fits in with the entire ensemble is beyond my ken to see and reference while in the midst of rehearsal and performance. Directors function as a mirror. Allowing us insight to how our internal process as an actor, is being portrayed externally and is observed by those outside the process. Relationships are like directors to me. My wife, my son, my trusted work-mates, my close friends... all have proven their qualified observations and are invaluable mirrors when they touch base and say... 'hey Creighton? Is this what you're intending to put out? (holds up mirror describing how my actions and words are coming across), cuz this is how it's coming across to us... invaluable. Provided it's offered in sincerity and not seriousness. Serious is a quick path to stilted energy and lack of vitality in my experience. Sincerity, playfulness, humor and nurturing is where it's at... Animals are great mirrors to inner process. No dissembling energetic prompts with them. People are complex in mind and so their mirrors tend to have some bubbles and such, but I'll take them, when offered in sincerity. eta: Dao Bums, quite a few of them, have become invaluable qualified observers for me. This place continues to inspire, motivate and connect me to an expansion of life. All forums I have visited have their regular flow of Trolls. Dao Bums from my experience is remarkably resistant to them. They come, they blow about and then tire and leave. Been contributing here for about 8 years and lurked for a couple prior to that... the pattern is observable with fundamentalists, and misery spreaders and megalomaniacs... they need to vent this stuff, or it will eat them up inside, they know this. Trolls seem to be most satisfied when they can manage to inspire misery and anger in others. But trolls soon blow themselves out, like storms.... the most violent cannot sustain for long. Sometimes, its me and you who need to be the mirror for them... allow them a safe space to get it out, it'll maybe help. But remember, when functioning as a mirror, reflect, don't absorb. Mirrors reject nothing, reflect everything and hold on to nothing when the images shift. I wish for all of us... more Mirror Love... Sincerely.

*looks around* hey... what the...? where'd everyone get off to...? *looks up* oh there you all are! what the &%#*?! how'd you get up there?!?!

investigating the ordinary... into the most basic essence. the simplest. this!

i find the portals to divine and hellish experience are generated and maintained within my own awareness. in the end, what are heaven and hell but names for that 'which i like' and that 'which i don't'? how i process what arises in awareness... determines the state and quality of experiental reality in that moment. what awareness is drawn to linger on and focus upon... determines the nature of the conditions that awareness can be aware of. where sensory input is available, it tends to dominate awareness. why do all lineages stress silence? Buddha's words: Take care what you allow yourself to think, this becomes your reality. Yea, to try a simple statement of it: the portals to heaven and hell are perceived as generated from within my own mind experience... my experience of reality relying upon awareness, which is a direct product of conditioning. Both states are generated from within and are maintained by the inertia of emotional and mental awareness, (or lack there of), and by my reaction to the stimulus of co-arising aggregates (the bulk of which when in trance is unconscious conditioned lack of free will).

As for aspects of higher self. As for the bodiless. As for shadow. the following has always resonated and remained for me. Just because they don't have a body... doesn't mean they're smart, or kind. Be Aware.

This kamma talk brings to mind a paradigm shifting insight from several years ago. A moment when an old, old long known teaching transformed from an intellectualI object, to a full blown living realization of potent clarity with a few words from an offhand conversation, i was only mildly listening to... It was a comment made in passing, from the backseat of my truck, by a participant at a Wang Li Ping retreat. We'd just left dinner and were heading back to the hotel. I was blissed out and sated from my one meal of the day and was more tuning into the body than the conversation, but tuned back in to catch this bit... The subject was the founding of a great school and all various aspects of it, and all the potential good it would do and how it would build great merit and the person speaking was confused when another local master declined to endorse, or get involved with the project, despite it garnering what seemed like obvious merit. "Some Masters seek to generate no kamma, either good or bad." woof! everyone paused, considering. then... "Good karma generates response and connection in the wheel of Samsara just as surely as does bad." and viola! I finally got it. chains of gold or chains of lead... I'd heard it and read it countless times... but only ever in mind. not in heartmind... not in presence... only thought. We were waiting to turn left, into the hotel. and the flash of that realization went off and in that moment I recall the rush of intense revealed energetic insight. The physical body cascade, the piercing mental clarity and calm... the near tuning out of local reality. In that realization, looking at the hotel... the last week of experience expanded outwardly, within me and I suddenly 'saw' and could 'palpably feel' the causative impact being generated in the lives of the 23 people and two instructors at our simple retreat, by this one teacher, in this one non-descript hotel in a major city. The reality of kamma was far more than the ramifications of cause and effect, it was the living, co-arising utterly intralinked life flowing through my own local process and the entirety of reality. Utter neutrality. Causation, reaction among the Co-Arising Conditions. Aggregate. Perceptual lensing. Assumptions. Projections. Emotional inter-influencing... Exponential intra-connection... Indra's Net... The web of energetic connections that spiraled out into all the lives affected by just the two dozen folks at our little retreat was utterly overwhelming to my local mind. We sat there a few moments longer than necessary while the simple truth of that reality resonated through my physical body, my mind, before I could drive again. That insight resulted in utterly dissolving my former paradigm of 'assuming one of the prime purposes of life was to make things better'. better for whom? For years I'd been willing to push certain agendas I was certain were good for everyone... but this moment. It prompted a shift in my life as profound as it would prove challenging. For quite some years, my suspicion, unspoken, unrealized had been that for me to assume I know the correct and right course of action of life was vaporous projectionism. In that moment, I no longer understood chains of gold or chains of lead, I was living it. We are all of us, wittingly or not... Gardeners. Each action, word and thought, a seed planted in the soil of all of those we affect. Good, bad... who sees the end? The question more and more is... not what seeds to plant... but if all these seeds need planting? just my musings, not claiming anything, or trying to convince... but wanted to share a potent moment.

Sure. I'll be happy to listen and help if I'm able... if not, we'll enjoy a conversation at the least.