silent thunder

@Harmonious Emptiness

@Bearded Dragon

@rene ! SKOL!

@lifeforce

@BaguaKicksAss @soaring crane @Bubbles and piercingly @Marblehead

My son just laid me out flat, tears streaming with this one... Old People Are The Greatest... we looped it... omg it just kept getting better...

this... everytime I hear it again, staggered. he doesn't play and sing, he shines this song out!

Well said virtue. There are times when it's nigh on impossible to accurately assess my own process from within it. Teachers act as mirrors reflecting back to me, those aspects of self, deviations, distortions, etc, that I cannot perceive from within the lensing distortions of my own process. And by teacher, I don't imply only human, but any aspect of life that can reflect what is not readily perceivable from within my own fishbowl... so to speak.

Well Said Mate! Count me a +1 standing side by side with luke and the Lion Panda...

wow. that was... unexpected.

Welcome friend. You're sure to encounter some practical and helpful bits here. My wife was spun deeply and penetratingly at the birth of our son. We breathed and cried and hugged and laughed and ate and walked our way through it. Peace and Love to your growing family from mine!

“Tangled grasses lie matted with death, but generals keep at it. And for what? Isn't it clear that weapons are the tools of misery? The great sages never waited until the need for such things arose.” ― Li Ba

We sit together the mountain and I. Until only the mountain remains. - Li Po and when the mountain is no more what then remains?

Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. comes to mind with this conversation. That voice we hear in our head, all of us 'normal' folk? That insight... intuition... Jayne's theorized that we used to experience that internal voice like it was external. And that this is the basis of our notions of Gods and Goddesses, Spirits. Moses coming on the cusp of the burgeoning modern brain, may have still been experiencing or interpreting his internal thoughts as an external voice when he claimed God was speaking to him. I always figured he was skizophrenic and happened to be a charismatic leader from my study of it in my Apostacy. After encountering Jayne's theory, it could be why we see written language, and modern civilization arising all about the same time, as our brains became more unified by the Corpus Collosum and thoughts that used to seem external, were recognized as internally generated. I have several skizophrenic friends. Routinely I find myself wondering if they're the ones who are broken, or if they're simply unable to turn off areas that are dormant in all of us 'normals'. Though I do always wonder as George Carlin did so succinctly. " why is it that the voice in someone's head always tells them to kill their family? Why doesn't that voice ever say "go take a shit on the salad bar at Wendy's?". pfft... normal... i gave it up years ago. any more, it's patently clear I don't suffer at all from insanity... i quite delight in it.

ok the ocean has given way to these two... looped, played concurrently.

It is not possible, I've found, to have civil, exploratory, or investigative conversations when one person involved only seeks a fight. The options then are to knowingly enter the bog (fuck that) and battle it out to the point of either exhaustion or victory; or walk away and carry contentment with me. But there is no victory in bog battle i have discovered... I'm old for a reason, I've survived this much... and no victories have I savored in bogs... only wounds and the wounded that require effort to be tended; and what's left of what remains does not smell of victory, but is covered in bog gunk, resting precariously on the rubble of disconnection... serving only to remind me once again. “If you find no one to support you on the spiritual path, walk alone. There is no companionship with the immature.” – Buddha And so I walk a lot. But not away. I walk toward my loving and toward connection... Carrying contentment with me. One great moment I discovered, that there is no longer value in fighting what I despise, and I run out of steam so readily. Yet in seeking to nurture what I love... endless strength fills my channels and my breath runs deep, loose and full of vitality. everything i love and everything i despise arise from one source the difference then surely lies within? Sometimes now, not even a walk is required, just opening that window within and breathing in the view. not awake yet. but there's a window inside with a lovely view

“You will not be punished for your anger, you will be punished by your anger.” – Buddha “Pain is certain, suffering is optional.” – Buddha “Peace arises from within. Do not seek it without.” – Buddha

“The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.” – Buddha

So, I usually phrase this question to parents... but it works for significant others as well. Operating from the assumption that Lie Detectors actually were capable of reliably detecting falsehoods. Would you be comfortable hooking yourself up and letting your children, or significan other, ask you whatever they wanted? I've been a very open book Father and Mate. While never going out of my way to accent the nasty, gritty or more fubar elements of life for my son... Neither have i sought to shelter him from them either. He deals with them as I do, as his Mother does, which is as they arise in our lives. My folks tried hard to keep me from seeing certain things, but children particularly are tuned to the adults precious to them... and what I found was that in trying to shelter me from certain things, they simply denied me full participation in which I could have seen and uncovered what tactics work and which don't, for myself while growing up... thus preparing me for the inevitables when out on my own. He sees me react and process and then witnesses the result. He sees it in context and my answers to him about any topic are as forthright as I'm capable of giving. I figure, how are we supposed to figure out how to deal with life, if it's constantly being shielded from us? But on the topic of honesty... and relationships. I giggle when I think of kids grilling their parents and finding out about their past. We love sharing our old stories and he leans in to listen like few other topics can entice a teen age boy. So... would you let your S.O or kid as you anything... if you had to be truthful, or be revealed as hiding? For me, resounding fuck yes! Let's get that truth out here where we can all get a good strong wiff of it.

I learned a fair amount (of that which settled properly for me) about a topic of which I knew next to nothing. It's a fascinating topic. I'm still reading with interest, but it's challenging to sift. All that we are is the result of what we have thought. ~ some woke Indian man If you find no one to support you on the spiritual path, walk alone. There is no companionship with the immature. ~ that same woke Indian man

all those folks... levitating... i wonder what they're up to...

wife is earth monkey -'68 i'm earth rooster -'69 and our son is a fire dog -'06 we'll take whatever kind of year comes and love each other.