silent thunder

eta: how Fred responds @ 1:50 rings of high skill to me... like a clarion bell.

words whirling in whorls. worlds worth of whirling word whorls! whole wide worlds of words!

Reminds me of a Teamster who drove for our construction department for a while on a long running Television series years ago. That piece of work could find the bad in anything. Birthday cakes, Sunny days, Hugs... you name it. I recall turning to him once after he derided a story a guy who told about playing with his kids at a local park and saying... "jesus man! You can shit on any topic can't you?!?! Someone could hand you a hundred dollar bill and you would bitch and be ungrateful about 'oh great! now I gotta find a way to spend this!'" Yea, he was pure misery. We contacted the Transpo Captain and got rid of him at the first available opportunity.

Through the healing path I've undertaken in my thirty year relationship with my partner and wife, I have experienced a palpable realization, that if you want to subordinate a person from the inside and separate them from their authentic core power and sense of self; to isolate them from their subtle, natural inclinations, their expression of autonomous, natural powers, and abilities... You control their methods of sexual expression and relationship. Demonize and fetishize individual inclinations and expressions into marginalized unacceptableness. When your core authentic relationship and expression of the life bringing and highly powerful force of intimacy and sexuality is repressed in the mind of the expresser... the seeds of slavery are planted and will seep into all other aspects of life, seemingly. When my wife began to feel able and wholly free to express her sexuality on her own terms, and we undertook an exploration of our sexuality together, in whatever manner felt most authentic... the reverberating repercussions of this on her psyche, and my own, began a systemic cascade of awareness arousal, awakening and a subsequent dissolution and revolution of the paradigm of self that ended up reshaping of all aspects of her/our life. Within a short span, she had reclaimed repressed abuse memories of her parents. And with no doubt whatsoever subsequently severed all ties to the abusive toxicity of their relationship. She barred them from any contact with our family and began the slow process of reclaiming stunted and previously demonized aspects of her natural essential self into the new unfolding realization of who she always has been, but was unable to express without intimidation, denial, rejection and outright denigration/bullying. Several years after that, she had the self presence and clarity of awareness and love for herself to sever all ties with the toxic abusive career environment she had been working in for 14 years. Her boss is/was cut from the same mold as our current president and her Father. We would rather downsize our living arrangements. I was elated. I had long petitioned openly for her to leave the world of Venture Capital. We gladly downsized our lifestyle. Fewer things allows more space for living. Now, some 10 years on, her transformation renders her nearly unrecognizable (in an admirable and inspiring manner) to those who knew her before the process of self liberation began. Civilization... from earliest awareness it's had a flavor of being remarkably, uncivilized... at least, as I understand and define the term.

I lived in chronic pain for over a decade. Undiagnosable for many of those years, the source of the pain was truly 'a mystery'. Unrelenting, stabbing, piercing, relentless pain. No position would alleviate it. Countless trips to doctors. Sleep was always a struggle. I went from a thriving man who saturated in martial arts daily, had a career as an award winning Shakespearean stage actor and stage combat choreographer, a free rock climbing champion, who logged tens of thousands of miles on his bike solo camping across the Midwest and Canada... to a guy stuck in a chair, unable to walk without a cane, suffering without hope of escape... for over ten years. Eentually, I recalled the words of Hamlet and the prison began to break for me. I realized that in spite of the two surgeries that 'saved my foot', the degeneration and atrophy may well have left me in permanent disabled status with chronic pain as a side dish... But even though there was pain, that did not mean I had to suffer it. I recalled a practice i developed in high school, whereby I could push a pin through my hand and not suffer from the sensation. It started slow at first, pushing the pin a small ways into the palm of my hand to simply experience the pain of it. Then, I began to 'project my entire awareness into the center of the sensation'. I found I was able to focus awareness so fully into the center of the 'pain' that it ceased being pain and became sensation. Shortly after that, i found awareness could become so fully immured in the center of the sensation that the sensation ceased registering. There was no pain, no sensation, only awareness focused in awareness. Unable to withstand the fog and walking coma of taking heavy duty western pain meds, I began to 'go into the pain'. In the midst of this, my mind offered me some aid in the form of a glaring memory of stage days that was most appropriate to my current situation. Hamlet. Act 2 Scene 2. Rosencranz and Guildenstern, Hamlet's college buddies, are brought to court by the King and Queen to help ascertain why Hamlet is so sullen, depressed and prone to violent outbursts. In the scene, while probing, Hamlet reveals the subsidiary source of his malady. "Denmark's a prison" comes at the end of scene 2, in Act 2. HAMLET Then is doomsday near: but your news is not true. Let me question more in particular: what have you, My good friends, deserved at the hands of fortune, That she sends you to prison hither? GUILDENSTERN Prison, my lord! HAMLET Denmark's a prison. ROSENCRANTZ Then is the world one. HAMLET A goodly one; in which there are many confines, Wards and dungeons, Denmark being one o' the worst. ROSENCRANTZ We think not so, my lord. HAMLET Why, then, 'tis none to you; for there is nothing Either good or bad, but thinking makes it so: to me It is a prison. ROSENCRANTZ Why then, your ambition makes it one; 'tis too Narrow for your mind. HAMLET O God, I could be bounded in a nut shell and count Myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I Have bad dreams. GUILDENSTERN Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very Substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream. HAMLET A dream itself is but a shadow. ROSENCRANTZ Truly, and I hold ambition of so airy and light a Quality that it is but a shadow's shadow. HAMLET Then are our beggars bodies, and our monarchs and Outstretched heroes the beggars' shadows. Shall we To the court? for, by my fay, I cannot reason. ROSENCRANTZ, GUILDENSTERN We'll wait upon you. His mind had become his prison. As had mine. I thought my body had imprisoned me, but it was my mind, my awareness that was holding me hostage to the sensations of pain. I began to 'go into the pain'. I entered it so fully with my awareness that the response was like entering a room with an overpowering stench of perfume, which after a time, is rendered unsmellable due to it's over saturation. I began to play my old kung fu forms in my mind as detailedly as possible and found a route to internal martial arts on my own, sitting in a chair in los angeles, without a teacher. Eventually I found it tolerable to 'go with the sensation' even while putting weight on the leg. Several years into this process of hobbling about, I encountered Master Zhou Ting-Jue, who taught me a process to help my body heal itself. Within a year and a half, all my former aches and pains, including the searing pain of the 'nearly lost foot' were gone. I'm back working in film and television, working 60-70 hour weeks constructing scenic elements. I wrestle and teach my 13 year old son Ju Jitsu and still occasionally, the ankle will bark, but it does not control my awareness. Denmark, the world, our sensations, our families, may be unpleasant, but it is our awareness that allows them to become prisons. Free your mind, and your ass will follow.

There may be merit in the pursuit for some. Though I have yet to answer this one question for myself sufficiently to envision ever trying it. If it's so amazing beneficial and healthy... why is my body naturally purging it? That unanswered question, coupled with the fact that our 'latest notions' of what's medically 'good for us' is always changing... particularly throughout history. We used to vent the bad blood from the system to cure the ill, or put holes in the body to let the 'demons of illness' escape... or inject the sick with harmful radiation relying on the body's ability to out-heal radiation that kills cancerous tumors. Speaking of dogs and their waste products usages... Craig Ferguson lays out the medieval treatment for blindness to great effect... "I'm blind I'm not stupid... I know whose dog this is..." omg priceless!

i'm struck so wholly to the core when a loved one passes along with the hole left in their passing is piercing gratitude gobsmacking gratitude because all about me i see this one reality and it centers on me, this little speck and my heart expands and my mind goes blank with the magnitude of it... that out of all the spinning galaxies... out of all the combinations of energies from the remnants of a supernova i got to meet them. that i had the fortune to get to know them... what treasure! then to have had the fortune to share time, to share deep conversation, myriad ideas, realizations and more than a few belly laughs... to get to know them... to count them friend... such treasure as this! miss you dearly my friend. recall you fondly and often... and so deeply grateful, to be able to miss you for having known you, was to expand what i know of me

i don't suffer from insanity... i quite enjoy it.

Tara

oh my... why yes! and thank you!

This! treasured ally... doubt

Mana from Heaven. It's rained three times this morning! Full gorgeous pounding rain. Our last measurable rain fell here in mid May. It was just shy of 3/4 of an inch, or 2 cm. When I first hear it on the roof, it's not a choice, I simply bolt to the door and walk outside to get soaked. I've always loved rain. It was a selling point in our early relationship, my wife recalls, watching me dart out of the car to go bounding off through an unexpected downpour and walk the rest of the way home in the rain, waving and grinning like a school kid on holiday break. But after moving to the desert, my former appreciation has unfolded into a driving love... a heart expanding wow experience every time I encounter it now. We used to take camping trips to nearby areas when we knew there would be weather, to simply sit in it. Had to share. We're in for some more over the next days and hopefully the trend out of the crippling drought of the last 10 years is yielding. Love Love and Love!

Water flows through the valley without effort, skill, training, seeking or striving. Coming to rest in the muck, slew and refuse ignored by the mind full... What is there to 'achieve'? What in life is to be changed, altered, mended by human mind based interferrence?... What of life and reality is broken that we with our limited conscious interactions are to set right? Easiest path of all... the one impossibility seems that dao never separates from essential core, nor outward physical expression, by even a hair's width, for a millisecond ever. as i experience it lately

Such bliss. Such unimaginable simple complexity. The magic of a square yard of simple earth. To love and be loved. To be despised. To be. One flower, resonates more profoundly for me, than all the sacred texts of all the lineages.

I lately find myself fascinated by Meme's lately. Through my 13 year old son's connection to meme's and my watching and learning their use by his generation, I am sensing this unfolds as a new form of written/pictographic communication in development. An evolving of language and communication visually, it seems to me the information capable of being conveyed through an image and a simple sentence far out-performs the use of language alone. This Meme use has manifested effortlessly, of their natural way... they express and even think this way effortlessly where for me, it's new and strange.

Hey Zork. It was an analogy. A direct comparison. There are as I experience it, many similarities in the pursuit of long term study within a lineage and in a bachelor/master's/ph.d program. Comparing the depth of commitment and dedicated study required to master a deep and complex topic, no matter the subject is similar in many aspects. The particulars, complexities and subtleties of Neigong and Weigong are myriad even from my admittedly limited exposure. These are broken up into many areas of study with some being prerequisite of mastery before the next levels are unveiled, just as in bachelor's study prior to Masters and Doctorate... this is essential in my opinion and experience in energetic pursuits primarily for safety of student and the world at large, for in the process of mastering the fundamentals, the student's mental and subtle body landscape restructures and is revealed in its essence. This seems two fold in that the prep, lays the foundation for the more intense and complex energy work to come with mastery levels and in my opinion, most importantly it is a manner to uncover the nature of a student's heart and mind to unveil the true character of student and their intentions by the teacher before unveiling practices that will result in abilities that could be harmful to the student, or the world they are unleased on. Master Wang Li Ping for example, in his book Daoist Internal Mastery outlines clear deliniations of the various aspects, areas and levels of study, which ones must be mastered before others are explored to create the foundation to support the paradigm structures to come.

My wife spent time with Amma. It was not earth shattering, nor paradigm shifting. It was utterly simple. Grounded, nurturing. Simple caring shared among the present. The only exposing here, is more of the OP exposing his inner landscape. On that note... I'mma go hang out with my gal, Amma style.

I don't... and I suggest leaving that to Jerry, the one offering the teachings, to vet potential of prospective students. Unless speculation is your entertainment... then... enjoy!

Welcome back!

I have for some decades now, been wondering when the Chinese oppressed would awaken enmasse and how intense the resulting backlash would be against the machine... i shudder in empathy... it's utterly horrifying, the implications of it. And as my experience of our politics elucidate and reveal our spiritual inclinations as nations and tribes... I have mulled rather sincerely, and increasingly over the last 23 years, the notion of relocating my family out of the US and back to Norway. With each story I read of their lifestyle, I find it resonates with my own sense of life. Perhaps @thelerner is correct and the blood calls us home. So far, it's an amorphous visage... yet it is ever present... and grows in clarity with each perusal of what passes for 'news' these days.

That sounds exactly like what Jerry offers in the seven year program. Postgraduate level focus in the arts of his lineage.

I picture Jerry, reading this... Imagine his response and it's nothing like anything I'm seeing by anyone participating... Perhaps we wait and see if anyone of his students has more to share? I spent time in conversation with one of his students, during a 10 day retreat with Wang Li Ping. He saw me studying from Jerry's book and struck up a conversation that evolved over the 10 days we spent together into a memorable sharing of different lineages. It was a flowing, open conversation that was characterized by mutual benefit. He was curious why I studied another lineage's book so intently when not openly studying with them and I replied. Dao flows from and to all. One of the few remaining impossible things I still affirm, is the false notion that anything ever anywhere, could ever be separated from Dao by even a hair's width for a millisecond... ever. So I am open to the flow and trust the anchor of dao in my own awareness to ferret out that which is beneficial to me, and that which is not. When i encounter that which is not beneficial, i no longer see any benefit in attacking it. I let it lie as it does and I move on. I have so much energy to work with on any given day... i no longer see benefit in spending it on what I despise in the moment. I find my energy is much more poignant when used supporting what I love, than in attacking what I find repulsive/unhelpful. I found him and his knowledge well rounded, his energy deeply rooted and his reaction to encountering unexpected and unwelcome news to be adroit, mature and respectfully distancing. He never once bristled, attacked alien concepts, nor childishly admonished views that differed from his own. In my recall of my time with him, he was a reflective credit to his master and his school. A helpful reminder... this thread. Thanks for it. I'm reopening Jerry's book and seeing what is calling me out of this conversation's result.

Cheers mate! It's been about twenty years now since I studied with Master Tan and Huang. Still one of the hardest things about leaving NYC was losing those two teachers. I saw Richard about a year and a half ago. He came out to Cali for a visit. He hasn't aged a day. Bagua for life! Master Tan taught us several variations of Universal Form, but never in my recollection did he refer to it obliquely as Qi Gong. Though the name derived as it was so adaptable to hard, soft, electric, breath driven styles. Looking back I see clearly how Masters Tan and Huang never really taught 'explicitly' as many Western teachers do... As in "Today we will learn Qi Gong and it will bring these benefits. (followed by lecture), or swing your arms this way, this will open the kua and bring speed and power to your hand strikes" They would direct us through the process oif praxis and correct posture and form and leave the rest to us to explore, encounter (or not) the various applications and potentials. I used the soft form version extensively as I recovered after shattering a section of my left collar bone in a bicycle accident. Orthopoedic surgeon told me that I'd never recover fully, would lose 40-50% mobility and strength, likely never being able to lift my elbow above my shoulder again. I said "ha! Watch me!" and promptly went to Richard for advice. Richard sent me to Grace Ho, a Chinese Herbalist who operated a clinic off of Mott Street. After diagnosis, she prepared a collection of herbs, tree bark and various other items to boil for hours and drink the solution. I did this for six weeks, three times a week. This stimulated bone growth and combined with the steady, soft, breath driven universal form, I returned to the surgeon 12 weeks later, fully healed and strong. He was flabbergasted and could not hide his shock. Though he discredited Grace and the Qi Gong as placebo, I did not. My collar bone fuzed back together, though it's now shorter and in the shape of a lightning bolt. Which I lovingly attribute to the passing dangers of bringing the notice of Thor upon one's self. Still recall those days training with Richard and Larry, Rex, David and the others with golden light. What a gift those years were!

My Apple Story One day Apple deleted in the neighborhood of 8,000 tracks of mine in the early 2000's. Individual stuff, unique tracks, gifts that can never be returned or resalvaged... Apple deleted them from my hard drive because they did not recognize the tracks in their catalogue and assumed I must have napster/stole them. So they, being the good parents/corporation that they are, decided they should delete them from my hard drive one fine day when I synched up my ipod. I was unaware at first. Then when I realized my track count was way off, I thought it was a faulty hard drive on my end... yeeeears later I read a random article describing how Apple settled a class action law suit over the illegal deleting of unrecognized files off of user's personal drives. The tracks I lost were irreplaceable. I have friends who are and were (then) big time international dj types (Tenaglia, Digweed, Sasha, Borali) and I received a steady stream of fresh tracks from their sets as I was not able to travel then (unfunctional foot had me locked in a chair for a couple years). I had at that time, stuck in a chair, burned and catalogued all my cd's and tapes to digital and relegated all the cd's to boxes in the closet, so my entire collection was on hard drives. They deleted a host of my purchased tape music as well, but this was recoverable, just took time to redigitize it from the tapes. My rage and pain when I discovered my backup hard drive was non-functional and all those unique sets were lost was staggering. Still bites a bit almost twenty years later. I smashed the ipods I owned with a single jack, uninstalled itunes and will never purchase another Apple product in the remainder of my life. The End... p.s. ( at least i'm not bitter about it ) On that note... I'mma get remarried to Coyote Woman

Been waiting (not very patiently) for this one for a few weeks. It arrived last night... I'm giddy about it. Reflections On The Dawn Of Consciousness: Julian Jaynes's Bicameral Mind Theory Revisited I'm rationing it. Savoring, rather than devouring.