silent thunder

Does the world happen to me? Or am I happening to the world? Is it a contiuum of both? Are there waves with only crests and no troughs? Break a stick in half... and I have to tops of sticks? Do I breathe? Or am I breathed? Or is there breathing and at times, I become consciously aware of it... like life? So little in life seems voluntary the longer I play with my awareness and experience the play of this body and the environment in which is manifests... I readily identify with the conscious aspect of my awareness most keenly. Those actions i have 'control over' I open my hand for example. But when I decide to open my hand, how do I do that? Do I decide to decide? I don't. I decide to open it and open it. Is this voluntary? When the impulse to open it was to grasp a cup to take a drink? Did I voluntarily become thirsty? The line that used to be so distinct for me. So filled with surety and absolute clarity, has fuzzed out miraculously in recent years. I tend to identify with those aspects of my awareness that are 'conscious' as me. And the rest as 'not so much me'. But what of all the aspects of life that are utterly involuntary, that arise and unfold, underneath conscious awareness? Are these not me as well? If not, then who and what I am is massively diminished. Do I, if I own my body? Do I voluntarily not get sick, avoid disease and not fall down in an accident? Of awareness... only the slimmest sliver of it manifests in the 'waking conscious mind'. The vast majority of it, inhabits the sub-conscious awareness of the trillions of individual cells that comprise the being of my body and the simultaneous unfolding of their processes. I rarely experience myself any longer as one organism, known as a human, aside from on certain scale of magnification. On a more myopic scale the smooth seeming skin of my hand, becomes a craggy mountain range. On another level even more myopic, it is a collective tribe of similar individual cells, working individually and together to house my muscles, bones and veins. All without my conscious awareness. Which one is most true? Which one is voluntary? On a certain scale, i seem but a flea, moving about on a moist bit of molten rock, circling and indistinct speck of light, in a sea of unperceived light. Which is most real? The voluntary, or the involuntary? Which is most me? Where does the line cross between that 'which i choose to do' and that 'which i am compelled to do?' So many processes unfolding in the life I call 'mine'. Most beneath conscious awareness. Hormone production, secretion and absorption. Meal digestion. Hair, and nail growth. All occur while I sleep. Women grow entire human beings, while doing other things... Where does the organism stop and the ecosystem begin, when the ecosystem is comprised entirely of organisms? What i used to claim as voluntary... i often now experience as compulsory, and after the fact, looking back and analyzing, I'll come back with an explanation of 'why I chose it'.

I have come to love and appreciate decay. All life is nourished by decay. Decay is giving, utterly, wholly and unconditionally. Complete release. Life is acquisitional, always reaching out and imbibing, consuming. All to their season, weep not one moment for me when I pass... it is the greatest love.

Some really insightful sharings here... deep thanks all. What a gem this place is... Tone of the recent conversation reminds me of the following that rang through my awareness like a clarion bell ring, some years back. We are each of us, Gardeners... knowingly, or unknowingly. With every word and action, we plants seeds of effect, in everyone we affect, whether aware of it or not.

I spent an afternoon talking with a trauma specialist who hails this book as a vital and significant work in the developing field of trauma therapy. I had the good fortune to be on set one long day, without anything to actively do, but be available and the on set medic's main career is trauma therapy. We spoke at length about the developments of EMDR and her experiences and that of her two grown son's... the three of them with a combined 55 years of trauma therapy. We spoke at length about the nature of memory and trauma and how it registers in fascia and musculature and intra organal tissues. She spoke at length about the, at times, miraculous and near instant benefit of EMDR therapy for some folks experiencing PTSD and C-PTSD. In my wife's case. Time seems to have been the most efficient healer. More specifically, Time without more trauma. Her utter retreat from society for a period of years living as an urban hermit in our home seems to have been able to get her through the worst of it. To have a safe, relatively controlled space in which to do and act and react however she felt most safe and comfortable. She is now almost fully out of the shell. Actively mulling and considering what areas that would be a healthy option for a job, helps out at our son's school and goes for days and weeks without a thought of the former terrors that defined her mind for years. She's reached out to friends and meets for lunch a couple times a month. She's considered EMDR therapy, though any therapy is still held at arm's length. There were a couple of real shit folk therapists, who actually added to the trauma, rather than help. When she unveiled herself as suicidal. I quit working and took on the house and daily activities, so she could do whatever she felt she needed to, in order to recover. It was a couple years of hermit in the home. Then a couple of brief forrays and interactions with folks while running quick errands. Now I'm taking calls for projects again and she's all but recovered. The memories still arise, but she does not identify with them, as she once did. The memories have lost their teeth. Almost as if it all happened to another person, or in another life time.

My son and I often walk to a local bakery and get croissants for breakfast on weekends. They are fresh and soft and warmed up and utter bliss, if not so nutritional. We have to cross a couple major avenues to get there. On our walk home, we sit in the courtyard of a small local newspaper and eat while chatting, surrounded by their gorgeous bamboo and flower garden. Yesterday the conversation revolved around soft power. How Bees shape the destiny and food supply of countless species including humans, cultivating and pollinating untold millions of fruiting and flowering plants that sustain life all about the planet. Without the tiny, fragile bees, life as we know it would not be. And as we're not far from the beach, we spoke for a while about the incredible power of water, nearly the softest of all... to erode entire shorelines of craggy cliff stone, into soft pliant sand. And then the passive power of sand to strip away the paint (and skin) when blown about by the wind. As we returned home, Lil C smiled and pointed and barked a laugh. We were greeted by this plant, gently poking its soft power way through the concrete curb to reach the light.

Been incorporating multiple tracks simultaneously for a while now. Usually it's a deep ohm chanting underlying and playing with other chants, or other long-form, non-psychological music. Currently these two are dancing looped through the house.

This transition zone between raw presence and story is where the game plays out for me lately. The play between raw simple unfolding beingness, pure sensation and living in and engaging in storylines of life... is endlessly ebbing and flowing. It's fascinating, this blurry interplay between voluntary and involuntary. The thoughts arise involuntarily. How i engage that, is often more voluntary. Which avenues of thinking do i feed with more attention and energy. Silence and emptiness manifest off the mat, it's such a simple joy to fall into raw being for moments on end, though like a bellows, some sensation triggers the storyteller i'll find the sweeping story arising again. I'm fascinated by the involuntary seeming source of these stories and their endlessly deep detailed structures, for being instantaneous, spontaneous occurances... they are often entire noumenonical worlds of themselves, arising and crashing down in a few moments in the scape of thinking.

Absolutely. All of life is always speaking, all of the manifest and non-manifest. When the sleeper wakens, all of life becomes a teacher, a sharing, a reflection of self.

wow @steve Your sharing triggers a memory. Late this morning... an extended dream, mildly lucid of being carried along reef lines by massive underwater waves and currents... lightly interactively tumbling along as carried effortlessly in the arms of deep ocean currents. vast, expansive, utterly sweeping and my awareness, my senses... like a leaf effortlessly rolling, tumbling along in bliss and joy at times swimming a bit to orient but mostly, just relishing the pure movement being carried by the Mother one effortless aspect of all that shifts and all of it, pure sweeping sensation without thought beingness thanks for sharing mate... deep gratitude. I often feel of folks who disregard energetic sensations and interactions, the way I do of folks who find relationships with animals irrelevant. I feel they are missing great dimensions of life. Then I remember that this is just my mind, making stories and I relax. The sense memory of this dream is utterly pervasive to mind and body. I'm sitting here in a near stupor of simple joy of raw beingness. such simplicity... life... beingness.

I've come across a similar concept in Buddhist worldview. Called the storyteller, or builder. The aspect of mind that habitually creates entire scenarios and universes of content, from a momentary reactionary emotional trigger.

Soft Power. Like the ability of music to affect my mood. The music does not force, but exudes response and is undeniably powerful... yet via opening, presence, not coercive action. Affecting impact without coercion. Through attraction, unfolding and offering, encompassing, expanding, and supporting... affecting effect through offering, rather than convincing, coercing. what a great idea for a conversation @rainbowvein. thank you!

Yes. Lately, last few years some smells have really become awareness consuming in a way they never used to. My sense of smell has altered dramatically over the last twenty years, twice. Once downward, and once again back open. When I moved to the desert from the forests of the Midwest and the East Coast, I had never experienced allergies or any nasal issues. In California, I experienced a chronic desensitization of smell. Massive reactions to desert pollinators and dry air. Stuffy nose was standard for a year and a half straight. Or, it alternated with utterly dry nose, incapable of distinguishing any but the most extreme smells much of the rest of the time. It began to improve over subsequent years, as I added liberal daily doses raw local honey to my diet on recommendation of a nutruitionist acquaintance. This slowly improved for years. Less reactions, less intense when they arose. Looking back, it nasal response seems to foundationally shift and heal, about two years after returning to daily breathing practice. These days my nose is always wide open and clear, even when the wind blows from the East... but now, when my nose stuffs up, it's for a few minutes. With very slow, methodical breathing only through the nose, the pathways soon open in just a few cycles. It may continue to run quite a bit. I may be blowing my nose often, but it remains wide open and unobstructed. Lately, some scents seem much more intense even awareness consuming, cutting through all other activities, and the driving reason for my response here is the following fascinating development... In recent years, i sense strong scents that seem to be internally generated. Floral seeming, but unfamiliar... and it seems, simply not there for anyone else. It used to arise only on the cushion, some time after starting a new practice. Then it began to expand and arise spontaneously throughout the day. For a time it was steady, almost rhythmical. But it was always individual. No one else smells it when I ask "hey what is that? do you smell that?". Curious as it's so intense and it's processed exactly like externally stimulated smell sensation.

Reminds me, whenever I'm looking at photos, I glance at the subject (particularly with staged pictures) and spend most of my time perusing the background stuff. So much fascinating stuff going on... all the real stuff. Bit of the detective in me? lol. hmm... that just triggered a thought. As a detective... your superpower was "giving a shit to such a phenomenal degree, you spent your professional career enduring and exploring the worst of people's behavior, in order to protect the innocent and soft. *deep bow of respect ma'am.* it only registers from time to time, just how intense a life you've led, on behalf of the rest of us... talk about service! woof!

My son and I hanging out at home one afternoon. He's seven at the time. And without context or prompt, as is rather routine for me, I ask him some random seeming question. Me: Hey! If you could pick any superpower right now what would it be? Invisibility? Super Strength? Flight? Son: (pause) Me: ... Son: (more pause, then) I'd be able to make angry people feel love. Me: ... Wow... That's amazing. (sinks in more, hang my head in mock shame) Son: what? Me: Well... your power kind of puts mine to shame... Son: Why? What's yours? Me: ... Son: ... ? Me: ... *sigh* i'd be able to shit other people's pants...

*goes looking for vampyre churches... http://vampire-church.com/ I should have known...

Inescapable. True Nature akin to Sky... not all this... weather.

I walked into Spirited Away at the behest of my wife, knowing nothing about it, other than it was an anime and she was interested. I walked out with my jaw in my hands, utterly gob-smacked at the shear volume, intensity and depth of creativity, feeling and above all, an endearing love of the ideals embodied by the heroine's story arch... Chihiro/Sen in that film, how she relates to the shifting entities about her, the loss of her parents... And the eventual revelation of her enduring relationship to the spirit of the river.... A handful of characters in stories have stirred my awareness on such a deep level. I was utterly gob-smacked by that film's paradigm. What a gem. Promptly went straight to a video store and began seeking out everything Miyazaki ever had a hand in making after that. eta: Totorro with umbrella, a gift to my family last solstice. We continually move him about the house for each other to discover.

well said. Does a tree strain to force sap up its trunk? Do flowers unfold in great effort? I suspect they do not, but, as you say, by not getting in their own way, their nature unfolds of itself... wei wu wei... do without forcing.

I imagine as i sit here sipping my coffee, in ancient daoist times, certain folks sitting about the chess cafe talking practical philosophy and looking down their nose at the common plebes, assuming them incapable of 'getting it', while being cat called in return by the local farmers and log splitters who walked by wondering what type of morons managed to stay alive, without a real job, spewing impractical words and concepts at each other endlessly over tea and gameboard pieces... Humans do as humans do. Some talk. Some act. Some do both. Some just doodoo. None of them are wrong in my opinion... just doing as they do...

The French call it the Fond. Adding water to the crunchy bits and mess in a pan and slowly simmering it into a sauce base. I believe it's deglazing in English. Whatever its name, I find it an invaluable resource of amazing flavor and people who pour or scrape that shit out and throw it away are quickly beaten with uncooked pasta and escorted out of my kitchen these daze.

How awesome to see this after all this time! I studied with Master Tan and Master Huang in NYC from 97-2000. Universal Form was an apt name for this form. It was a major part of my path back then and has continued to be a regular presence in my energy work and play. Playing Universal Form, is akin to a constant unfoldingness in presence. I recommend it highly. Short, simple. Raw, and potent. but perhaps most impressive is its adaptability to play one form with many techniques of moving. Saw Richard just last Summer, he was out for vacation and we hung out for a bit. He hasn't aged a day in over two decades... Master Tan went off grid some time ago and so far, none have heard a peep from him. Wish him contentment and awakening, wherever he may be now. Deep gratitude for his taking time to share insights and techniques all those years ago. The seeds planted, continue to bear fruit...

Totorro was what my son asked to watch, every time he got the opportunity to choose, for yeeeears. He's 13 now and we still break it out regularly. Hayao Miyazaki's superpower... storytelling.