silent thunder

i used to experience the flesh of my body as the barrier between my 'self' and the rest of the universe. It was to me, a static, mostly unchanging and seemingly solid thing. A shift occured. and now... the skin of my body is experienced as the living breathing fluid process, the very manifestation of the utterly intimate connectedness between my individual awareness and the entirety of the Cosmos.

As within, so without... As above, so below. I sense my notions of god/gods stems from the bicameral nature of mind. from those notions that arise from beyond my rational thinking self which seem... otherworldly, profoundly prophetic and indelibly out of reach/control... yet never beyond influence... always intimately responding to intentions and raw reactivity... That relationship between awareness and the rational mind, I suspect is where my notion of a god arises and for me, if there is any god, surely she is intimately woven into the very fabric of what I refer to as myself... so much so that to touch her rationally with my thinking awake self, is as rare as a fish considering the nature of water in which it saturates. That dancing spiral between my waking mind and the vast untouchable, unknowable raw ocean of unified awareness.

carrying sorrow... such burden!... until it cracks and the light floods in

Again, how grateful I am for all the wonderful folks who share here! Such words are treasure to me, and the timing of encountering them just this now... as I transition from my dream life to my waking life... uncanny! Thanks Bums... you have no idea how your words ring like bells in my life all through my days!

i dance a spiral along this fluid archway twixt the night and day

Interesting that quartz crystals are integral to electronic communication... or at least they were, not sure about more recent developments. And they've been used for scrying and communicating with the non-local/conscious self for much of human history.

My earliest clear memory is of becoming lucid in a dream back when I didn't differentiate between dreaming and waking life... and I've been coming lucid in dreams on and off my entire life. I've had countless experiences in dreams that are more vivid than physical reality and as all experience serves to reveal my authentic nature through my response to stimuli, I have come to value dream experience as readily as physical ones and have come to appreciate dreaming as a very potent realm of self exploration, unfolding realization and cultivation. The unshakable, palpable sense that the waking world is akin to a shared dream has always resonated with me. And many cultures talk of this... The Tibetans and Aboriginal Peoples of Australia come to mind. As the dreaming mind works in symbols, in my experience it can be potent ground for initiating shifts in the aspects of our minds/selves that lie beyond our pinpoint/flashlight like rantional waking mind. Though I have seldom engaged in any traditional Magick aside from rudimentary divination (norse runes and tarot) and a healthy respect for following my intuition when it reveals itself, I have worked in my dreams my entire life to great effect. The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep by Tensin Wangyal Rinpoche is a book I recommend.

Nice one, thanks for sharing. Reminds me of friends describing playing push hands with an adept master who, even though they are touching your hands, no sensation is generated in the exchange and flow, no point of resistance can be identified against which to push... it's as if there is no one to push against.

Rumi! What a treasure his words have been in my life... Some time ago I traded certainty for wonder. Hard answers for living, fluid, ongoing questions. And rigid life rules and expectations for simple presence. The result is a stunning unfoldingness of simplicity, love and bliss. Rather ironically, it seems most of my seeking was the very thing preventing me from realizing I already was, what I was seeking.

Hey bud. I'm pretty reticent to give specific recommendations. But it never seems harmful to cut out processed foods, alcohol, sugar and cut back on, or cut out meat. My diet shifted steeply back in 2011 in response to blood test results. Blood analysis revealed high cholesterol and blood sugar and I've always hovered even as a young man on the edge of the treatable zone for blood pressure. I got these detailed results not out of seeking to improve myself. I felt fine at the time. But they were revealed while seeking treatment for an irregular heartbeat that had developed while under anasthesia during a voluntary (vasectomy) surgery. Back then, rather than treat with pills, I opted to try nutrition therapy, which synchronistically, I had just studied in depth a few months before the event when getting back into full time cultivation. The shift in blood chemistry in 90 days in my case was startling (both to me and my GP) and it was achieved simply, by ommitting some foods and replacing them with high phytochemical, alkalizing foods from my farmer's market.

While vinegars are acidic, in digestion they break down alkaline; whereas meat (most of which are alkaline prior to digestion), processed flour, processed foods, carbs, sugars, coffee... break down acidic in the blood. article alkaline vs acidic foods

Add mass and flexibility insofar as possible. stretch, lift, stretch again. Nutrition. Nutrition. Nutrition. Realize that injuries are a when, not an if, become a friend to every little signal your body sends your awareness. and have fun, it is play after all...really relish in it.

Laborers use their hands. Craftsmen use their hands and mind. Artists use their hands, mind and heart. Traders profit on what others craft. Farmers feed all. Without them everyone starves and has nothing to sell or trade.

There may be pain, there may be discomfort, there will be loss. This does not mean I am suffering.

thank you.

This question, keeps arising lately without intention and I've been appreciating the process. So, without being serious at all, yet with complete sincerity... What is most obvious?

me too... I'll go look for my lower jaw later, it's somewhere under my desk right now... lol

This is pure awesome... I was just sharing this very notion with a coworker on Friday. He's a recent Catholic convert and we were discussing notions of god. My take is that: If god exists anywhere, surely it is in my ecstasy, in my joyful abandon when I'm so swept into the beingness of love that I forget to hold anything back, or add layers of conditions upon it and I become just the pure dancing love of life... and my complete dissolution into the beingness of joy, wherever I am, right now, if there is a god, surely she is here with me in this.

Thoughts arise, seemingly of themselves and this is natural. Like clouds form and dissipate in the sky, so too, my thoughts arise and dissolve. I let them. And just as when I walk under the great sky and notice the clouds, I don't judge which cloud is best, or which is ill-formed... I no longer churn and judge each thought that arises even when my intent is to sit in stillness and emptiness. Soon enough, no matter how big, dark or stormy they are... the thoughts will dissipate and the sky (mind's natural state) will return. Rest assured the process your intention has instigated with this process is fluid and ongoing, it is happening when thoughts arise and when you are clear and in my experience, through all of it our true nature is as spotless as the sky. We can't paint, scratch or mark our true nature... just as we can't drive a nail into the sky to hang a picture.

well said mate. More and more it seems i am made of love and when I release fully into simple being... this is experienced as a clarion bell ringing effortlessly, bouyantly. This place is a constant reminder of the ground state of love. Even in the prickliest of interactions... for much like your adroit metaphor of the burnt hand... I love all of this place, even the triggers. Sometimes particularly the triggers... as they remind me that the presence of love is so foundational, when my perspective of life becomes too myopic, I sometimes lose sight of what is most obvious and lose the forest for the trees, so to speak. Even when this place challenges and triggers me, there is love flowing. Without the love, there wouldn't be enough inertia to put fingers to keyboard in an attempt to express what is flowing.

What is our water? Wow my friend... we share some deep resonance often but this is uncanny. My first title for this thread was What is our Water?. Throughout my life one notion that arises repeatedly on my thought pond is... "if my essential nature is made of some thing, I suspect that thing is love... love as the foundation upon which all else rises in the manifest." I no longer have the sense that the people I love create the love that I feel... rather I am love and when near the people, places or things that make me feel this openly, the aspects of life that I carry around that cause me to not feel this natural state, dissolve and without those occlusions, the natural state is recognized again and I tune into my essential nature. So I am no longer saying I love you... but rather. You remind me of the love I am... thank you. And here's the real kicker... in my experiences throughout this life, the action and motion of love in my life moves like water, in the beneficial and the violent ways. Sometimes a slow, gentle lapping trickle, softly feeding all it touches and gently reaching into and lovingly nurturing all the most intimate corners... and when the storms arise, these are also love, but the possessive, frightened and raging frothing fomenting whirlpool or tidal surge that sweeps all before it in a tormented stormy press.

It seems to me that anyone is free to criticize and say anything they choose, anytime they wish. Whether their words and viewpoint will possess any gravity, relevance or potency however, resides in the world view, opinions and awareness of the one hearing/reading them... and that will be pretty unique to each person listening. I've been accused of offending god throughout my life. (can't imagine how that happens.) My reaction to that ranges from "i don't think i can offend god... i don't have that kind of clout" to "what... offend myself?!? Preposterous!!!"

lol so grateful you take your time to share here my friend.

Nice topic! i love hearing what books/films others find fascinating! for me, there are so many... so... so many... lol off the top of my head: Stalker and Solaris by Andrei Tarkovsky The Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman Woman in the Dunes by Hiroshi Teshigahara Blade Runner by Ridley Scott Hero by Zhang Yimou The Zero Theorum, Brazil and The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus by Terry Gillium Mind Walk by Bernt Amadeus Capra My Dinner with Andre by Louis Malle Dreams by Akira Kurosawa Spirited Away, Totorro and Ponyo by Hayao Miyazaki The Lord of the Rings by Peter Jackson The Lord of the Rings by Ralph Bakshi Groundhog Day by Harold Ramis 50 First Dates by Peter Segal