silent thunder

before the 'i' thought kicks in there is no distinguishing me from other there just is what is and i am this i am

It really is... amazing beyond belief. you remind me of a potent conversation with a friend at work. sometimes my exuberance and bouyancy can be a bit... irksome. Someone at lunch asked me how my sandwich was... I must have been rather vocal in my enjoyment and eating sounds I'm guessing and I responded "ohmmagod... issamazing!". And my dear friend, who has a brilliant mind, is a keen scholar, a shakespearean actor, a master woodworker and a film star as well, responded. "is it Creighton!? is it amazing?! or is it just a fucking ham sandwich? jesus!" we all paused and grinned and let it hang, no one was triggered and so we moved on. we often challenge each other's notions this way, it's not mean spirited, it's passionately intrigued. anyway. Some days later, my friend came to me and said roughly this... "You know Creighton, I was thinking about it more and when you consider everything it takes to make a sandwich... it really is amazing! In order to make a ham sandwich you first have to have the entire universe. The farms to grow the wheat and raise the pigs and the tomatoes and lettuce. The baker and the bakery to bake the bread. The butcher. The roads to ship all these things. The people who made and repair the roads. The factories that create the trucks. The refineries that make the gasoline and the mechanics that keep them running. The people who made the knives and the mayo and mustard and the plates and the napkins. The sun that shines, the rain that falls... all the way back to the supernova that formed the heavier elements which are the basis of our solar system and planetary home..." Every single aspect of this fluid, unfolding process is utterly amazing and so full of spirit and magic, it is beyond expression. but not beyond simple experience. raw, simple beingness here and now reality... unreality how magnificent!

and your chair is chairing in such a similar manner that an apple tree apples... or a human world, humans...

i used to define light as 'that which my eyes perceive'. but that has fallen away over the last few years particularly lately i experience light as what is... beingness. undivided, raw presence. awareness. beingness. Light is... and it is undifferentiated, an isness of itself. though through the i process and the eye process, dividuation can be perceived and convincingly so. even darkness to me, when considering light as that which my eye sees, is no longer dark. darkness to my eyes is filled with light whose frequency is beyond the ken of my lenses to focus. Light is Beingness. Presence. Awareness. raw and simple and magnificent

nice one dwai. that's potent stuff... my gal says 'nothing'. i get blank presence. not void blank. there is presence sense, an isness or amness. a presence due to the inquiry but before the i thought manifests, in the fraction of a second... this is blank, empty empty presence. raw awareness. before the i thought can kick back in what is, is. wow it's potent. how blank it is and how fast the 'i thought' comes into the picture. i see why it requires 'fraction of a second'. the act of 'try to see who you are' reveals a blank presence, before the 'i thought' kicks in. without the i thought, what is? thank mate...

no wonder I get you mate... i carry my playground around with me. wherever i go, there i play

not sure what five is, but six is a snowflake for sure... and not one of the derogatory too sensitive snowflakes, the sacred geometric kind. wait... we've strayed into numerology now...

Yea, his character was a psychotic mess. I forgot how beautifully that film was lit and photographed. All I recall was the disturbingly empty expression on his psychotic face while he cut through humans as if pushing baskets of laundry out of his way in a busy market.

I love that place! We stop in whenever we are nearby.

If I remember right, in the final fight of that film, the psychotic samurai cuts down 76 opponents.

Some time ago I ceased being able, or willing to spend much energy trying to manufacture happiness in my experience of life, through the exploration and alteration of the external world and I turned within. Some time after that I dropped any ability to put effort into the notion of happy being a desired state at all and released that pursuit once and for all it seems... now years later. When I ceased looking without to create happiness, something profound happened. I began to accept life as it is, to abide in my self wherever I was, in whatever conditions arose... and contentment was revealed. Lately I'm with Marblehead and a few others here, on the notion of happy. I don't want it. I find it unsustainable and manufactured. It's flame like nature seems to require fuel to sustain it and thus, when conditions change, the coin flips and despair/suffering arises. For me, happiness is an inflated emotional charge state, whose flip side is despair and they always revolve around each other, two sides of one coin being flipped every time we encounter conditions in the world and allow them to dictate the quality of our experience. Neither are sustainable for long as they require effort to maintain. Happiness resolves into despair when the external conditions of what is responsible for our happiness changes, shifts or is lost. 13 Hope hollow like fear. Both foster tension in mind. Success like failure. One imbued with hope, tension takes a joyous form, anticipation. When fortune turns ill, as seems inevitable, fierce anxiety. Bodies will suffer. An undeniable truth. Embrace misfortune. Sage knows the self, as a simple yet fine robe impermanent shape. Surrender the self. In humility, find trust. Now love world as self. Happiness to me seems unsustainable, born of identification with the external. Whereas Contentment is the ground work being, realized when turning within. Contentment, the way I experience it, seems a neutral, bouyant, natural state that arises without effort when inner conflict is released, when unacceptance of the conditions of life resolves and natual essence is allowed to be as it is... (think Mencius' sprouts of virtue being cultivated). Releasing all else reveals that which is our essential nature. Contentment isn't manufactured, nor does it rely on activities, or specific conditions. This notion has been reinforced through the hardest and darkest (spiritually) years of my life. There may be pain, there may be discomfort, there will be loss... none of that means I am suffering. I suffer when I reject what is... when I expect, desire, or try to force what isn't to be what is. When I ceased being able to put energy into finding my contentment in the external world (through teaching others what i think is right, expecting others to change their behavior to suit my expectations, judging others as wrong in the first place, judging the conditions of the world as right or wrong), I began to turn within. When I turned within, eventually a realization came. Contentment was more and more the status quo. And as these sprouts were cultivated, not through supreme effort, but again through constant release of notions of escape, alteration or subjugation, contentment revealed itself as a foundational, natural component of my essential nature. As I released into this abiding within and ceased incessantly focusing on making the external into something my internal could harmonize with, the harmony within my natural state, emanated and contentment sustains effortlessly, even in difficult conditions. This led to a most profound realization not long after, when I realized I no longer required a focus to be in love. I used to think that love came from a person, place, or idea that made me love it. Now I experience I am love and contentment. When the chatter of incessantly using my energy to try and force the external world to adhere to notions born of my unacceptance of the universe as it is, quieted/ceased. When I released all... that which remained was my essential nature. I am contentment. I am love. Ceasing to try and control the external, allowing myself to be the simple, beingness I am, releasing all notions of should/shouldn't and abiding only in the simplest raw presence of my own beingness... I realized love is not something I acquire through striving, effort and great knowledge. Love is the ground state and blossoms in my experience when all the mental chatter, thoughts, world noise, assumptions/notions/concepts are released. Love and contentment is my natural state... and where I used to think that my wife, or my pursuit of knowledge, or walking in nature were the sources of my love... 'i love her/this/that', shifted and I now experience it this way. I now see that these were the reflectors of my inner essential nature, strong enough in their emanations that they cut through the fog that was occluding me from realizing what it was that I was seeking... is what was doing the seeking. It's what was there all along, underlying all, foundational. Requiring no effort to sustain itself, it is that which sustains. I am love... love is my essential nature. I often forgot this, and on occasion still do, but thankfully I am reminded, either when those things that cut through the fog are near... or I quiet myself again and turn within to simple presence and beingness. I no longer say or think "i'm in love"... I am love. I am contentment. No effort is required to maintain this. No effort could create it in my experience. It is what I am. I only sometimes lose touch with it, when through my mental chatter, my unacceptance of conditions as they are, or my desire to alter that which is, clouds over the pure, simple, raw beingness of it.

I've had a blendtec blender and have been using it daily/bi daily for seven years. It is worth every penny of the $450.00 US I spent on it then and if it ever does fail. I'll replace it immediately. It has a 3 horsepower motor which pulverizes even avocado pits into micronized particles so fine, they veritably evaporate into the smoothies I make. There is no chalky residue, nor any 'bits and pieces' remaining. I can't stress enough how resilient and valuable this blender is in my experience. I highly recommend it.

man you are on fire lately mate... dropping pearls! you remind me of an old toltec teaching stop taking the universe personally... it's not happening to you, it's happening and you are here. when i stop taking the world personally... contentment arises effortlessly.

Swallowing saliva and the tongue position in the mouth seems rather important to both of the Wu Dong lineage holders I've studied with... Master Zhou Ting-Jue calls this practice 'swallowing the pearls' and in his lineage it is vitally important and brings great benefit. Master Wang Li Ping, when beginning to sit always says. Sit well. Sit up straight. Close eyes. Lips closed, teeth touch (lightly), tongue behind the front teeth. The tongue position seems to correspond to completing the Du/Ren energetic circuit, creating a bridge between the Mai Zhong and San Jeng points in the face, according to Master Zhou. Some time ago, I realized that at some point in my process, without thinking about it, my natural, neutral facial position has become one where my lips are closed, my teeth are touching (not clenched) and my tongue is nearly always resting on the roof of my mouth with the tip just behind the upper front teeth. This occurs without thought, intention or will. There is a constant flow of saliva, but when swallowing this, I do not tend to swallow, or gulp air along with it and don't experience the gassiness you mention @26sol I have noticed I become gassy and swallow a lot of air, when I eat or drink too quickly... gulping down air with my food when rushed. Just my passing thoughts on this.

Well said ilovecoffee. The bolded statements resonate particularly for me. In the end, until we actively engage and experience for our own self... all else is conjecture, hearsay and in those realms it is nigh on impossible to rule out mistaken notions, outright falsity and incorrect assumptions/interpretations/projections. While I can tell others about my experiences, feelings and thoughts, no one can be absolutely sure my words convey absolute truth as these are subjective and utterly personal and are thus not replicable in another's state of being. In the end, we must each engage for ourself in any given process and in this, we will find its resonance and effectiveness in our own process. In this we will uncover its truth and veracity, not through claims, or videos, but in the fluid living process of our own experiential beingness. I love that you have such a strong connection and draw to the teachings of Master John. This is a rare gift is it not? To know that you've found something that resonates for you and will bring you benefit.

Break Nungali?! No way. He's probably just consumed with preparing for, or enjoying one of his festivals, or off at the elder's camp, away from the noise of this side of life for a bit.

I'm reminded that the Big Bang Theory was created by a Polish Jesuit Priest, Astronomer and Professor of Physics at a Catholic University, Georges Lemaître. He proposed, theoretically, that the universe was expanding. Two years later, Hubble observed the effect and the Hubble Constant became widely accepted. For some years the Doppler effect had been observed but it was Lemaître in 1931 who proposed that if the universe was expanding, then projecting backwards would give rise to the "hypothesis of the primeval atom" or the "Cosmic Egg". This became the cornerstone of the Big Bang Theory. And to Georges, it was an elegant as well as theoretical scientific method for describing the instant god created the manifest universe. Can't say I come to the same projected conclusions/world view as Georges did... but I find it wonderously ironic that one of the cornerstone theories of science was born of Catholic Priest.

reality and unreality has been a cornerstone topic for much of the seeking in my life. probably because my first memory in this life was a dream... a nightmare really. a nightmare so profoundly terrifying it brought about my second memory of an out of body experience... due to the nature of this first memory of my life, i've always been rather obsessed with the variety of conscious states and the nature of what we call reality. and dreaming is always at the center of my suspicion about the fluidity of reality. dreaming, lucid dreaming and waking dreaming and the nature of awareness and self awareness always hover near when its on my mind. bear with me as i try and share my obsessive suspicion about the nature of the reality of dreams, or the relative unreality of the 'manifest' waking world... or just skip my words, but know no matter what, i'm not stating facts here, this wonderful conversation has motivated me to try and share this one more time, because it seems to fit the topic. one aspect i've always found exceptionally intriguing and of vital importance to the nature of reality cornerstones on the seeming fact that my memories of dream experiences can be just as vivid as those i form in the waking world. and my ability to learn about myself through my reactions to scenarios in dreams can teach me just as much about my essential nature, as lessons learned in the waking world. because of this, there is quite a bit of reality to me in dreams... when they can reveal truth about my nature and impact me in memory. not to mention the fact that dreams are often not recognized as dreams until i waken in them, or until i wake physically, but when in the dream, it's always real. second aspect is that my method of becoming consciously aware in this life, my earliest conscious memories of becoming aware of myself, mirrors exactly the manner in which i become lucid in dreams. when i become lucid in a dream, the dream is already in motion, the setting of the dream, the scenario and the players are in mid action, as was i moments before becoming lucid... when something triggers my awareness and i 'wake up' in the dream, only then do i realize the nature of that level of reality... but my lucidity does not start as the dream starts, i become aware in mid dream when something triggers my personal awareness. the tibetans talk about the layers of dreaming. the san bushmen talk about it. the australian aboriginal people still carry a vivid connection to the Dream Time and all speak openly about the dream like nature of our shared waking life dream. coming to consciousness in my 'real' waking life was the same as coming to lucidity in dreams. my first recollections in this life were several years into my body's presence and my conscious awareness came online one evening while asleep ironically enough. ok so with that set up, here are my first three memories in this life: my first memory in this life is a dream. i did not know it was a dream, nor did i know there was such a thing as dreaming. i simply became aware i was doing something i loved. i was sliding down our carpeted stairs on my bum... diggity diggity diggity, flump to the bottom. then scamper up and do it again. so the memory starts as i'm in mid falump, already going down the stairs. as i reached the bottom landing the dream and looked into the washroom, the dream turned instantly into a nightmare so profoundly terrifying that it spawned my second memory in life, which is that of an out of body experience. i was 3-4 when i dreamt it. my mother said we moved out of that house a couple months after my 4th birthday. the stairs ended in a hallway that went right and left. right was the den, left was the washroom. from shadows behind the water heater, in the far corner of the room stepped a black hooded man holding a two handed axe. he began walking toward me with intense, loud footfalls. i turned in horror and began to clamber up the steps. and as i approached the top step... i slipped and begane to slide backward on my belly. hands outstretched, scrambling to stop myself... i could feel and smell the musty carpet sliding under my hands. the footfalls of the headsman growing louder as i slid down toward the landing. in my mind i knew that the moment i hit the landing, he would arrive and swing the axe. as i approached the landing... in pure, raw desperation... with the full focus of awareness on 'getting out of this'. i shifted there was a moment of reorientation. the stairs were gone. the headsman was gone and i was hovering, massless over the bed of a small boy with a mass of red hair. this is my second memory. looking down at my own sleeping body but not knowing it for a few lingering moments. all traces of fear were gone. there was simply a bit of shock and a processing of what was being 'seen'. i looked down at a sleeping boy with big red hair. something struck... conversations about red hair and praise from adults... "is that me?" i asked silently and pop! i opened my eyes and was looking up at the ceiling at the spot i had just been peering down on my body from moments before. my third memory was 'what was that?' for a long while this memory was relegated to the non essential disregarded portion of memory but something triggered me to recall it in my teen years and from then on... my obsession with exploring the myriad varieties of conscious states was born, and thus began my lifelong pursuit of entheogens, breathing methods, mild self asphyxiation, meditation and, on occasion, street drugs. reality versus unreality what neti neti and many of you have shared in this conversation resonates... but particularly neti neti's two quotes, as well as much of the dream philosophy i've read from the tibetans, resonate with my experience of awareness and the nature of reality/unreality. the i thought and the experience of reality/Self/Brahman co-arise simultaneously and that is why any notion of a creator of clay models and the universe as an automated machine made by some grand architect have never passed my gut/taste test. anyway, enough rambling, i'll wrap this up... ever since that recall in my teen years, all through the countless lucid dreams i've had my entire conscious life, and often in my waking life i have this incessant presence in my mind, this nagging suspicion that all awareness of self.other.yin.yang.the ten thousand... is very dreamlike. it has given rise to the following notion I feel inherently that one moment I will awaken within the 'real world' in the same manner that I become lucid during the dream state a multitude of times.

Wow he drew that @ 16? That is pure awesome.

These really resonate. This is one of the key points for me in Daoist philosophy. Playfulness. Returning to the state of a child. To me it speaks of the deep healing wisdom in being childlike, open and curious about life and new situations, full of questions instead of answers, flexible in thinking and assumptions... childlike, not childish. Too often I find this Daoist notion of playfulness and returning to the state of a child is derided by the left brain bias of modern human culture and dismissed as useless chidishness, and is accused of being an excuse for running away from responsibilities and being dependent on the whim of life's flow. This is a common, harmful conflation in my opinion. It's extremely important beneficial to me, to cultivate a playful, childlike beingness. I find it a method of high skill to keep my own presence bouyant and connected while putting others at ease and de-escalating energetic responses in the tensest of situations.

and for those needing a little more cow bell in their life... the following may suffice.

Put this one on... within several bars, wife and son, both dropped what they were doing and leapt into the dance.

Nietzche's experience simply couldn't accomodate the illusory beliefs offered and upheld by the society that he was raised in. What a painful gift this can be... but such a gift is unequaled. It's the gift of all gifts to me, to have illusory notions stripped away. It is no good thing to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. ~RJ Krishnamurti The tao that can be spoken, is not the eternal tao. ~Lao Tzu Nietzche's insights seem to have been born of realization garnered in experiential beingness, not beliefs. Beliefs to me are merely thoughts that have become conflated with self. Nietzche's experience was the clarion bell ringing and no amount of bullying, threatening, ostracizing, cajoling or ganging up by society was going to unring that bell. Once the bell has rung, there is no unringing it (even if one desperately wants to). Woe to anyone whose words shake the beliefs of others though... for such fanaticism is born of those justified in maintaining their ideas of reality that any horrific act is not only condoned, it becomes an obligation. The attacks on Nietzche call attention to the clarion nature of the power present in the words he shared born of his experience and their affect on others. Realizations born of experiential awareness seem to shine with their own visceral resonant presence like light. I have felt this when in close physical proximity to a Sage. The fog of illusory beliefs, concepts and notions simply dissolve in this presence. Experience resolves into such simplicity, all illusory notions normally carried around dissolve and realization of the raw potency of simple beingness arises in the absence of the cacophony of maintaining the thoughts and beliefs. The clarion bell of awareness rings in silent presence like thunder... a thunder that dissipates conceptual notions like sun dissolves fog. This is why I suspect, no amount of cajoling, or bullying ever domesticated him. His experiential beingness... his presence simply dissolved illusory notions and without our agreeing to notions and beliefs presented to us, they cannot take root in our mind and grow more firm and become mistaken for reality. The clear, raw presence of beingness. What are beliefs, but thoughts internalized to the point of mistaking them for what is real... for self? What are thoughts but clouds coming and going in the presence of the clear open sky of abiding presence and awareness? Just because we think something and feel strongly about it and society tells us it's true, doesn't make that thought real, true, or even important. It's just a thought. beingness is... thoughts, concepts, even heavily invested emotional beliefs can not assail, mark, or impact beingness one iota in my experience. Replacing experiential beingness with notions, concepts, thoughts and beliefs seems as futile to me as trying to drive a nail into the sky, or trying to paint the air. one cannot touch the other. What greater truth is there than to simply abide, present, here and now? The pure raw magnificent resonant simplicity of presence can still be overwhelming, even as it emanates supreme contenment and bliss.

funny you bring up chimps as an analogy rider... chimps are well known for being extremly promiscuous sexually and for many homosexual relations. edit to add: humans are about 4% different in dna from chimps. that's not much... but in the manifest it results in written language, cities, space travel. it's remarkable what 4% can do... but still... we share 96% with chimps. so yea, you could say we're monkeys... er chimps I mean... (they're different after all). Let me exemplify: say I gave you a sandwich that was 4% ham and 96% dogshit. Would you refer to this a ham sandwich?