silent thunder

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?

rider my friend... you seem to have that most rare of gifts and to be suffering for it... to always know exactly what you need and want in any given situation and to have the one true bead on 'the truth' is a rare achievement indeed. cheers on your achievement. it's amazing is it not, to lack all doubt of the sum total experience of another's life by reading a few lines they've shared! how few ever find such treasure and certainty? how is it then, i wonder... in the solidity of knowing you're absolutely right and right where you should be, with all the answers and truth... you seem so easily upset and tipped into charged emotional states by the ignorance of others? why denigrate those further, who already suffer from ignorance? is this how you fix them? for myself I find notions of absolute certainty to be the realm of the arrogant ignorant... and of that, I'm absolutely certain... er, wait... oh shit. nevermind

Well said my friend! My Sister was devastated when her first husband left her and is an example of just this type of pain caused by this notion that two men or two women giving each other pleasure is somehow wrong. They met at an evangelical missionary christian school in Texas and married young. They would travel the world sharing the gospel as missionaries. That sort of changed when he admitted to himself that he was gay and had been trying desperately through prayer and belief in the writings of men, to become 'normal', which meant getting married and being attracted to women sexually. He finally couldn't live the lie and left. She thought they'd been robbed when she returned home from work one evening to find most of the things had been moved out by his family. He was so distraught over his realization, that he was unable to tell her in advance, the woman who loved him... knowing how their school and all their christian views would condemn him as he was, he assumed she would denigrate and abuse him. In the end, she understood, but wow, the suffering they both endured due to his trying portray a false self and to mold his authentic self, into some socially programmed model of 'normal'. Ironically, the one who finally made Doug, my sister's first husband, realize his true nature, was the man from church whom he fell in love with, the one who was assigned by the church to 'deprogram his homosexual choices and exercise the demon of homosexuality from him". Doug and his partner both left the church upon their realization and were still in a relationship when I eventually lost touch with them. My sister went on to meet her second husband. They've been traveling the world building homes, wells, and preaching their gospel to any who will listen for the last 25 years now. This constant sociteal obsession that everyone use their genitals exactly the same way is utterly absurd to me. Who cares what folks do with each other, their genitals (and the gardening tools in the shed made of rubber)... so long as everyone is consenting and no harm is offered?

well said lerner... When folks internalize and identify their beliefs as their very self... fanatacism is born and all sorts of demonic, violent behavior is not just justifiable, it becomes an outright obligation to condemn, stifle and attack that which doesn't accord with their beliefs/self in order to uphold what is right. And incidentally to protect their notion of their self. When speaking to folks intolerant about sexual orientations other than their own, I will sometimes ask them this in an attempt to knock a light on about choice and attraction. do you think attraction is a choice? do you remember when you chose to be straight?

The depth of Nietzche's suffering seems to me, something of a forge, or a chrysalis that aided in his intense insights, peering into and through the illusory nature of much of human thought, assumption, projection and the paper thin falsity of beliefs. What a gift his writings are to me now... I was raised charismatic christian and it wasn't until I arrived here and started reading some of Marble's sharings on him that my previous assumptions (handed to me by my church) were unfolded. Where I used to assume madness, I now sense deep kinship. Of course... I'm completely mad as well... and so grateful to have finally begun the unraveling of that pesky previously held belief that there was ever such a thing as 'normal'. Much of Nietzche's work resonates with what I've encountered of Robert Anton Wilson, though Wilson's presentation and general demeanor is much more pleasant and less angsty, as Wilson seems to have not been plagued nearly as harshly by pure physical agony as Nietzche was... and was born in an age when questioning the dominant religious dogma of the day had already been well paved by... well... the likes of Nietzche.

He sure is! I much prefer him to his angsty, bitter cousin...

That was refreshing rex. Thank you!

I am not familiar with that book, but I appreciate his writing style and found his book Energy Work to contain strong and effective methods. Particularly in my home it became very useful for my wife in developing kinetic forms of visualizing energy. My wife is an Aphantasiac and does not think in visual terms... ever. She forms no mental images in her thought process, nor in dreaming, so the typical approach to visualizing is lost on her. I really appreciate his simple, direct language in sharing ideas and still use several of his practices regularly on blockages to strong effect. He's got his finger on the pulse in my experience. Good stuff.

Worry is a misuse of imagination. ~anon

I said nearly the same thing about my weapon collection to my son the other day...

sigh...

Hmm... think I'll just go down by the river.

While I don't blame, or intend to demean logic and intellect, I can see how that may seem the case. My intention is to point out that for me, when abiding in logic and intellect I can readily perceive separate, individual 'things'... whereas in presence and experientially, unity is undeniable.

Just be. what else is there? thanks my friend!

sure does... and when the leaf lands, it never lands in the wrong spot. miracle of miracles the atoms of my body were once a star exploding in a supernova this planet that was once boiling oceans of liquid stone, is now mothers of all manner of beings giving birth. perspective and perception responsible for notions of duality and unity?

can anyone point to out one thing that is separate? life is a fluid system, unified, conditions arise environment and organism are not separate... they are co-arising. environment brings about organisms... organisms comprise the environment. A tree is just it's form? Leaves, bark, heartwood and roots? What of the insects and birds that live in it? What of the soil, in which is grows? Can a tree exist separate of this? What of the sunlight which provides energy and nourishment? What exists in independence and separation? I've yet to encounter that.

How Wolves change Rivers How wolves, eagles, insects, grass, bison, caribou, soil and prevaling weather systems/rain/snowfall are as much a part of Yellowstone rivers as each drop of water that comprises what we like to normally distinguish as 'the river'. From an intellectual perspective, based on my perceptions, I can readily assume and intellectually argue that I am one, separate, independent being and claim logical truth. Yet on another scale, the microscopic scale, I am not one being at all, but a collective of many tribes comprised of trillions of individual cell beings each with a birth, life and death... all carrying out functions, making mistakes, achieving results. In some areas of my healthy body, great battles are waged on a tiny scale, filled with the most violent behavior, which is the natural essential means of acquiring nutrition for overall vitality and health. Perspective and intellectual assumptions about perception make it pretty obvious that I am one human. Until my perspective shifts. Notions of self and separate, individualness break down at certain levels of the very small and the very large. Scale up perspective to the solar system and I as a human, disappear entirely and there is just one ball of mostly water we refer to as Earth. Is this separate? Or is it also part of a unfied process of gravitational rotation about the sun and its fellow planets? On the galactic scale, our planets all disappear as well, refined to simple point of twinkling light, in a spiral of lights. When as rider poignently shared, I go to shit... am I alone in there? Am I one being shitting? Or five trillion beings fluidly processing in a unified process observable as a pattern that gives rise to the notion of a separate self, dependent upon a particular mode of perceiving? Is the fruit that I'm shitting out not with me, intrinsically is the rain and the sunlight utilized by the tree to grow the fruit not with me?d even after I shit out my fruit and walk away, are we disconnected? Any longer I experience one fluid flowing process in living. How I interpret that process depends on my current level of perspective and my filters of perception, the tools through which I interpret the fluid vibration of the one unified process of life.

Can't think of a book off hand, but lately, observing water run down the gutters of our street to the drain, brings a simple, potent lesson on the experience of dao. Just sit and observe. Be present. Just be. Water flows downhill and can generate great force without mind, without effort, skill, training or intent. It carries along whatever it encounters... leaves, litter, dog turds, jewelry, live insects and dead bodies of birds, without revulsion or covetousness. in this, a palpable experience of dao... for me.