silent thunder

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.

Who is it? The one who carries this corpse around? The one clinging this meat to this skeleton... filled with water and air?

Wait! ... what?

don't worry mate... I corrected it for ya. phew, that was close!

The Sage is in the world but not of it. No matter what conditions spring from dao, the Sage occupies the center, taking no sides, having no fixed notions of should and should not. Mastery does not need to imply incredible learning, or intricacy of plans and devices. True mastery is exemplified in simplicity. Why spend years learning to carve designs, gears, cranes and levers, when all is needed is a simple block of wood to chock the wheels of the wagon, while you load it? A small action at the key moment of shifting conditions, brings rapid change without much force. In this wu wei, the Sage, being fully present, perceives conditions with clarity and thus with simplicity notes where to apply minimal force to achieve great result. Without need to invest in long drawn out and intricate plans, the Sage may respond adroitly in any situation and is perceived a Master in all situations. While remaining an uncarved, unresplendent, non-fussy demeanor and approach to conditions of life, releasing expectations and notions of how things should, or should not be, the Sage with minimal effort in any situation brings about vital effects and carries conveys the appearance of mastership, to those who look at the center from somwhere on the circle.

I hear you friend. lately I'm just watching the wheels letting it go...

how does one acquire what already is? where is there to go and what is there to do, when what is, is all that is? what to do when what is being sought, is what is seeking...?

Fully agree mate. I've long had the observation in myself that what is often interpreted as fear, is actually the sudden rise of inner power in response to a situation. The pure energy of it is neutral, but so potent, it triggers the reject response and is easily labeled as fear and shunned, instead of cultivated and used. Seems a symptom of the disconnected nature of our culture.