silent thunder

I'm drawn to share this paraphrase of a conversation I had with my son back in January. I was lying in a hospital bed, recently stabilized from septic blood poisoning and reassuring him regarding the health crisis and near death experience. It exemplifies at least some of what I'm trying to convey of my sensations regarding personal responsibility and connectedness to the nature of all phenomena. "When one experiences the entire world as one's self... for me, there can be no other perception than personal full complicity in all that transpires. I am fully responsible for this rupture in my gut buddy and the great thing about that is it means I'm not a victim in this, it's not happening to poor helpless me, who is dragged along by unseen forces beyond my control. I'm as much the generative force in the illness as the entire cosmos... and what's truly wonderful in this realization, is the unshakable notion that I am also the generative force in the healing and regeneration of it. I'm coming home soon... in fact... we can't be anywhere but home, it's all home" ~ This sentiment is echoed by the wonderful Alan Watts, who realized it in an experience spontaneously as a 17 year old boy in a moment of nonlocal clarity... and to whom I owe several key awakening realizations at the hands of his sharings. He shares his senses of it thoroughly in his powerhouse of a book: This Is It! Which I recommend highly to all seekers and near wakers. Here is a small quote from the opening essay that echoes the sentiments coalescing in my own unshakable sensing and experience of it now.

Thanks for sharing Mate! I'll be adding my voice.

I echo your senitiments and add my intention that all will awaken in whichever manner is natural. The barrage of 'shoulds' 'should nots' 'musts' 'must nots' 'truths' 'falsehoods' that stream from the sources you mentioned seems endless at times and can readily fill a mind for life, if uncountered by presence awareness, or waking up. I recall a quote that resonated rather recently and seems appropriate. "you must program your mind yourself, in every facet, down to the smallest detail... or the environment (your family, society, religion and politics) will do it for you." Our minds can't avoid being filled in early life... ages 0-7ish. My own waking process started rather early (around 10) and has been a long slow unfolding for nearly four decades. It's foundation lie firmly on the belief system of my household religion. Once this seemingly unbreachable wall of dogma had been breached, my eyes were primed and I began from then on, to look at each institutional dogmatic structure, be it secular or spiritual, with a wary, penetrating gaze. I think once that first gap in the house of cards designed by my birth religion was breached and an inkling of what lay beyond the world they painted for me had been perceived... the process of waking became its own animal so to speak and manifested an inertia of its own in my case. For I could not stop searching out the cracks in the dogma that lay in systems all around me. what a gift! Painful at times to be certain... to have long held notions revealed as utterly false and at times ill intendedly so... but what a gift to garner that glimpse through the illusion... for once one has breathed real, fresh air in the mind and soul, nothing in the world of dogma can ever again, quench thirst or slake hunger. This type of gap in the card house experience is the point where seekers become seekers and then strive to inquire past the maze of tulpa like concepts that otherwise corral our mental processes for the entirety of our lives. This process may be benefited, or hindered by the mindset and disposition of the waking sleeper... but any longer and for some years now, my own process has long since garnered inertia beyond my personal control (through desire, former practices and grace) and has begun to carry me along with it as it follows its natural path. Any longer, for me there is no straining or seeking, only a concerted non-striving intention to remain open to the flows of the natural order and to cultivate presence, awareness and emptiness. As insidious as the processes of dogma are... they are not infallible and once breached, they quickly lose their teeth. Keep the Path and bouyant, freedom will be realized and discovered where it always lay... within our very essential nature. Never lost, never separated from us, only hidden under the barrage of notions and false concepts of the structures of mankind we had no inkling were untrue when first encountered as children.

Thanks for sharing. This resonates. All my life, I've been walking in and out of various dreamscapes... some of them while sleeping, most of them in what we call 'waking life'. And through all of it, this unshakable sensation, this anticipatory knowingness that one moment, I will awaken within this waking dream, the same way that I become lucid in the dream state, each night. The Tibetans talk in some detail about this concept. what is it to waken from a dream into another dream? what proof exists, beyond any doubt I wonder, that reality is not but a shared dream? I can't shake the sense of it. The sense of it is the flavor of the very air I breathe. i wander dreams within dreams and wake within dreams what is this.. to waken in sleep akin to the dream I've lived so long in waking within this wandering of dreams I weave a wakening walking way the mirrors are full of masks am i the reflection, or the butterfly? can one dream themselves awake I wonder?

I have awareness... of that I'm still certain. Though I have no number to the potential of responses to conditions, nor of conditioned responses to stimuli. Understanding is of little importance, even though it can feel strong and vital to make strong statements and have my mind reinforced with logical understandings, these days the mind games seem little more than passing entertainment compared to... Presence, Beingness and Awareness... Release, Clarity and Emptiness. If there's an action for me any longer, it's unfolding. Radical, constant opening and unfolding in presence. Being. Here. Now. In this unfolding there is no effort involved, though some actions seem repeatedly manifested. Release, acceptance, acknowledgement and presence repeatedly reinforce and cross manifest with each other. Though there is no straining to achieve this... rather it manifests when enough of the filters and extraneous mental chattering and egoing no longer garners inertia. I would characterize this unfolding as a repeated awareness of the absolute perfection of the manifest and unmanifest resulting in the radical release and deeply grateful acceptance (both of actions taken and not taken and of all phenomena). Unfolding to true presence the way a flower unfolds. No effort aside from a deep yielding to one's innate essential nature of beingness and presence. There is a profound level of trust that I am living now, directly related to this unfoldingness and grateful acceptance of the perfection that is what is... that I would not have thought possible prior to recent shifts. Where I am now, I couldn't claim with a straight face that anything is absolutely necessary... from tao, nature flows. It flows according to its nature and can not be other than it is... and as the fluid nature shifts that which is manifest then is other than it was, yet is still naturally flowing from tao. i am this flow... thoughts are a menu of sorts, or a book that refer to nature, but are not of it... so always seem somewhat ineffective for conveying the beingness of concepts. I wonder, to what level, how radically and deeply the conditioned aspects of personality can actually shift with awakening. Even in this it seems our essential nature in awakening does not erase personality, nor emotions, rather the relationship with them shifts. hmm... hope some of these words helped clarify what I'm trying to share. It's a wonderful and potent conversation. Deep gratitude for all involved.

The latter responses remind me how in The Secret of the Golden Flower, reference is made to 'the square inch inside the square foot'. This was regarding the focal point, or gateway orifice between the inner and outer selves, according to Wang Li Ping. Though it doesn't seem to relate to the verse in question to me, I mention it in case it carries resonance for others.

That sounds awesome! I would so be there with the fam if not for the pesky little pond between us mate.

In my experience even cerebrally mediated processes are not under our direct, independent control and are subject to processes we are unaware of... what we commonly refer to as choice, to me, is not a display of independent action and power on the environment. It's no actual independent choice at all... rather what we call choice is the mental rationalization we ascribe after the fact, to the natural reactions to conditions by conditinioned responses that lie beneath conscious awareness. Our choice of orange juice over water is as much a conditioned unthinking response as leaping away from the car. I realize this doesn't sit well with many folks and I'm fine with that... it's just my take.

For me, it's like a koan... presenting one's mind paradox with the intent to drop incessant story identification, projection, evaluation, comparison and judgement through the presentation of an irreconcilable concept. It's like an interrupt signal to bring brief pause to the incessant monkey telling stories about how understandable every aspect of phenomena and noumena are... The Way is beingness, not a thing to be understood. The Way is a fluid verb that encompasses all phenomena, emptiness, concepts and the non-conceptual. One does not logic The Way. One lives it. It encompasses all the senses, and all that which is beyond sensory interaction. Many experiences of my life remain beyond my mind's ability to analyze and compartmentalize into neat logical concepts, in spite of them being repeated experiences dozens and hundreds of times over decades. The logical mind is a small tool, useful within certain parameters, but is not capable of encompassing The Way. Release. Be here now. it's purposefully paradoxical. the Way cannot be intellectualized logic'ed and spoken of concisely. it can be lived. being. presence. awareness

he is, it's the deluxe hat... fully sentient and self adjusting.

“There is no coming to consciousness without pain. People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own Soul. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” CG Jung

This morning on my walk, I am drawn to watch the water... flowing down the gutter. The sprinklers were on up the hill, predawn, to feed the flowers and the lawn and the trees. The water flows past them nourishing... without intent, care, or worry. Without malice or thought... without skill, or intent, it generates force enough to carry things along with it. It flows in the lowest channel available and carries dead leaves.. bits of discarded food and food wrappers from our neighbors who litter... it carries a dog turd on this morning, with no mourning. It flows to the sewer where it saturates these with the mould and the muck and carries them all, without love, malice, intent or skill to the ocean. tao is here... this saturated turd slowly scudding along leaving skid marks on the gutter. no malice, no intent... just tao.

To clarify, this teaching, this concept, is still paradoxical when I consider it by intellect... this can't be reasoned out in the ignorance of separate self identification. But experientially, in beingness... I am living it... now. fully, with no contradiction. With grace, bouyancy and a palpable sense of continual unfolding. It can be experienced, but not understood. This responsibility is something I am being in this moment, not something my mind process can understand. It's not logical. And I don't expect it to adhere to logic, because the experience of it, is beyond words, concept and the entire potential of mental conceptual/logical progressive mind story thinking. The experience of this responisibility, is the beingness of it. Not the thinking. It manifests and is experienced foundationally under and beyond the limited, codified, conditioned, evaluating, judging and projecting conceptual mind. It cannot be reasoned through with logic and mind stories, as these are deeply codified and imbedded in the vibratory forms of story, sense of self and duality perception. This teaching, or concept is so deeply tied to the nature of foundational relational ignorance that it occupies an energetic vibration beneath and above mental awareness in most situations... (hence as steve and I alluded to, many times this is often triggered by experiences of deep trauma and horror). It's like how I imagine that most fish have no concept that there is something we call water... unless they have an experience of being drawn up out of water... It's so foundational, that it lies beneath conscious awareness. This responsibility steve addresses that i have tried to convey my sense of in words, is paradoxical on the level of mind, even to me... yet my experience of this responsibility is a beingness... that I am fully, living now... no understanding required. The Sage is in the world, but not of it. We are all one. There is no we. I am responsible.

what a gift, these exchanges what a treasure, this place where we meet and exchange each to their own and yet, all together kinda like...

Thanks for the topic steve. Recently, in January, I crossed over another level of understanding on this topic. Lying in hospital, hovering on the line between alive and crossing over for several days as my blood went septic from the posioning due to the ruptures in my colon... I had the full experience of my own responsibility for all of it. Every bit of it. It was beyond just mere mental understanding... I experienced my responsibility in my bones, in my very blood. It was one of the single most beautiful, bouyant and empowering moments I've ever experienced. Empowering as well... because the moment the cascade of understanding really bloomed in my awareness... the palpable sense that I had put myself there and thus, could also pull myself where I was drawn next... to health, or to the other side... I was no longer a helpless, poor me, streaming about in the river of fate. When I claimed complete responsibility for being there, for the experience and the results... gratitude such as I have never known, opened up within and without... saturating me. For a long while, I had been growing in the experience that just because I experience pain and horror and loss, does not mean I am suffering. Now it's just the way it is. It's as clear and natural as the beard on my face. My wife is currently in and out of hospital. They have no clue the causes, or the cure. She's hovered near death as well and I look at my 12 year old son, our home with three cats and all the things reflecting our 29 years together and I accept all of it. Yes, she is in pain. Yes this digs deep into my personality. But I am not suffering. I am present. I am here for her, offering healing, offering presence, just... being. Connected and loving. Bouyant and clear. Fully sensing and accepting my responsibility in all of it. It's remarkably freeing. So bouyant. Hard to describe with words if you're not in it. I understand when others even get upset hearing such things... i used to as well.

This. All ten hours of it and then some... for several days now.

I'll check them both out. Thank you.

Some time ago... I released trying to fix in others, what bothered me. The bother lay in me, not in them. All I despise and all I love, come from one source. The difference between them, then, must lie in my experiencing... in my interpretation. Far more effective than all the energy I've spent trying to change behaviors and understandings of other and fixing them according to my sense of things... was putting my energy into calmly abiding in my self. Accepting, nurturing and healing within, that then is able to emanate outward and in some cases, even impact others beneficially... seemingly anyways. Peace through healing acceptance and release. Seeded, nurtured and cultivated within, it emanates then outwardly, naturally... without force or will, or doing. being peace

This book is treasure! And I've only just dipped my toes in... I'm deeply grateful you mentioned it here. When I read the title in your post, it veritably lept off the screen into me, but didn't expect this level of connection. As I opened the book to peruse it, a full body shiver ran through me; and as I feathered through a bit, lighting on some images and random passages, a sense of deep familiarity. His use of images is strikingly similar to a process I'm undergoing over the last few years with my own version of the TTC and his wording, approach to description and phrasing could have been taken directly from my own sense of things. Deep familiarity. In general, I read in short bursts these days. I take in small breaths and bits of things, dipping my toes in the ponds of other's thoughts rather lightly, then withdraw and allow the ripples to flow through me until I'm inspired to dip in again. As such, I'm only a few pages in, but each passage resonates so deeply, and with such familiarity... it's remarkable. His description of the hangover effect really reflects my experience without even being aware of it. Using the hangover as an analogy for the remaining inertia of personality traits and behaviors after awakening put me on my butt for some days... just woof! Yes! This! Page three he references Rupert Spira, who has in the last year come to my sphere of awareness with a remarkable presence. Circles within circles it seems right off the bat. His words emanate with a calm, neutral acceptance and a nourishing manner of sharing. The utterly unsurprising and natural process of awakening belies the words we use to attempt to describe it... words like awakening and enlightenment carry so much story/baggage. When the experience isn't grandiose, but as familiar as the feel of my butt on this chair... as natural as opening one's eyes after a nap, or inhaling when reaching the surface of the water while swimming. No prompting thoughts, or requirements. Just natural being. I'm deeply appreciative of this work and I'm only just approaching chapter 2.

Ha! love it! It's odd how once i'm folded and tucked in all comfy in lotus, it feels like unfolding. Mostly energetically but even physically. When 'tucked in' there is a deep release I experience in the legs, kua, that emanates up into the abdomen and prompts a deepening of sung and full body release. It's oddly fun, how folding up the body, unfolds the experiential nature. This. This. This. Not forcing is paramount. truly wei, wu wei. Allow the stretches to unfold with the breath and reach into themselves of their own accord. And breathe... breathe... breathe... Keep the breath flowing full and easily. I initially sought full lotus after hearing the benefits touted by people I deeply respected, but it was a long uphill process for me. Even though I sat on the floor almost exclusively as a child, I have traditionally held energy in my hips and ankles all my life, so full lotus was purely unapproachable for some years; though half lotus took only a few weeks of gentle... and i stress gentle stretching. Every month or so, I'd try full lotus and see where it was... for years, it was either... no way, or so strained it was useless for any work aside from a short stretch. No way to sit in that and release. Eventually, given the tight nature of my lower body, and an increasing experience of clarity and bliss anyway... I eventually stopped seeking lotus at all. I found half lotus comfortable and could now be maintained indefinitely. Switching legs when they call out. I had been able to sit full lotus for short times... few minutes at a time, but it was always with effort and strain. So I let it go. Some years passed and I hadn't even thought about full lotus for a long while. Then one evening, when going to sit, as I folded my legs into half and settled into checking in with the body and my lower leg spoke up and asked to be lifted up into full lotus. I obliged and found to my surprise, no pressure, no strain and a deep calming groundedness. I sat for about two hours that day with no issues. I've had full lotus since then, but don't use it every day in every sit. The body calls out when and I respond.

Thanks for sharing Alchemical Walrus! Your words resonate deeply here and touch on key aspects of taoist cosmology in my experience. As it applies to daily life. I no longer perceive life and death as separate, they are one constant mingling fluid dance that resonates bliss, fulfillment, clarity and love in all phases. My awareness is drawn lately, daily... on my walks, when running errands, to the decay that supports all life... I find attention drawn to and lingers far longer with the brown decaying grasses, with the withering leaves and the fallen decaying aspects of nature... not the green, lush and full ones. I am appreciating and experiencing on a deep level, the process of decay that nourishes all life. And it is so full of love! Beyond words, but I'll try once again, because the experience of decay is so full of bliss, clarity... and contentment. Release and freedom. Decay is happening now, in my gut (and all through my form, but particularly the decay in the gut), and this decay is what nourishes my physical life, nurturing the foundation of this form and the experience of vitality. Decay is the soil of the growth of life. Life feeds on decay and decay nourishes all life. The soil of our entire planet, is literally the bodies of all that ever lived... be they plant, animal, reptile, or insect. Life is acquisitional, seeking and consumptive. Decay is nourishing, releasing and nurturing. These are two aspects of one process. As a toddler, I had an experience that was to set a foundation in my life. A massive blessing, in the form of a nightmare so terrifying, it prompted my awareness to eject from my body for a short time as I tried to escape the horror. Once out of the dream, all horror instantly vanished, forgotten as I was in shock, marveling at the sudden shift. I found myself looking down from the ceiling of a small room, at a little boy lying under covers in bed. After a few lingering moments, the thought... "is that me?" and then, I was back, looking out of my body at the spot on the ceiling I had just been looking down on my 'self' from, moments before. This experience, rendered me immune to the fear of body death before even having a concept of death, or of a self as a body that could die. When I later encountered death, it was not a matter of thought... it was an experiential recall that awareness is not limited, nor generated by form. Decay. Far from being feared I now relish and celebrate her nourishing love. Not from a desire to obliterate my form, or any other. But from a deeply experienced appreciation of the shear nurturing, nourishing love emanating from the side of the life process that asks nothing, requires nothing and gives everything.

I used these stretches over the last few years to great effect. Highly recommend them, though some you'll need time to reach into them. They are not all for use at the beginning of your unfolding.