silent thunder

It's indeed been real mate. I'll have my catcher's mit handy...

Why is a question I no longer ask, and spend no energy to try and answer for others. Why is utterly relative and purely subjective and so any answer can be as right and wrong as any other, at any time, in any situation. Why is meaningless aside from what meaning we assign. How can still intrigue me... a bit. But soon, it goes the way of why and I am back to release and beingness. I spend my energy in abiding in beingness... now. Presence and awareness, now. Releasing all outcomes and accepting a Universe that is what it is and cannot have been another way. This is it.

I've always considered pink to be the bridge between red and purple...

I wonder who was born, just now?

Wang Li Ping described three types of Taoist practitioners. Mountain, Temple and Family. Mountain practice full time and live in seclusion. Temple practice full time, live at temple and blend with society a bit. Family practice when they can, blending their practice with their life. edit to add: He also said that those who practice will advance and likened practice of this nature to making a new path through the woods. With repetition the path becomes cleared, established.

Finally found John Blofeld's The Secret and Sublime... for $52.00 instead of $331.00 or laughable $1041.00 Picked up Saltzman's The Ten Thousand Things as well.

those who were seen dancing seemed mad to those who could not hear the music

Nice! I want to shake the snowglobe on the shelf in the background...

breath flows in breath flow out mind rattles and settles by turns growth provides decay decay nourishes growth what is so secret?

Nice! I've got some time on my bum now, I'll give it a look. heheh... I'm a Bum, on my bum... Here's a snippet of description from the purchase page. When I imagine speaking to a person who for the first time opens the pages of this book, I think of telling that person something like this: “You are about to read an authentic and incredibly lucid account of what it is like to live in this world as an awakened being while simultaneously functioning as a personality with all of the usual habits and peculiarities of an individual self.” Robert’s way of describing his understanding of the human existence from the point of view of an awakened personality is a revelation. His book is a fresh look at the questions that occur to anyone who thinks deeply about these matters, questions about free will, self-determination, destiny, choice, and who are we anyway. Book ordered.

In my own life, the action of choice occupies a position in process that is beneath consciousness. By the time my conscious mind occupies the space, the choice has already begun its cascade into action. After the fact, if I bother to consider it, my mind makes a story as to why I 'chose' an action. The reality in my experience, is that my mind is allocating a story, to fit a narrative that was written before the conscious mind arrived. Choice to me, happens at a level beneath the conscious mind. We use the conscious mind to make a framework, and often to provide a sense of control and power to a process that is, innately intuitive, primal and beyond our willful control for the most part.

Aye, so simple. simple like water... often unnoticed even by the fish that swim in through it.

I appreciate what you're indicating Lost... Choice as beingness. that resonates.

I don't find danger in being exposed to luxury, or bright colors and tastes. Danger manifests when I disengage from beingness into a realm where thoughts such as 'that is luxurious' arise and are maintained. Beingness occurs in the midst of the treasures of the Louvre, when thinkingness does not override full presence. The point is not that the danger lies in the nature of external phenomena, but in how much of my beingness is in presence in any given set of phenomena.

Wonderful topic. the word art always elicits this saying to me: A laborer works with hands and body A crafstman works with body and uses mind to craft with skill. An Artist/Artisan works through spirit, embodying mind, body, fully engaged. An artist is engaging in a fluid living process of creation and expression. In this sense, no piece of art I've ever worked on has ever been finished. Every time I encounter one of my pieces, it is still a living relationship, a coming and going, not an encounter of a rigid, fixed or finished thing by another fixed thing. Art for me, is a living process... the manner through which living spirit mingled with skill, awareness, presence and effort all comingle to manifest form which engages my whole being. This is why nature is art... the living spirit, supercedes my ability to simply analyze something with my mind and draws me in to an experiential relationship to the living process the piece is the focal point of... Every tree is a living sculpture and elicits a response in me of beingness. Relating to... self known through what self was previously anticipated to not be. Through something seemingly external, I am provided with a lense through which to experience an aspect of self, previously unrecognized as self and considered 'other'. An unfolding of the self, the process of art seems. Expanding. Not forced, but allowing, cultivating. Just as Eating brings the external world to the internal in a living process. Arting manifests the internal world in the external in a likewise fluid, living process. Art as the complimentary opposite of eating. Art as feeding, not just the body, but mind and spirit. Art as nourishing beingness... presence. Art engages my whole being into presence... this, I think is what is the foundation of such sayings as 'that piece really moved me', or 'that place really touched me'. This living response to and from the intent and the living spirit of the expression... engages whole beingness, which allows space for presence to manifest within the always abiding awareness. This reflects in the experience I have around certain places... canyons, forests, trees, or the shape of a dragonfly's wing structure... where they 'feed me' when I encounter them... as they draw me into more full beingness... presence. In this, they expand me, nourish and revitalize me. When my body eats, that which is outside the body is ingested, incorporated it into body. When I am Arting... interaction and intention flows from my inner beingness, manifesting into form in the 'external'. When I am Arted... I am drawn into a relationship with an external form, given rise from another's internal process. We are both expanded in such an act. And it is a living, flowing process. Never a thing.

Nothing is such a wonderful answer to that query! It's what I said to my question as I was typing it as well... that answer, nothing, has gravity for me. It represents living in the questions while accepting that mind answers, are not the answers. the answers are not words, or stories, but the very beingness, the now, the presence instigated by the very questioning... and releasing the sense that any of my mind stories will ever be able to encompass the flowing action of life with their meanings and definitions... little boxes into which I try and store the meaning of the flowing river of experience. My question wasn't meant to accuse you of asking for proof, I didn't see your question that way, but when your question entered my mind space, it elicited that responding question instantly and rather unexpectedly. gratefully... Your query prompted a potent reassessing in my self, of all my stories and how they may be applied to answering your question... and I'm really grateful to you for eliciting that from me... I didn't know it was there. My question was the response to the attempt to locate within myself any stories that would elucidate and I'm loving the discovery that I find none of my stories will provide any meaningful answers! Questions embody beingness, flow reaching out, or inward, seeking, exploring. Answers seem finite. Stories develop meaning, context and become 'things', with starts and endings... and often a message that conveys meaning through relationship. as it applies to my own process... Can the stories my mind has acquired and crafted around this, or any philosophy, meaningfully alter, or shape, the living of my path in a moment by moment, practical, applicable manner? When I first began swimming in taoism there was a fierce gravity to it for me and I was reflecting my own nature at the time, when I tenaciously began to saturate in it. For the concepts, when encountered, entered me and filled me with a sense that this is what I was seeking, before I even knew there was something I was seeking. This however, held me back from fully embracing Taoism. Any attempt at mind study, removes me a bit from the livingness of it. As any 'ism' is filled only with mind-stuff, stories. Whereas the experiences that had drawn me to taoism as a philosophy, were experiential in nature and had little to do with any of the mind stories that generated on the layers above and filtered over phenomenal processes. So often the thins I read, seemingly have no applicable use in daily life and so... All the talk and read and think about... were all but useless, if there were no manner in which to synthesize, apply and utilize in a flowing real time manner in my waking, beingness... in life. I have one practical thing to share. It relates to my long standing experience with rage and anger. Some time ago, I began to use breath sublimation as an interrupt signal to rage's tendency to dominate my thinking space when it arose. In my experience, an emotion engenders a thought, which reinforces the emotion, that then tends to bring about another, similar thought that further reinforces the emotion. This inertial loop can become self sustaining and have devastating consequences for myself and those around me, as I stomp around the house for hours, or (used to be) days as the thoughts and emotion fed each other. Well one day, in the midst of a deep rush of initial rage at an injustice I encountered, there was a moment of clarity outside the rage, that pierced through the rage to my awareness and my reaction to the usual conditioned response was altered as never before. I could see the arch of the oncoming inertial anger storm and could sense the overall scope of it... there was a moment of clarity and in that moment, one of my practices presented itself and I employed it without thinking or analysing. I entered into breath sublimation. I simply exhaled all of the breath in my lungs until I was empty. As I did this, I released all tension in my body and slumped over in my chair, hanging my head down between my knees. I remained empty until the body need to inhale, overrode my ability to think about and spend emotional energy on the rage query. As soon as I began to breathe again, the story of the injustice returned... though along side it was now awareness... of the process underlying the emotion. As the rage crescendoed, I again sublimated the breath and have found the need for breath in the body, when denied until it is becoming antsy... will utterly supercede the desire, or ability of the mindbody to maintain the inertia of the emotional storylines. I had found a practical application of a (tibetan) practice, to affect change in my experiential life. The philosophy had managed to jump the shark, out of the realms of pure mind stuff and words/concepts/language. To a living process in my daily life, that I had a functional relationship to... After some time playing with this... I find it has shifted again. Now when any overwhelming emotion arises... I go quiet, empty and release tension. Then I ask myself... where is this emotion in my body? Then I relax further into full body awareness and when I locate the sensations that stand out in response to my query and self checking... once I locate the spot, I find the majority of the emotion has dissipated in the act of having non-judging awareness brought to presence with it. Forgive me if this is too rambling. I'm on day four out of hospital, with five stab wounds in my belly lol...

No choice on my part, at least, not as such as I've ever heard defined by humans, or myself. choice as a concept no longer exists as it once did, within my mindscape... (whereas choice used to be this thing I did, where I exacted my will upon the world around me... now it seems choice resonates through me as a localized sensation of the non-local process of 'what will naturally occur around and through my senses', based on all the patterns of energy flowing together here and now... it is a living fluid, a flowing beingness of give and take and a natural expression of all energies involved, rather than some definable actions and answers I create or choose from and then impart to, or inflict on the world about me through some meaningful display of the idea of the power of my words or actions). beingness flows, it is the river... choice is like a piece of paper, I cut shapes out of, then look at the river through and say... 'look how I have shaped the river'. When all I have shaped is a holey story. and upon reflection... it was not so much a veering off... as a refraction around as to welcoming back.... thank you! yes! indeed welcome back! though the experience traveled no where and came from nothing tangible... so am I thus welcomed back to where I was without having ever left? wait... where was i?

what bird is screeching? fools talk while sages listen... whose voice is that now? oh mine, right... darvit! how does this keep happening? wait... do you hear that?

What could another say or do to prove unequivically, the veracity, quality and validity of their awareness and experience I wonder? Not just in taoism, but any path, any approach...

I veer off right around 'choice' myself...

funk-tastik!

magnetic fields of the two halves of the heart is what I see...

I have been experiencing a pull to describe my Sammadhi experience in words again. So here's the quick and dirty version. About 15 years ago now. It happened while sketching. Spontaneous expansion of self. I'd been hanging out for a half hour or so, had just roughed in the outer lines of the main courtyard at the Getty Museum complex. I got lost in the act of sketching and in observing. Or rather than lost, I expanded into it. It was a two stage shift out of subjective awareness into encompassing the entire multi building complex of the Getty (something like 7 buildings spread over several acres, along with a swath of the surrounding hillside overlooking Santa Monica Bay and Downtown LA. The first step was while intently studying the curve of a balcony, to try and really get the lines just right in relation to the background... my focus suddenly shifted from being aware of and looking intently at the form of the balcony to seeing the shape of the space encompassing the forms... a shift: not a flip but a dissolve/sideways the way I normally look at forms became how I looked at the space around all forms. and then stage two... expansion. awareness was simply the entirety of the space of the whole hillside... and the forms were as the space and the space was as form and they were me and I them... one flowing awareness so expansive and accute... utterly intimate. I could feel the shape of the space in the keyholes inside of the doors in the gallery building's entrances. the grass on the hillside, the wind blowing was me my very essence, the form, the emptiness... both... as intimate and familiar as my own body in this chair now... and the kicker looking back on it... the form and the emptiness had the same consistency. form and emptiness... the exact same essence space and form equally alive beingness and love, it was just love all the way down and all the way up as my friend rene always says... both same time... all the way out and all the way in same same one fluid beingness

peace: not a destination or a thing but a process a fluid dance a flowing we are peacing here