silent thunder

Interesting... would you say light is a biproduct of energy then? Or vice versa? Or perhaps neither...

Temptation of a Monk has been mentioned already but if you enjoyed Hundred Eyes, it's worth another mention here. It stars a young Joan Chen and is a remarkable story about a General, betrayed, who finds liberation while seeking revenge. one of my all time favorites...

agreed... I only watched Marco Polo because I happened on that short of Hundred Eyes incredible!

Maybe not coercing, but reflecting.

listen through beingness not the ears see with beingness not the eyes

and my favorite of his... You never change things by fighting the existing reality... To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

love Bucky Fuller!

so then as polarity relates to awareness then... local and non-local seem to be the dynamic instead of aware and not aware.

Ha, how awesome.. the timing! synchronicity mate...! synchronicity!

Happened upon this interesting article, where a Stanford professor claims to have ferreted out the secret of Damascan or Wootz steel in his pursuit of the creation of a synthetic 'plastic steel'. Mystery of Damascan Steel solved?

Thanks for checking. It's already been a labor of love... drooling over the various blades, styles, knowing a couple of them will eventually be resting in my hands.

lives in a hole

so where does awareness lie upon this scale of oscillation? does it? or is it foundational? beyond it, underlying it...

fully integrated systems... networks of completely interrelating sub-systems that comingle in the myriad forms and patterns of the ten thousand. as opposed to: the old cartesian mechanistic model of individual, separate parts, separate machines, operating completely independent of each other which seems a true impossibility. that said... don't kill a water dog! I'm reminding me of a great film, one of my all time favorites, that deals with just this interplay. Mindwalk A conversation in an old Irish Castle, between a poet, a politician and a physicist... about the difference between the old cartesian model of the universe, with the then emerging 'systems theory' of the interconnectedness of life.

A powerful distinction... the myriad layers of awareness physical sensation is awareness yet awareness in the manner of an abstract thought which exists in the mind only is also awareness and yet abides in no particular place, though a thought has a spot in time, beginning, and fading... so many layers and spheres of awareness... pure awareness is... where in space? is it in a place? does it come and go in time? doesn't seem to be bound in that manner... perhaps only my perceptual process can lend that sense to it silent, empty darkness seems permeated with awareness to me my physical body with all its myriad sensations, seems not the source of awareness either, but rather more like a dense, slow vibratory speck within the field of my awareness which is vast beyond reckoning and not even fully mounted or fixed to the dimensions I commonly refer to as 'reality'.

I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions. ~Augusten Burroughs

Deep, abiding thanks to those who've reached out in pm's to share. The sense of connection I derive from those sharings are truly gems to me... value beyond measure. :love: :joy: :gratitude: !

A couple years ago, my wife and I shared yet another paradigm shifting and unique experience together. The latest of several that have occured in our three decades together. On a weekday afternoon in our kitchen, we were utterly consumed and saturated in a sphere of White Light, for a span of about six seconds. Complete white out. Total white out. All vision gone white. We were standing in our kitchen together when it occured. I was on the phone with a friend in mid sentence, when I went silent as the entire interior of our home was engulfed in pure, non-directional, utterly saturating, White Light. It was roughly 3pm on a cloudless, typical Southern California day. Sun blazing overhead. This White Light blocked out all other sight in both of us and if it came from a source, it seemed that it was within us, or between/within us. Our field of vision rapidly irisced up until all vision was whited out. I remember looking at the mirror on the wall 14 feet away as it just dissolved in this dense fog of white light until neither I nor my wife could see even our hands in front of our face for a span of about six seconds. It was just like a pure black out, only white. Then it rapidly receded just as it had come on and was gone, leaving us both gaping and me repeatedly asking "what was that?... what could do that?" The light had no direction, like a reflection. And any light of that intensity, capable of whiting out all sight, should have left us both white blinded for a time. I work in the film industry and am constantly moving between very low and very intense light situations, not only should we have had some sort of retinal ghosting after such an intensity of light... there should have, by all my previous experiences, been stabbing pain in the intensity of such a light. My eyes are so sensitive it was often an issue back in my acting days... when the light was sufficient to render my face for film, my eyes would be watering and ruin the shot. i also struggle with night driving and will often tear up due to clear lenses and piercing sensitivity. With this, there was nothing. No retinal response at all. Literally zero sensitivity reaction to this light, as did Willow my wife. Our son, who sat in the living room noticed nothing. These seem to reinforce the sense that the source of the light was internal. It utterly saturated and engulfed us both, along with the entire interior of our home. I've never seen a light of this color, nor intensity in my life. Perhaps it's relevant to add that this manifested in the midst of a time of the worst emotional upheaval I have ever experienced in my rather blessed life. Having just lost both of my parents, several dear friends, the child of another friend, and in the second year of witnessing the near complete emotional collapse of my beloved partner and wife as she wrestled with the awakening of long buried memories of childhood trauma at the hands of her parents, whom we had subsequently excised from our lives and home. To say it came at a point of deep emotional pain is understatement. I've only spoken of this once before. Matters of this nature, like the silent thunder my wife and I experienced together and where I take my name here from are always tough to share... but the time seems right given the state of the board and the nature of the recent light topics. So I'm curious what your various lineages, and hopefully some of your direct experiences with such open eyed visual strangeness have to say.

Precisely this oscillation/interplay between polarity that lends easily to the seeming appearance of 'two', yet are unified in experience/phenomenon. All waves have crests and troughs. All sticks have a top and bottom, snap one in half and you have two complete sticks, not two bottoms. phenomenal experience manifests/emanates within the polarity/oscillation of unified fields... and yet at its base what is present? awareness seems to be there. Does awareness have an oscillation? Is there non-awareness? Is it possible? if it were, could we even know? Or is Awareness a unified process that phenomenal perception lends a sense of on/off? Or is it constant? foundational? sure seems foundational... yet if there is a realm beyond awareness... how would one check?

visible awareness... that! the awareness one is aware of... and what one is not aware of...? what is the limit of awareness? is there a limit to awareness? if there were a limit, could we even be aware that we weren't aware? what lies beyond awareness? the three circles of knowledge... picture two circles, one vast and one tiny. the tiny one represents what you will learn and know in this life. the vast one represents what you will know that you don't know, can't know, in this life. and the third circle is no circle, it has no boundaries and extends outside the vast circle and represents what you will never be able to know, that you don't know. now substitute the concept knowledge with awareness and replay the previous... (woof) I love this place! thank you!

Aw bugger, I know voids posts can be a bit jarring and overbearing at times but hoped they wouldn't get swatted out as several brought up some key points for me, regarding the interplay of sound and light, silence and darkness as well as a new term pratyahara and the withdrawing of the senses, that directly relates to the development of several anti-cravings I've developed along the path of my practice. Post a link to the new thread here so we may find those as well when this all sorts out? I'm still rebounding and chewing on the notion that we cannot perceive light as it is in this instant, this moment, but only as it was prior to our interpreting and processing it visually. Always a step behind so to speak. Perhaps this is why so much emphasis is placed on going within in spiritual pursuits of realization... pratyahara, darkness, silence, stillness... withdrawing the sensory which is by its very nature innacurate, toward the unsensory, which by comparison is more accurate?

Fog like is a very apt way to describe the nature of what we experienced... Interesting! Thanks for sharing mate.

sure thing mate... here it is. silent thunder experience

Yea likely will never know a source. More curious to know of any similar accounts. Figure someone here will have encountered such. I know I came upon some buddhist descriptions of the silent thunder, or the roaring water inside silence experience that my wife and I shared on our honeymoon and figure, if ever there was a community where this sort of thing would be potentially shared... it'd be here.