silent thunder

It seems evident, that when one who is energetically sensitive and potent intends to inflict pain with words, they are effective. And when those who are slung by intentional words of harm, are similarly sensitive and potent, a strong and potent response will be elicited. I have only so much energy in any given day.... lately I find I have no energy available for harm.

@soaring crane @Friend

I've missed the storm and am shocked and severely bummed reading this! I've taken a couple breaks from the dao bums process and all media, out of a real need, but always find the space to return. Should you not return, then please know in what high regard and deep admiration, love and respect I hold you, your insight and your wit and experience. You are truly one of a kind. Much Love Old Friend!

Thank you for sharing.

@dawg and @Bearded Dragon

Water is the weakest of the elements. Breaking itself on all it encounters. Yet the persistence of its weakness is evident as power, as eventually, it breaks down all boulders into sand... all fallen logs into soil. Water. Without skills, desire, or training... flows downhill effortlessly and yet generates force that sweeps away entire forests, levels hills and scours down the mountain tops. Its weakness expresses the underlying strength, power and force... undeniable.

Lately, I experience bouyancy in the meaninglessness. Instead of binding me to despair, I'm wide open and flowing, unfolding in the freedom found only without imposed meanings. There was a time, when I was deeply saturated in societal, familial and self created and projected meaning, that the hints of nihilistic truths brought only despair and knee-jerk fear rejections. This though, revealed itself through realizations to be the despair of losing something familiar and comforting that was only comforting in its familiarity, not its inherent truth. I am aware. This is one of the few certainties that has not fallen away. And as far as I have explored to now... Awareness has no meaning. It is foundational and beneath meaning... or above it, depending how one wants to allocate that... As experience continued in the face of meaninglessness... bouyancy and joy replaced despair as the realization came... with the release of any notion of meaning, objective or subjective, space for bliss replaces prior projected meanings. True freedom. Ultimate internal Anarchy.

Interesting stuff. Your Warhammer example reminds me of something I learned from a Lakota woman. She said that among the First Nations living in North America it was common to have two chiefs. One who took the lead in times of war and another in peace, as those with skills suited to one arena, didn't necessarily translate well to the other.

Powerful stuff Wu Ming Jen! The manner in which you arranged those word/forms really resonated. Thank you! I recall a powerful realization, where I imagined myself inside the Sun and wondered, if I were a source of light... would I be able to perceive that light? Or is it only through the light bouncing off of 'others' that it would rebound back to me. what is the nature of light and non-light? It was a potent ride that abides still from time to time. Light does not illumine itself... fire doesn't burn itself... teeth don't bite themselves, nor do knives cut themselves. Relational actions in the realm of form is magnificent and paradoxical. How lovely to ponder such!~ relational perceptuality... form dependent, co-arising phemonema? Last night my wife called Connor and I out to see the sun setting. It blazed through the high cumulous clouds that had been raining on us blessedly all day, turning them to magenta dragons and was then arching off the underside of the palm fronds in the trees that line our street, causing them to burst in flashes of oscillating orange/green. I said to Connor... "imagine the path those photons of light have traversed, from their cacophonic rattling about inside the ovoid of the sun, to their line across 'space', toward our ovoid earth as it spins and hurtles through space... then arches through our atmosphere, rebounding off the underside of those palm fronds as they dance in the wind, to settle perfectly on the back of our eyes where we see them flash and glint." Where is the separation of one thing and another in that process? Forms appear separate, yet it all coalesced into one fluid, flowing process for me again in beingness... not understandingness. really lovely... thanks again WMJ. Your words (and all of manifest and unmanifest reality again reveal themselves as my teacher) are calalysts for my continued realization. *deep bow*

Really well worded Lost... your phrasing and the tone of the whole conversation really resonates within my awareness. Thank you. That which used to appear to me as two separate 'things'... I lately no longer perceive as static, separate things, yet they flow seamlessly into the varying degrees of expression of one fluid process. No ends at all to them... but more like a Mobius Strip. The extreme expressions of the one process used to appear as separate things. Like temperature... one fluid process that seems to have two separate extremes due to my perception of the relativity of that which seems colder or warmer than I am. This process is also blending other paradigms... where the variety of phenomena, are no longer separate from each other, but morphing in perception to one great fluid gem, with endless facets... Indra's Net. All flowing, interconnected and intra-reflective. And defined only when my perception lends a definition to the process. When this process is only mind and when my idea of my self is the relative anchor, mind seems to be the pivotal catalyst. When I release mind and its processes of defining and ordering, beingness is experienced and the hard lines of mind perceiving melt away into a great flowing gem, oceanic in its totality and I feel the reality of the facet which represents 'me' in this present moment. In beingness the realization cannot remain unperceived, that what I used to perceive as my separate self is never separated from all other phenomena, or noumena... source, ever, even by a hair's width for a nano-second.

Well said. To perceive the miraculous nature of even one inhale/exhale can be a bit paralyzing at times. Reminds me of something that happened at work once. Someone asked me how the sandwich I was eating was and I replied "Amazing!" They responded "That's ridiculous man. Sandwiches aren't amazing are they? I mean, it's f'ing bread and meat and lettuce, it's just a sandwich for christ's sake." "True enough" I said.... "but consider this... to make any sandwich, first one must create the entire universe." Forget where I heard that, but it sure does ring true... even the smallest of processes are connected to the most profound aspects of perception/reality.

sun shines in all directions without favor, or obligation rain falls on the murderer and the healer without distinction in the deserts it grows thorns and in the gardens, flowers leaves fall on the ground in the autumn can you point to one and say... this one is the wrong shape? or fell in the wrong spot? any longer, i perceive no accidents all i love and all i despie come flow from the same source any distinctions, lie in my perceptions and projections the nature of reality... awareness, emptiness, clarity

I'd never heard of Predagio or his book The Unity of the Three. But the title in your post veritably leapt off the screen at me and now a copy sits in my home. Looking forward to diving into that pond... thanks for mentioning it.

Yea. Like the concept of: First there's a mountain, then there's no mountain, then there's a mountain again. seems to relate to this, much in the manner of this phrase I have really come to embody. The Sage, while being 'in' the world, is not 'of' it.

Well said Mate. I agree. The shift I'm conveying when I talk about release and unfolding, doesn't mean to discourage natural effort, but stems from many years of effort and striving... that left me exhausted and in my exhaustion, I realized, much of the energy I was expelling in my effort, was lost in the tension of trying, rather than being translated fully in the process through the presence of being the action, not trying. So I don't mean at all, to discourage natural effort and work, just the added levels of tension of unnecessary 'forcing'. Releasing into being the entire process. I'm including my last response to the 'effort and power' thread as it seems to speak to this process for me as well. Trying, lately seems counter-productive, an unnecessary added level of tension and resistance in a process that is not conducive, no longer helpful in the flow of being. It seems to impede the force that naturally flows through my mind/body. A good friend once said "don't try to do something, just do it, be it... TRY simply stands for To Resist Yourself. Don't try to not spill the coffee as you cross the room... this adds a level of complexity to the process of being that is unnecessary and impedes the natural flow of energy to be the process, instead of 'do' it. Kids enter samadhi, naturally, routinely in their play. They do not 'try' to play, they dissolve into being the play. This applies to my relationship to power and force. Full being in presence, without the addition of 'trying', allows greater transmission of force and power through the system that I refer to as my self engaging in a process. When I am 'trying' it seems that part of the force generated, or that is always flowing through my process, is transfered into tension, which is actually impeding flow of being and reducing the power moving through the flow. The tension of trying, creates a layer of resistance to the flow of energy through my body/mind, which reduces the effect of force on my actions. Lately, instead of 'striving' or 'effort', it's rather amazing. I go the other way, release into an unfolding, a very neutral non-attached 'being' and presence, rather than layering on another level of intent of mind and body tension with 'trying' to do things Instead of 'doing things' I am simply being it. Instead of approaching 'a task' which is separate from me, as something my body/mind will accomplish with intent forced focus... there is an unfolding and release into being all of it, me, mind/body and the process engaged in... all as one. A space of being whereby once the intent to 'do something' manifests... mind becomes quiet yet still present for response to needed stimuli and changing conditions, without the layer of 'trying'. This supports an internal space that cultivates full presence in being whereby my entire process becomes the process I'm engaging in.... and power flows unimpeded, effortless.

Trying, lately seems counter-productive, an unnecessary added level of tension and resistance in a process that is not conducive, no longer helpful in the flow of being. It seems to impede the force that naturally flows through my mind/body. A good friend once said "don't try to do something, just do it, be it... TRY simply stands for To Resist Yourself. Don't try to not spill the coffee as you cross the room... this adds a level of complexity to the process of being that is unnecessary and impedes the natural flow of energy to be the process, instead of 'do' it. Kids enter samadhi, naturally, routinely in their play. They do not 'try' to play, they dissolve into being the play. This applies to my relationship to power and force. Full being in presence, without the addition of 'trying', allows greater transmission of force and power through the system that I refer to as my self engaging in a process. When I am 'trying' it seems that part of the force generated, or that is always flowing through my process, is transfered into tension, which is actually impeding flow of being and reducing the power moving through the flow. The tension of trying, creates a layer of resistance to the flow of energy through my body/mind, which reduces the effect of force on my actions. Lately, instead of 'striving' or 'effort', it's rather amazing. I go the other way, release into an unfolding, a very neutral non-attached 'being' and presence, rather than layering on another level of intent of mind and body tension with 'trying' to do things Instead of 'doing things' I am simply being it. Instead of approaching 'a task' which is separate from me, as something my body/mind will accomplish with intent forced focus... there is an unfolding and release into being all of it, me, mind/body and the process engaged in... all as one. A space of being whereby once the intent to 'do something' manifests... mind becomes quiet yet still present for response to needed stimuli and changing conditions, without the layer of 'trying'. This supports an internal space that cultivates full presence in being whereby my entire process becomes the process I'm engaging in.... and power flows unimpeded, effortless.

Work, to me, conveys a sense of 'trying', or effort, where release is opening, flow, unfolding and effortless.

For me, rather than working with... or trying to... or attempting to, or forcing... it's now unfolding in and releasing into...

*WARNING* Do not watch this unless you want to be compelled to eat! This guy is so connected. His cooking skills, outdoors over open flames... absolutely incredible! I've learned so much and gained a couple pounds due to watching his channel. Almazan Kitchen.

There's really only one way to do that... find the posts one by one... select edit, highlight the text, then delete. To find the threads you've contributed to... go to your profile page and click 'see my activity' Enjoy your internet fasting and withdrawal. Very cleansing.

Yea, some martial practices come with a severe sacrifice.

WOOF!