silent thunder

how many bathrooms are required? depends...

Since the info seems good from both sides, at this point, if it were me, I would try out both for a full cycle of the moon and keep records. Then compare. Originally, all of the great masters were exploring new territory. And each of us, is our own undiscovered country. Jump in and you'll figure it out. Could be that you need to swap depending on seasons and moon phases. Anything that is really important to me any longer though, I keep simple notes and records. It's amazing how much detail is lost when I don't and how much impact a few simple words about something I tried several years ago, can benefit insight in the present.

I would say it's hunger that runs Hollywood. Hunger for sex, money, influence and attention.

yup that pretty much tops the list of things I did not expect to read today.

As a young man, (20's) I was drawn frequently to spend spare afternoons and evenings in graveyards. I would meander about and then settle for a time, sketch, read the names, meander and roll the names in my mind, ponder at times what they liked to eat, or where their favorite fishing holes were... what their lives were like. But mostly just to be and meander. Wrote some potent poetry in graveyards too, the proximity to so many stories and the deep yin like a pool of very still, very deep water. Now near 50, when I'm drawn it's to walk a bit to whatever spot is calling, then sit and simply be present there for a time.

Nice. I'm sure I'm not alone when I say I'm interested to hear anything you want to share about your coming experiences.

I'm stoked... a new Tea Shop opened up here in Torrance, vendor has been going for 25 years and they chose our town for their latest expansion. A massive wall of bins, their selection menu is a full on printed book... and the smell... dear gaia, the aromas of the place. I stocked up on a body buzzing hibiscus with mango that is glorious. I also grabbed a few ounces of a nice soft vanilla mix and some sturdy earl grey. Our last local shop closed over a year ago, so this is like finding an oasis.

Great idea!

I almost signed up for one of his dream workshops back in January... perhaps soon. A few of us here tried a shared dreaming exercise for about a month or so recently and it demonstrated great promise. I found it very rewarding. Dreamwork has always been central to my living experience. I've learned so many things about my own inner nature in dreams, that its value to me is as relevant and necessary as my waking life. I have most of my adult life, lived with this nagging, continual sense that one moment I will awaken in the 'real world' in the same manner I have become lucid in the dream state a myriad of times. To me now there is this palpable sense that waking life is a varied frequency and resonance of dreaming. One that is a shared dream in the slower vibratory realms with all of our fellow dreamers, stone, animal, insect and element alike all sharing in the slow, resonant process. These thoughts are well echoed in the words of our ancestors and even the modern vernacular of the Aboriginal Australians and their honoring and holding space of the DreamTime. And I'm with you on audio books. I banished commercials from my life years ago and now have no tolerance for broadcast tv or radio any longer. So, I have really come to appreciate audio books in a deep way. Especially with the long, slow commutes of Los Angeles... it's amazing to have that time be so pleasant, productive, or relaxing, when it used to be an energy sink. I've never taken anything herbally or chemically to help my dreams specifically... perhaps with this next round of reading Dream Yoga, I'll head to the new Tea shop that opened here in Torrance and see if they carry anything to augment the work... I'm sure some Bums here have relevant experience with this...

See if this seemingly unshakable truth about modern eating resonates with any of you... It seems I can substitute the phrases "Fat Free", "Diet _____" and "Sugar Free" with Chemical Shit Storm. and be completely accurate...

yea, I find dream work is extremely effective and necessary for my path... has been that way all this lifetime for me. That and sometimes it's just purely joyful and playful and fun, to be awake in the dreamscapes.. it's invigorating. My earliest memory is of a lucid dream and all through my life I regularly experience extremely vivid dreams, both lucid and passive. I rarely go more than a few nights without vivid dream experiences that I recall in minute detail. I have not had the experience of vivid dreams being problematic or causing a lack of rest, so I don't agree with Marble on this being problematic, but I don't consider him wrong, we are just different. I think the pivot is to be sensitive to how you are affected. Your bolded sentence really affected me and has spurred me to action... it's like the fifth or sixth almost verbatim reference of The Tibetan Yogas of Dream and Sleep by Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche which is one of my most cherished books on dream work. I've been feeling a shift approaching in my practice but wasn't able to pinpoint where... now it's become clear. Time for some focused dream work.

Good point.

Who?

yea one of the things I'm most grateful for via cultivation, is my low tolerance for watching tv...

I really resonate with what you wrote... nicely put. I have no idea how my body is regulating hormone production and distribution of nutrients from my last meal... I have no idea where my ideas come from when I am inspired to write, sketch, paint or build... yet they arise. Intuition, insight, inspiration all start with in. within... for as within, so without. We reflect each other as you seemed to reflect her health and vitality back to her through intention. Our society seems to have grown steadily and frighteningly into a paradigm that now only accepts the rational, logical mind as useful or healthy... or necessary. Anything else is tolerated in the young, old and the 'artistic types', but heavily suppressed in all but a few meager avenues of 'civilized' life and I am reminded of the cost of this every time I allow myself to engage with 'the news'. It's really down to just the artists who are socially accepted to live for a time in another manner of thinking and not be deemed 'mentally ill' and even that, is grey and dangerous territory if you go 'too far' and freak people out. Anyone else running about discussing voices of inspiration receive the sideways glance of judgement and quietly or overtly deemed nutters and bundled off to be saved at the altars of pharmaceutical and psychiatric rehabilitation. I'm reminded of the odd dichotomy I experienced at church, growing up... all these people who professed to believe in this God. Yet if anyone talked about hearing its voice... they were deemed crazy. Indeed many of the modes of perception that society labels "ill" are actually functional socially, yet the lack of value and acknowledgement of the intuitive, or any other manner of perceptions lends to this pervasive and aggressive response to any 'deviant' manners of perception as fundamentally flawed. The next and often unfortunate step is to intervene and a 'need to save' people from their own innate nature. Now obviously I don't speak of those manners of perception that are violent to either self, or other. But it sure seems that there is a pervasive unacceptance of the marginally functional. Those who within the margins of society, make their way along the edges without harm to any others, just their mere presence is too uncomfortable to be tolerated and we then rationalize as a culture the need to 'save them' and seek to treat, or more usually just hide them behind institutional walls, because they do nothing more than make us uncomfortable and perhaps, just perhaps ignite in us a certain awareness that we too, hold these other manners of seeing, of hearing, of perceiving within us and our prolonged isolation from it, triggers the fear response when we witness others in the thrall. Our language and culture reflect it.. and has so saturated the collective paradigm with the colors and palette of the left brain, straight line, mode of perception. That we now subtely and actively suppress the validity, merit and even outrightly question the need of the right hemisphere. The intuitive, creative, unstructured it seems, is now viewed as not just abnormal, but unhealthy, broken and should always be sought out and healed through saving elements of civilized treatment. I suspect its roots are tapped in the concepts of original sin and the abiding fallacy that there is somewhere this thing I always hear talked about with such confidence... this thing I have never experienced anywhere, in all my travels, energetic or physical ever... normal... edit: deleted double quote

I really appreciate that term shenpa... emotional barbs or hooks that grab us when someone says something, or something happens and initiate that avalanche of related energies/reactions. I first encountered it through my wife who was intensely reading Pema Chodron at the time. It has no english equivalent that I've come across yet.

One of my teachers is often referred to as 'the healer's healer'. He's known for affecting healing in hopeless conditions and often has healers seek him out when they are under the very influence you speak of 'cross contamination'. Folks fly from around the world to have sessions with him. He does not refer to those who come to him as patients... they are students and he is not healing them, he is teaching them and aiding them in returning to vitality and health. They are not subordinate, he is not above. He is assisting where he can, with what he has available to him... it is a relationship, not a transaction. He does not consider himself the source of the healing at all. He is a conduit. I think this paradigm is of paramount importance when it comes to energetic healing and treatment. It is so easy to fall into the healer trap that I am the power and the source... it's often present in group work and retreat settings. Someone once referred to it as "I" healing. "I walked into the room and I saw that there was a brown spot in the orange of her aura and I cleansed it". With that ownership comes possession of all that comes with it... much of it potentially not beneficial. When we operate from this point of view, we are mentally projecting and taking ownership and responsibility of the energetic flow and the transaction. Seems to me that this may well be a main avenue of cross flow and assimilation of energy, rather than allowance for it and release of it. I was deeply affected by your story of healing. But my second thought was, while you may have been a catalyst for the event, you were not the source, nor the power, but a focus and conduit. You mentioned that there were friends in the room when you arrived. When you entered there was already an energetic matrix of car and love, the combination of all the connected friends present and that shifted with your arrival. When you arrived and had the instinct and intention arose to act... to me this exemplifies your sensitivity and awareness of an opportunity to catalyze the matrix and focus the existant present conditions with the new potential coupled with the personal willingness to act. The teacher I mentioned above after 50 years of healing and practice... still practices himself daily, even his most basic beginner form. And he also prepares the healing space where he will 'teach others vitality' before engaging in any healing. The translator that works with him, told me that in the seven years he's known him, teacher has never been sick, low energy, or under the weather. He works every day of the week, either teaching or healing and is nearing 86 now with no signs of slowing. Early on in my experiences with energy and internal work in my twenties... I viewed myself as a bucket. I sometimes was empty and other times full. When empty, I would look for a place to assign blame "that person sucked out my energy.. they're a vampire!" And while I quite accept the eight reservoirs are real and do house and hold energy. There is certainty that energy is always moving and flowing and at some point, my awareness shifted. I no longer see myself as a bucket that is empty or full, rather, I am a series of channels and meridians that energy is constantly flowing through, never hoarding. What I used to feel as being an empty bucket, I now perceive as my channels are constricted. When they open up again, I do not feel full, I feel the full flow. Anyway, it's really heartening to hear your experience and your dedication to developing your abilities, sensitivities and awareness. Deep blessings mate!

while assessment of progress is perception dependent... it is observable and seems to be incremental and sequential in its nature. often when in the midst of the forest, it is difficult to ascertain its health or shape... we must garner perspective and in order to assign value, there must be something to compare it to: If we compare casting in American media now, to casting in the 50's there is a marked observable difference. change appears to me as the currency of time and change seems constant

I don't know that I fit this moniker of awakened, though I have the experience of being opened up on several occasions... like some of the toothpaste has been released from my tube and I wouldn't put it back in, even if I could manage a manner to affect that... I can speak to old habits and old conditioned responses that are no longer tolerable though... They continually and regularly reappear and for long years, I treated them as failures and grew angsty over them. I fought them and resisted them and tried to 'put on a good face' and 'fake it til I felt it'... all to little avail. Now I radically accept them and acknowledge them when they arise. I also release them and don't resist them a bit, (if I have the presence and am able). Resistance to them just seems to slow their path through my system. Fighting them brings things to an utter seeming standstill and creates all manner of greater issues than the initial shenpa. Acknowledge, shine awareness on it, and then utterly release it. repeat as often as needed and love yourself mate... you're doing the work and deserve it. edit to add: to expand a bit on this notion of 'put on a good face'... I am in favor of honesty in all interactions, particularly when in the teachers' role. Too often I think, I felt this pressure to always present a facade of 'togetherness' and 'having it all down' which I now reject utterly. I find it is not beneficial to students or my self. When we don't acknowledge our difficult days and struggles openly, we give the false appearance that we are beyond them and this has a subtle but intense affect on those who look to us for guidance, not to mention the affect it has on us. When we show no fear at acknowledging our trials, there is an energetic release that happens that opens up avenues of energy that would be devoted to covering, as opposed to used for solution.

There are few things more engaging and attractive than a person speaking about what they are passionate about... except when it's full of vitriol and rage that is... After the loss of seven friends and both of my parents in the last two years... I have come to relax under the freedom of a potent realization. After several other close friends have had disintegrating marriages and children touched by molestation, after witnessing the triumphant achievements... something has been driven home in a manner I can not, not acknowledge. Grief dissipates as we share it. and Joy/Love increases as we share it. Be open and present to the affect you are having on others when necessarily expelling grief and despair, but don't isolate and don't 'man up' or 'play the hero'. This long term isolation breeds all manner of unnecessary and utterly avoidable suffering and likely further harm than what the original bother was. When terribly angry, I try to wait a day to address it, or at least a few hours. Because once a bit of time has passed, I invariably calm more than a bit and the resultant exchange is much more productive to addressing the issue at hand, rather than solely based on ranting out the harsh energies of the moment. And more and more, I try to express my joy, without hesitation... indeed with exuberance and passion. I now regularly stop folks on the street and let them know when I love something they are wearing, or their awesome hair colors, or when I witness them doing something beneficial and kind. Joy increases as we share it. Grief receeds when we share it.

Great idea to take a break from media and screens when the craving arises. Much of what we are is what we spend out time thinking about. Far more important to me these days than what I eat, what I wash with and what I practice... is what I allow myself to think about.

Nice! What a great way to enjoy my tea this morning... thanks mate!

http://zenmontpellier.net/eng/lotus/lotuseng.html stretch, stretch, stretch breath, breath, breath eat, work, sleep do again

that bison skull mountain pic always makes me nauseous as for opium... the white devil didn't create that, but he sure mastered the details of mass production. white devil, yellow devil, red devil... all humans share similar nature both destructive and creative. sweeping generalizations are seldom accurate or helpful in my experience

I didn't notice any defficiency at all, just the opposite, my health and vitality bloomed while exclusively drinking it. My blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol all dropped from treatment levels to normal levels in 3 months, drinking only distilled water, cutting out alcohol and sugar and replacing breakfast and lunch with my phytochemical intense smoothies. I haven't seen the treatment plant, but Torrance is spread out with a large industrial area, I imagine it's over in that way. I always hoped my son's school would take them on a field trip there and I'd chaperone to go inside for a peek.