silent thunder

Males all start female. We are one. Separation is an illusion. There is gender unity and fluidity in expression. We are not male or female, we are male and female in varying expressions of the two extremes in both physicality and emotional/expressional, subtle aspects. I'm a straight man, who exhibits some very distinctly feminine characteristics. My wife, a straight woman, has many masculine traits. There are all manner of expressions and combinations. We are fluid, not static.

Good points both. I find those words distracting as well and usually less helpful rather than more, yet they are what we have to work with until better words are generated. It's never possible to wrap one of the vast, spiritual experiences into words in a functional and meaningful manner to me, yet I try and I appreciate when others try. I like being and beingness and awareness. To me being accomodates the neutral, constant awareness that lies foundationally beneath my monkey mind. It's tied intrinsically to my physical self, but accomodates the subtle as well. It seems to lie on equal footing to the sub-quantum field and to me is at the core of Tao experience. Beyond words, yet words can be there. Beyond senses, yet the senses are present. Evervescent, Ephemeral, Ethereal, yet Concrete.

My wife and I were standing in the kitchen one afternoon and had a very intense and bizarre light experience. I was talking on the phone with a friend and we were preparing something together. Suddenly a sphere of blazingly brilliant, yet soft white light completely engulfed my wife and I and our surrounding rooms, blotting out all other visible light completely. We were in a visual white coccoon of sorts. It came on swifly but gradually... as it overcame my sense of sight, for a brief second or so I could see the walls of our living room fading slowly into complete white, comforting but blazingly brilliant light. Shocked into silence until it passed... I had been in mid-sentence with my friend and blurted out "what the hell was that?!" We both experienced very similar reactions... white light engulfed us... it was absolutely 'blinding' but not painful at all. The light completely blotted out all other visual phenomena for about 3-5 seconds, then faded just as it had come upon us. I have extremely sensitive eyes... night driving has always been challenging for me. That bright a light should have left me in pain and blind for some seconds after it faded, but there was no 'eye sensation' whatsoever. It seemed to both of us afterward, that the light had been not sensed with our eyes, but our eyesight had been overridden by the light. It felt and feels in memory like it was somehow internally generated. Our then 9 year old son was in the living room and noticed nothing... we stared at each other in shock and then laughter and gratitude, along with a healthy dose of 'wtf was that?!?!?'. (shrug) It felt like a boon, like a wash but I soon forgot about it and haven't given it much thought again until this topic struck my memory.

In manners of this ilk, I'm consistently reminded of the old adages. take care when arguing with fools that they do not drag you down to their level and beat you with greater experience or it is good to remember that from a distance in an argument between a fool and a sage it may not be possible to distinguish which one is the fool we are not all in agreement nor should we be we have five senses (at least) so here is vivid proof that we are not meant to experience the world in just one manner.

curious indeed... and a touch... unpleasant.

I pity you your road seeker...

There is this persistent and indelible sensation of beingness... An awareness. Opening and Closing Simultaneously. Constriction and Expansion in Union. I don't know at all about enlightenment or awakening... though there are times when I look up from my tea, or walk out the door when I have the unshakable experience of having just woke up from a dream state. and I can no longer shake the sense that one moment, I will 'awaken' in the 'real' world, in the same manner that I have become lucid in the dream state, a myriad of times...

Justified is to me, at the root of this and many horrific sufferings manufactured unecessarily by humans on the world, other beings and themselves. Justified is to me, if not the most horrifying, then in the top three most horrifying concept/words that exists.

I'm reminded of a story of a Taoist Sage who responded to an inquiry from a Zen master about the nature of Tao, who stated... (and I'm paraphrasing) "the only impossible thing, the only thing that can never be, is for one to be even a hair's breadth away from Tao, ever"

all is flowing, interconnected verbs... not nouns. that'd be a much simpler way to put it...

To me, yes, and pretty definitively so. I would express it that they are intrinsically expressing facets of each other, as all parts of a system reflect the other parts that support the whole. Sort of the way a gem will reflect the other facets when light shines through it. I cannot shake the indelible sense, the permeating and overriding sensation/thought... that I am always simultaneously part of something much larger than my self, while made entirely of smaller things and these layers reflect and relate. None of them are independent of each other... all are indelibly linked to and through each other. Pattern within patterns, all inter-related and co-mingled and co-arising. In order to make a sandwich, I must first create a universe. And while the sense of the separation of my body from others may be profoundly convincing and I may seem like a thing unto myself at times, as I inquire into the nature of reality, as I go within and as I study without... I steadily realize that I am intrinsically linked to all other parts of the system and all of it is unified. My body is made not of human things, it is made entirely from the same elements as the 10,000... our differences exist in varying degrees, extremities and arrangements... our similarities are much more profoundly foundational. That which is similar in each part of the system, far exceeds that which is derivational... to me... at this point. One afternoon, as I was standing in the kitchen, watching my toddler son play in the living room while making tea. As I reached for the honey, I had a flash of insight and realized that there was a chain of unbroken causation and co-arising conditions that lead directly from this moment of me reaching for the spoon, to the moment that my Mum and Dad came together to make me. And from that point where my folks came together, the unbroken line continued back, directly connecting the conditional events all the way back to the origins of what we call our universe... at no point, was, or is there any line of demarcation that I could fathom or manufacture that could in any meaningful way, create a separation from any other thing, being, or condition. All events, all 'thing's, are one flowing oceanic, inter-related system. The realization veritably rang in my awareness... in my being. It was experienced as sensation and thought... that harkened back and built upon another realization I had while sitting and watching ants eating a lollipop... that there is no time in my life that I am not simultaneously touching, something infinitely larger than myself and something unimaginably smaller. Connected. That I am part of something vast, while made of small things. that no thing is independent all is inter-related and co-arising all is one, with many seeming parts, yet all inter-related and co-arising... all in all and all for all and through all and in and within all... All paths stem from and return to source. I expect the physicist's sincere inquiry into the nature of perception and reality will lead them inevitably to a merging and eventual full blown meeting with Lao at some juncture... and that, as inquiry leads to discovery of both false and true, Truth is revealed consistently and inevitably cannot long be hidden. Physics and the oddities described in the Quantum field and how they reflect many aspects of Taoism's mysteries, were a major initial draw for me to study Taoism in more depth. Similarities expressed in what I had come across in both fields sparked the same curiosity to further study both. Fritjoff Capra's book The Tao of Physics was a pivotal nudge for me and symbolizes nicely the very point you are asking in the OP. All roads, no matter where they meander, lead to source. I've never been one much to walk the short cut anyway, I like to meander on my hike. Meandering is not a waste, indeed nothing is wasted and truly, not all those who wander are lost.

Yea, I'm on the verge of purchasing one, with the intent, if that one works well, of getting two more, so we would have one in each bedroom and in the main living area.

I have experienced a few. All of them were spontaneous. None of them were by choice or intention. I have, through intentional work, come to the threshold a couple of times, i.e. the intense vibration state and the rushing/overwhelming sound phase... but then it shut down. All but one of them, were transitions from lucid dreams and the one that transpired while completely awake came while I was taking a shower and was doused in water. I'm thinking of trying to induce one again using a sensory deprivation tank that is available for rent nearby here.

http://www.theworldofmichaelparkes.com/cm/Home.html

Innsaei: The Power of Intuition My gal turned this one on and I found it had more than a few gems nestled in its basket. The ancient Icelandic word for intuition is “innsæi,” but in Iceland it has multiple meanings. It can mean “the sea within” which is the borderless nature of our inner world, a constantly moving world of vision, feelings and imagination beyond words. It can mean “to see within” which means to know yourself, and to know yourself well enough to be able to put yourself in other people’s shoes. And it can mean “to see from the inside out” which is to have a strong inner compass to navigate your way in our ever-changing world. https://zeitgeistfilms.com/film/innsaeithepowerofintuition

Health care in America is financially predatory. They will try to help you... but they will also extract every possible ounce of gold they can in the process. Broken from within it is... ~Yoda

I have lived with several zen masters... all of them feline.

My wife fell down a long flight of stairs in our home in her early twenties. She broke her spine in two places and I revived her after her heart and respiration stopped. The young doctors in the emergency room, did not do a full spine xray and only diagnosed the broken coccyx, fully missing the broken T-7. She was bed ridden for a weeks initially, couldn't find any relief from the pain in the T-7, standing, sitting, laying, moving... nothing brought any relief from the relentless pain. It was grim. and then one day she just stood up through the pain and said "fuck this!". She walked straight over to our stereo and turned on one of my old favorite drumming/dancing cd's. She began to dance through the pain. She danced daily, sometimes for hours. She rmoved through pain into ecstacy. She moved from ecstacy to pain again. She healed through the repeated motions. Eventually, ecstacy and pain receded into balance. She then found a system of yoga poses that brought full range of mobility and strength and this maintains the balance in her system and she made a full recovery. It was years later at an exam for an unrelated issue that an astute chiropractor discovered the broken T-7 and inquired... she and I looked at each other and a flood of knowingness rolled over us as we realized what had occured. What I took from witnessing this process is that the body is a healing system and will be constantly attempting to replenish and repair itself to optimal status, if given the right conditions. for her the right conditions were, a constant supply of loving soups brought by our neighbors and friends (we lived in an artist coop at the time and had a tribal community) and her will to realize that her body could move in spite of the pain, couple with the understanding that with motion, would come revitalization. I have no idea if this would be right in your case. I share because her situation seems similar, was very extreme and she found complete and total healing through a determination to be whole again and her method was dance and yoga.

I am told I am human... and I get it. I'm human. I'm human in the manner of my mother and father and my ancestors and all humans... I grew as a human, yet where inside me is the essential human part? I can see humans around me and recognize them as human instantly, every time... well ok, sometimes it gets a bit grey at Walmart and Comic-Con, but when I look inside to find the source of that human recognition, all I encounter, is non human bits. When I look inside myself to find what is human, no matter what human bits I examine... my human teeth, my human nervous system, my human frontal lobe, my human opposable thumb, my human speech... no where is there any human element that this is comprised of... It seems I experience my humanity and any humanity only within a pattern. A human pattern that grows entirely from non human elements... so at what point does the non human become human? What is the essence of human? Where does it reside? When I observe a single human liver cell, I perceive one living being, in an environment, engaging in processes that affect its surroundings. It has a life span. It is a liver cell, living and engaging in what liver cells do. It is not alone, it works within a pattern of similar individuals that form into an organ I call my human liver. Yet if I delve inside the cell, even within the very human DNA, there is no human element. At what point does the transition occur, from individual liver organisms to a human liver? If I widen my scope I can see how the liver engages with the colonies of living cells in the heart, spleen, lungs, kidneys, bladder. Systems supporting other systems. Systems suppressing other systems. Patterns comprised entirely of individuals made entirely of non human bits... that somehow easily seems recognizable as human at a certain point. So where is the essential humanness? What is human and where is it? Where does it start and end? Often of late, I look around and perceive patterns. Patterns within patterns, as within, so without... Patterns comprised of individuals, individuals comprised of patterns, all naturally growing within frameworks so innately interwoven that in the end all patterns mingle fluidly into the whole. edit for spelling

and now I'm off to the mountains with the kings...

I wake up most mornings and there is a song in mid refrain in my mind... Today it was Los Lobos and Kiko

I like this one, though it's a bit tongue in cheek. The difference between the teacher and the student. The teacher has failed more times than the student has attempted.

for me, the action of returning to source is of letting go, releasing into natural being... sinking into presence and awareness and dropping all else. silence, breath, emptiness and clarity are deeply healing, free and ever present. use what presence, focus and energy I have to heal, nurture and love. retribution is a useless exercise that amounts to little more than spiritual self immolation, forget/drop/release wrongdoings and cultivate authentic presence now... this leads naturally to healing, nurturing and love. there is no external validation, or secret knowledge beyond my sense of my self that is closer to source, than what naturally occurs in every interaction in this soup of life. don't chase, release and be. life is soup, it's fluid. i too am a fluid, a flowing verb, not a static noun... there are no accidents. there exists no thing that is independent of other things... nothing anywhere is independent. one life. all in all. things are very suspect as things... solid is an illusion of perception suffering is a crisis of perception i don't believe everything i think... just because i thought it and even felt strongly about it, doesn't make it real, true, or important... they're just thoughts, let go, release and be when sensory input is available, it will tend to want to dominate awareness, cultivate effortless being, silence, radical acceptance let go, release and be as is natural. there is no need to chase external validation, or secret knowledge, such things are inherently valueless, circular, self feeding loops. cultivate the whole of the self, to transition to the self of the whole the only authentic thing i have, is my authentic presence and awareness. it is the only real thing I can offer to anyone. it is valuable beyond measure. edited: to change the word valueless