silent thunder

“Never mistake my silence, as ignorance I'll speak on it when I'm ready. Never mistake my calmness, as acceptance, I'll deal with it in due time. Never mistake my kindness as weakness my scars are proof that I'm a survivor not a victim, but most of all, never mistake that because I chose to ignore, that I was blind, even a fool knows snakes in the grass only move when found out and I want everyone to see you first”

I spent a summer observing the lemur family at our local zoo. It started as a project on behavioral interaction and family structure in primates, but became my obsessive joy, to go and sit with them, one I continued nearly every single day of that summer long after the project ended. Their baseline manner of interacting and behaviors stood out. They struck me as incredibly intimate, loving, joyful and mischievous in a sweet manner.

Wow timing... this really resonates... I was just saying to my gal a few months back, that I would like to take some of our ancestral talismans and create a focused shrine in our home. There is a palpable drive that continues to gather inertia, to reach out with conscious intent through the objects from my life, around my home, that are filled with the potency of living memory and connection to those who walked before me, rather than just to keep them out and around in a loose, decorative manner. Birth and death do not seem like opposites to me, I've never had an experience of the fear of death, due to early childhood experiences, birth and death seem to me the two extreme expressions of the unity of the life process. That process does not seem one way to me, nor static and never has... early experiences rendered me incapable of fearing body death. After my son and wife had fallen asleep the night of the burial, I went back to the cemetery and sat on my mother's grave. All around me were my ancestors, blended with the soil, her brother, her parents, grandparents... and I just sat there, no projections, or questions, just me, sitting there, offering my attention and presence. Just me, alive, sitting on the soil where my ancestors rest. Powerful. Resonant. Freeing. For the next week, we traveled back across the country toward 'home', stopping in yellowstone and the black hills and the canyons of utah... and everywhere we went, I would look at the soil and think... someone's ancestors are here, everywhere and they're mine too... we are all of us, one race and there is one earth and we are buried here when we pass... Crazy Horse when asked "where are your lands now Crazy Horse?" He stretched out his hand and pointed "my lands are where my people lie buried..." one people one earth honor all that pass and who are passing so potent.

mysterious gate

breathe in relax breathe out let go repeat

yes please!

Abby!

So like I mentioned my family has spent a lot of time in the truck recently... and after listening to The Time Keeper, we started pointing out all the references we caught about time... we had a really good time

Ah synchronicity... just came across this while looking for books on cd for our road trip. The Time Keeper The inventor of the world's first clock is punished for trying to stop time. He is banished to a cave and for centuries endures the voices of all who end up seeking more days, more years, because of our sense of time. Eventually, with his soul nearly broken, Father Time is granted his freedom, along with an hourglass and a mission: a chance to release himself by teaching two humans the nature of time. He returns to modern 'time' - now counting by atomic measure, the hours he so innocently counted with water drops - and commences a journey with two unlikely partners: one a teenage girl who is about to give up on life, the other a wealthy old businessman who wants to live forever. To save himself, he must save them both. And stop time to do so. The timing of it was particularly cheeky and the book was pleasant and insightful...

The Time Keeper The inventor of the world's first clock is punished for trying to stop time. He is banished to a cave and for centuries endures the voices of all who end up seeking more days, more years, because of our sense of time. Eventually, with his soul nearly broken, Father Time is granted his freedom, along with an hourglass and a mission: a chance to release himself by teaching two humans the nature of time. He returns to modern 'time' - now counting by atomic measure, the hours he so innocently counted with water drops - and commences a journey with two unlikely partners: one a teenage girl who is about to give up on life, the other a wealthy old businessman who wants to live forever. To save himself, he must save them both. And stop the world to do so.

It seems inevitable, but that makes it no less unpleasant.

If I were to type something about this it'd probably look very similar to this: moderate a forum the way you cook a small fish

Breathe in... Breathe out repeat as required

fish

Seriously. Amazing conversation.

Another great source of negative ions is the beach. Crashing waves. Walk along the break and be healed.

I really resonate with what you're saying 4bsolute. Not withdrawing from breath no matter the external conditions. Much of my process is about release... radical release and it's practice seems intimately tied with breath. Particularly pointed of late, is the sensory process at the deepest point of extreme relaxed exhalation and breath sublimation prior to the extreme need to inhale while remaining relaxed. Breath and consciousness seem inexorably entwined and between breath rate, lung saturation and sublimation it seems there is a nigh on infinite playground of consciousness hovering in the midst of breath.

Wife and son and I spent a good portion of today hanging out near the thermal geyser system in Yellowstone. The rampant presence of life around the vents, the massive colonies of bacteria and thermophiles had us contemplating the likelihood of life in other places and brought me back to a quote about alien life that has always resonated. "if we are the only life in the universe... it seems like a colossal waste of space."

Be yourself... everyone else is taken ~ Lord Byron

as above, so below as without, within

the leaves of an aspen tree dancing in the wind outside my window

To begin the path, the only requirement I would list would be curiosity. To remain on the path however is to me the real issue and for that you must be willing to endure the systematic stripping away of all preconceived notions and programmed beliefs. The spiritual path is far from comfortable and reassuring. I have found it to be often the opposite. To me though, it sure beats the alternative. Peace edit to add this quote: We must want the actual truth, more than we want the truth that we imagine. ~Adyashanti

oops, sorry, (belch) y'all were planning to use that apple as some thing?

I love me some barefoot, stubbed toe, stepping on stones wu wei accupressure! I only put on shoes when I absolutely have to... shoes to me, are much like lineages... they can soften the path a bit and may let me speed my walking rate, but they also act as a barrier of sorts between my process and path and when I slow down, I notice so much more anyways... It's reassuring to see that someone else defends the term New Age. All these highly touted and sacred held lineages have much to offer, but they also have much to avoid in my experience, particularly in the vein of the the unquestioning and robotic seeming manner of following another's path without critical thought or even active participation on some levels. All the lineages that exist now, were once a path of New Age discovery, being created by a human treading a path not yet laid by any dogmatic truth. We don't see the universe as it is... we see it as we are. As such, where is the one vantage point of truth?

dis-ease