silent thunder

If you have any connection at all to your bagua teacher stick with them! In person instruction by a qualified teacher with whom you share a real connection, is beyond platinum value in my experience.

so, so many too many to ever fully list but the most potent and immediate that come to mind the king james bible tao te jing talmud the cave the origin tales of many of the north american precolumbian cultures mabyn of the mabinogion yellow emperor's classic of medicine prometheus rising the power of now tibetan book of the dead the grand inquisitor the origin of satan nag hammadi as a child specifically the king james bible the hobbit the giving tree I was also exposed to george carlin at the age of 8 or so. He had a very potent impact as an example of a rare type of adult to me.

"Take a moment and imagine that there is no time. Take a moment to just let go of tomorrow. What if letting go of suffering wasn't possible tomorrow--that today, even right now, was all you had, and you had nothing else but today? All of a sudden, you would look at your whole existence through completely different eyes. See if you can feel what it is to exist only now. See what its like to completely take tomorrow, and yesterday, out of the picture." ~Adyashanti Falling into Grace “I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.” ~JRR Tolkien “How did it get so late so soon?” ~Dr Seuss

muddiest waters left undisturbed by 'process' rest in clarity

sink the body on exhale release on the inhale

I tried the pole vault once... ONCE. that is a truly awesome feeling and also mostly a terrifying one to me...

I don't have any popcorn... but I prefer beer anyways... now... let's have at that theory!

such a potent threshold I repeatedly resonate with upon the very depth of exhalation in the extreme it's something of an obsession for the present, but that won't last and transition will flow... but wow, the resonance of it!

to me, ego seems a fluid motion of action or mind, constant grasping, or dodging, within which the very act of grasping begets perceived need for more grasping or dodging... much like the symbol of Cerberus and the hunger that grows as it is fed. when resting inertia settles and clarity seems inevitable muddiest waters left undisturbed by 'process' rest in clarity

why seek externally for what is already present within?

if you have to sell something it isn't worth buying

I know the relative origin of the mankind of my son...

every time I try to share what seems most amazing, the methods I possess to communicate, seem absolutely incapable of the depth of the required transmission... edit to add: but nonetheless, I love to hear when others make the attempt...

No problem with any of it. just a sharing of an observation of my take on value and connection

This really resonates. Thanks for sharing it. Any more, cultivation is presence and to me, it's main action, if one could be assigned, is release. This presence and release... may they soak into every aspect of my day and night...

Makes me think about the nature of value and how we assign it. The Olympics used to be extremely important to me. Winter specifically, the skiing and the hockey. There were a few years where I was in serious training to make the US Ski Team. One day, while watching the qualifiers I experienced an epiphany that altered my perception and changed my experience of reality, changed my life. It happened while watching one of my favorite skiers have an amazing downhill run, only to lose by a couple of hundredths of a second and seeing his misery at losing. When all I could see was how amazing he was... for him, there seemed no value in having been that close at all. All he could see was the lack of winning. That was his value. And I realized that I had adopted that superficially as my value as well, when the authentic and true reality of my connection was just love of it. Samadhi. Losing all sense of self in the motion and the process... the moment. So I realized, that for all the sacrifice I was making... the missed time with friends outside of school. The early morning sessions, the travel costs for my family... that if I made the team, the commitment would be even more intense, for the run up to the Games and then, if all went well and I avoided injury and didn't happen to be sick on the day of my event, I'd have a chance to be at the peak of my potential against all the others of the world. And if all those conditions came through and I won by whatever margin... would it really mean that much? Absolutely, on one level... a rather superficial one for me. Could I really consider myself to be 'the best'? Not even remotely. At that level, the differences are so minor and insignificant between competitors, especially in skiing, as the conditions on the course change throughout a competition, just having the wrong wax will kill your chances of placing. At that level in nearly any sport, the differences pale to me, compared to the collective achievement already won. And that real value was in the connection each athlete had to their sport and themselves. For me, in that moment, I realized what it was that I really loved and it wasn't winning, or even competing. It was being connected and awake on those mountains. In the moment, no hesitation and no thoughts, just action, reaction and life. I never raced in another competition after that, but I continue to pour my love into the mountains and being on them, Winter or Summer. The last Olympics I watched was long ago now. Although I've always loved seeing the games themselves, the progressively slanted and chest thumpy nature of the American coverage of the games made them unpalatable. But I still love to see the faces and the shining joy of the athletes... I just wonder if they know now, or will know when they look back later, that it wasn't really the winning, or the losing. What has value? Whatever we assign.

I no longer drink milk, but you brought back some amazing similar resonant experiences at my Aunt's dairy farm in Iowa when I was growing up. Whenever we visited Wow!... there was no food on that farm that wasn't as Master Zhou would say "Big Qi!" Though there should be a disclaimer in my diatribe response above and that is... "In my experience, far more harm has been caused by what comes out of my mouth, than any that came from what I put in it." edit: grammar goblin

true story!

inter-connectedness

Reality Tunnels as described by RAW have always resonated with me as a model for how our sub-conscious foundation of biases built by social and familial programming affect the tone of our perception of life, set the tone for what we consider normal and strange, good and evil. How the tunnel vision of our perception will naturally filter out that which causes cognitive dissonance and highlights that which reinforces already held belief structure. Robert Anton Wilson: Reality Tunnels

I frequently wonder what are our flat earth certanties... we have them and one day, folks in the not too distant not now will look back at our assumptions and giggle at our naivete. I mean it's so obvious to my eyes that I stand still while the Apollo flies slowly across the sky.

If it grew in, or on the earth and looks like it did when it came from where it grew, then I consider it real food and trust that it will act in my body like medicine and will provide long endurance energy and will prevent illness if not sick and when sick, it will provide the phytochemicals that fuel the immune system the body uses to restore its natural healthy state, rather quickly. Real food is medicine in my experience, pure and simple. Roughly four years ago, I was able to rewrite my health, alter my blood chemistry in 90 days and keep myself off of a lifetime of pharmaceuticals using simple produce. Our digestive system developed and refined in a long dance with natural foods. I'm not a vegan, nor a vegetarian, though as I age, my meat consumption has all but dropped off and I can readily tell very quickly, sometimes just by holding food in my hands, how I will feel when I consume it. If not, then within a few minutes of eating it, it is quickly apparent whether I'm garnering benefit from it, or if it's just filling the hole and making work for my system. My body and mind resonate in response to the frequencies of what I consume and not just with food. What I put on my skin is just as important to me now as what I put in my mouth and what I choose to dwell on in my mind... Processed food was developed very quickly and very recently and while cheap, mass produced highly processed food can be a viable source of staving off hunger. It seems evident that our digestive systems are not equipped to deal with many of the components present in highly altered processed food like stuff. Over the long term, the continued introduction of highly processed food is well proven to have many toxic effects on the body. If it comes in a box, is frozen, preheated, precooked, conveniently pre-prepared, I generally stay clear. I tend to stick to the outer sections of the grocery stores. Those center aisles are usually full of demi-food and while they will keep your body alive and when I was dirt broke, I ate my share of Ramen and was very glad to have it, but it's not what I call food now. That demi-food will allow my body to continue, but under a stressed and in a reduced functioning capacity. I would love to have a pair of glasses that would analyze my body when I looked at it and relay what parts of my body were formed by what food I consumed at the time the cells were being formed. I bet I'd never touch ice cream again if I had those.

aye... ain't that a truth!