silent thunder

Pure Awesome.

muddiest waters left undisturbed by 'process' rest in clarity. in releasing all that is not essentially my self, what remains?

No... I should use the quote function in cases like this. As I was watching that gif, my son walked up and saw it and exclaimed as if from the fishes' perspective "You Ate My Mom! Take That!"

My son walked up and said... "YOU ATE MY MOM! TAKE THAT!"

I have not encountered any I found that my near manic seeking for decades, was the greatest obstacle of my own creation which kept me from being aware of self truth, in a manner much like the fish who is unable to perceive the water it swims through... but thankfully, that manic pursuit and constant herculean effort brought about a very natural and almost all consuming fatigue and crash of illusions. It was keenly painful and totally unavoidable, looking back. Almost like a pressure release valve built into the very fabric of a seeker. After all, a drawn bow settles in balance. Water flows downhill and settles in the lowest places. There is tao. In the shit and the mud. Finally all that ego searching and building a self up with stories and objects that reinforced the effort and created honor and weighty claims around the self induced illusory quest inevitably crashed into the dung of truths. The yang of the building wave of my seeking finally crested and its own weight brought about its yin release into balance and the resulting crash was the beautiful release. Such calm, clear, bouyant joyful loving beingness. Such gratitude replaced all that effort and strife. So humbling and liberating simultaneously. No effort required. No effort possible. It would have just created more ripples and hidden the raw, authentic truth. Just Be. My healing and authentic self, my connection to all was revealed in the release of all and in the subsequent, absolute acceptance of what is, at first out of sheer collapse and despair for a time, but eventually in simple being. Just breathing and being. Vajra. A realization of abiding clarity and bliss there all along, glowing, resonating, inside me all along was what I had been seeking. I wasn't aware of it, for all the interference of the effort and the trying and the seeking, the very seeking was impeding my experience of being. Seek what? Just be... it's fluid and it's never injured, despoiled, lost or broken. Spotless.

chop wood and carry water...

sure could be... seems to me, truths encompass all, or they're not a reflection of truth. to me, it's an observation. vajra. no ism implied or required, but none excluded either. to me suffering is a crisis of perception

although, while pain seems inevitable, suffering is not.

I have no idea how any external source (book, person, or tradition) could ever effectively tell you (or anyone) what would be appropriate for how you express your view the world and in what manner you would adopt rituals and verbiage to reflect your perceptions of it... It's on you to interact with your inner and outer life and as I've found, throughout my life, my paradigm is not fixed but flows as well, so what was appropriate for me in my 20's is no longer the case in my late 40's. In the end though, there is no doubt to me what is in alignment with my authentic process and what is not. This inner compass is how I identify my Path. edit: to slay the usual grammar goblins

I don't follow it regularly, but when I catch a match at the pub I enjoy it.

hmm... both I guess, not sure where I'd draw the line of demarcation betwixt them...

I love the pranks! You can always tell when you've messed up and people are pissed, because the pranks stop.

It sure is interesting and still surprises me whenever it arises. To me, it;s seemed to be sensations associated with the wei qi field, but I have no certainty of that. Some of the aspects of it seem incongruous with how that field has been explained to me so far by my teachers. The phrase I bolded really resonates though... with the sense I've long had that any concept or idea of me being a separate entity, is due to my perception of the energy patterns. And those which are based around my thoughts, emotions and physical form, seems to easily identify that pattern as a 'self'. Yet, within cultivation, that field extends, morphs, expands/contracts and interacts with other patterns in ways that defy any sense of separation in any meaningful manner. Shared presence is a great way of describing the sense of it. Patterns within patterns. Cycles. The smallest of scales mirroring the largest. As Above, So Below. As Within, Without.

lol... water buffalo 1.. production 0! I'm a Propmaker, in IATSE 44. I build scenery and certain special props, and am an occasional f/x sidekick. I really love it, the intense, immersive nature of the work while on a project and the subsequent freedom of having weeks off between projects allowing me to pursue some things beyond work that aren't feasible on a more traditional job/cubicle schedule. I most appreciate being able to see some amazing places and routinely doing something new. One of my highlight days was hanging, suspended in a harness from the helicopter pad atop one of downtown LA's taller buildings while doing a setup for a rooftop bar/fight scene.

Intention is intention to me. I'd say it all depends what you're praying about and for...

All sorts of feelings: Magnetic fields in front of the palms is very common. Puffy hands... hands that are two or three times thicker than usual. Cloud hands. As the hands move the sensation of mist or clouds streaming between the fingers and around the lower arms. Air flowing, out of the feet and palms. Water flowing under the skin, usually in the legs but all over the body at various times. Electrical pulsing and crackling in the feet. This occurred in the beginning but left off after a year or so. Almost immediately at the beginning of every form, a magnetic flow along the right side of my abdomen, leading from the MDT, downward to the LDT. This can sometimes stay and pulse throughout the form, or else it dies off after a couple of minutes and does not return. Warm waves emanating from the core during the final phases of any moving form. Expansion of individual parts of the body, face, arms, torso: feeling like they are 3-10 times larger than normal. Expansion of the entire body. Sense that the body is made of dense mist or fog.

Yea, it's funny how a religious mindset can work for some folks but it usually soon gets bent... they feel this compulsion to extrapolate outward and assume that what they've found that works for them, must be the way to work for everyone and for their own good, all others must be turned away from their ignorance and brought to the 'one truth' even if by force, in order to save them. Truly scary shit. Justified Crusade type scary shit. Reminds me a bit of the folks who turn to a vegan or vegetarian diet and it heals them and helps them, then they go all fundamentalist about it and assume that it will be better for everyone and begin a crusade to save the broken and ignorant, not taking into account that various blood types don't respond the same to that type of intake. Projection and assumption seem to be the precursors to 'justified' acts of saving. Justified is currently in my top 10 scariest words of the English language.

Of the Abrams series, I prefer the first two, but this one also had the charm of those... It was just fun and didn't try to be more than that. I appreciate the way they honor the original while still being their own thing, that takes some skill. There were a couple of appropriately unimaginable moments that kept it campy and star trekkish and from taking itself too seriously. Good fun. As to the awareness underlying all Jim, I don't have pretty words for that, the experiences that engender that sentiment in me are beyond words. At times the Taoists and Buddhists and the Bleeding Edge Physicists come close, but I'll leave it to them. For me the experience and the living sense of it is enough.

Speaking of life forms... just took my gal to see the latest Star Trek. Sadly I didn't get to work on this one, but it was a fun watch. I still hold that the origin of humans is awareness. And awareness lies under all.

and all humans start out female...

start a thread mate... I'm pretty much endlessly fascinated by the interactions of primate minds

The Mists of Avalon.

In my experience it is not possible to be separated from source, ever, in any capacity... So practice as you will, when you choose and best to you on your path mate!

Magic Johnson

Bad news has good legs and sells well. And the desire to share the nasty bits is a tempting ego stroke that makes me feel powerful when I am the one doing the sharing and when I give in to it. One of the reasons I gave up tv and radio years ago is that I couldn't shake the awareness that it is at its core, to me, parasitic. It does not enlighten, educate, nor assist. It is designed to feed fear and sensationalism in the extreme and it's worth is near non-existent for me. Seems to me, that in the age of information we just hear about more things, in much quicker fashion so it seems that more is happening, but I still hold that for every piece of bad information, there are thousands of moments of pleasant, which are so common as to be ignored as 'normal' and 'boring'. When I started on my path of healing, I began by changing what I put in my mouth. Then I altered what I put on my body. Inevitably, that led to what I allow and foster in my mind. Slowly, I'm working on what comes out of my mouth as well. TV and radio are absurd and utterly ridiculous to me now after years of not ingesting them. The ads, the constant stream of suggestion and programming I find nauseating. Don't believe everything you think... they're just thoughts and just because you thought it, doesn't make it real, true, or important.