silent thunder

When I could not walk, I would play the old Kung Fu forms in my mind, first as a way to alleviate boredom and to escape the constant pain. Eventually I continued because it was the only way I could still play the forms. While the muscles would not be worked, it turns out the pathways of energy did not realize it was 'fantasy' and responded accordingly. For some months a couple of years ago, as I would lay down to sleep every night, I would work a form in my mind as vividly as I could imagine, with the intention of playing Qi Gong lucidly in the dream state. Some weeks into the practice, I became lucid and had this experience. * I became lucid with the realization that energy was flowing freely and with strength along the Du/Ren channels. After some time in this state, I became disassociated with my dream body and yet maintained full awareness and sensation of the flowing energy within my dream body. I realized I was now looking at myself from outside. I was staring at my own body (even as I could feel the MCO flowing in it), my dream body was seated inside an egg, that egg was housed in the trunk of a friendly old tree.* Dream work is invaluable in my experience. I have learned things of myself in the dreamscapes, that are as impacting, enlightening and valuable as anything I have experienced in what we collectively call the 'waking life'. I wish you vivid journeys.

Very potent words. Thank you for sharing. I'm going to foster these words inside a while and see what surfaces.

so I posed the question to my son... his answer. "I don't know it well enough to give a reasonable explanation"

space seems a product of perception

I was overwhelmed in previously blocked energy when I released the sense of guilt and pressure to 'rigidly practice', or the constant nagging, doubting sense that I wasn't able to do enough because of the demands of family life. What rubbish! Life is practice. Dishes, laundry, my son's homework, building towering scenery, showers, sitting in traffic... awareness, presence and breath are not precluded in any of it. With the realization that my practice is not strict, it's not limited to my cushion time, or to when I'm 'waving my hands in the air', awareness of breath into each action and interaction with energy in all that transpires opened up realization that there is breath and awareness always, no matter what my surrounding conditions, I am always this fluid connection, this viable presence. Even when I'm not 'aware' of it. This process is ongoing. It's all cumulative. Nothing is wasted. Nothing is lost, it's all grist for the mill. We cannot be stained, withered, or broken. Your intention shines mate. You're doing fine.

This morning, watching the various songbirds dive in and out maneuver each other for the seeds and bread bits that are my daily offering, I'm reminded of the cream stealing Blue Tits of Britain circa WW1. http://brendaruble.com/wp/?p=2153 That story has always fascinated me. Morphic fields and what not... but in the end, I just love the clever, pretty lovelies no matter what they get up to.

well put my friend.

What bird is screeching? Fools talk while Sages listen. Whose voice is that now?

Newton

cats give me the sense that they embody what I would call mindfulness and emptiness by turns...

synchronicity. Before logging on I was talking with my wife on our balcony and our conversation came to this point.... "I'm past any real committed discussion of any aspect of the over inflated importance of the differences between men and women any longer, it's got no gas left... and all the subsequent gender malice and over simplified gender roles our culture stuffs us into from birth that go along with it is so tired and played out, it's going to die out finally... this whole process of displaying and controlling our sexuality into rigid male and female separate roles superimposed by ideas... what a sad, laughable oversimplification... we are fluid beings, flowing verbs always in flux, nurturing and hunting by turns male and female both, embodied in the authentic expressions to the conditions of life. We always embody both male and female energy... always. All of us start out female for the love of life... Any more, duality as an opposing concept is ridiculous... there is the unified expression of human, which manifests as us... all of us completely and collectively... human is human, every tribe, nation and cult... it's just human in all the unified myriad reflections from nurturing to the hunt."

booyakasha!

not sure about becoming anything but when embracing, or embodying the childlike I nurture any instinctual curiosity foster authentic presence (lack of pretense) embody full, undiluted expressions release into dilution of self in play/environment/moment

Perhaps it's a semantic thing, but I believe the idea is to be child-like, not childish. Very different states of being.

You are pursuing your passion, I dare say you could be the one offering advice to many others my friend. May your path be full and rewarding!

Nice! Thanks for sharing Mate!

Hey there. I have spent time in Manistique where my Father lived some time ago. Beautiful up there... welcome to the bums.

We are fluid verbs, not static nouns No thing is of any one essential nature, but an abiding flow between extremes of one unity that we express as duality. Given conditions will bring out attributes within the overall arching template of behaviors, depending on a person's upbringing, familial and social conditioning.

Yes! This resonates poignantly. Release, of late, is my action. Abiding space... simple awareness resting without effort in the fluidity of the life process. Non impeding, abiding and empty. bliss

I keep returning to this... To claim an origin there must be a break... a before and after. Where is that I keep wondering... In a fluid, never static universe, where is the line of demarcation, the distinction point of human from cosmos, exactly? In what capacity are we separate that we could have some identifiable independent origin? Where to make the distinction between human and universe... flowing, fluid actionable body of human, fluid epoch of the same atoms which in my hands seemingly now and yet once within stars bursting in light and never a stopping point in between? The action of my thymus as intimately and unmistakably flowing still with the pulse of the supernovae. Simple, effortless, like acorns settling on soil.

Your words and thoughts resonate so potently with my own Orion. Seeking, effort, desire... leave no space for being. To experience now is all but impossible in this... My operative term now and my mantra is release... At first I just released the anger, resentment and some of the painful old stories. Recently this release is opening up into the fluid action and feeling of every aware moment. Let go, just be. It's so ridiculously, intimately close... now, I find myself laughing raucously at the 'simplest' of moments... the effort itself was masking the truth, yet even untruth serves truth and so nothing is able to be truly hidden. Nothing is ever lost, broken, soiled, nor marred in any way. Obscured, masked by effort and seeking and wanting, but never apart. Always the source is and we do not even return to the source... how to return to that which one is incapable of leaving? one of the few absolutes i maintain at this fluid juncture... 'the one true impossibility is to ever be separated from 'it', by even a hundredth of a hair's width, for even a fraction of a millisecond... ever.' Release is my laughter and my love and my emptiness... let the fluid moment flow as we all flow... we are none of us nouns... but fluid verbs, flowing and roiling in that which is all in all.

Great book. Incredible man. Only wish I'd encountered him a couple decades earlier in life...

Carly said she had some in her coffee

reciprocal transmissions

I have a two traditionally made Lakota Chanunpa Pipes, one of them for over 25 years now, picked it up on my honeymoon. In Southeastern Minnesota, they still carve the soft red pipestone in the traditional manner and grow the Kinni Kinnick, Cedar Sage and various other herbs, hand picked and dried in the traditional manner. Regularly, I will stand on the balcony under the sky and offer my gratitude and high thoughts to the sky people as I light the pipe and offer it to any of those I love who happen to be with me at the time. We pass it around and chat and share good conversation, or even better silence. Love and Blessings carried on the Wind.