silent thunder

Ha! Synchronicity! I was just talking and fawning over Tarkovsky to the crew in the truck on the drive back to the studio from our location today. Stalker and Solaris are two of my all time favorite films. That man was a genius storyteller.

I'm fortunate. Both my Dentist and my General Practitioner Dr are energy workers and both have long standing Qi Gong practices.

Find a teacher, if at all possible. But also, I would suggest to read anything you can find on the topic and devour them repeatedly, let them set for a year and hit them up again, it's amazing to me what new things will leap out at me from a reread given new insights via practical experience. I wouldn't presume to know whether or not you'll find anything useful in Dr Yang's material, but I found his book Roots of Chinese Qi Gong to be clear, concise and basic years ago. Maybe start there. For the record, I highly value even books and lectures that don't shed light on great truth, especially over time as more material is gathered and compared to deepening experience in practice. It's all grist for the mill and nothing is wasted. Sometimes it's ever easier to identify what I am not, than to nail down exactly what I am...

turns out... the leading cause of death... is life. ~Creighton Larson

I find one of the universe's impossibilities is to ever, for even a fraction of a millisecond, be separated from tao... ever.

It's been conclusively shown that electrical conductivity on meridian points is significantly higher than that of the skin just a millimeter off of those points...

Realized today that a strong contributing factor to my not taking myself so seriously, is my concerted effort over the last few years, based on strong, repeated observations, that I should stop taking much of what happens around me and to me, personally... It so often has absolutely nothing to do with me personally.

For me, it used to take a long time... and then I would cringe recalling my antics. Then, it still took a long time, but I would smile and chuckle sometimes at the 'seriousness' with which I took it all. Thankfully, of late, the full on laughter comes soon, sometimes before I even finish the sentences of my rants...

coalesce

Sounds divine... I'll start the water

Wherever you go you will find your teacher, as long as you have the eyes to see and the ears to hear. ~Shunryu Suzuki

Our perceptions are not reality. Kind of like a dream to me.

hmm, fun question... not that it matters... but that's definitely a fun bone to chew on.

No matter which way you pass, you stem from and return to source. Relax and be, or struggle and attain. No right or wrong. There is no being lost, or broken, nothing is ever wasted... there exists no one correct path. Look, touch and taste. Listen and hear. Be. Let your mind wander, fill it with knowledge, or pass your days sitting on the grass with an empty head, or build an empire. Which is correct?

Conditional love relies on the quality of expectation and fullfillment of obligation, the obligation to create and maintain the conditions that make that person feel love. They do not realize that love is generated within and have come to believe that love is entirely brought upon them by the external actions and words of those around them. The love of one who loves conditionally is present, only as long as the conditions they require to express that love are present. When they perceive that what 'they need from you' is no longer available, their love terminates, often into aggression. When you come into contact with a friend, or lover and the oxitocin is flowing and the love feelings are strong, the conditional lover is filled with joy and they love you because of 'how you make them feel'. However, when conditions change, as they constantly do, and if you find yourself in a position where you cannot do the things for this person that you normally do, if the conditional lover has empathy, they will usually deal with it, though grumblingly for a time. Without empathy, they will usually perceive that you are willfully denying them their love and in this case, we see affection turns into aggression. Conditional love is present only as long as the conditions the conditional lover is dependent upon are present. When these conditions change or are removed, this is where you see a loving companion turn instantly into seething violence, justifiably aimed at the one who 'took everything from me'. It's almost entirely self and internally created. These folks just don't have the capacity to observe love beyond how it makes them feel, how they feel it impacts them and how it makes their life pleasant or painful. In this respect, it no longer bothers me when folks near me find they have to leave, because 'you're not here for me', or 'you've changed'. My love is available because I love, not because you have earned it, or deserve it. My Mother used to make up lies about events and people in our life, to get me to reach out to her and care for her. It often had the desired affect... I would instantly drop what I was doing to rush to her and support, coddle, reify, puff up and indemnify her with lots of external shows of love. What she was not aware of, was that she need never have lied to get that from me. She felt in her core that she was unworthy of being loved just the way she was... so she manufactured events to create what she saw as the conditions that were required to get my love. Some of these lies, were incredibly painful for me and drove a wedge between me and my Father for some years. As time flowed, I eventually discovered the truth, as is always the case and when I confronted her, I did not lash out in hate. I hugged her for a long, long time, telling her again and again that there was nothing in the world she needed ever do, to gain my love. It was there all along. Nothing is required. She felt she needed these stories to get the love that was readily flowing the entire time. She felt unworthy and so, rather than just reach out and say what she needed, she manufactured events that she assumed would bring the desired results. I reconciled with my Father and we spent his remaining years together in the love that was present all along...

For Qi Gong I play Fire Hands from Wudang as taught by Zhou Ting-Jue. For stillness I sit as taught by Wang Liping also Wudang.

Struck me the other day how another aspect of life and reality emulates the dream states, based on something I think Karl said about the origin of the universe not having a set beginning, not being created, it just was... Reminded me a lot of how I interact with my dreams. Most often, there is not a clear recollection of the start of a dream, I become lucid as it plays out and I'm suddenly aware of things and my apparent place in them. Reality reflects dreams for me in this way. We have no clear, distinct recollection of the origin of reality. It just was and one moment, we found ourselves aware that we are interacting with it.

Wow, never knew I had so much in common with old Friedrich. We usually only hear the dark stuff. Nice one mate!

“Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men for the nastiest of motives will somehow work for the benefit of all”.

I walk everyday, barefoot now that I live in Southern California.

Really enjoying the conversation. I don't get too hung up on contradictions of this nature; I find when teachers use enough words, contradiction is nye on inevitable; especially when dealing with states and concepts outside of duality. As for the dead end concern... I have yet to experience anything that was a dead end. They just don't exist as far as I have experienced. Everything is grist for the mill. Nothing is wasted, lost, nor unused.

Water flows downhill.

If you are to watch that film, please do yourself a favor and watch the original by Tarokovsky. The 1972 version. What an amazing film. The recent American rehash was a mess of modern hollyweirdisms. Incredible concepts handled with mastery and skill. His other film Stalker, is my #1 favorite sci-fi film of all time, with only one special effect shot, right at the very end. Brilliant.

I find there to be something of an epidemic in human consciousness now. If a person thinks something and has a strong feeling about it, it must then, be true and real. My life experience has consistently shown me that this is not the case. Perceptions of sensory information are not exact, they are interpretations. Naive Realism is alive and well in our current world, indeed we are rife with its strong and often overpowering scent.

Fascinating topic and one that has been with me much of my life. I have long had the unshakable sense that one moment, I will awaken within the 'real world' in a manner similar to that in which I have become lucid in the dream states, a multitude of times. This sense is not one that I sought. It is with me unsought, without desire and it is persistent in a way that few other things in my life have been... I am agnostic and open mindedly, skeptical by nature due to a heavy religious upbringing and many experiences that are beyond the scope of the materialist paradigm to explain; indeed the reality I lived as a child, with its invisible man in the sky is one I woke up out of one moment, to become the man I am now, one level of awakening out of a dream in which I lived for the first 10-15 years of my life... and this fluid sense of how my consciousness and awareness relates to sensory information and the conditions of 'reality' around me... it is unshakable this dream-like quality and experience of all sensory life. It remains with me and has been reinforced through the decades, through my direct life experiences. On several occasions I have had paradigm shifting experiences of the fully conscious, tangible and fluid nature of space. Each left me with the resonant, indelible sense that space is far from empty, ever, even in the vacuum, and that everywhere it is fluid, alive and intimately relating to us on many levels at every moment. I have one particular samadhi experience I'm intending to share here as soon as I get some time when this current project ends, it occurred while I was sitting at the Getty sketching... but many times space has become a living, palpable part of me, or I have in a sense, awakened into a wider range of senses of self. My body becoming vast, or expanding to the parameters of the room in which I sat, or stood. Space in these experiences is intimately part of me and I am a physical part of it. I can feel it as clearly as I can feel the cotton of my shirt on my skin or the keys under my finger tips. Something Joseph Campbell said always resonates whenever this topic comes to mind for long. "Dreams are private myths. Myths are public dreams." This sense for me is unshakable, even as I am skeptical about the nuts and bolts of it. Reality seems like a communal dream state to me. Subjective experiences of time and space have constantly reinforced this for me. However, this state does not respond whimsically and instantly to the intentions of one consciousness. It being a slow, dense and shared state, it remains malleable and fluid, but slow to alter compared to the instant reflections of intent in the high vibrational state of the individual dreaming. Great topic. Great discussion. Thanks.