silent thunder

“I myself am made entirely of flaws, stitched together with good intentions.” Augusten Burroughs

eat healthy. exercise. die anyway. unknown

“If you prefer smoke over fire then get up now and leave. For I do not intend to perfume your mind's clothing with more sooty knowledge. No, I have something else in mind. Today I hold a flame in my left hand and a sword in my right. There will be no damage control today. For God is in a mood to plunder your riches and fling you nakedly into such breathtaking poverty that all that will be left of you will be a tendency to shine. So don't just sit around this flame choking on your mind. For this is no campfire song to mindlessly mantra yourself to sleep with. Jump now into the space between thoughts and exit this dream before I burn the damn place down.” Adyashanti

The last three years have been astoundingly harsh, challenging and traumatic for not just myself, but my wife and every single one of my close friends. It's staggering how much difficulty and massive life impact and change has churned in the lives of everyone close to me.

We were so blessed to have him for so long. What a talent! RIP

I work about 7-9 months a year depending on Hollywood. We live under our means and thus it's easy to save money and don't worry when I'm in between gigs... But it's certainly not the lifestyle for everyone. Not knowing if/when/what you'll be doing in a few weeks all throughout the year makes some folks utterly nuts. To me, I figure, the birds don't have jobs and they seem to do just fine... and squirrels survive Minnesota winters with a brain the size of an almond, so I should probably be alright. I use my time off to travel, hang out and cultivate full time.

Or one could build a life they don't feel the need to escape from... Still, can't see anything wrong with travel myself.

Agreed and echoed. Personality abounds among all the manifested.

I feel I should add that my practice is no longer very focused on my forms. They are no longer the pivot of my process. My focus is more and more on awareness of my natural breathing and its interaction with my mind and my emotional hooks throughout the day. The forms and the clearing of blockages began to make me aware that my next level of practice after forms, was how my breathing affected my body and my mind. It still stuns me just how much my breathing (and heartrate and subsequent mental process) changes when certain thoughts arise. Once that clarified, I became acutely aware, unable to avoid being aware, of how various foods and things affect my body, my mind and my emotions. After a couple years of altering and being very focused on what I put in my body and how it affected me, led me to then changing what I put on my body. Lotions, tooth pastes, soaps... Finally, recently I've started watching what I put in my mind... what I choose to read, watch, listen to, think about. TV has been gone for several years. Internet news is extremely limited and selective. My strongest daily improving impact has been on watching my breathing as I interact with media. Emotions and ideas are like waves... my practice is having the awareness and will, to choose which waves I will ride. Living authentically, being true to self. More than any form now, I am garnering highest benefit from being aware and authentic. In this space, any influence that shakes the center, immediately stirs awareness and attention. With intention, that attention, brings me out of the inertia of the emotional response to the impulse and allows me to release and not to ride certain thought/emotion waves. Being healthy now to me, is far more about what I linger on in thought, what I choose to bring into my mind, than what I eat, or if I play Qi Gong. Certain thoughts, certain modes of thinking, can cause energetic inertia that last weeks, months, decades even, where a harsh meal is processed in a few days, energetically. One thing that repeatedly has helped me get in deeper body awareness and mind open awareness, is when I become aware of my breathing at random points throughout the day, I simply breath in my next breath and really feel and sense the sensations of the bottoms' of my feet. For some reason, this then brings about a simultaneous, whole-body awareness and that thoughts don't seem to be able to settle onto and the mind clears so softly. This small, seemingly random practice, has more direct influence on my everyday well being and sense of calm, than any moving form or seated meditation, but I'm not sure I would have arrived here without them... hard to say. Bah I'm rambling...

Be yourself. Above all, be authentic. Don't apologize for what you need, or what makes you comfortable. And don't feel compelled to explain everything you do. I needed about 15 years of separation from my family in order to recalibrate and heal some things. Now that those muddy waters have cleared, I find even when around the old influences that would trigger emotional storms in me, no longer have the inertia that Apech mentioned and so I am unaffected in their presence and can hang out around my family and simply be. Oddly, my simply being there as my unapologetic, authentic self seems to have an affect on them... The Sage is in the world, but not of it. Occupy the center. The center is everywhere and everywhen. We are just often not settled enough to experience it consciously, but when we do, it can have a powerful calming affect on others. So the healing you seek, may be the healing you bring with you. I also see now after some years, as Apech also pointed out (man I like that post), that many of these triggers are mere echoes. Not real, not even present any longer, but merely the reverberations of old inertia that only remains, because I haven't released it yet. Tapes playing on loops due to familiarity and often, in my case, some latent desire to identify myself with their stories. When I finally realized I'm not the stories, they fell away effortlessly, leaving me. Sort of like peeling an onion. So many layers and so often to me it felt like... "am I really doing this again?" "I thought I was past all this?" But this kind of work on ourselves is cumulative. Even though we may feel like we are repeating the same steps, we are not. Change is constant and with awareness and intent, change can be channeled. And as we get to the center of the onion, much like the center of whatever inertial emotional issue we are working through, when we peel that last layer, we find... Emptiness. Authenticity. Simple Being. All that said, again I reinforce. Do what you need to be comfortable and feel no need to apologize. Few things can carry the inertia and powerful echoes like old family hurts and there were a couple of people I have had to consciously cut out completely. No matter how compassionate and loving, they are too broken to be near without enduring harm and at some point, our compassion must be for our self.

Well, I guess even a broken clock is right twice a day... but I have little use for one

Trophic Cascade is a scientific term for the cascading influence of the higher, alpha level predators and species on the entire eco-system that they inhabit, down to the most minute levels. It's definition: It's an offshoot of Systems Thinking and this short film How Wolves Change Rivers is a potent, quick explanation of the impact on the entire web, when one strand is affected. To me, it's a vivid portrayal of Te and Tao.

Thanks for adding the video link, not sure how that slipped out between the preview and posting.

Fire Hands and Pranayama, (even though one is not technically qi gong, they both rock my paradigm continually).

In my world, there is only one law. Harm no one. If harm is done. Isolate the predator. Then heal the victim and the predator if possible. Return both to independent life if possible. That's it. If that isn't possible, isolate the predator indefinitely and let things settle as they will. In all other things... stay the fuck out of it. One addendum to the above... is about harming yourself. If you are harming your self... have at it. It's your self. I have no interest, nor do I feel I, nor anyone else has some innate right in policing other people's personal paths. I find it supremely, negatively egotistical and offensive to think I, or anyone knows how others should treat themselves or what their path should be, providing they are not harming others. Caveat to this, the semantics involved in what constitutes and defines harm. Enter the lawyers and then my system breaks down entirely into word salad and mental shell games. Ah well, they're just thoughts after all. Not real. Far too often though, I think humans lose themselves, becoming almost possessed in the punishment of wrongs and then break the do no harm law in the punishment, making things worse not better. Look at the prison systems around the world. Mostly designed to do damage, often significantly more damage than was perpetrated originally. In the last few years, I find the most frightening word in the English language is 'justified'. I have come to this based on what I've observed, in myself and all around me, unspeakable and terrifying thoughts and acts of violence and hatred perpetrated by seemingly good people, because they feel justified. Look at any of the wars, or violence at the hands of religious, or political dogma. It's everywhere. I now see this as vile and endlessly saddening, pain body induced, revenge based, broken thinking. In myself, I look back on some of the things I wrote and did in retribution and cringe. These days I am constantly amazed at the darkness and sick intent expressed under the guise of justified punishment. On some level, I knew full well, that I was not helping anything, but simply inflicting more harm, yet it was ok, because it was justifiable. I can't even take refuge and say I was just a mindless animal lashing out... in many cases it is premeditated and that's what makes it so scary to me, because I see it in the news every day and I hear it in the conversations of people I love and admire when certain topics come up. The full cognitive function involved and the fervor and sadistic glee that comes with that sense that we have carte blanche to do anything we want, because we were wronged. I'm specifically reminded of the priests giving absolution to the knights for the sins they would commit in the future, regarding justified actions for the church in war time. As soon as people feel justified, it seems to foster an attitude and atmosphere of impunity and sadistic judgement within which, extremely dark and heinous acts are perpetrated, which would otherwise be vilified outright. One of the things I've lost in my travels on this plane, I'm so happy to say, is any desire to punish. I now see it as utterly worthless. Isolate the predators, but waste no energy on more harm. Spend all energy on healing and spend it freely on both the predator and the victim. Punishment is useless. Not only useless, vile, repugnant. In any situation where there is harm, rather than using what resources we possess to protect and heal, we seek to do more harm? That is insanity to me.

For a while about a year ago, it would come 2-3 times a week. This went on for months. It has leveled off now and will arise every few weeks. Utter gratitude and resounding joy, expressed seemingly on a cellular level, flowing outward in all directions and tears flowing freely with laughter. Such beauty, such love. Life is amazing.

Freaking Awesome! Thank you for sharing.

For me, University study was never about preparing for a job. It was tantamount to therapy. I designed my own independent degree under the watchful gaze of two amazing professors, for the express purpose of apostasy and self exploration. By the end, I had enough credits for two majors and three minors, never bothered picking up the diploma and only stopped attending classes, because my wife and I moved across country. I still consider myself a student... always have, hopefully always will. I work in a field that does not require a degree and yet, what I studied has everything to do with what I do and who I am, every. single. day. It is utterly invaluable to me. I can't overemphasize enough the value for me, of the environment of College/University. It is such a unique social setting. Some freedom and the first taste of being independent, yet still cloistered from much of the world. Several of the relationships I formed there have thrived and remain among my most valued treasures 30 years later. Even the shit and stupidity I encountered remain useful and instructive at the least. All around, I recommend it whole-heartedly. In fact, were I to win the lottery, I'd likely begin taking classes next semester. Hell... why wait for the lotto... edit: spelling goblins

Understanding why someone did, or said reprehensible things and feeling compassion for them does not mean there should no longer be consequences for those actions.

That is freaking awesome!

lmao! thanks for that...

This could easily be the case as what I'm pulling on was from what came up talking about marriage with my friends back in college when I was writing about it and looking into it around the time my wife and I met... That was a couple decades ago now

This is the method taught to me by my teacher and what I use regularly. We use reverse breathing and standard breathing in alternating cycles. When we are reverse breathing, on the inhale the tongue connects to the back of the teeth, in the Wind position of the diagram posted by Andrei. On the exhale the tongue relaxes. During standard breathing the tongue remains relaxed during inhale and exhale.

I find silence, intense attention and acute listening to be best. That and reassuring physical touch, if appropriate. I'm amazed, humbled and often a bit overwhelmed as people often share intense, deep and painful truths with me. Coworkers, strangers, it's wild. More often than not, my words are rather obvious and simple, but only pertinent to that one situation, so laying out a guideline of what to say wouldn't be possible to me. I used to strive to say the perfect thing though, especially with my wife or a very close friend, both of whom endured horrific abuse at the hands of their families and have shared repressed memories, and all manner of stories over the decades. Of late, I strive to be fully present for them, to listen intently and what few things I do say, are generally not answers, they are gentle reassurances, or questions that allow the person to walk out the path they are already engaged in... It's really all about being a loving presence, more than an answer. While I'm not shy about advising if asked, I won't offer word one until asked.

Gifts, without written contracts are considered verbally binding contracts in the courts. Example: an engagement ring, after a broken engagement, despite having a receipt there is no obligation to return it, legally. It was a gift.