silent thunder

mmm toast is yummy!

Boy that creates a bit of cognitive dissonance with the America we were 'taught about' in 'school'. Oy! I love that dissonance! I didn't always, but as so many revelations have come out of those dissonant moments, I've come to treasure it/them.

I wonder how temperatures affect shen. Are higher vibrational frequencies (those of a higher octave) pretty much unfazed by fluctuations of temperature as we experience it in the denser fields? I know one of my teachers was seemingly unaffected by intense heat. And the concept of Wei Chi and its protective properties. Interesting stuff...

Form and non-form, I get the sense they exist in a breath-like relationship. Give and take. The bellows analogy. The action of Tao is like a bellows. Is a building defined by the edges of its 'material' corners? Or are the corners defined by their relationship to the space unoccupied? I've always loved verse 11 for planting this concept. Form and function, space and usefulness. One of my favorite places in Los Angeles is the Getty Museum, its design has some taoist elements, specifically in the architecture. The open spaces created by the structure of the buildings, balconies, pillars and how the buildings relate to each other with bridges, water, stone and plants, creates an awesome array of 'negative space sculptures' that I find more interesting than the art on the walls of the galleries inside. It's also free to the public. Another great taoist element imo. Thanks for the post, good stuff!

Reminds me of an article regarding planets in our system and how they are giving off more light than was being reflected by the sun. Our own bodies are luminous, bio-photons are cascading off of our bodies every moment. So we create light in our process. Hah... and now Yoda pops into my head "Luminous beings are we... not this crude matter." I'd have to disagree on semantics with yoda though, matter is light, just another variation in frequency.

Hey Sree. I have traveled extensively but only in America, Canada and Mexico. My experience with other cultures has come mainly from living in NYC for 7 years after college and then spending the last 13 in LA. We are blessed now to have 3 families from Pakistan, 1 from Macedonia and 2 from Mexico living right nearby. Our neighborhood is also heavily Asian and Middle Eastern. Makes for a great mix of people and smells around dinner time. Never have made the trip across the pond, but it will happen. My son is old enough now to remember things (the first trips I recall well were when I was about 7), so we're planning on going to Europe in the next year or two. My wife has a house on the North Sea that was her Oma's. The family rents it out during the summer, for folks coming to take advantage of the health benefits of the area, so we'll go hang out there, then catch a boat and do some camping up in Norway. I have a few other places on my bucket list. Tibet. Wu Dang Mtn. Thailand and Machu Picchu. We'll see how things play out. As for the spicy shrimp, the one she was eating the night I was posting was from a Thai restaurant we always go to when we see a movie. But she makes a killer coconut milk curry for me from time to time that makes me melt. I'm really blessed. Dang, even after stuffing myself with grilled veggies n pie, my stomach is telling me to get some of that going right now lol. Well, time for a brief sitting meditation and then hopefully some killer lucid dreams. Cheers!

Those who start wars never fight them. When young people refuse to pick up a weapon and obediently kill whoever is pointed at, it will be a great day.

Synchronicity. Love that stuff man! Have an awesome day Bums and thanks for the great flux of bones for my mind to chew on! I'm off to a BBQ with the family, but a part of me will be mulling over all this great stuff all day long.

He was in Russia, regardless of his personal atheism or anyism, he was surrounded at all times by the influences of his culture. So even though he's identifying in conscious life as atheist and has no 'interest' in spirituality before his NDE. He was exposed constantly to some pretty heavy Orthodox influences by his culture all his life. His peripheral experiences were filled with spiritual material for the mind to use as symbols when attempting to adapt information from an experience that transcends mind thought/word/symbols. Not surprising he'd end up identifying spiritually with that framework of his family after his experience. After all, he said one of the key factors in the whole experience was love. The core of love is family. As his atheist paradigm was exposed to a spiritual experience, his mind was adapting this new information, it's pretty natural that the mind would draw from those peripheral spiritual experiences and symbols he was exposed to in conscious life.

Wow, that is one whopper of a NDE. I don't even know how you call it 'Near'.. three days is about as in depth as you can get! George gives a good description of his experience of non-duality. "God, I believe, is even more than the light, because God is also darkness. God is everything that exists, everything - and that is beyond our ability to comprehend at all." While I don't have a sense of a God with a personality. I get what he's talking about, his description of the Void is something I experienced in an OBE. "I didn't experience any sense of guilt or remorse for things I'd done. I didn't feel one way or another about my failures, faults, or achievements. All I felt was my life for what it is. And I was content with that. I accepted my life for what it is." Here is where it gets so tricky when trying to discuss the non-dual state. Because the mind gets involved and we're mired in association with Yin/Yang and the non-dual state is lost in this. His lack of guilt or remorse over failures or faults, his lack of joy in the triumphs... allude to this state of being beyond either yin or yang. It's incomprehensible when engaged in the identifying with anything process. But the sense of everything being right, or perfect is there and it's undeniable when you experience it, even when you can't give 'an answer'. There is no need for an answer, the reality is that all is right. Rilke is one of my favorite poets, not surprising to me he would lean on her to aid his attempt to describe his experience. In the end, live the questions. Live in love. What a great story, thanks for finding that link gentlewind.

Yea, I can't imagine holding that state while identifying with either yin or yang. Definitely. It feels like another level of awareness somewhere under or behind/beyond the conscious mind. It's too big for a thought, but I have an awareness of it. Cool, thanks. I hoped someone would pull a direct quote. That line has always resonated with me. I was raised Charismatic Lutheran, which involved some pretty cool gnostic elements. Healing hands, Words of wisdom, Speaking in tongues all happened in my presence growing up. That was one of the scriptures I would go back to again and again to ask people about at church or anywhere. I was scouring the bible for episodes of astral projection and mind trips to help understand my earlier experiences. Ezekial was like Odysseus to me back then lol. I can't stomach much in terms of any religion aside from interesting intellectual study, but the core teachings of Christ often resonate. I find the Jeffersonian Bible to be pretty handy for getting in touch with the idea of christ the teacher. More synchronicity, as we were walking down the stairs to go run errands my son asked me "What is the most powerful thing about me dad?". "Your curiosity." I answered.

Chess and Wei Chi, both humbled me as per 3bob's comment... Just when I thought I was getting to be hot shit... lmao down comes the humility hammer. My son likes chess so I asked him how he'd describe chess, (he's 7) and he said: Chess is for laying traps and not getting stuck in traps. On the topic, anyone play Go or Wei Chi online? if so where?

This is such a deep, wonderful spot. It's so potent. Illogical and yet true. At least to me, I feel it, I experience it. Words hedging around the description of a sense of awareness about something too big to fit into a thought. The state beyond duality. "If thine eye be single, thy whole being will be filled with Light..." Jesus, (supposedly). Regardless of who said it, this has been my obsessive mental bone to chew of late. I can't get away from this sense of perfection underlying all reality, even the heinous, cruel shit. It's damnably hard to talk about, but I can't escape the sense of it, when I'm open and flowing. As soon as I grasp onto, or avoid anything, that sense is utterly lost again, but its existence is palpable and it returns now more often. Unity. Perfection.

Hey there Dan. Welcome!

Wow so glad I posted this... that wording really resonates! Thank you. Each of the highlighted sentences as I read them, accompanied deep resonating waves in my presence.

Thanks Marble! That means a lot coming from you. I really wrestled with the concept of surrender and it kicked my head's ass for a long time. I'm reminded of how we used to float down the Apple River in Wisconsin as kids in tubes. It was about a 4-5 hour trip and ended in some fun rapids. It was effortless, unless we wanted to avoid something, or were drawn to something else. In those cases, we'd paddle our asses off to get to the goal, but otherwise, we just went with the flow. On one level it's semantics, but semantics are sometimes key for me as they relate to how something is defined, which is intrinsically related to how something is perceived. When I can find this less personal meaning of surrender: not as a form of 'fuck it I don't care what happens' but rather 'this is the flow of this moment', my natural place in the river becomes apparent and the power of it opens like a flower. Energy pathways open up with the breath of surrender and the flow of information from source is wide, allowing for 'good instinct', 'strong intuition' or 'good judgement' to kick in and make apparent the wide path, easily followed.

Interesting side note for me: Resistance and Surrender. I find that my most unfortunate decisions come when I am resisting the way conditions are in the now. The act of resistance cuts me off to the flow of information that underlies and supports the process. When I make decisions from a perspective of resistance to current conditions; (or more accurately), my refusal to accept the way things are instead of how I wish they were, or how I feel they should be, is a key factor as well. Choices made from a position of resistance seem to do just that, magnify the resistance and cause more dis-ease. When I am able to surrender (not give up), to the acceptance of conditions in the now, I feel instinctively that the choice that flows through me in these moments is more in accord with Tao. In old Norse Cosmology, this is the concept of 'Right Action' and it applies to the concept of a River of Fate. This is a bit OT, but it relates I think so bear with me as I work this out. Fate and Right Action are linked in this cosmology. In this view, my fate is like a river. This river is comprised of the conditions of my life, over which I exert little to no control, where I'm born, what the family energy is like (nurturing or aggressive etc) is there war, famine or abundance. The flow of my life is much like a river of conditions which will carry me down stream whether I fight or not. How I navigate, (the choices I appear to make), will exert some influence, but it's akin to swimming against the current or with it. This surrender I'm talking about is akin to a deep trust in the Tao that releases all resistance to the conditions of the now and I feel allows me to tap into more a more powerful flow of information on the underlying levels (some call it intuition, or just good judgement). I think the lack of resistance to the flow of the moment, opens meridians allowing 'Right Action' or 'Good Judgement' to flow through me.

Yea this place is an awesome mirror. Robert Anton Wilson really blew my head open to the relevance of this. I, for many years, operated on the illusion that I see the world as it is and interpret it accurately.

Absolutely. No fear. Alignment in the moment, which frees energy to flow. I have found my perception on choice to be empowering. Much the way I find there is deep abiding power in the act of surrender. Not surrender as in giving up and just becoming a limp fish with no care, passion or drive. A surrender that is a cognitive acceptance of conditions as they are, that I feel, allows more clarity in the now and brings awareness about conditions so I can maximize what influence I do possess in the moment, when not consumed by how I should be changing the past, or warping things for the future. Hope that makes sense, I'm still waking up here. There is an empowering quality to surrender that leaves an inner freedom that shines.

This concept has been knocking around in me for a while now as well. Since choice is related to thought and thought is rooted in illusion, they must be transcended. I'm reminded of the images of Shiva, holding the recently decapitated head of Vishnu in one of her hands. In order to transcend thought realms and have the experience of the higher realms, I must kill any image of a god I hold in order to move past it because, in the end, it's just another thought.

Seems to me, choice is minimal. There is some, but, to me, it exists within powerful conditions that shape it. So powerful that, to me, it seems that the apparent power of individual choice is negligible. Choice and free will, to me, seems to suggest power. The power to 'do something'. Make a decision and follow it out. But what are the underlying conditions that support and shape any decision? This to me holds the key to ferreting out how much I really choose anything. If we choose our parents, then I think we have some real choice about our life pattern/experience. Otherwise, genetic influence/karmic influence, geographic/environmental/social/political/familial/religious-non religious influences carry so much more power in the process and formation of the underlying causality of any choice, that it, to me, renders the idea of individual exertion of power in a choice, a reflexive action, rather than any kind of intended individual expression of power. If we choose our parents I think we have some serious influence on the pattern of our life. If not, then, for me, the conditions are really the dominant factor, the causality of any decision we make, rendering any perception of personal power rather impotent from the view of the self. My old perception of choice has spiraled outward through my perceived awareness of the spontaneous interaction of conditions known as the universe.

Perhaps the system could replace itself with Wu Wei... oh wait...

Agreed. I would also put forward the dandelion principle in their failure to wipe out the religion with violence. The action that condition put forward in causality was one of spreading high level rinpoches and lamas and teachings all over the world in exile, thus spreading the religion in a way it might never have done had they left Tibet to its own inertia.

My rules for hallucinogens. Environment is the main trigger, people and surroundings. Natural outdoor setting is almost always my prerequisite. Anything heavy or deep emotionally that happens the day of a trip, will likely be processed or come up in depth during the trip. Expect it, or delay the trip for another time. Be around people you genuinely love. The best guide is someone who's done it, that you have a strong heart connection to. Trust in a trip is like mana in a video game, pure magic juice.