silent thunder

Much resonance from here on this... for me acceptance is one of three core mental processes at the heart of my cultivation. Acknowledgement, Acceptance and Radical Release. Acknowledge what is, accept that it is, accept that i will act, or not act regarding it and release of what is as what is, (the i am included). Humor (a form of acceptance and release) it seems can be particularly effective in undercutting hate. Truly. Well said.

Sounds like the title track from the self-titled album... conversations with a mirror.

@liminal_luke No sense that she's trying to communicate anything here my friend, aside from spilling her inner state onto anyone who'll pay attention. I think Dionne Warwick nailed it in cases like this. 'Walk on by'.

When your friend is pointing to the Moon. Don't look at their finger.

Hey @liminal_luke I know you didn't ask me but check out Almazan Kitchen and Chef John from Food Wishes on youtube. Almazan for inspiration and Chef John for nuts n bolts. Food Wishes has an incredible catalogue of recipes and his descriptions of the process are so clear and easy to follow. Almazan Kitchen is part ASMR and part the most amazing food porn I've ever watched. More useful for inspiration as they don't really speak, they just let you watch them cook out in nature somewhere in Serbia, over open flames utilizing utensils they often carve on site. Bonus... you sometimes get to see their pet owl that follows them about on the trails. Natural cooking of the highest order. They were the inspiration for the following thread in the rabbit hole some years back.

Still looking for the nuggets on the chickens over here...

Most every day is mother's day, if you're wired that way. i am. Though as the years pass, I relish the excuse to hype it up and take it to the level on a day dedicated to it. Through dear friends though I know not everyone had a great experience with mum, and for some it was downright traumatic, so I don't belittle folks who pay it no mind. To each, their own and c'est la vie.

“To see a World in a Grain of Sand And a Heaven in a Wild Flower, Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand And Eternity in an hour.” ― William Blake, Auguries of Innocence

Be whole, not perfect. Kazuaki Tanahashi Momiji Yamanishi: He was a teacher of mine at a Buddhist Monastery. I asked him should I go back and try to correct that what I was working on. He replied, be whole not perfect.

Welcome to the Bums Iri.

this statement: a mirror of your own projection

Change is one of the constants of life. It is possible to shift, alter, change and transmute one's processes.

An all time favorite, from my Liquid Spine collection.

This nears the heart of my sense that we (humans) do not exhibit free will through choice. That what we refer to as choice as we experience it, is not the exhibition of conscious free will but the label we ascribe to the process of conditioned sub conscious responses to stimuli. This arises of itself once programmed into behavior patterning. We experience the illusion of choosing in awareness , but the precursors to conscious 'choice' are determined prior to us being aware of 'the choice'. The conditioned responses prompt action which arises tzujan. After the conditioned impulse to a response has already occured, we experience the conscious thought... and call that choice. This is behind why it's nigh on impossible to change certain behavioral patterns as their promptors and the process involved in them lies beneat the surface of conscious awareness in the subconscious. This is being studied by neurobiologists such as Donald Hoffman. Fascinating area. I hadn't thought to look into responsiveness in AI. Thanks for sharing mate.

-.-

It's in the drop menu when you click on your profile name, under Account Settings.

@WannabeDaoistAll_Infinity I don't think you'll find anything being offered by MIthras. He's making stuff up and posting non-sensically of late.

Drew seems highly imbalanced. His predatory nature is revealed time and again in his sharings here over the years. His view of women reads as highly objectifying and to me is a rather dangerous mixture of judgement/blame and fear/anxiety. He hyper sexualizes women and underage girls in addition to blaming them for his own thoughts, tendencies and obsessive notions regarding jing leakage, sex and communication. He bragged repeatedly about sexually assaulting teen girls in public spaces with his immense subtle energy field perturbations due to sitting in full lotus. I would recommend you cease feeding anxietous thinking about this topic all together. These thoughts arise within and not from the jing thievery of others who likely are not even aware of your presence. If you do only one thing, stop blaming such anxiety on women in your life. These fears and this thinking arises within, not from without. Sit down, calm your breathing and grow quiet. As mind begins to quiet, rest in this place and begin to explore within your own awarness. The answers you seek are there.

I would not take Mithras literally in these responses, as he appears to be posting in a random stream of consciousness/word salad pattern lately. It's been going on for some time now. If it were me in your position, I'd revisit Ilumaren and Trunk's advisements; and I'd cease all mentation and formal movement based meditations for a while and focus purely on grounding mind and body. Long walks, mellow diet and seek out a qualified dr of chinese medicine if one is in your area.

Wecome Fabio.

Hey mate. Don't blame your inexperience. I've been on this road for decades and what Mithra shared does not form a cohesive line that I can follow to any direct information of relevance to your question. (side note: His posting style has shifted of late, into more of a stream of consciousness with randomly sprinkled 'esoteric' sounding phrases mixed in, rather than direct conversations with others.) They are poetic, but I find them confusing and am unable to follow them. I recommend you seek out and use an in person teacher for cultivation, if the intent and motive are there, a teacher will usually become apparent to the seeker. Though I've always lived in major cities so this has immensely aided my search. This may not be an option depending where you're located, so there is a book my teacher (longmen pai lineage) recommends to his students related to our path of study. The Secret of the Golden Flower, translation by Richard Wilhelm. While I find books to be very challenging as sources for study and practice of this nature, I'm kind of a turtle and a bit of a dull stone in these arts. That book would have not aided me much without my living teachers guidance, but for others it may not be so. The books of Dr Yang Jwing-Ming I found very helpful for basic terminology, philosophical and taoist cosmology as well as some practical applications, meditations and stretches. Good hunting to you!

While putting my response together a voice in my mind repeatedly suggested that very notion. Perhaps this is why abiding in silence and cultivating space for mind to quiet is a cornerstone practice in nearly every lineage and line of self discovery. My call sign here is drawn from an experience of profound silence shared with my partner, while resting deep in a ravine in the Badlands one August afternoon. We'd come to rest after several hours hiking up this canyon split. We hadn't spoken in some hours which is nothing unusual for us while hiking. After a time sitting however we each became accutely aware of a silence so dense, so pervasive, so penetrating, it dwarved all senses, all thinking. The notion that I had never experienced true silence like this was acute. The sense that where we'd settled was devoid of any kind of organic life, no insects, no vegetation. Nothing but us for quite some space. And then the internal sound began. A faint rushing sound, like a raging river, far off. We looked at one another simultaneously with questioning eyes... and asked without speaking "are you getting this?" We each nodded and then in growing awe we each perceived the very faint rushing sound began growing, while all about the utter silence damped down about us. This rushing sound at first like water, steadily grew in intensity until it was no longer water but absolute roaring silent thunder. Obliterating all notions, all concepts. At one point the following thought crossed my mind. If this continues, I will cease. My mind will cease and my very body will become shaken apart and I (ego) will cease to be. We stood up together and walked out of the ravine, only sharing our mirrored experience after regaining the car and heading toward our camp site. Our experience was shared and nigh on identical. I may forget my son's birthday some day, but I doubt I could ever forget the impact of that silent roar. It dwarved all other experiences in this life.

The conversation is bringing to mind a Druidic axiom I encountered in my early studies that 35 years later, still resonates. Thanks to all contributing, this was a wonderful way to start my day. A human is always three things, simultaneously. A human is what she thinks she is. She is what others think she is. And she is what she really is. The first two seem to me to apply to the realm of senses and form, and are relative and subject to and subjective of our current perceptual apparatus and process (whatever species that may be), conditioning and personal/special limitations. It seems we always experience life from the center of our own awareness, hence why Samsara and Maya are so convincingly, seemingly 'real'. The latter represents the ground state of The Absolute and encompasses all that we cannot put into words, all that lies beyond the ken of our perception, beyond the relative speaking and word based conceptual thinking mind. It 'is what is', and may or may not ever be engaged by the relative; yet it seemingly arises tzujan and abides of itself, and is the spring from which the relative is dependent. It is True Awareness to my small awareness. Perception and 'the tao that can be spoken of' seems to be the relative process of awareness sifting the absolute through the filter of our experience at the center of our individual awareness. It is elevant only to the modeling process of the perceiving apparatus in the moment, in whatever form that awareness is streaming through currently. Of late, the 'tao that cannot be spoken' is Pure Raw Awareness, expansive, penetrating, all encompassing... or these words seem the most apt concept for my relative mind to apply to try and describe what is by its nature, indescribable. What the Absolute may be. Always challenging to engage in speaking about such matters to my small mind. I'm re-minded of two other sayings that resonate. “The contradiction so puzzling to the ordinary way of thinking comes from the fact that we have to use language to communicate our inner experience, which in its very nature transcends linguistics.” -- D.T. Suzuki As soon as you see something, you already start to intellectualize it. As soon as you intellectualize something, it is no longer what you saw. ~Shunryu Suzuki