silent thunder

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

Paradise!

My fave is whatever's in season Each summer during the heatwave I become a dull fledged fruitarian for a few weeks.

so perfectly obvious; so wholly overlooked. who could find what is? amidst all this seeking and straining? amidst this ceaseless striving and searching and fretting and overthinking and counter-guessing? breath this way, squat in this manner, sit like this, drink this tincture, swallow this pill, apply this balm... when all there is, is what is, and this that is... this is it. here now as is perfectly imperfect wabi sabi tzujan

Not sitting to meditate. Not sitting to achieve enlightenment. Not sitting to avoid anything. No need to sit at all. simple being... as is. this is it.

No teaching could be more direct than to just sit down. Shunryu Suzuki

“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

Echoing the sentiments of stirling, this mind recalls a concept shared by Shunryu Suzuki that resonates. "No teaching could be more direct than just to sit down."

Well met and welcome rhodopteryx.

All those beaches about the planet with all those billions of tons of poor 'displaced' silica crystal sand... oh the horror!

That talk was my introduction to Hoffman and his research and insights into the nature of our perceptual modeling process. I deeply appreciate it. The mirroring aspects of Hoffman's work to my own experiences in long term meditation are staggeringly intimate. For any inclined, this extended 2 hour interview explores the concepts in that ted talk in greater depth and is a really wonderful conversation/exploration of the research.

no white flags today. pre-perceptual presence. a raw awareness...

“Physics and evolution point to the same conclusion: spacetime and objects are not foundational. Something else is more fundamental, and spacetime emerges from it.” ― Donald D. Hoffman “Hence our decline of insight as we shift our gaze from human to ant to quark. Our decline of insight should not be mistaken for an insight into decline—a progressive poverty inherent in objective reality. The decline is in our interface, in our perceptions. But we externalize it; we pin it on reality. Then we erect, from this erroneous reification, an ontology of physicalism.” ― Donald D. Hoffman, The Case Against Reality “No conscious agent can describe itself completely. The very attempt adds more experiences to the agent, which multiplies the complexity of its decisions and actions in light of those new experiences, which requires yet more experiences to capture those more complex decisions and actions, and so on in a vicious loop of incompleteness. A conscious agent must therefore remain, at least in part, unconscious to itself. Recall that what conscious realism claims to be fundamental is not just conscious experiences, but conscious agents. An agent cannot experience itself in its entirety, no matter how large its repertoire of experiences.” ~ Donald Hoffman

He's a true inspiration. Really remarkable work he's been pursuing for several decades now, all while the bearers of the 'standard model' of academia attack him relentlessly. I sense his insights will be of massive benefit and influence in the coming centuries. Game changing insights into the nature and tenets of the source field/structure of the vacuum as per Dirac's discoveries and its influence/interactivity with the phenomenal and noumenal realms... it's Tesla level realization on several fronts. His 8 part series on amazon is riveting.

Tesla made some intriguing claims/statements about crystals in writings I encountered decades ago. If interested, you may want to look into his musings for his take on their potential uses/effects.

These two playing concurrently on loop this fine rainy morning...

Diving back into Rupert Sheldrake's Morphic Resonance. My first experience of it was a paradigm shifting and utterly fascinating exploration of the nature of self organizing systems to seemingly inherit habits from previous, similar systems. To me, it leans heavily on buddhist notions of co-arising interdependency, taoist conceptual cosmology and Indra's Net. So I'm revisiting that while I wait for the arrival of the latest edition of his commentary on the state of dogma in academia.

Welcome to the Bums mate.

No teaching could be more direct than just to sit down. Shunryu Suzuki

You can edit your posts or delete the text within them once they've been posted, but there is no delete feature in the forum. As a rule Moderator's will not delete posts. Though some may be temporarily hidden, or moved to a section that lies beyond search engine's ability to access if deemed necessary. There is a personal section of the forum however, where any member may ask for and keep a personal practice journal, like a mini forum. In that section, you will have full moderator functions allowing you to hide, edit and or delete entire threads or individual posts as you see fit. Any member can request a personal journal in this thread here.

The truth is that you already are what you are seeking. Adyashanti Go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows. Rainer Maria Rilke The Gateless Gate: Nansen's "Ordinary Mind Is the Way" Case 19: Jõshû asked Nansen, "What is the Way?" "Ordinary mind is the Way," Nansen replied. "Shall I try to seek after it?" Jõshû asked. "If you try for it, you will become separated from it," responded Nansen. "How can I know the Way unless I try for it?" persisted Jõshû. Nansen said, "The Way is not a matter of knowing or not knowing. Knowing is delusion; not knowing is confusion. When you have really reached the true Way beyond doubt, you will find it as vast and boundless as outer space. How can it be talked about on the level of right and wrong?" With these words, Jõshû came to a sudden realization. The birds have vanished into the sky and now the last cloud drains away. We sit together the mountain and me, until only the mountain remains. ― Li Po