silent thunder

~Rumi

Every act of perception is a gamble old friend.

ok boomer...

Lois here's a thought... take your infantile bigotry, racism and thinly veiled anti-semitic beliefs and antics somewhere else.

I never knew Old Bay was Baltimore's baby. I'd always assumed it was Maine, or the NE. Spent a weekend in Baltimore once with my gal. It was good. We wandered about on Saturday and went to see the Ravens play the Vikings before hopping back to Brooklyn where we lived at the time. Highlight for me was the two train rides Being raised near a freighter line, I'm an old school choo choo guy.

Of all my ideas, few ever arise to full manifestation whether due to time available or motivation to commit to it. And even then, of those that i do pursue, i sometimes find i wish i'd have left them remain in the unmanifest . They are so pure there.

Dreams have always been central to my process of life. Interesting fact about me is that my first memory in this life is of a lucid dream that prompted an OBE. I was 4ish. I favor and deeply resonate with the Tibetan reality paradigm that considers waking life to be a shared dream state. It fits how we become aware in life once it's already ongoing. And when dreams start, they (for me) never start 'at the beginning', i always become aware in the dream once it's ongoing and already in process... i instrinsically find that extremely telling and important. Up until the last five years or so, I was lucid in dreams each night. Often choosing not top affect the dreamscape, aside from my decisions and being aware that i was engaged in a dream while it was active... Occasionally i would influence an aspect of the dreamscape, the environment, or characters appearing... but usually i would allow the scene to unfold while aware and then react as i chose within that framework. Lately, dreaming has been the opposite. The dreams are utterly absorbing and seem completely real while engaged in them, i experience awareness to the point of reacting as i do in waking life, though i have no idea it is occuring in a dream realm until waking. Quite disorienting for me after 50 years of lucidity, but i welcome it as a natural progression. One of my most intense lucid dreams followed me out of sleep and into the waking world. Full hypnogogic reality waking vision. One of two that are central reasons i suspect i so resonate with the Tibetan notion of the shared dreaming state of waking reality. Anyway, thanks for sharing @Owledge. Fascinating topic and a really potent share.

hmm... you've got me looking at my 'Lawry's' bottle sideways as well...

I think it's fantastic you were inspired and reached out. Connection and creativity are as close as I've come to a meaning for my life. Peace my friend.

Seeing as you're both still active here and my curiosity is peaked... I'm going to bump this and ask. @Owledge @CarsonZi Did anything ever come of this?

mirror...

You are truly lost in this mate. You seemingly can not see what my reaction was to at all. I leave you to whatever process you are engaged in.

As with many concepts of this calibur... when words are used to point to experiential processes they tend to readily absorb us out of experience and into mentation. Like the proverbial finger pointing to the moon. The finger is absorbing attention and often occludes the moon. Shunryu Suzuki: As soon as you see something (or describe it in words), you already start to intellectualize it. As soon as you intellectualize something, it is no longer what you saw (experienced).

*sigh* rabid ralis is at it again, tilting at windmills and looking for someone to blame. no energy to devote to your usual games today mate.

I find your projections revealing.

These succinctly reflect my process of release and my experience of unfolding in life, not arising or claiming or achieving. Constant letting go, allowing illusion, reaction, to fall away and settle as it will where it will. tzujan Flowers do not unfurl in deep striving and effort, they fall open 'of themselves'. Clouds do no study hard and attempt to form, or float. Water flows of itself without training or need for instruction. we are as we are and this is never not the case. Illusion, supposition, projection, assumption, thinking... all these occlude realization. awareness is.

Deep resonance with this. thank you for sharing.

This

Diapers are wholly unnecessary... why else do you think the Scots created kilts?

Some folks, having not experienced their own innate power will mistake its rising to a situation as fear, since prior to experiecing power, fear is the only thing they've experienced that comes close to the level of intensity that power has. Being unfamiliar with it, they mis-take it for fear. When in reality it is not fear manifesting at all, but their innate living power rising to a situation. I am not implying that this is the case with you. Only using it to demonstrate my experience of the power of true presence versus the feeling of fear arising.

whatever gets your through your night...

Nonduality is word. What the word attempts to convey is experiential awareness which lies beyond the ken of words to compress into expressible terms. The tao that can be spoken not being 'the tao' and such... So many of the topics we approach here lie in the same 'untouchable' waters. It's an occupational hazard of esotericism and philosophy. C'est la vie.

This nondualist you propose is curious Which nondualist? You asking what 'the concept of a nondualist' would accept? How could anyone know what it accepts? As it is not a reality to encounter, but a story character you've created in your mind to use in an abstracted scenario.

C'est la vie. We each experience reality from the center of our own awareness. Yours be quite different from mine.