silent thunder

Thank you for sharing wolf. I'm reminded why I'm regularly so grateful for this place... All these years later, your words resonate and my experience is affected. Such a potent and simple practice. Again, thanks

Subjective and always shifting experientially... time seems an effervescent self projected experience of comparison and memory...

My experience of Time seems a function of Awareness. It seems an interpretation my awareness creates through memory and comparison.

Sometimes I seek out the guests for Dinner and sometimes the guests present themselves. Authors being recommended routinely leads to co-reading several books at once. And suddenly I realize I'm hosting another TimeTravelDinner conversation. It happens routinely that seemingly unrelated books will overlap in synchronistic manners for me. Right now the guests who "popped by" are: Victor Fankl, Marcus Aurelius and Carl Jung

They love my wife. I'm ignored. I grew up in Minnesota and have had many hundreds of thousands of bites growing up. Body no longer reacts even on the rare chance one does stop for a taste. My wife however, is always covered when outdoors and when she sleeps, even in the heat. And they go after any exposed spots. She sometimes wakes up, looking like a prize fighter after a rough match. She's A- while I'm O+.

We live not far from you Mig. On ground floor we had a steady stream of scouts moving through and about the house. I suspect there was a massive colony under that building and in the surrounding area. We used chalk barriers for the big openings and were diligent about not leaving food about, crumbs and wiping surfaces. Not much can be done about scouts, but if there's nothing found to eat and carry back, no one else shows up. In that place we set our cats food bowl, in a slightly larger bowl that had a bit of water in it, creating a mote around the food. This allowed our cats access to food while preventing the bowl from attracting a column and being overrun. Where we live now, second floor we've not had any ants I can recall. Though the downstairs neighbors keep their recycling in the yard until there's a couple dozen bags, then they make their run to recycle it. Every so often there is a hatching of roaches. My wife smashes them with no question and no double thinking. I don't always kill. When I do, I don't question it. When I don't, I don't question it. Death and Life are one process and Death is by far the more pleasant of the two, in my personal and repeated experience. Grew up eating pheasant, duck, grouse, goose, squirrel, rabbit and raccoon that my Father and I hunted. Two freezers full. I loathe suffering and so endeavored to become a skilled marksman to be able to kill with a headshot as mercifully and as often as possible. I will be food for others one day. It's natural. Straw Dogs... Always appreciated T.H. White's rendition of ant life in The Once and Future King. After being transformed into a variety of animals and fish, Art finds himself living as an Ant through the Alchemy of The Merlin. Ant culture and life is portrayed with an utterly simple binary process of focus on completing. It is efficient and uncluttered by mulling of things. There is either a task that is done, in which case it's no longer considered... and there are tasks that are not done. These are attended to until done, and then they are out of mind. 'There is a not done tunnel in sector 4.' This not done status could mean unfinished, damaged, caved in... it's irrelevantAnts receiving the message respond and go to the not done tunnel in sector 4 and make the tunnel done. If an ant becomes injured, killed or defective, it becomes a not done ant. "There is a not done ant in sector 3." Ants receiving this message will go and take the not done ants to the 'done pile'. There is no mulling over of shoulds and shouldn'ts, there is doing of what is not done, until it's done. Then there's no mulling over of what was done, there's doing what next is not done, until it is done. Straw Dogs... all of us. All of it. By Straw Dogs I don't mean inherently worthless... Straw Dogs, for the duration of the festival (their manifestation as a life form) are inherently celebrated, but when the end of the festival arrives, they again become just straw, the form is not what endures, or matters in the wider context.

I prefer to link to pics from elsewhere on the net. It's fastest and does not require any upload, or resizing. To do that, the photo needs to already be on the internet somewhere. You right click on the photo/pic you wish to use and then select the 'copy image location' option. Then you return to the post you wish to add the pic to and right click, select the paste option and the image should appear in the window. You can also upload a limited amount of files directly to the site through the attach feature which is just under the reply window. Next to the paperclip that reads: " Drag files here to attach, or choose files... " This is a two step process. The 'choose files' option will let you browse your computer for the file you wish to add. Once selected, that file will show up under the reply window in miniature, with a small plus sign and a small garbage can overlayed on it. To place the file in your reply, you press the "+" icon and it puts the picture wherever your cursor is currently resting in the reply. If you change your mind you can hit the garbage can icon and delete it. There is a restriction of size of file for this second option. So you may need to first downsize particularly large files or they will induce an error that prevents them from being added to the site. Your third option is useful if you want to reuse a picture you've already added to the site. This is the icon on the bottom right in the grey box that reads: " Insert other media ". Selecting this will give you two options: Insert existing attachment (pics you've previously placed in replies), or "Insert image from URL" (not sure about this one, I've never bothered with it, but expect it works similar to the 'copy image location' you would use the URL of the pic). happy imagining mate.

Scandanavians have a long established practice of leaving their babies outside in Winter to nap. Especially say when you're meeting some friends at a coffee house for a chat, they'll leave the babes parked outside. Well bundled, but that clean, cold air makes for hearty, vital people and strong immune responses. I dearly miss Autumn, Spring and Winter especially those incredibly still Winter days and the Cracking Thunderstorms... Where I live now we have two seasons. Summer and Summer's coming...

Most of us want to feel better, we don't actually want to see that we're misperceiving things. But that's the core of spirituality. And the only way to really wake up is to realize that the way you perceive yourself is not true. Adyashanti “Enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier. Enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruth. It's seeing through the facade of pretence. It's the complete eradication of everything we imagined to be true.” Adyashanti

Por supuesto!

Gandi was a mystic... who was well known for eschewing footwear and walking about bare footed and had a rather extreme diet that left him rather prone to illness... and bad breath. Thus he was a super calloused, fragile mystic, hexed by halitosis. (god i love it when I get to dig that old bugger of a joke out of the dusty memory banks... )

Unused wealth may as well not exist. This applies to the wealth of the vitality of body and mind to me as well...

I hold that Siberians and Norwegian Forest Cats are closely related... There was a reason the vikings adopted them as travel cats and mousers in the frozen tundra. They are remarkably balanced and grounded as a breed characteristic. We just trimmed the foot hair on our NFC yesterday... the hair that grows from between her toe beans was over 2 inches long! We let it go too long and the poor gal looked like she was walking on ice trying to navigate our stone kitchen floors. Weegies as their affectionately called here, while majestic and rather aloof in appearance, are downright unflappable in changing circumstances (like voyages on Viking Longships to uncharted lands) and are incredibly warm and sensitive (when you prove you're not a tool). They accomodate myriad changing conditions, other animals and children remarkably well. I've had cats my whole life, but our Weegie has a very subtle sense of humor I've not encountered in a cat... it took me a bit to pick up on it... now she cracks me up routinely. She's also one of the most observant and by far the most non-aggressive feline I've ever known... so long as you're not a mouse, or cricket, or squirrel, etc...

I have such an energetic crush on Ms David-Neel. She is like a lightning rod... her influence on my most recent developments on internal work cannot be overstated.

Heyokah Hey! Today is a Good Day!

bedtime...

It's revealed just how deep the scam goes in the power structure when you actually try to organize something like a dairy co-op (like we did back in the 90's) where unneutered raw milk could be sold. So. Many. Systemic Agressions and Intimidation. Back then at least. Seems raw may be gaining traction in some circles. https://www.realmilk.com/real-milk-finder/california/#ca edit to add: I'm intrigued by the powdered goat milk idea. That never occured to me, thank you.

bewildered

Real Cream! I remember scraping it off the top of the urn and putting it directly in a bowl with blue, black and strawberries. My Father's youngest Sister owned a Dairy Farm in Iowa. She was forced out after putting up a long resistance effort. On the market there is no real milk any longer (unless you have friends) . The market stuff is revolting... white pus water.

mis-identification

So it was Copone who led directly to the monopoly of corporations that currently dominate the dair industry. Wow. His model sure took off among those who saw its potential... My first job out of college was raising money to lobby in DC against the Corporate Dairy machine that was systematically squeezing out the independent and non-bovine hormone using farmers. If you follow the graphed line of the cost of milk to the 70's, one can readily see when Corporations gained 'functional control' of the market which was then reflected in the subsequent market pricing. I remember when Southern Californians were barking mad over $4 a gallon for gas. But none of them flinched at paying 6$ a gallon for milk. milk. Gas you need to survey, find oil, build a rig, pump, ship, refine, ship again... 4$ a gallon. Milk... squeeze cow, pasteurize (a different horror story altogether), package, ship again... 6 bucks please. And that's nothing compared to the ~ 35$ a gallon for Venti Mocha-fukkaccino's @ (insert name of corporate coffee chain here)... Well... At least i'm not bitter about it.

Thank you for the reminder, I need to get some more of their work. I Love the Strugatsky Brothers... Reading Roadside Picnic was like peeking inside a birthday present early... only the present was my own inner unconscious flow from which the illusion of choice arises... and where true desires reside. Poetry meets Prose meets insight and raw authenticity. Fearless honesty. I can only imagine how the language and imagery settle in awareness in the native Russian... “The hypothesis of God, for instance, gives an incomparably absolute opportunity to understand everything and know absolutely nothing. Give man an extremely simplified system of the world and explain every phenomenon away on the basis of that system. An approach like that doesn't require any knowledge. Just a few memorized formulas plus so-called intuition and so-called common sense.” ― Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic “You’re absolutely right. Our little town is a hole. It always has been and still is. But now it is a hole into the future. We’re going to dump so much through this hole into your lousy world that everything will change in it. Life will be different. It’ll be fair. Everyone will have everything that he needs. Some hole, huh? Knowledge comes through this hole. And when we have the knowledge, we’ll make everyone rich, and we’ll fly to the stars, and go anywhere we want. That’s the kind of hole we have here” ― Arkady Strugatsky, Roadside Picnic "There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in." __ Leonard Cohen