silent thunder

Just look at that wood glowing in that instrument. And the tone quality... and... 21 strings! Wow. That instrument always elicits such deep response in me. It's always captivated me. here's one of my favorites... on a seven string Guqin. Particularly the lower tones, induces potent resonances in me that remind me of extremely large singing bowls...

Enjoy your food thoughts! I'm currently thinking about my good friend(s) across the globe... and this incredible digital garden. To think.... I've made friends all over the globe whom I've never seen face to face. Because of this place where we meet and share... our thoughts. This seems quite necessary to me. That's an amazing thought. An even more wonderful feeling(thought).

I am fascinated by the potential induction aggregates behind the phenomenon of light bodies. It's so well documented in Tibetan history... It's a strongly claimed fact (at least in physics) that biological creatures give off bio photons... and at the sub-atomic scale we are all fluidic patterns of vibration of varying frequencies amidst vast emptiness... I wonder at the connection to great 'relative stillness' and some mantra practices carried out over decades, to affect the vibrational foundations of body and mind structure and induce light shifts in 'corporeal matter'.

What about thinking about thinking... which is what we're up to here... is it necessary?

Silence... is destroyed whenever we pronounce its name.

I grew up in Minnesota. North Star country. Geese everywhere. Man those great Northern Woods are incredible. Many of my earliest 'dates' with my wife (we never really dated) were driving off campus to the local damn and hanging out, where we'd feed the geese and get lost in each other's eyes... Now in California, we have just a few tribes that follow the coast on their long flights. Occasionally they get close enough and I most often hear them in the minutes before Dawn. How I love their voices! And such close families they have, the social connections are deep and their families are large.

I never read much Bradbury, but that story sure rang the bell when I read it. Still does...

It does often seem that complication is something of a default setting among humans. I know it's a tendency in my own awareness... one I've spent time working to diminish. Much of my praxis has pivoted about simplifying, releasing and reducing my impulses towards complication and over-intricacy.

Regarding judgements...I've always adhered to the old adage... "Don't judge someone til you've walked a mile in their shoes..." Because that way, when you judge them, you're a mile away... and you have their shoes.

Yea, I decided to link to my comment as it's several awesome paragraphs and longish and I didn't want to splash the thread with a TL:DR post right out of the gate. Tseng Lao-weng basically eviscerates the overprocessed, overthinking, pill seeking 'doers' of Daoism. Kind of odd that Anand quoted my reaction to it here and not the paragraphs themselves... My comment about the quote is irrelevant emotive context. The quote however, is a shiny Daoist pearl... it still resonates as it did that first time. I'll always remember rene for being the one to introduce it to me. After that one taste... I spent over a year, tracking down a copy I could afford of Mr Blofeld's out of print book, The Secret and Sublime. I highly recommend it.

My first 'out of timeline' memory encounter was Mandela's death, reported on the radio, years before him being released from prison. It stood out because of the emotion it brought out. I clearly recall his death in prison being announced by George Noory during the news segment while he was substituting as host for Art Bell on Coast to Coast AM one night. It stuck out because it was surprisingly emotional for me, as I'd always had a bit of hero worship of him since studying him years earlier. I was shocked and sad and pissed off that this man, after everything he'd faced, died in prison. It impacted me deeply. I carried the sadness for a while. It passed and I let it go, but years later, the memory came back in shock and confusion when the news announced and celebrated that Nelson Mandela was finally being released from prison! Me... "Um released from prison... the fuck? He's been dead for yeeeears" Not in this life it seems... just in my vivid memory. I was elated when it was confirmed. This really drove it into vivid memory. I chocked up the first story to bad reporting and that someone didn't vet the story properly. But then, on open lines, hundreds of folks started mentioning the same thing, each of them recalled George, or some other news outlet, announcing Mandela's death years prior. My second seeming 'memory of another timeline' experience was much more personal and utterly undeniable and this one really opened the Rabbit Hole as it involved a vivid memory of a sweet moment with my Mom. Berenstein Bears. It's stein. or it was stein... Vividly. No doubt (which says a lot for me these daze). I have no interest in proving this to anyone *cough* @Nungali I'm simply sharing what for me is a clear strange experience. This one could not be chocked up to bad sourcing of some news segment... this is a deep and very intimate personal vivid memory of Me and my Mom... at story time. It stood out in two ways as time with Mom was a real rarity back then, as she was working two jobs and i was a wee lad, who was often put to bed by my older sister before Mom got home... So it stood out for that, but also because it involved a new strange word. And from as far back as I can remember, I've been obsessed with words... the stranger the better... I've been a word whore since I was walking... obsessing over learning new words, what they meant and especially if they could mean two things at once. Before kindergarten I was reading all the road signs on the Freeway and some news over Mom's shoulder. By sixth grade I was reading at a collegiate level, (everyone expected me to follow the three other geniuses in our family to greatness, ha!). I've always had a photographic memory for words in particular and so it came very easy. I could always spell like a mofo because after seeing a word, I could simply envision a word, and then spell it. I also had a penchant for over-pronouncing words to extremes, particularly as a kid, but also later as a professional actor. It was signature move for my characters to have a few phrases or words that are intentionally over pronounced or slightly mispronounced to great effect. Both of these come into play with my memory of another timeline in this instance... I looked at Berenstein and the 'ein' stood out. I pounced on the word and asked Mom how to pronounce Berenstein... and she said "it's like Frankenstein" and that was it, it had stuck... I don't have any recall of the stories themselves, but that moment is ingrained because of the 'oddity and the closeness of it'. It was one of the first Germanic words/names I encountered and I got off on it, it stands out further because I then started marching and stomping around the house chanting "Berenstein Frankenstein! Berenstein Frankenstein!..." and my Mother and Sister were eventually howling with laughter at my antics over this simple word with a new ending... As for proof... no one owes you proof Nunners. You clearly haven't had this experience. Bully for you. We're just having a conversation here... no one is up for a Nobel Prize... if it's so repugnant to you, why are you conversing about it? Does it bother you that we have these odd experiences?

Aside from a couple stories, he's never hooked me with his style. The Temple drew me in, but only I suspect because it reminded me of Fritz Lieber's Tale of Symorgia. Lovecraft tends to be wordy and dry to me, leaves me rather neutral. I've tried several times... C'est la vie.

Hey bud. Nope. I'll ask her to get Mom's bible and read me the verse from it.

yup. It seems the apparatus through which I experience time (memory and awareness of change), seems linear in how it processes through awareness but that is the illusory aspect of my perceptual process. The apparatus of my perception of time, (as i interpret it lately) is not like a lense through which I see the actual, but a resistor, that dampens out enough of the reality that my tiny local awareness can deal with the remainder in a functional manner, which comes through as time leading from the past toward the future... when there is always only the current unfolding. such a delicious paradox.

I experience living from the center of my own awareness. (galactic non-personality based experiences not included) As such, within the mundane, my view of others can come into a kind of relative and clearish focus and I readily see the thorn in my buddie's eye, while my take on myself and the log in my own eye... is often skewed out of focus, due to the fishbowl like lensing of my perceptual conditioned framework that arises from within my own coccoon of awareness. This is why I cultivate close relationships and am very open regarding my reactions to things and share often and authentically (perhaps too much) with those close to me. It is through their reactions and through their checking in (and particularly those whom I consider 'qualified observers') that I can come to garner a more whole notion of how i appear to others. It's what I loved about acting. And why we have Directors of theater, film, dance, etc. The Director is the outside eye that sees the process of each actor and reaches out to fine tune what is shared. Often in my theater days, I would be experiencing something deep and profound within my own mind and body, yet what was being conveyed to the audience, what was coming 'out of my instrument' was not matching what I was experiencing internally. The two tales did not always match. The Director with their outside eye on the whole show... helps the actors to refine their sharing, so what comes out, matches what is occuring within. Spiritual pursuit for me is akin to finding and crafting the Internal Director. Master Wang talked about sitting for long enough and eventually the "Inner Teacher" would arise and appear. But my inner director is still playing second seat to my most trusted and intimate qualified observers... some of whom are on this very board. Sharing has taken on more importance these last seven years in particular. The loss of my parents and too many friends to want to count at the moment, has driven home the power of sharing. When I share my grief, it lessens. When I share my love, it expands. When my friends share their responses to my reactions, I get a glimpse of how I appear to them. This sharing often feels like a wounding, the vulnerability sensation can be overwhelming. But having qualified observers close is the antidote to that poisonous tendency for me.

Yea, it was always that way in Sunday School, no wonder politicians are usually professing religion... both system's leaders tend to share similar evasiveness in regards to direct answers to direct questions... and I agree, we have earned our interesting times and here they are... I no longer own a bible. My Father never owned one, but my Sister probably still has my Mother's from back then... I'll ask her next time we talk.

I remember Lion. KJ version at least in the 70's and 80's when I was deep in the 'preacher in training' school, it was lion. Haven't looked at a bible in a long while. Not since Cern anyway... another Mandela Effect I guess, I'll add it to the pile. I used that to question my sunday school teachers... "So in the ark... did the lions lay with the lambs or eat them? What did they eat? Did they bring extra lambs for the lions... cuz two wouldn't last 40 days..." I usually got the non-answer 'God provided'... heh... Fun times. Speaking of fun times... 2020 seems to wholly embody that old chinese curse. "May you live in interesting times." edit to add: and as for elections... since age 10, I've never been a Democrap or a Repulican't. This year, I'll cast a vote for Biden, while vomiting into my mouth a bit, then go take a shower on the inside. There isn't much of a political party for the likes of me, as I have yet to see a "Strange Women Lying In Ponds Distributing Swords 2020" option. Though ironically some time ago while driving home from work, (back in mid January (that long already, sheesh!) I did see a bumper sticker that said 'Giant Meteor Strike 2020'.

I had no idea who Adrian Belew or King Crimson were when a friend took me by the hand and pulled me to the venue. It was a rare day off for me back in my performing days and I was reticent to spend it in another theater. So glad I didn't resist. When I heard this piece live @ First Avenue in Minneapolis in 1990... i was gobsmacked... transported...

This is what I do in the movie biz... large scale props. If this lack of work persists much longer... They've got me contemplating copying their idea and installing one in a vacant lot on our street.

NOTE: Sweet Totoro goodness split from here: (pic is from one of my all time favorite films.) My Neighbor Totorro

Thank you for this... very synchronous for me. deeply resonant and beneficial in the moment.

Whoa, missed this question. It's been four years and I'm just encountering this post, apologies mate. In case you, or anyone else is still interested... At the time you asked this I was using both systems daily. It had been a little over six months since I'd gone on retreat with Master Wang. In the ensuing years... There are times I have opted to oscillate between them, working one only, and times I abstain from both. I am currently nearing the end of an abstinence period and will begin with both again soon. Master Zhou stressed that the Qi Gong he was sharing with us "plays well with others"; so long as one was played morning and others in the evening, or vice versa. Master Zhou's moving forms compliment Wang Liping's stillness techniques to potent effect (for me) The two systems seem related as I've experienced them. They resonate and harmonize with each other in a remarkable fluidic feedback system.