It's midnight, or a little after. Or a little before, if you're a purist. The woods outside are black and quiet. I have a microphone out there. I can hear the river. Sometimes a large animal. Bears are easy because they're loud. I never hear cougars, unless they scream, and that is rare. I hear owls a lot. Night birds I can't identify.
There's a moon out, close to full. A sea mist is fully lit, and the snow in the meadow is bright. The woods are dense and black. A separate world from the moon.
I'm from war, which means I'm strong and weak. They go together. What nurtures one, nurtures the other. What drains one, drains the other. The gift and the curse.
I struggle with Taoism. Pure determinism is easier for me. Meditation was a struggle too, until I came up with a two sets of living meditations. The first is a philosophical meditation. It's long. I recite it every morning on my walk through the woods and along the ocean, and as I recite it, it teaches me a better way. So I change the meditation every day, just a bit, to reflect new insight. In this way, it is living.
The second meditation is stillness. Sitting. Imagery. I imagine a beautiful place, the same place, a forest pond, for me. I concentrate on it, letting it show me things. I keep adding to the details. It has a life history. Things happen. In this way, it is living, too.
I found your site while researching a topic, and found posts made by people who have achieved some clarity. Given life, by definition, is a state of separation from a greater truth. And life, at best, is a long, slow awakening. Maybe transcendence is a way to bridge that separation without dying. People with clarity are stepping stones that help us along the way.
I am mystical and scientific. War made me mystical. And it showed me mental powers that are hidden, beyond easy bidding, but there. A long time ago, a few years back from war, I woke up in the middle of the night and took a drive. The night was bitter cold, with deep snow. There was also a full moon, like tonight. The woods was bright from moon and snow, easy to walk. So I parked and started walking through the woods. I came to a fast-running stream, fast enough to run in the bitter cold. Then something laarge in the stream startled with a muffled noise. My war sense came back, faster than time.
I could see the thing was very large. Maybe a deer. And I thought about why a deer would be in the stream in such cold weather. Then, as my focus improved, I could see that the thing was not solid. There were holes in it. The thing was not moving. It was frozen just above the stream. I could study it carefully, impatient that my focus was so slow. Then my focus improved. The thing was not full of holes, and not a thing, but many things. As my focus improved still more, I could see the things were ducks.
The instant that I could identify the ducks, they exploded in flight. Of course, the ducks did not freeze in flight. What happened was my mind sped up to fantastic speeds, making the ducks seem to be frozen.
The mind can do amazing things. Maybe I'll share some more, if that would be welcome.
When I was reading one of your threads, it came to me to use a spiritual name for this forum. But I didn't have one. On other forums, I just use my first name. As this feeling arose in me, I picked up a pen and just wrote down letters as they came to consciousness.
Hi. I'm Warninji
