Rare Methods?

[Taomeow]

Innuits of Siberian Tundra love to listen to Equatorial Africans explain to them how to avoid frostbite.

[Taomeow]

1 hour ago, silent thunder said:

I have discovered over the last decade that few things more elevate my awareness into full immersion than the soft lavenders, piercing pinks and the flowing blues on the high cirrus clouds the coming time of year, shortly before dawn here in Southern Cali.

 

You're awake before dawn?  That's commendable.   

 

I am a weather shamanka, not a climate shamanka, so I can't change the climate, but I can tweak with the weather.  Everything I wrote in this thread was part of the spell for rain I was casting.  My method (taught by Mother of the Universe in the Amazon, in the course of a torrential flood) involves complaining and sulking, not commanding, because my wuxing phase -- Wood, which makes Water my wuxing Mother phase -- can't command Water (we Wood people command the Earth), but must approach her the way a child approaches a parent and use "but I want it" pure emotions rather than strong arguments or reason.  It worked, as usual.  A little rain I did get.  Not a lot, but at least I won't have to wash my car.  And there's some clouds.            

Edited November 6, 2017 by Taomeow

[silent thunder]

12 minutes ago, Taomeow said:

 

You're awake before dawn?  That's commendable.   

 

I am a weather shamanka, not a climate shamanka, so I can't change the climate, but I can tweak with the weather.  Everything I wrote in this thread was part of the spell for rain I was casting.  My method (taught by Mother of the Universe in the Amazon, in the course of a torrential flood) involves complaining and sulking, not commanding, because my wuxing phase -- Wood, which makes Water my wuxing Mother phase -- can't command Water (we Wood people command the Earth), but must approach her the way a child approaches a parent and use "but I want it" pure emotions rather than strong arguments or reason.  It worked, as usual.  A little rain I did get.  Not a lot, but at least I won't have to wash my car.  And there's some clouds.            

My love affair with predawn is so selfish! 

It's all about having a long, soft, slow moving launch into the very yang energy of day.

My love affair with water became an obsession when I moved to this arid and startlingly moisture free environment.  I deeply sense and love the condensing water in the air predawn.  It's a bigger drug than just about any other for me lately.

 

The hours of 4-6 am have developed into something of a lucid temple to me.  A temple that embodies the very qualities you speak of in the taoist painting.  Full immersion.  Total sensory connection. 

 

A living, liquid light, resonant temple of motion, mingling awarenesses and soft acceptance of pure being.  A temple of quiet totality.  When most of the minds and thought/form matrices around me are yet in those last yin hours before waking, this time resonates.  Yin, soft, exuding yet inhaling, nothing hurried, nothing left undone... nurturing and condensing... empty and so potent.  A temple of liquid light flowing effortlessly into the coming morning and all its cacophonic harmonies of yang.

 

As to your spell... now I know why this thread spiked rather intensely for me... <read me!>. 

Rather routinely now, I can't escape the tangible sensation of the direct exchange and infusion of the sky... all of it... with the bellows of my lungs.  When intention combines in this process... <woof!>  I can perhaps somewhat imagine the exchange going on down there near the border with you and your spell... and I deeply admire your connection to your own cosmology and how this emanates into the whole.   Gratitude for your endeavors.

 

Your knowing and moving with intention through your own elemental nature is also deeply intriguing.

 

Rather compulsively of late, I'm being reminded and drawn to more deeply investigate and understand the workings of the elements in my own body universe.  Do you still offer professional birth charts and analysis to those looking to purchase such services?  I think it's time I invested in such, if you, or someone you recommend were available some time.

 

Either way, thanks for you who are, how generously you share here and how you go about just being you. 

It's deeply appreciated.

*deep bow*

 

[Gunther]

In case of occasional boredom:

Lie down on your back, stare at the ceiling and say:

Come on then boredom, meaningless, hopeless, depressive, negative, loneliness, come on, here I am, show me what you can do.

[cold]

Or close eyes and hum: hello darkness my old friend ...

[9th]

 

[CedarTree]

On ‎11‎/‎5‎/‎2017 at 2:56 PM, C T said:

Its like the difference between drawing on the finest piece of silk screen and drawing on water. 

 

I definitely want you to go more into this!

[CedarTree]

23 hours ago, Taomeow said:

 

Thank you.

 

This sky, a very traditional and very popular subject of taoist painting, is full of qi, and so is the artist depicting it.  You don't remove yourself from this flow, you don't take an absentee "observer" stance in order to get it -- there's no getting it unless you're part of it and it is part of you.  Quite a few famous old taoist paintings actually have the artist himself painted in, captured by the brush in the very process of looking at this landscape and this sky, being part of it, not separating his mind or body or spirit or the brush in his hand from the mind of tao and the flow of qi it engenders. 

 

He is looking at the transformations of qi that are life.  Taoism is fundamentally about life.  Let this sink in...  From solid earth to flowing water to soaring mountains to clouds and mists disappearing into the unknown, leaving you with the image of a dragon ascending from the earth to the sky and melting away into mystery --

 

 all of it is of interest to a taoist, it's non-hierarchical and emptiness is not the "goal" or "true state" or anything like that, anymore than nonexistence is a "true state" vs. existence.  It is not.  Being comes from nonbeing like a child from the womb, not like a criminal thrown into jail (or hell, purgatory, illusion, what have you) to pay for her transgressions.  Nonbeing is nurturing, the great mother, and she does not hate her children, the beings.  Sky and earth are beings, both her children, and neither is a "favorite child."  The taoist circle of life is not a vicious circle.  It is a virtuous spiral.     

          

"To paint the bamboo," the poet and painter Su Shih wrote in the 11th century, "one must have it entirely within one. Grasp the brush, look intently [at the paper], then visualize what you are going to paint. Follow you vision quickly, lift your brush and pursue directly that which you see, as a falcon dives on a springing hare---the least slackening and it will escape you."

 

 Chinese painters were expected to paint from memory rather than depicting a landscape that lay before them. The artist deliberately chose materials forcing him to paint quickly in one continuous process.  Quick drying ink and absorbent paper which could not be erased or retouched.  What is, as is.  The 11th century landscape painter Kuo His wrote: "In painting any view the artist must concentrate his powers to unify the work.  Otherwise it will not bear the peculiar imprint of his soul..."

 

So, my soul -- or rather my qi and my all shens -- are players when I gaze at the sky, my heart-mind has a memory, an opinion, a mood, a feeling, an imprint of my whole life's experiences --

 

and none of these are "bad," "not real nature" by any religious authority's decree, none are on trial for being "not the true mind, " none suspect unless I myself suspect them and undertake to cultivate them away because I want to, not because I'm afraid of some boogie man or other (rebirth, maya, deviating from the dharma, whatever...).  They are legit.  I am simple and complex -- visible and hidden, yang-hard and yin-soft, showing-revealing and hiding-concealing, playing with things mild and misty and feather-light and with things sharp and unyielding and powerful.  When I look at the taoist sky, I play with qi...

 

...and if I don't know how, I shouldn't gaze at the sky, much less paint it, much less proselytize about its "true nature."  How would I know if there's things I exclude -- e.g. my love of water, my love of life, my ability to notice that there's a prolonged and devastating drought going on in SoCal?..  My true nature is not a dogma.  It is what it is.  To disown any part of it on cue, because someone tells me to, is, from a taoist's POV, ridiculous.  (Zhuangzi drove the point home with a rather blunt statement of where tao, "the true nature," can be expected to be found -- good luck excluding it from anything, let alone from a cloud in the sky!  -- which I won't repeat here...)  

 

This sounds a lot like the best period of Chan and how I understand the best part of Zen teachings   Also I just wanted to thank you for this amazing write up.  Absolutely awesome.

 

I made a post in the Daoist section about what exactly Daoism is to people and the teachings they have found inspirational and intense and meaningful and I would love to hear more from you.  Obviously incredibly articulate

[Bud Jetsun]

4 hours ago, Taomeow said:

 

You're awake before dawn?  That's commendable.   

 

I am a weather shamanka, not a climate shamanka, so I can't change the climate, but I can tweak with the weather.  Everything I wrote in this thread was part of the spell for rain I was casting.  My method (taught by Mother of the Universe in the Amazon, in the course of a torrential flood) involves complaining and sulking, not commanding, because my wuxing phase -- Wood, which makes Water my wuxing Mother phase -- can't command Water (we Wood people command the Earth), but must approach her the way a child approaches a parent and use "but I want it" pure emotions rather than strong arguments or reason.  It worked, as usual.  A little rain I did get.  Not a lot, but at least I won't have to wash my car.  And there's some clouds.            

 

 

Bold and brave karma dancing to make the weather a play toy and car wash. In respect for lifes balance of what beings live beyond LAs asphalt dying of thirst. 

 

My occupation is creating the energy storage solutions that enable no more burning things in respect for the life support system on our beautiful shared spaceship some label climate. It's happening exactly as fast as it needs to, through mindfully solving one technical challenge at a time, and the work is it's own best reward in doing. 

 

So much power and energy cultivated Taomeow, remember to wield it with gentleness and care, and not to be distracted by it from seeing the Taos own perfect flow enabling it. Surfing a big powerful wave feels amazing, getting sucked under along rocks on the ocean floor feels amazing. 

 

Unlimited Love, 

-Bud