sirguessalot

yeah, there seems a time there are ways to practice being present in work, play, eating, sex, etc... good athletes are present while active, or they are not good athletes good musicians good dentists like 'being still while moving' not applying brakes to stop not applying gas to go but rather...taking off the clutch and paying attention to what comes next there are prayers and meditation while walking, eating, celebration, etc... that have all already been developed into arts and sciences even ways of being a warrior in battle that lives in presence as the field of silence that the very war rages in but a common thread, it seems as that the silent sitting is really the ground of all the other stuff because practicing sitting with silence cultivates our awareness of the basic truths of it in preparation for a life of ways of embodiment of those same inward truths in other words...sitting with silence is the baby food of all traditional spiritual practice whether one is a jew, gentile, or something else and though being still and silent should be the easiest place to start (due to actually requiring less than any other kind of activity) it is often the hardest place to be in this hyper age and when we skip that "easy" part we really are putting the proverbial cart before the horse often acting on behalf of our thoughts and feelings about God when we have never really gotten used to observing our own thoughts the way God does in the first place and then there are always other things...

and i just want to add real quick to rid certain confusions i also believe that many people (such as myself) had truly positive life changing experiences with tongues and such while in the way in fact, i would even go as far to say that if the tongues of twi was really being practiced, that it could actually help people genuinely come to recognize the silent nature that has been described as the voice of God throughout many traditions and schools of thought but as we know, how more often than not, the way life was lived as a community in twi often worked against our own intentions and collective gifts....though not always, of course

very cool...thanks for those immediate replies a few thoughts on the fly... i think it might help to remember, too that this is only the first chapter in a pretty densely nutritious book and so it really is the "big fat claim" portion of the book and provides virtually no detail i guess what im saying is that i wouldnt expect too much out of it and yeah...i dont even know what is right or wrong any more about posting such a thing i suppose i'll pay whatever price should someone find a cause i only plan on posting the first chapter, anyway ... anyway... i tell ya guys like Parker Palmer have been successfully teaching teachers and writing about it for a long long time, and all one really has to do is spend a little time digging in and around the works of modern practicing quakers to see that there is already a huge growing body of stories and research and thought around it all but again...there really are 9 more chapters of densely nutritious practical stuff with plenty of case studies and stories to illustrate not that i am selling the book here ...there are millions of good books well, i think you nailed it with that question which really does speak to the common heart of most conclusions and too, i think our preference for words is always worth looking into as well as making sure we know how any given speaker is using it english seems an increasingly difficult language to define, let alone use these days and finding the meat of the intent behind them takes a little more time than we are often inclined to give especially considering how severely twi taught us to warp and re-warp common words into some perfect unchanging meaning ...not that there are absolutely true or absolutely untrue meanings just the opposite we simply have to develop the skill to know what each other is meaning whether we are reader and author, or you and me in a cafe ... that said.. (this is just my impression...not all of which would disagree or agree with Parker's book) it seems to me that if i am a whole being of many parts but i think i am only a piece of what i really am in a sense...i am broken simply for not knowing how whole i am and those pieces i do not think are mine simply haunt me as if it was an "invading or oppressive other" and this condition is considered, by many schools of thought, to be the most natural state of every given person most all of the time since the dawn of man and it is a very real place that we all naturally experience though we may want to claim we have no such darkness left in us we are under the illusion that our un-whole-ness is a whole-ness we act according to that illusion or if we are under the illusion that our un-whole-ness is true but an evil curse we act according to that illusion a perspective of whole-ness requires that we includes our shadows and scars as well as our deepest gifts and yearnings or we are simply not seeing the whole self picture "as God would" ...we are being partial in our approach and so our life's work is realize the nature of our actual wholeness the face of brokenness not just in theory...but to unfold and experience the actual texture and contour of the soul in life were we can find actual value and distinction in the shape of the lines that define all our many pieces to pick up on the theme of many traditions and schools of thought i would even go as far as to call the shape of our very soul "our most beautiful and holy wound" and seeing all the parts of "the whole wound" that we are requires that we find a perspective that is even able to witness it all to tease out all the lines of our entering into this universe is to trace the lines of an amazing scar but most are either too terrified to make such a choice or too distracted to realize such a choice can even be made both of which are quite natural, too and it really couldn't be any other way which is why the quakers incorporated a lot of silence and space in their elder communities in order to actually experience that place of silence in a profound way simply by enduring it in order to see what happens next and what happened next is much like what happened throughout all the scripture stories in terms of visions, dreams, predictions, compassion, community, meaning, etc... compared to many traditions i would say that twi had us fill such an "evil" silence with all kinds of noise and activity and effectually blocked out the root essence of the voice of God ...traditionally (i love "speaking in tongues," btw..and still do, and practice it daily in my own ways)

:)

here is the first chapter of a book i am studying in both theory and praxis called "Hidden Wholeness," by Parker Palmer as part of a project, i had to scan and prepare the text for some friends of mine but since the work was done...i thought i would share it with friends here, too Palmer's work is based an some amazing Quaker traditions which not only makes them deeply Christian but quite deeply American, as well my hope is that this chapter offers insight into ways of being that might not only help us heal from the negatives of our TWI experience but might also help us build and deepen whatever good we experienced there and not only to help us find better ways of being with each other in this venue but especially helping us find better ways of being with our selves together i do look forward to comments, reflections, responses, reactions, experiences...etc btw..no, i am not a Quaker peace a few wiki p articles that might be helpful for some background Parker Palmer Quakers

what seems kind of odd to me is how one can speak of the devil in a sense that takes the most personal responsibility for our self direction and in a way that addresses our utter interior and inherited brokenness and lack of perfection and in a way that is agreed to be very very difficult and painful and soulful in which there is no guarantee to succeed yet Jesus did succeed, and showed us the only way to God (and i would add...he also showed us the way from God, and back again) yada yada yet some do react as if this same person is some sort of messenger of the devil contradicting gospel truths denying christ etc... how can this be?

i hate to seem so argumentative but for what its worth, you didnt upset me, either Sunesis though you seem to be upset...i could be wrong i do find it somewhat saddening how you can come think that a thread is great until something is posted that you dont like Lindy posted an open request for thoughts and as far as i can tell, that includes mine imo, not all threads function the same way as you think conversations flow or are intended to they seem to tend to be more self-organizing though we can and do bring our own set of expectations and assumptions to them and...calling it 'poetry' doesnt make it mere poetry, either... just as calling it flowery doesnt make it somehow less than or somehow irregular besides, since when does speaking "poetically" become some sort of unbiblical or irregular act? honestly...how one can come to this conclusion is quite puzzling to me (which makes me an idiot in this regard...cuz i am truly stumped and baffled) but regardless...as far as i can tell, speaking for myself what most of what i have has been quite literal and direct really and even where i use metaphor i typically contextualize it with enough to dissolve any mystery of what i am writing about maybe read slower or something quote something specific that i wrote and show me how the poetics of it are wrong or unscriptual show me my blasphemy using my own words...so we all know what you are referring to and too, i noticed that a lot of people still post in this section just look at the dates on the threads it seems this forum has actually been more active than most other forums around here i do hope you are going to be ok with all this peace, Todd to add...there are some schools of thought where people agree to write or speak about their thoughts and opinions about things in a general sense and agree not to try and fix and correct each other just a safe place to air your thoughts on whatever topic and openly inquire of each other's deeper reasons for writing what they did (rather than projecting our own stories into the meaning) like breaking bread and passing it around a campfire it can be quite refreshing really and easier said than done so it takes a bit of practice but quite worth it in the end (notice..no poetry was used in the making of this thread, except for one line, which i started with the word "like", but i used a biblical metaphor)

well, ive seen it with my own eyes, so i just hafta say that not all RCs approach scripture alike RC history has quite a few rowdies, both men and women, who approached scripture much different than is commonly thought of them and some have contributed amazing insight to the overall body of christian thought especially some of those irish catholics...some real irreverent types in that lot idiots, really nice one, chaz maybe we really are off the hook of textual perfection, after all

haha...too funny, dancing

thanks for saying that cuz the brilliance of what lives within is quite amazing that which is buried and hidden under an ego like a placenta around us our truest self is a most radiant thing hidden to even itself a shy, elusive untamable thing that can only be invited eternally young, creative and paradoxically....our deepest oldest self which is who the devil inside cannot even see that is the pearl of great price that is the name prior to your name that is that which endures death itself even it falls back asleep buried there, in the darkness sucking its thumb waiting for the candle of your attention to stir its embers again

the deeper you sit the deeper the universe becomes before you and the you you thought you were is no longer seen as seperate from the entire cosmos and so our attention is like a candle and those who knew how to sit for long periods of time would eventually meet the demons that haunt them the most and eventually their greatest adversary their own person devil there in the closet from the start all along a tip from the epistles: do not attempt to make this journey alone this is a way of Christ who knew all things and so he knew what Buddha knew and he knew what all the other billion wise men already knew but man keeps forgetting anything sounding blasphemous yet?

sorry, sunesis really a confession... i am an idiot you all know it but then again so are you and we all know it yet, by god's grace we are also somehow holy little children foolish, grubby, gibbering idiots, really who will never know or understand the entire truth in spite of all our learning thank God its all ultimately an ongoing mystery so anyway...cuz were all pretty much specs of beings in a really huge huge huge vast vast vast universe beyond any of our ability to measure and experience where the ultimate truth of everything is always pretty much always going to be out of our reach the devil knows it, too and so does God and Jesus and all the angels and spirits of the four corners of the earth the living beings that go round and round yada yada yada we are doomed, again lost and broken as usual from the start from the very first human up til now suffering and misery always with us lost and broken again our hope is to remember what that kid taught those people plodding towards visions of a better future hoping we can reunite with our loved ones who have died so, the numbering of our years are based on the life of a man named jesus a jewish kid who lived and died a radically tragic life in a way that many wise prophetic people predicted would some day just have to happen, no matter what and so he showed us an even deeper way of courage and being that actually really truly honestly trancended death for really really really real one that surpassed the wisdom of anything that any king or wise man had ever known or done or seen he showed us the most direct way to god while he was alive and by his dying and his rebirth yada yada yada he taught actual spiritual practices according to the traditions of all the wise east and west, north and south, old and new and took them higher, wider, deeper, longer and as we know, he had very little to do with any of it his life was in complete surrender to god in all ways to the best of his ability and he demonstrated how the devil is defeated...from within...where God whom is everywhere also is in short, something about everything on earth changed...big time and nothing has ever been the same again the name of jesus is now everywhere, even more and coming again, even greater than before yep...i am with you 100% still and yeah...there is a stubborn and elusive force in this planet and most likely throughout the universe that causes all suffering each of our lives is really just a wound a tear...a rip in the fabric of god our life depends on how we get free from our slumber and choose the right way to eternal life ... it seems to seem to me that of the billions and billions of books of books of pages of pages of lines upon lines of stuff about the devil, darkness and the nature of evil... also a lot of them on healing, nature, medicine, sexuality, morality, virtue, wisdom, marriage etc... as well as on the nature of God, Eternal life, Christ, Heaven, Truth, Love, Spirits, angels, etc... writings about reality itself, time beyond time, dying, sickness, music, motherhood, birth, etc... spiritual disciples who follow masters and form schools of thought abraham is the father of most all old religious traditions the jew, the muslim, the hindu, the buddhist and jesus practiced these things and lived and travelled in a world where these things were practiced as an art form and lifestyle devotional, monkish life of vows and really strange strange behaviour, by most all conventional standards of course, what and how he practiced was important but why was most important of all ... my point, i guess, is trying to be... that we probably actually do not disagree about the value of that collection of book of books of books but i am afraid that they are truer than you seem to think i think they are and that the modern way we have come to practice what we call christianity is about as unlike and far away from original christianity as one can get scripturally, historically, anthropologically... in terms of what is actually being practiced as a lifestyle and what the stories are describing not saying i am perfect i am a fool like you...remember? which is perfect enough for me cuz we are kinda stuck in this much different world together and this world is radically different place and christ and god the devil are about as radically alive and well as they ever were and that war rages greater than ever now on in our hearts and minds this world cannot last like this yet here we are waiting for the Spirit of Christ to come and guide us again in a much bigger and better way than ever ever before from a much much higher place where it has been waiting and preparing for a long long time on a much much bigger set of clocks and gears ... and so i wonder how many lines of thought are really going on here? 2? i count at least 10 lines in each of us, to some depths or degrees in each of us...as radically amazing beings even in our obvious and ongoing idiocies and sillinesses.... dazzling with light, even in death whether we know it or not god and spirit are that friggin stubborn and in charge, imho so just exhale and be silent a while that is what the kid said his students should do when everyone was wiggin out about the crazy drama of his death breathe.... and sit for days you will see if you believe me you will not die if you follow my ways and in time...you will find the treasure you have been seeking all along the theme of this kind of teaching was after the order of abraham the bull and so...it becomes obvious when the teachings of abraham are not somehow being lived because people are more afraid, angry, sick, lives haunted by devils and demons yet here we are....thousands of years later

yeah... superstition = fear of devils often makes me wonder if those warnings against "doctrines of devils" have been misunderstood compare "love your enemy" vs "the last enemy to be destroyed is death" vs "the devil is the author of death" ... and i tell ya it is rapidly becoming clearer to me how this modern devil is mostly being defined along purely racial lines especially for this wave of twi-like evangelical christian thought no, its not by what race a person is but by what races and traditions are deemed to have been holy enough to connect with God and which ones were duped by the devil what makes it worse is not only that this mindset is mostly programmed to NOT look into those things they condemn for fear of being contaminated....but that it is also hellbent on conversion

i imagine there are quite a few old jewish folks who just sit back and scratch their heads not only wondering how we can became so metaphorically challenged but watching in awe at how much human suffering such a thing can cause

yeah..the war in heaven rages on...within ...no doubt but if some of the titanic battles of Rev are somehow in our mind does that make the scripture less important? does that make the battle less significant? does that make the devil any less real? does that kake God any less real? depends on how much we value we place on our very own interior selves, i suppose and whether we think our mind is "just a brain" nice comparison, Dancing seems there was a war in heaven fought in the wilderness that day, fer sure i can imagine that if everyone in the world is fighting that battle...within and everyone who ever lived is fighting that battle...within one could also write of the devil as an actual being who walks the earth and gives us hell yada yada one could say that all human ills are due to this rascal and not be lying after all, this "most naked snake" is not a problem til man shows up one could say that guardian angels try to protect us from this rascal and not be lying maybe the greater problem is not when there is battle in heaven (within us) but when we are not even fighting putting up the fight because we wage our war on earth (without us) ...shadow boxing perhaps one of the great illusions we must each get through is that there our greatest personal adversary is somewhere outside of us and until i do, the earth will be subject to this most destructive unseen foe while the very one capable of defeating him is asleep at the wheel which is why they all say "turn around" repent the path is very very very narrow for each and every one of us and just like the kid said... it is the same path by which we came from God simply turn around (no, not your body) do not fear the darkness...within for in doing so, you yourself manifest that very darkness so shine a light...within seek out and reveal the enemy of God where he lives and stop being fooled by him of course, the shift from "the devil only outside" to "the devil on every inside" is a dramatic one much like a birth that breaks hearts of stone and pride into pieces no wonder when a bunch of people go from outwardness to inwardness at once their dreams and visions tend to open up and intensify ...simply for having ignored their own interior for so long

seems to me, that saints and sages have been saying all along that one's trajectory is really spiritual if it has an unmistakable feature ...that it is an endless series of greater and greater humiliations and of course, as we are now seeing with this community on tv ...how childishness can be the best messenger of God in this regard even in the most extremely seemingly unforgiveable circumstances tho i often wonder how we've come to wear so much armor around our soul? or how such an occurance may come across like some miracle or sign or wonder? imho...there is no need to have something extra or special for such beautifully ordinariness and originality to shine through it is rather, a series of revealings, or unsheathings, of a soul that can't be faked or ignored ...which then brings us to a different place altogether...tho we havent actually gone anywhere i think it gets really strange when one finds that there already are, in this world, living legacies of the arts and sciences of forgiving and sacrifice that are beyond even this amazing act so, while i dont find it amazing how we can marvel with humility at this kind of holy foolishness i do find it amazing how large segments of our culture can demonize those very legacies who practice such things ...and in the name of Jesus, no less i wonder what that does to millions of people ...not forgiving, not forgetting, seeking revenge and doing it for hundreds of generations? thank humility for even a drop of it in this desert but also pray that it rains thanks oeno, too for posting this and for everyone who responded

:) i especially love the way you started that, Roy cuz i think it really points at a few really important things especially how one's very sense of identity is found in how we answer that first question and how we have found amazingly diverse range of ways to answer it throughout the history of human experience the shape of our perceived place in time seems very closely connected to the shape and texture of our self-sense i mean...are we not also made of star dust? which is already billions of years old? are we not also the clear space between our thoughts? btw...when did that sense of self first enter time? did we not also mostly think the world was closing in on us and coming to a violent end on our original birth day? some people find their sense of identity in their physical bodies alone and some include their clothes and some include their house and car some people identify with their dreams and visit their body as a guest would visit a house some identify strongly with their tribe, or team, or nation and react much like a flock of birds turn as one on a breeze and back when we were all little perinatel podlings we thought that when our bodies were being pushed out of the womb we identified with the womb at the time, and thought we were being ripped out of our own bodies any such "coming of the lord" is awesome and terrifying, indeed of course, whether we scream bloody murder or not depends on a lot of lot of lot of things and the end of time, it seems comes differently to each whole in waves and streams and cycles and seasons

thanks, Lindy and yeah, that is a typo but it does seem to work either way, duznt it...

and so, Dot so as not to speak around you or above you i just want to say that i can also understand this fear of the end times that, in and of itself, seems an obvious sign of the times a lot of big changes have just passed and we are reeling like drunks in pain and there are more shockwaves of change upon us and we are not ready technological changes environmental changes social changes personal changes floods of new information new kinds of crazy and god knows everyone's pool of dear family and friends and enemies wont stop changing on us we need an anchor that is real and something better than what we have now which is what drives us to reach deeper and higher than before of course because out of the collapse of any system comes a higher order and out of new problems come newer solutions and it seems to me that the way of Christ is always some radically new way to die and be reborn and so the good news is not always considered good to those who simply dont want to die and be reborn so we go kicking and screaming, instead those parts of us that dont want to die

and to add i think that for some newness = the devil which is sad and somewhat troubling i think that just as predictors throughout the millenia seemed to be saying is how its easy to spot those who reject the newness of a world being reborn is because they cannot stand to lose the old world there is a reaction that is akin to reacting to a mortal threat such as a death grip on a doctrine or a person or a food or a drug or an enemy etc... and of course, this is true in any age or time "the coming of the lord is always terrifying"...naturally especially if "the lord" simple means that wave which is simply inevitably and unavoidably coming regardless of what we say or do about it

hi all plz pardon the thickness of this simple rant but it seems to me that any such divine or ultimate reality always only moves and flows in cycles within cycles of birth and death which are always also eventually followed by rebirth into some higher order of birthing and rebirthing a galaxy a moon a leaf a forest a life a faith a perspective and this is so stubbornly faithfully ignorantly purely truly stupidly tenaciously so... that one could even call it something like divine and it seems that as we find all the ways there are to basically stop flinching at all the gazillion aspects of this most awesome and violent kind of truth, we can come to rely upon the endless waves of transformation that are always already upon us and will never stop coming. never ever ever sigh :blink: as for the sign of the times o changing there is no need to look reall hard for mysterious hidden signs cuz signs of any eternal and radical passing are everywhere always flash flash flash flash and in one sense in the blink of an eye the big bang happens again genesis happens again and not because the world finally changed but because we finally opened the eye to see such a thing and like a newborn babe's....it was an eye that was already always only here the we see that the end of time is always now and the moment you realize that the very awareness of Christ is here and you are here and we are here and so is God and everything that is is simply here as it always is time itself vanishes but remains as the usefull illusion it always was and will ever be as it always has been prior to our forgetting the names and words we use to remember and to tell the story of our remembering simply always only ever changes ... and so sure enough as it is for every single person and as it is for every single nation, tribe, or CULTure the earth itself has its many many cycles of death and rebirth many ages and times and come and gone violently brilliantly horrifically wonderfully as always yada yada yada...til the end of time i think most anyone could agree that some part of most everyone started to die on the year 2000 or on 9-11 or when the internet came together or when we dropped the bomb or invented the stirrup just as they did in 1492 just as they did in the first century just as they did at the dawn of humanity in the twinkle of an eye worlds are born and worlds die ... and so these days are different no one can deny many things are new obviously no, we dont fight and kill each other the same ways in which we used to but we have surely gotten better at finding ways to kill each other more slowly overpopulation of addictions, delusions, news ways to be crazy and new things to be crazy about widespread societal loss of adequate meaning and hope and in mechanical, uncreative, unimaginative ways is a kind of programmable poisonous hell on earth that far outweighs any pagan experience of slavery and genocide ... so yeah, it seems to me that are obviously in the end of many big somethings all at once as always, but bigger then before, as always and never what we thought it would be and never when we thought is should be but always now and always coming and alway passing ... my advice...we need to find better ways to stop flinching so much as the world dies again again again in so many infinite pieces and ways some how some way cuz regardless of anything else we learn if we learn at least this little kind of thing we wont be such jerks to our neighbors which is helpful if the world is falling apart around us again as usual happy Sunday yawn

sorry, i dont have the source at my fingertips, Rhino but i do recall it was from reports written by and for the energy sector and like i said, then there are all those other things... Here is a nice confusing article on ERoEI

also, something to consider is how much oil it takes to get (and use) the oil back in the 70s, it used to take 1 barrel of oil to get like 30 barrels out of the ground (and refine, distribute, blah blah blah) by 2000, it was more like 1 barrel of oil to get 3 barrels when the ratio gets to 1 for 1...it doesnt matter howmuch oil/coal we have ...of course, then there are also all those other things... :blink:

well, i dunno fer sure but it seems as if everyone needs a story to hold their hopes and experiences of things like plain ole dying and justice and when people (or societies and cultures) lack a story that works (i.e. actually and really functionally frees them from fight or flight behaviour or otherwise being jerks to each other) they must find and keep any story they can this is not really an option and so, shared stories are the most powerful and sometimes the story is that of a super child of a sky god who is going to come and kick butt on our behalf and sometimes the story is that "it's all only always mostly b.s. and nothing more anywa so who cares" but either way...if the story does not free us from our deathgrip on the story itself we will basically make life worse for someone else pain that is not transformed is always transmitted in short... we are terminally mortal and we most naturally dont like this so we come up with many ways to interpret our impending doom simply because we have to, somehow and many people these days are using the story of a saviour from the sky to help process the insanity of a world that seems to be falling apart around our ears my 2 cents

oh god... it seems to me we are quite free to blame and we can blame anything and everything and even can blame anything and everything for anything and everything else we can blame people blame the big bang blame it all til therz nothing left to blame so blame nothing, too blame til yer blamer wears out and when/as/if weer finally fully done we are free from blame this is the journey of a life so...good luck you may see that there always is and always was and always will be a wide open door behind you ...one has never ever been closed justice revenge forgiveness they all already always happen here ... if nothing else... find this place, at least ...start here, ya know?