"A mind free of thought,
merged within itself,
beholds the essence of Tao
A mind filled with thought,
identified with its own perceptions,
beholds the mere forms of this world" - Verse 1
Our nature is the formless form. Merge within yourself. Behold the Mystery.
releasing isn't about looking for tension, releasing it, then iterating to the next source of tension, and so forth. releasing is simply being aware of what is already there. It's being fully present with what is. release even the "seeker" - the "looker" the "doer" - the thing with its own agenda, with its own plans for the moment (to "practice", to scan the body in a particular pattern/way), with its own expectations and wants (finding tensions, releasing them), and merge with the expansive awareness that is simply aware of time/space exactly as it presents itself in the current moment.
what is TRULY in the present moment, is intelligent, biological, connected to a field, and knowing. it is everywhere and nowhere. it will direct energy where it needs to go, and if release happens, it's of its own accord, when & where it wants to.
“When water is still, its clearness shows the beard and eyebrows… the still mind of the sage is the mirror of heaven and earth.” - Zhuangzi
Weightlifting is good because it helps people feel stronger. Feeling strong is a very overlooked side of mental health.
The problem comes when you only learn how to feel and be strong through generating tension.
Learn to feel and be strong through releasing tension.
releasing can be extremely uncomfortable, almost unbearable. like shedding every skin cell at once, all the bones being pulled apart at every joint. weighted so heavy into the earth any movement would feel like you're taking the whole world with you. but you're not even doing anything. you're letting go of the reflex to escape the intensity of being reborn. you're choosing to not return to your habitual contractions, so that you can return to the Source.
@lichthauch Try Yoga Nidra (lying relaxation) practice lying in bed before you sleep… you will consciously reach deep sleep, and witness the mind and body separating before choosing to go past the hypnagogic state into the dream world.
When it rains, it pours... often when you need people the most is exactly when they start dropping like flies.
So when a man loses a partner during one of the most difficult seasons of his life, the mistaken lesson can become: next time, keep it all inside. Put on the poker face, toughen it out. Never let her see the weight.
But the most rigid and unbending fall the hardest.
It was never your weakness that made you stumble under the weight of the world. You did not crack; your armor did. Your stiff, unyielding shell began to split, revealing something more honest underneath.
Your softness was not the failure. Your tenderness was not the liability. That vulnerable place in you may be the very thing that allows you to adapt, grieve, sense, feel, and survive.
The tree that cannot bend is the one that breaks in the wind.
Many women love the image of being the light a man can turn to in his darkest hour. But when that hour actually comes, when the flames of hell cast his shadow across the room, it's not only his own shadow that is revealed to him - he also sees hers.
And he discovers the truth: that her image of herself was only fantasy, her words only the poetry of her own delusion. She wanted the myth of being his light, not the ordeal of it.
She may go on believing she is that kind of woman. She may still carry the self-image of being loyal, nurturing, and devoted. But he has seen what happens when the darkness is no longer poetic, when his pain is no longer abstract, when devotion stops being an identity and becomes a demand.
Maybe she feared what he would become in the fire. Maybe she feared what will be asked of her while he is still molten. Maybe his descent confronts her with her own.
But it's not only his becoming, nor only hers - it's theirs.
Because real love is not proven simply by measure of keeping things all fun, flirty, loosey goosey.
It is proven in the underworld. It is proven when one person is being remade and the other chooses not to flee the forge.
And ultimately, if they can endure the forge together, both emerge with something far greater than either could have claimed alone.
@buridansridge We are never not in a state of momentum. Even apparent stagnation is momentum. What matters is whether your snowball of habits is rolling you towards your true nature or away from it.
SEEING is not passive reception, but an ongoing creative act, a braid of three processes - sensing, selecting, perceiving.
1. Sensing - the open, uncarved, nameless field.
the raw material of colored patches which form the visual field. they don’t point to a “this” or “that” which is “out there.” it’s the undifferentiated light striking the newborns eyes. the present pure sensation of Now unfiltered by past.
2. Selecting - interest ignites form, the field fragments, first ripples of “named” emerge, memory begins to shape the mind.
from the total field, the mind highlights one region. partly because the eye records its clearest images at the central point of the retina. but this physiological basis only underpins greater psychological selection due to interest, survival, desire. what we’ve learned to care about, need, or fear tends to be what we single out now.
3. Perceiving - memory constructs the world, the ten thousand things are born, the past rushes forward to organize the present.
through repetition and stored experience the mind learns to carve selected color patches into stable “objects” that exist out “there” in space: a “cup”, a “tree”, a “face”. but they are only as real as the past that they’re stitched together from.
Eventually sensing, selecting, and perceiving fuse into a single seamless moment and we think seeing is objective. But when the reification reflex softens - through meditation, altered states, or certain neurological conditions - we discover the infinite within the contrivance of what seems finite. Opaque objects become more transparent, revealing their transcendent nature as divulgent luminous expressions of the open nameless ground.
The past - our habits - construct the world of form.
Formlessness requires no effort. It’s always already present.
The named and the nameless, two sides of the same seeing, differing only in name, whose identity is Mystery.
"The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal Name.
Tao is both Named and Nameless
As Nameless - the Source of heaven and earth.
As Named - the Mother of ten thousand things.
So the unwanting soul
sees what's hidden,
and the ever-wanting soul
sees only what it wants.
These two are one and the same,
differing only in name,
whose identity is Mystery.
Mystery of all mysteries!
The door to the hidden."
- Verse 1
@_Sophianical Fascinating… I’d like to believe that’s a reflection of their embodied intelligence, the degree of connection to their own tensegrity structures
@_Sophianical sculptures of the human body require the widest base of support… its what distinguishes us as bipeds from all other life - the degrees of freedom in being able to move our center of gravity… and still be balanced
As if crawling and walking transcended swimming? There is walking in flying, as there is swimming in crawling... as there are primordial, prevertebral rhythms of vibration, sponging, pulsation, etc beneath all vertebral movement.
I love Eckhart but it's comical to see how he frames movement... gravity was never an enemy to defy against, but a dance partner to move with.
The man is a complete stranger in relation to gravity. Look at his alignment. His head isn't even on the same vertical axis as his central channel... which makes his spiritual achievements even more impressive, and to think what else he's missing out on... at least for me, ever more calibrated alignment between heaven and earth allows the "download" to come into the system...
@keeepmoving_ sometimes the hardest thing is to give up seeking, who would we be without struggle… how terrifyingly beautiful is who we find when we stop searching