Dream

Had a dream that I narrated to myself upon waking up. But I went back to sleep and now it's completely gone.

How should I go about practicing recording it properly? Perhaps I should do what I do with "leaving the house". I have an item in my morning routine to "Practice leaving the house" wherein I go to pretend to put my shoes on, but before touching shoes, I stop and point at the various things I want to do before touching my shoes:

• do I want/need to wear a mask?
• do I want to put sunscreen on?
• what else do I need to bring?

Perhaps I can lay in bed and do a similar thing? Perhaps I could use naps to practice? I already have hypnagogic meanderings that I forget by the time I end the nap. They happen much more consistently than dreams, and also I get multiple chances per nap. It's probably a good idea....

Meditation (Day 47)

Prime number, woo!

I believe I need to fix my posture again, though it's something I can find given enough time. By the end of today's meditation, I found a really solid position. I think I've gotten into the habit of leaning too far forward and curving my back too far back. Was tiring out my lower back.

Anyways, the experiment I referenced yesterday worked well today. To more consistently cultivate the habit of invoking introspective attention regularly (before forgetting the breath), I've decided to think "focus on the breath" during the pause between the out-breath and the in-breath. The goal isn't to always do this, mind you, it's to do it mindlessly.

Why?

It's something I've noticed is very useful during walking meditation. To keep track of which foot to focus on, I needed to say "right" or "left" for the foot when it was time to switch to it. This is because my usual "right" or "left" placement was when my foot landed, not when it was about to be in motion. But in motion is when you want to focus on that foot.

It took a long time to get used to this, to the point that it became a habit when not focusing on the feet to narrate the "left" and "right" while walking. This means I have something consistent to notice when I'm distracted or being mindless when I want to be mindful. But this only applies while walking.

Now, I could do some sort of "in" and "out" sort of thing, but in all honesty it's a lot of work to quiet that part even when focusing, and I don't want something as hard as "right" and "left" to overcome again, as useful as it is.

So, the goal is that when I get distracted, I hear the "focus on the breath" during that pause. It worked pretty well today, and because I'm explicitly building a goal of quieting it when actually focused, it wasn't itself distracting when the breath was a focus (though I did need to explicitly stop myself from thinking it).

I believe I did not forget the breath today because of it, and by the end of the session I was pretty solidly in stage 4 territory (keep introspective awareness continuous, and immediately notice and correct for gross distraction and strong dullness).

Extracurricular Thinking

The above thinking may become its own blog post.... I'll think about how I want to store the above writing so I can edit and play with it.