Dream

Three dreams again, but really only one I properly remember at all. None lucid. I believe a lucid dream could come any night. Though thinking about it, it seems my reality checks only come when I think about dreams, which I don't do in dreams (yet).

Food seems to be pretty common in dreams. As is thinking about whether or not something is vegan. I should tie those to reality checks as well.

Blue Burgers

I was in a very small, basically one-room house. The kitchen had one of those metallic grills you sometimes see at restaurants. I noticed it was heated with 4 propane-fueled burners. Very sloppily, I make a bunch of beyond mean patties. For some reason, I put a bunch of these underneath the metal sheet grill next to the various gas fires.

The metal grill falls off the stove, and the patties fall into various areas around the stove. One patty was safe and untarnished, but I realized it was too big. I collect all the patties I can find, wash them if they were found in a suspect place, and start making two smaller patties out of the setups that are way too big.

During my search for all the fallen patties, I find this compartment on the right side of the stove. Everything inside it, and it itself, is blue. I realize they're blue from being frozen. I find two blue patties inside. I decide they couldn't possibly be the patties I was cooking with, were probably left from a previous tenant, and were probably not beyond meat patties (and thus not vegan).

The patties that I washed ended up cooking white. Sort of like cooking chicken. My brother said something about it being weird.

There's a lot of stuff in this dream that's hard to put into words, or put in the proper place chronologically. I had made comically large patties and (basically like two patties stacked on top of each other), and fixing them gave me many more than I expected. Further, at some point the metallic grill got lost and so I used a plastic cutting board, which worked just fine.

Oh, yeah, the book says I should write these in the present tense.... I'll try to do that next time.

Bojack, Diane baby

Diane has a baby? Not Bojack's. That's all I remember.

Living Room Reorganized

I was sitting in my living room, though something was off about it.

We had reorganized the room so that the TV was against a different wall, and thus everything else had to move as well. An old TV I had when I was seven (but broke in 2016) was situated on the other side of the armrest of the couch (like how I used to set it up so that I could have a gaming TV whilst the regular TV was being used).

"This setup is much better," I told my wife, who was suddenly there.

Things were way cleaner and brighter than I believe is truly possible (though the brightness wasn't overwhelming).

That's all I remember.

Meditation (Day 80)

Intentions for the day:

• Label the distractions, do it over and over so that it becomes automatic
• Anything I have control over, try to do anticipate it mindfully
  • E.g. swallowing, introspective check-ins, even
• Learn the various different ways I have to guide myself back to the breath
  • E.g. away from tempting distractions, away from posture distractions, away from pain
• Trace distractions to source, see how much wandering happened
• Try to note where the breath was when you label a distraction (attention, awareness, or forgotten)
• Only adjust posture mindfully, microadjustments due to relaxation too (though just "relax" as a mindful cue is good)

Is there anything else I want to write down before sitting down to meditate?

Oh! Do I want to do a dream check while meditating?

....

No. I have yet to meditate during a dream (that I remember), so I do not think it's valuable to pollute the meditation with this.

Post-Meditation

I ended up not being able to help myself in checking if I was dreaming after a distraction related to lucid dreaming.

Today was super distraction-heavy. Also, I messed with timing a bit to see if I could have a quieter session, and... I didn't really. I think better to stick with orignal timing.

Also, had a rare give-in to the "look at timer" distraction. I resisted it many times, but the session felt longer than usual and I got paranoid that both my watch and my phone malfunctioned somehow (something that has yet to happen during a meditation). When I finally gave in there was but 2 minutes left in the session.

Not sure if a session feeling long is a good or bad sign. Once I got my mind settled, it did feel really good to be in a meditation. Even though it was hard to keep my mind settled. I may well have slid all the way back to stage 2 (condidering noticing I'm distracted a major win). But I think that's great? Somehow? Like, meditation still proving it's so valuable, and also I don't just give up.

Though giving up was something that occured to me today. Making it through that feeling though, unlocked that solid head feeling I always seem to have after meditation.

Extracurricular Stuff

I did do a tiny bit of writing yesterday! Hoping to have a blog post out next weekend. I'm going to go for one a month, I think (though I missed one in July, but that's fine).

The post will be called "Practicing Intentionality".

Also, friend seems like he still wants to do calls. So, maybe that'll happen today.