Dream

Dream Prep

So, I have a physical journal I write in for this. I later convert that writing to this digital form (though I save them in Notion first and copy it here, because Notion has a means of tagging and such).

A structure to this system is starting to form, and I believe I will also copy notes from that structure here.

....

I ended up getting super carried away playing with how to organize my dream journal in Notion. I figured it out, but, like, I had to start working after that, and now I'm once again doing a 1630 meditation instead of an 0830 one.

I'll come back and fill in dreams after meditation.

Intent (logged at 2200 last night)

Alarm at 0400 set. Wake-back-to-sleep. I am grateful that I will remember my dreams. I am grateful that I will have a lucid dream.

This time, to avoid dreaming about being in bed and to reinforce the compound being a common dream location, I will try to set my dream there.

I will consider this intent before my longer REM dreams in WBTS.

Wake-Back-to-Sleep (logged at 0330 this morning)

Woke up at 0330 or so. No reason to force 0400 as start of WBTS. Can use alarm as indication to go back to sleep.

Letting my mind wander a bit. Should I try strong focus during WBTS? My body feels pretty good today. Should I try meditating during WBTS? I guess I can do that to fall back asleep.

I am about to dream. Do I still want to go to the compound? Am I ready for that? I could try going back to the mansion. Perhaps I should be prepared for dreaming about being in the house again. Just got to do my reality checks. It happened last night, it could happen again tonight. I'm excited.

Bathroom now, and then back to sleep.

Cowboy Wanted by the Law

The earliest part I remember, I'm a cowboy asking folk a bunch of questions at a bar. There was an earlier bit I think but either it's a completely different dream, or I forgot it.

I'm there to grab a friend, though I don't seem to like him. While looking, two men are arguing and I decide to intervene. My choice is to just punch one of them. I do this just as the other one calls the person I'm punching the n-word. So, I punch the other guy. They're both knocked out.

The guy I'm looking for shows up with a big sack of hand guns, and we leave in my truck to go to some farm. The person with the guns wants to hide in the covered flat of the truck with the guns.

Upon arrival at the farm, there are a group of officers. Specialized. FBI, maybe? They find the guns and want to arrest me. I mange to get away (there's either missing memories here or some sort of time-skip).

One of the people on the farm finds me and offers me a tool to get the attention of a horse I bonded with on the farm.

As I go to find this horse, I get attacked. They attack with these weird pen weapons with a tiny retractable blade that looks like a fountain pen tip. They apparently throw very well, blade always pointing in the direction of velocity.

Some six men with these pens are chasing me. Quite a few of the pens fly by my head as I dodge them. I pick up a few where they landed as I continue my escape. I throw all but one, hitting no one.

At the entrance of the farm, I run around the vehicle that they rode in on. I'm now intending to steal a car to get away in. A pursuer catches up to me and I stab him with the pen blade. I didn't stab very hard, so it barely scratches. But I'm surrounded now. Everyone looked worried when I stabbed him, but have calmed down now. I stab again, so hard it gets stuck in him. In the confusion, I get away.

I try to steal an Uber driver's car but he's giving a ride to a kid, his brother. Somehow, I come across the horse I was looking for.

There's a time-skip. I'm in a different-enough area that the law enforcement chasing me don't know who I am. I see the chase from a bird's eye view. I'm cutting across fields and stuff, trying to take advantage of my horse.

Eventually, I give up. An officer catches up to me and we start a dialog. He's asking me questions, not sure why I was running away. I answer, avoiding saying anything incriminating. The whole time I have a gun in my hand that I'm hiding from the officer in ridiculous, unbelievable ways. I see this all from a third-person perspective. My avatar kind of looks like Karl Urban, and by the end of the conversation I'm pressing the gun against my face, keeping that side hidden from the officer.

A shirtless, glistening, muscled man saw it all and commended me for my boldness after the officer left.

Panicked Packing

I'm living at my previous home. Need to pack for a trip but things keep distracting me. Realize that I left something important at a different area, and start heading there to grab it, but then I calculate the timing and need to head home immediately to have enough time to pack. "Why do I always do this," I remember screaming at myself.

Someone at the house tells me they also need to grab something at the place where I was going, so after I'm done packing we can pick it up on the way... to where we're going. I feel better, but am still rushing.

That's all I remember.

Meditation (Day 82)

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)

Post-Meditation

I really felt like I nailed my goals (aka intentions) today. It also makes me more confident that I haven't "mastered" stage 3, though mastery will come with the work I do in stage 4, so it's all good.

What I've found is that when I'm making new progress, there's narration, but when I've grown comfortable, it quiets. I can also use tools I have at my disposal to do the same job as narration, mind you, it's just that I'm still constructing the "tools" of meditation, so it's a lot of medititation.

It's a lot like learning a new control scheme (or a keyboard layout). The narration helps build the neural pathways, it feels like. Before it becomes automatic, and then I have to force that same thing to rewire pathways consciously. With certain feedback mechanisms, the narration isn't necessary, but I think it helps. The goal is also to reduce this narration to silence. Consciously improving without narration is definitely possible once I learn the alternative langauage of the give craft (in this case: meditation).

Playing with Notion now continues with meditation stuff! There's a lot of stuff I can do, but I realize that one thing that may be valuable is logging distractions in a database.

I won't backfill anything, though. My system before was a bit to adhoc for it. Though, luckily, I have a nice big centralized list to initialize with, Which should help with how to organize them, exactly.

....

And done. It'll get played with more, for sure, but I like this.

Now, I gots to update my dream log above.... After anime night.

Extracurricular Stuff

So, it occurs to me that dream stuff is new project, and thus it needs time to settle. I'll be giving it my focus until it properly settles.