Dream

Intention (2200 the night before)

Continue trying to dream of mansion. Try to have a dream-initiated-lucid dream (DILD) if a wake-initiated (WILD) doesn't happen.

I will:

• reality check before writing in journal
• play out pseudo-dreams during WILD attempt
• write in journal upon any wake-from-sleep

Group Chat with College Friends

Yesterday, I had a group chat with college friends (over Zoom). A friend is moving from Seattle to San Diego.

I believe I had a dream about this as well, but don't remember much of it. I think it was in-person in the dream.

Getting a Raise

I am in a conference room. An old work acquaintance is now my boss. I interacted with her infrequently, and only knew her more through other work friends. For example, she's very into Star Trek and says "Come" when knocking on her door consistently.

I anticipate being disappointed in the offer, and being prepared to put in notice of my resignation. She tells me that I'll be getting a 50% raise.

This is properly registered as incredibly generous. I try to do the math in my head, but I make it really complicated by increasing some 10 different numbers by 50%. She notices that I look troubled.

"Is it Yoda?" she asks. And I notice my cat is zooming around the room, running back and forth, claws catching on the carpet as she zips around.

Wake-Back-to-Sleep (logged at 0400 this morning)

Too tired for WBTS today (is what I wrote in my journal at 0400).

Died in a Plane Crash

I am working out on a gym that's on some sort of flying vehicle. I believe it registers as a plane. It seems that a previous high school teacher of mine swears by this gym, as gravity can seem to lessen on it for some workouts.

Suddenly, I find that I'm being thrown to the back of the plane. An intense dread feels my body. "Oh, I'm dead." There's this texture of a crash, and then I'm awake, tingling all over.

SF Confusion

I am in a building in SF. I'm trying to do something, but I can't remember what. My friend Ian is there. I'm glad he's okay, he hasn't responded to my texts.

Really vague, hard to remember, didn't write enough down when it was fresh (I was very tired).

My Aunt is Killing Viruses

I am at my aunt's house. Except as far as I know it's unlike any house my aunt has ever lived in. But I know it to be hers. My cat Yoda is there, zooming around the house like crazy.

I notice a strange splatch of... something on the ground. It is in the shape of a skull and crossbones. "Oh, that," my aunt says, "that's just the dead virus." She'd put down poison all over the house, apparently, that only kills "the virus", and when the virus dies, that's what it looks like.

That's all I remember.

Wake (logged at 0700 this morning)

All I did was note the dreams I forgot to note so I could write them down as best I could later.

Pre-nap (1315)

Play with pseudo dreams.

Post-nap (1330)

No body-movement today. Tried to see if I could explore memories of last night's dreams in addition to a bit of Melee practice. Maybe helped with further recall? Unsure.

Reflection (written at 2130 this night)

I was really tired last night, and it led to some strange dreams, it seems. That same tiredness made it hard to remember them properly as well. Upon waking up I noted more if I could, but did not make a proper "Wake" bit of writing reflecting on it all while the dream state fades.

Ideally, I think, I'd write the wake document and one of these reflections later. But in any case, 1/2 isn't bad for our purposes.

Yoda was very present in my dreams tonight, but I'm pretty sure it was because I woke up several times to her running all over the bed room (and even attacking my feet, which she hasn't done in a good while).

Meditation (Day 87)

Intentions for the day:

• Stage 4 intention (vigilance on keeping introspective awareness continuous)
• Fall back to stage 3 if necessary
• Label the distractions, do it over and over so that it becomes automatic
• Before adjusting posture, count 8 breaths
• 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
• Note where the breath was when you label a distraction (attention, awareness, or forgotten)
• Body-scan later in the session.

Post-Meditation

Today continues the no-forgetting streak. Again, maybe not quite as good as two days ago, but with its own good things and its own bad things. You may have noticed that planning a body-scan is a part of the pre-meditation intention-setting.

The "bad" here was that I actually did forget the breath. Twice. But they were planned interruptions to my meditation. Basically, I forgot intentionally. It makes sense in context, but I don't want to make it a habit. Merely a bit of flexibility on my end.

Also, I'm starting a post-sitting walking meditation habit, which is also going well.

What's very exciting to note is that I use the dream version of the graph when visualizing the breath. I quite like it. Looks more like I'm painting the breath. And it makes me really decide on the transition points. It's satisfying. The breath is becoming quite vivid and I have lots of ways to play with looking at it.

Experimental

Renaming this section. I realize what I really want to think about here is what do I want to do that I'm not and what mutations do I want to make to my habits to start making progress towards that.

And there's a lot of things here. So many. So much so that I have to choose to not do most of them. Many of them I'll choose not to do for years, for decades, and many more will just never happen.

I have found that right now all effort focused on an understanding of self will, in the long run, mean doing more of the things I want to do. This is something I knew intellectually for a long time, but it wasn't until ADHD medication that I could start putting that into motion.

And now I just keep getting reinforcement that it is correct. Meditation has proven very valuable. I believe dream journaling will prove itself (though the abstract meditation dream maybe was already such evidence).

Anyways, my focus this week, I said, was "work more". But really, it's to do something I never got very good at, which is try to adhere to my timeblock (at least during "working hours"). Again, this is something I've seen the power of, but pre-ADHD medication, things didn't really seem to stick. Today was very powerful, perhaps I can expect stickiness this time.