Dream

Intention (2200 the night before)

I will notice conflict and realize I'm dreaming. I will see the mansion and know I'm dreaming. Delicious food will trigger a reality check. Upon waking, I will do a reality check and put pen to paper, writing dreams or the lack thereof.

I will wake at 0400 (alarm set) and do a WBTS.

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

I may have had a dream related to Lovecraft Country, but I can't remember it.

Perhaps the mansion is too vague to incubate. It is a place from a dream a long, long time ago. It's also basically me trying to incubate my dream literally telling me I'm dreaming. I don't think this is impossible, but perhaps a bit too big for my current dreaming capability.

What else, then? An old home, maybe? An old family member?

Perhaps I should revisit a recent dream?

I've gone to my aunt's various times in dreams. That could be fun. Let's try that for incubation.

Sleep time. 0420.

Wake (logged at 0700 this morning)

Still no incubated dream or lucidity (save the super short-lived one). But lots of interesting stuff, though!

I'll just keep trying, and reflect and learn when I can.

(Also, I just wrote everything in journal BEFORE a reality check. Good thing I'm not dreaming.)

Entertainment on a Train

I am travelling on a train. Though often it's a lot like an airplane. So much of the train is a never-that-clean white.

At first, I believe I am not myself and I am traveling with my boyfriend (a dream native). Some of the entertainment on the train is exclusive to the train. I notice my boyfriend is watching some medieval magic fantasy show.

Fire bursts from the screen. Everyone, including me, acts as if this is normal. I explain to someone near me that although he's a great boyfriend, he's a bit boring.

My perspective switches. I'm the boyfriend, and I heard everything. The fire had glitched my audio. I'm pretty upset.

My perspective switches again to a different group of train people on the same cart. They are completely unrelated. "It's weird, I wasn't allowed to bring my favorite brand of cigarette on the train, but you are allowed this crappy brand." I remember them being specific words for the brands at the time, but they were arbitrary nonsense that I can't remember now.

The other guy is more preoccupied with finding a consenting adult to have an affair on the train with. Seems like it's a habit for him? There was quite a bit of content at this part, but lots of it has faded.

....

Now I'm still on a train, but it's different. I am myself and I'm travelling with my friend Andrew (who was also in a dream a couple days ago). He notices I'm awake. "The rain helps you sleep, eh?" he points to the rain falling on this huge window. Would be quite the view if not for all the splatter.

I disagree that it affects me, telling him it's this book I'm reading. I lift up a thick, aged-to-yellow book.

"Ah, did you want to watch that one show exclusive to this train? By the makers of League of Legends, a comedy."

I am confused by train-exclusive content. He seems to hear my confusion.

"Ah, yeah, various transportation services getting exclusive content now. There was even this one movie that a plane company got. Instead of making first class nicer, first class got access to this movie. They were all cramped in there, but the hype for the movie was huge."

What a strange manifestation of dystopia, I think.

Pre-nap (1257)

Play with building hypnagogic habits.

Post-nap (1327)

Tried to picture myself in settings and use those settings as reality check reminders.

Meditation (Day 88)

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 in the latter half of meditation
• During a planned deviation from breath, keep breath in awareness

Today's meditation will start at 1600. Now that I'm not worried about skipping meditation if I don't do it at the designated time, I'm going to the work meditation meetings to meditate with workmates. I will also take a break in the middle to chat with others about the session. This is a "planned deviation from the breath" and yesterday when this happened, I "forgot" the breath. This time, will try to keep it in awareness.

Post-Meditation

So, I'm hitting problems that I've "gotten over" before, but I think that's a good sign. Specifically, I'm having trouble with the timer again. But that means that 45 minutes is seeming longer. Which I take to mean that more of my moments of consciousness are devoted to the breath and are not lost to dullness or mindless distraction.

This is also my experience, mind you, whereas vivid sensation at the nose before happened often, it wasn't really constant, but now it pretty much is.

And so I'm surprised that 45 minutes haven't passed. I have various backup alarms, so I don't "need" to look at my timer, but the urge exists all the same.

What's also interesting is how... playful this urge is? Meditation is very rarely frustrating, and even when it is, the nature of meditation means I'm given ample opportunity to look at that frustration and understand it. Though, no frustration occurred today, so we can talk about that some other time.

Anyways, there were two interesting "fights" on the cushion today:

• the timer (my old, familiar foe)
• boredom (but not how I usually think of it)

So, really, the timer and boredom are connected, but the timer is also triggered by a history with my fitbit restarting (and thus silently ending the countdown timer I have going), and also by how asleep one of my legs clearly is (and a paranoia that I'm doing nerve damage even though there's no way I am). However, the struggle (don't like this word any more than fight...) aginst both is very similar so I'll speak only of the timer, but assume something similar is in play with boredom.

The fear-triggered timer distraction is a familiar dance at this point. It goes on entirely in the background. Will knowing the time change anything? No. Does the timer dying matter? No, again, I have backups. So, it's fine, don't look at the timer. Meditative joy formula: relax and look for joy; let it come, let it be, and let it go.

What's interesting, though, is that this distraction still shows up and still wins sometimes. Via sheer tenacity. And then even further, it's fun to dodge it (dodge also isn't good, I'll find a fun word eventually). The distraction typically becomes tenacious past the halfway mark, I'm guessing around 30 minutes in, but I don't know, because I don't give in for a while after it starts being frequently insistent.

Every time the distraction comes into awareness and I don't look at the timer, it is immensely satisfying. But when it sometimes wins, there's this feeling of, "good game mind, let's play again tomorrow". Today, with 10 seconds remaining on the timer, I broke down and looked at it. In so many circumstances, that's the worst kind of loss. But it was just a super strong "good game" feeling.

Experimental

The experimental thing of focus now is still adhering to the timeblock. I'm thinking this adherence will also only be a "workday" thing, though maybe I'll have a smaller block of adherence on the weekend.

There is something oddly satisfying about not revising the timeblock at the end of the day.