Yesterday's dreams will be digitized today.

....

Yesterday's dreams have been digitized.

Meditation (Day 130)

Prep (0930)

Trying to write the motivations and intentions from memory before looking at them. Feels like a solid idea.

Motivations:

• Practice Intentionality (set specific intentions)
• Unity of mind
• Subduing distractions
• Overcoming the illusion of self

Intentions for the day:

• Posture prep as long as necessary (until ready to stay still for the rest of the session)
• Body-scan when breath loses vividity (and also as part of narrowing attention to breath at nose)
• Set intention to focus exclusively on the breath at the nose
• Increase scope of breath attention to more body parts to help subdue subtle distractions
• Keep awareness strong so that it can stop distractions and dullness from interfering
• Specifically be aware of posture and do not give it attention
• Set the intention to stay completely still
• Do not feed distractions with attention (even with labeling now), instead just list the ones you remember during post-meditation reflection

Expected distractions:

• Wife
• Cat
• Outside
• Crazy Ex-Girlfriend
• Cardcaptor Sakura
• Memories
• Reflection
• Planning
• Meta
• Posture
• Shoulder
• Lower back
• Body-scan
• Dreaming?
• Fantasy
• Work
• Timer

Post-Meditation (1035)

Another best day. At this point I feel almost certain that stage 4 is in my version of mastered. Stage 5 may be, as well, even. The breath was basically always vivid. My hesitation to label either was all the distractions I was noticing, but with stage 6 intentions I'm already overcoming them (though still there are a lot). And as the book noted, it's not that I'm having more distractions, it's that I'm noticing more of them.

But wow, I also feel great. It's like when I started meditation 130 days ago. It's even following me around throughout the day. Exclusive focus is super neat.

Dream

Intention (2310 the night before)

The color of the walls were the color of strawberry donut frosting. Maybe I'm close? Let's try again.

Watch myself fall asleep. WBTS. WILD.

Wake up at 0720.

Sleep time.

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

I woke up convinced it'd be well-past 0700 already.

Wonder why I felt that way. No early-REM dreams coming to me. I have iterated through various tags, which sometimes helps jog them into consciousness.

Very hypnagogic right now. Almost just fell into a dream, it felt like. Can't remember it, either, though it felt like for a second I remembered a dream.

"Strawberry Fields Forever" is a song that keeps coming to me, I think it's in the strawberry incubation attempts. Pretty certain, in fact, as sometimes I sing "Strawberry donuts forever".

Well, I think I may be able to WILD in this state. So, let's try.

Wake (logged at 0711 this morning)

I awoke with a dream fragment but by the time I got to my journal it was already gone. I'll learn better capture methods as these continue to happen, I'm sure.

The hypnagogy this morning is strong. Lots of nonsense. One unrelated thought with no context after another. Perhaps this was what my dreams were like last night. (Future note [1557]: I have a feeling it is useful for finding random connections between sub-minds. Something certainly feels powerful about it.)

There's still a chance they'll come, though. But even if not: my habits were solid, and now a day I don't remember a dream is rare. That's solid! In isolation, I don't consider an inability to remember a dream a problem.

Also, I've been waking up at or before the intended time, and doing so quite joyfully. Which was an explicitly higher priority thing, that I don't seem to have to compromise on given my growing note-taking-at-night habits.

Pre-nap (1500)

Late nap with some diet Dr Pepper caffeine processing through my system. What might happen? I find meditation is on the mind lately, during these pre-nap bits. Makes sense. Leveled up recently, I'm pretty sure. This maybe deserves its own place for thinking.

Anyways, as per usual, practice habits, but prioritize good nap.

Dream Fragment (1520)

Computer glitching out like it used to. Causing me great frustration.

Post-nap (1521)

Main wisdom takeaway before any other reflection: "Kids are not taught to process their emotions. To communicate them. To understand them in a way that they can store them. And so as adults they don't remember them. The damage this causes is double: the damage of the unprocessed emotion has not been treated, and the damage is hard to locate because there is no thread of understanding to find it."

This quote, which I have expanded, came to me as I explored a past childhood home in my mind. The exploration uncovered memories. One was that of getting Ocarina of Time as a Christmas present, and the temper tantrum that exploded shortly before Christmas (as I was convinced I wouldn't get it, and was furious my parents wouldn't let me buy it with my own money).

I tried to feel the emotion again, but I could not. Then, it was as if I spoke the above quote to my own child.

There are other things I remember, but I am deciding they do not need to be written.