Meditation (Day 133)

Prep (0930)

Motivations:

• Unity of mind
• See what the next stages are like
• Practice intentionality
• Overcoming the illusion of self
• Subduing distractions (on and off the cushion)

Intentions for the day:

• Prep pose to stable position and set intention to sit still
• Body-scan while narrowing focus to the breath (stage 5)
• Body-scan when breath loses vividness (stage 5)
• Exclusive attention body-scan exercise (stage 6)
• Resolve to settle attention exclusively to current meditation object
• Keep perhiperal awareness strong to keep dullness at bay
• Specifically keep posture in awareness and out of attention
• Do not feed distractions with attention (even with labeling), simply list the distractions you naturally remember during reflection
• Increase scope of attention to the breath sensations of more body parts to help subdue subtle distractions
• Eyes closed today

Distractions to look out for:

• Wife
• Cat
• Outside
• Cardcaptor Sakura
• Pain
• Shoulder
• Lower back
• Lotus
• Posture
• Reflection
• Fantasy
• Vision
• Body-scan
• Dreaming?
• Labeling
• Meta
• Swallowing
• Timer
• Work
• Slack

Post-Meditation (1045)

I keep getting short bits of exclusive attention, I believe. Also some interesting feelings throughout the body around the times I get the exclusive attention. There's an excitement that happens that has me lose it. It's a lot like getting excited in a lucid dream and waking up.

There was a time near the end that distractions really wanted to be gross, but they stayed subtle, and I was able to better identify how certain distractions beget others.

Couldn't help but do some labeling, and funnily enough that often led to me labeling the "labeling". Double-up on the labeling distraction! Triple-up?

Feeling super great. Like, even better than usual. Though, this feeling better than usual is becoming somewhat usual.

Super exciting.

Dream

Intention (2330 the night before)

I should revisit some saved dreams soon. Maybe this weekend. See if anything jumps out at me. I wonder at what intervals I should revisit dreams. Like, is sooner better, or does length provide a valuable new perspective?

Watch myself fall asleep. Notice when the dream tries to tell me I'm dreaming. WBTS. WILD. Incubate strawberry donuts.

Good night.

Dream Fragment

Vaguely remember telling someone to avoid getting hit by cabinets as they stood up.

Wake-Back-to-Sleep (logged at 0425 this morning)

Feels like it's been a while since WBTS, but I only missed last night. My mind has wandered to the lucid dream that I played with dream powers in. I wouldn't mind doing that sort of thing again.

Almost just fell asleep again with pen and journal in hand.

WILD. Backup with DILD intention. Incubate strawberry donuts. Let's see what happens.

Wake (logged at 0720 this morning)

No dreams remembered. Not too late. Dreams may come. If not, that's okay. Did go to sleep a bit late last night. That seems to interfere, sometimes. In any case, solid habits, I think. Just keep going, and iterate on habits when appropriate.

Pre-nap (1302)

Reset and get back to work.

Post-nap (1318)

Good nap.

Experimental (Special Meditation)

Joined on the work meditation session at 1600 today. I'm pretty sure I want to do something special there, but today I just did another, shorter session today.

General Thinking

Tasks stacking up a bit, but maintaining focus has kept me from feeling overwhelmed. There's an artificial urgency that I need to let go of, I think.