Daily Entry: October 18th, 2020

Dream

Intention (2333 the night before)

Focus on sleep quality. Drill habits if sleep good. Remembering dreams nice, but I am not going to be upset if I don't.

Wake (logged at 0827 this morning)

I did wake at 0400 and momentarily consider WBTS, but decided to just go straight back to sleep.

There were perhaps dreams I remember at some points but right now they're completely gone (not even a memory of having remembered).

Pre-nap (1308)

Being pretty mindful today. Which is cool. Will try to reset habits today. Got some errands to run today, so let's get napping.

Post-nap (1330)

Quite a bit of hypnagogy. Decided that strawberry donut incubation not working. Will try aunt house visit for a bit. Spent a solid amount of nap exploring her house while watching my body fall further into the nap. Might be possible to WILD while doing this, not sure.

Meditation (Day 136)

Prep

Motivations:

  • Unity of mind
  • Subduing distractions
  • See what the next stages of meditation are like
  • Practing intentionality
  • Overcoming the illusion of self

Intentions for the day:

  • Eyes closed today
  • Prep posture until ready to set intention to sit still
  • Body-scan on breath throughout body (stage 5 exercise)
  • Body-scan when breath loses vividness (stage 5 exercise)
  • Set the intention to catch and immediately correct for subtle dullness (stage 5)
  • Set the intention to focus exclusively on the breath (stage 6)
  • Keep all distracting thoughts in peripheral awareness
  • Especially posture
  • Do not feed distactions with attention
  • Increase the scope of the breath to more body parts to help subdue distraction as necessary (stage 6 exercise)
    • Decrease slowly when distractions are subdued

Distractions to look out for:

  • Wife
  • Meta
  • Haunting on Bly Manor
  • Politicis
  • Reflection
  • Timer
  • Fantasy
  • Body-scan
  • Posture
  • Outside
  • Vision
  • Labeling
  • Swallowing
  • Cardcaptor Sakura
  • Spiderverse
  • Lower back

Post-Meditation (1730)

There was some strange, hypnagogic-like thoughts. Very similar to old nap experiences. Every time they showed up, I checked for dullness, but everything seemed pretty vivid and strong.... It is possible, similar to how I hear things, that I just have nonsense thoughts that usually I don't notice.

In any case, increasing mindfulness exercises (stage 5) probably still quite worthwhile. Though, stage 6 has a variation, so I'm sure I'm increasing mindfulness in both. I am also paranoid about dullness, which may be causing dullness symptoms without dullness? One thing I'm doing is regularly checking for dullness. Similar to the introspective check-in (which itself is done in a peripheral way n;ow, kinda, I'm working on it).

Still voicing my intentions as I return to exclusive breath or remind myself to be still. Today, I tried to make those wordless. Sometimes I think I could instill the intent without the words. I'll continue to play with that.

Experimental (Notion Organization)

Should I still try to experiment with special meditations?

Perhaps it's time for a new experiment?

Maybe just organizing my Notion setup for about 15 minutes or so a day?

General Thinking

A lot of the weekend got eaten up by errands and opslead stuff. Will have to decimate the weekly review throughout the week again.