Dream

Intention (2300 the night before)

Alarm set for 0500. Conflict is a common theme in my dreams. When there isn't conflict, there's usually some surprise at something in the environment (I tag these as "Call outs", with some glaringly impossible things being "Surprisingly Possible"). I will try to have these trigger a reality check. Upon gaining lucidity, if I feel the dream collapsing, I will ask, "Can I stay?"

"Stabilize!" didn't work, and part of that is that commands just aren't my style. I'd rather have a dialog that leads to an informed consent, even—no, especially—with my mind.

I will also try to remember the dreams that occurred before WBTS.

Wake-Back-to-Sleep (logged at 0500 this morning)

0500 success! I'm very tired.

I feel like I maybe recently woke out of a dream but I can't gather it here. EarlierREM dreams will take some work, I think.

....

Found it! Maybe two different ones?

(I write "Climate Change Closes the Stock Market" and "A Coup in Joker's Gang" here)

Okay, dreams captured to the extent I remember.

Again, there was conflict. Though, stock market thing was something that felt "right", but "bad weather" being the reason is surprising. Something I think I "called-out" in the dream, maybe? Which I'm trying to use to trigger a reality check.

So, as I go back to sleep: conflict, surprise, call out. These may mean dream. Try reality check.

Now, I will reality check until I fall back asleep.

Wake (logged at 0700 this morning)

No additional dream memories.... Perhaps, whenever I notice I'm awake in bed, I should go to my dream journal and see what spills out.

Climate Change Closes the Stock Market

I am at an old home in Vancouver, Washingon. Except the layout isn't quite right. Have used iMac to make a large investment. My sister comes to me with the wireless phone. It's the investment firm I just used. My investment allocation is delayed. Terrible weather has caused a panic and the stock market has temporarily shut down.

A Coup in Joker's Gang

I have joined a gang led by the Joker. Though, this "I" is some strange dream avatar, not a person I identify as me. Possibly I am Harvey Dent, though that doesn't really make sense. I am walking around the city streets with no discernible goals or purpose. It was really pouring earlier but I notice I'm not wet. It may even still be raining but I'm not wet.

Some sort of confrontation with the Joker happens? The dream is real fuzzy. I think I killed the Joker.

Meditation (Day 83)

Today, I will meditate at 1600 on purpose.

Intentions for the day:

• Label the distractions, do it over and over so that it becomes automatic
• Anything I have control over, try to do anticipate it mindfully
  • E.g. swallowing, introspective check-ins, even
• 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
• Try to note where the breath was when you label a distraction (attention, awareness, or forgotten)
• Only adjust posture mindfully, microadjustments due to relaxation too (though just "relax" as a mindful cue is good)

Post-Meditation (should be filled in around 1700)

Today, I had a shorter session. I sat for 30 minutes instead of 45. It's not something I want to make a habit of. There's this struggle in the last 15 minutes that is very satisfying to overcome. But the first 30 minutes were very solid, none-the-less. It's something that's okay to happen every once in a while.

Basically, promised to do thing with wife, but there was a bunch of meetings in awkward places, and the wife misheard, so I had to find a new place. And then I didn't manage my stretching time too well, and I realized I needed to stop a bit sooner than when music with wife started because I need to walk about to verify circulation in my legs and stuff.

I think, however, that I always kept the breath in awareness, and did a pretty good job of handling distractions fairly quickly. Quite a few of them were handled in awareness before they intruded into attention. Which is fun. Further, I could feel the narration quieting today as certain processes became familiar. Really felt the breath for a lot of the session.

Also, I'm liking my new distraction tracking system, though it still has the problem of me needing to remember the distractions. But the ones I forget are either not to be worried about, or I'll get more chances in the future.

I'll do something similar with dreams to see frequency and stuff.

I may also start noting distractions outside of meditation, too. Kind of how pomodoros recommend doing them, but I'd do it more "Is this on topic according to what I've set in Toggl?"

It'll take a while to build that habit, but I may start playing with it soon.

But speaking of outside meditation, I'm feeling like I've come out of meditation all day lately. It's super solid. I wonder if my dreaming practice is a form of meditation? This also I think is leading to supercharged meditation. Like, there's an intensity on the cushion and it's like unlocking another level of power.

Still very excited to see how far this practice takes me. And also, I guess, how it mixes with other practices.

Extracurricular Stuff

Dream development is main new project now. Thus, "side-projects" will have to wait until next weekly review.

Dream

Dream Prep

So, I have a physical journal I write in for this. I later convert that writing to this digital form (though I save them in Notion first and copy it here, because Notion has a means of tagging and such).

A structure to this system is starting to form, and I believe I will also copy notes from that structure here.

....

I ended up getting super carried away playing with how to organize my dream journal in Notion. I figured it out, but, like, I had to start working after that, and now I'm once again doing a 1630 meditation instead of an 0830 one.

I'll come back and fill in dreams after meditation.

Intent (logged at 2200 last night)

Alarm at 0400 set. Wake-back-to-sleep. I am grateful that I will remember my dreams. I am grateful that I will have a lucid dream.

This time, to avoid dreaming about being in bed and to reinforce the compound being a common dream location, I will try to set my dream there.

I will consider this intent before my longer REM dreams in WBTS.

Wake-Back-to-Sleep (logged at 0330 this morning)

Woke up at 0330 or so. No reason to force 0400 as start of WBTS. Can use alarm as indication to go back to sleep.

Letting my mind wander a bit. Should I try strong focus during WBTS? My body feels pretty good today. Should I try meditating during WBTS? I guess I can do that to fall back asleep.

I am about to dream. Do I still want to go to the compound? Am I ready for that? I could try going back to the mansion. Perhaps I should be prepared for dreaming about being in the house again. Just got to do my reality checks. It happened last night, it could happen again tonight. I'm excited.

Bathroom now, and then back to sleep.

Cowboy Wanted by the Law

The earliest part I remember, I'm a cowboy asking folk a bunch of questions at a bar. There was an earlier bit I think but either it's a completely different dream, or I forgot it.

I'm there to grab a friend, though I don't seem to like him. While looking, two men are arguing and I decide to intervene. My choice is to just punch one of them. I do this just as the other one calls the person I'm punching the n-word. So, I punch the other guy. They're both knocked out.

The guy I'm looking for shows up with a big sack of hand guns, and we leave in my truck to go to some farm. The person with the guns wants to hide in the covered flat of the truck with the guns.

Upon arrival at the farm, there are a group of officers. Specialized. FBI, maybe? They find the guns and want to arrest me. I mange to get away (there's either missing memories here or some sort of time-skip).

One of the people on the farm finds me and offers me a tool to get the attention of a horse I bonded with on the farm.

As I go to find this horse, I get attacked. They attack with these weird pen weapons with a tiny retractable blade that looks like a fountain pen tip. They apparently throw very well, blade always pointing in the direction of velocity.

Some six men with these pens are chasing me. Quite a few of the pens fly by my head as I dodge them. I pick up a few where they landed as I continue my escape. I throw all but one, hitting no one.

At the entrance of the farm, I run around the vehicle that they rode in on. I'm now intending to steal a car to get away in. A pursuer catches up to me and I stab him with the pen blade. I didn't stab very hard, so it barely scratches. But I'm surrounded now. Everyone looked worried when I stabbed him, but have calmed down now. I stab again, so hard it gets stuck in him. In the confusion, I get away.

I try to steal an Uber driver's car but he's giving a ride to a kid, his brother. Somehow, I come across the horse I was looking for.

There's a time-skip. I'm in a different-enough area that the law enforcement chasing me don't know who I am. I see the chase from a bird's eye view. I'm cutting across fields and stuff, trying to take advantage of my horse.

Eventually, I give up. An officer catches up to me and we start a dialog. He's asking me questions, not sure why I was running away. I answer, avoiding saying anything incriminating. The whole time I have a gun in my hand that I'm hiding from the officer in ridiculous, unbelievable ways. I see this all from a third-person perspective. My avatar kind of looks like Karl Urban, and by the end of the conversation I'm pressing the gun against my face, keeping that side hidden from the officer.

A shirtless, glistening, muscled man saw it all and commended me for my boldness after the officer left.

Panicked Packing

I'm living at my previous home. Need to pack for a trip but things keep distracting me. Realize that I left something important at a different area, and start heading there to grab it, but then I calculate the timing and need to head home immediately to have enough time to pack. "Why do I always do this," I remember screaming at myself.

Someone at the house tells me they also need to grab something at the place where I was going, so after I'm done packing we can pick it up on the way... to where we're going. I feel better, but am still rushing.

That's all I remember.

Meditation (Day 82)

Intentions for the day:

• Label the distractions, do it over and over so that it becomes automatic
• Anything I have control over, try to do anticipate it mindfully
  • E.g. swallowing, introspective check-ins, even
• 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
• Try to note where the breath was when you label a distraction (attention, awareness, or forgotten)
• Only adjust posture mindfully, microadjustments due to relaxation too (though just "relax" as a mindful cue is good)

Post-Meditation

I really felt like I nailed my goals (aka intentions) today. It also makes me more confident that I haven't "mastered" stage 3, though mastery will come with the work I do in stage 4, so it's all good.

What I've found is that when I'm making new progress, there's narration, but when I've grown comfortable, it quiets. I can also use tools I have at my disposal to do the same job as narration, mind you, it's just that I'm still constructing the "tools" of meditation, so it's a lot of medititation.

It's a lot like learning a new control scheme (or a keyboard layout). The narration helps build the neural pathways, it feels like. Before it becomes automatic, and then I have to force that same thing to rewire pathways consciously. With certain feedback mechanisms, the narration isn't necessary, but I think it helps. The goal is also to reduce this narration to silence. Consciously improving without narration is definitely possible once I learn the alternative langauage of the give craft (in this case: meditation).

Playing with Notion now continues with meditation stuff! There's a lot of stuff I can do, but I realize that one thing that may be valuable is logging distractions in a database.

I won't backfill anything, though. My system before was a bit to adhoc for it. Though, luckily, I have a nice big centralized list to initialize with, Which should help with how to organize them, exactly.

....

And done. It'll get played with more, for sure, but I like this.

Now, I gots to update my dream log above.... After anime night.

Extracurricular Stuff

So, it occurs to me that dream stuff is new project, and thus it needs time to settle. I'll be giving it my focus until it properly settles.

Dream

Lucid dream achieved! A lot to write even though it all happened very quickly. Excited to get another go at it, though.

This morning I utilized a technique in A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming called "wake-back-to-sleep". I set an alarm for 0400, and woke up for 15 minutes, thinking about lucid dreaming. Then I went back to bed, thinking hard about lucid dreaming.

This is something I'll need to work on. Gots to invoke dullness more effectively whilst effectively meditating on my dream intention. It was hard to fall asleep, and also I was thinking about it so much that my dream was... well, you can read about it below.

LUCID: Dreaming in Bed

I wake up lying in bed. Having a lot of trouble falling back to sleep after wake-back-to-sleep. I hear a single voice speaking. It seems to be coming from my phone. Bringing the phone to my ear, the voice gets louder, but in a way that doesn't really make sense if the voice is coming from my phone.

I have a sudden realization and gasp, "Am I dreaming?" Tingling occurs all over my body. I try to push my right index finger through my left palm and it slides right through. "I am." The tingling gets stronger.

Getting out of bed proves difficult. It's as though all my limbs are dead asleep. With difficulty I achieve a sitting position. The dream is collapsing now. There's this dissonance between me sitting up in bed in the dream and me lying down in bed in the waking world. "Stabilize," I yell, trying to use a technique from the book. It helps a bit but the dream is still collapsing. I notice hair in my eyes and brush them away. The visuals of the hair gets replaced with a glitchy, compression-heavy haze. "Stabilize!"

Twirl. I need to twirl. The book says that this is a very effective means of stabilizing the dream. But I'm still sitting down, and I still can't get up. There's this feeling that I have nothing more that I can try, and I accept the fate of the dream. I wake up.

Fancy House Parkour Cat

I'm living in a large, fancy house. Very open. High ceilings. Everything a radiant white. Our cat Yoda is being adorably hyper, running all over the house. She eventually runs all the way up an especially tall, white wall to the ceiling and then runs back down the wall. "I didn't know that was physically possible!" We finally catch her and clean her ears.

Stranger Things Derivative

I'm a kid with my group of friends. There's this garbage can full of roasting marshmallows that I need to stash at my house, because my parents are away for the weekend. On carefully "hiding" the garbage can on the front porch, my annoying sister tells me I need to throw away some old flour or something. I argue with her about composting it. It's in some plastic container, though, and we do not have any compostable bags. Eventually, I figure out a way to compost it, and then I get in a car that takes me back to my friends.

Compound Medicine

Need medicine for pet but forgot where I put it. I am at the compound. My dad was with me when I last used it so I ask him for help, but he's drunk and of no use. My sister ends up finding it in the fence near the pool.

Meditation (Day 81)

Intentions for the day:

• Label the distractions, do it over and over so that it becomes automatic
• Anything I have control over, try to do anticipate it mindfully
  • E.g. swallowing, introspective check-ins, even
• 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
• Try to note where the breath was when you label a distraction (attention, awareness, or forgotten)
• Only adjust posture mindfully, microadjustments due to relaxation too (though just "relax" as a mindful cue is good)

Post-Meditation

I had to delay the daily meditation quite a bit today (basically 8-hour delay, aka after work). So I'm possibly not sure what was special about today versus special about the timing. It seems that various intentions above are becoming more automatic. Which is good, means I've gotten better, but now I need to be vigilant about where the automatic parts need to be brought back into specialized attention and fixing.

For instance, today it really felt like my mind was very automatic about letting me know about distractions. Still a lot of gross distractions, but the breath never felt forgotten. However, I wasn't particularly diligent on checking where the breath was at the labeling of a distraction.

Distraction labeling is also becoming less narrated somehow, which is probably related to my dropping of the "check where the breath was" habit.

Further, I haven't so much developed an awareness and labeling of things before they happen, which is kinda the intent I'm going for, and more I really, really notice when they happen. So, I'm still moving without mindful intention, but my body practically sings at the slightest readjustment now. What I plan on doing is learning to stop the motion sooner and sooner until its stopped at the awareness that I want to move.

I've made progress here, I believe, in that near the end of the meditation several times I started to move but stop. Though I moved enough that I couldn't just stop where I was and I had to carefully put myself back.

Speaking of the need to move, I'm pretty sure my posture is very close to a completely sustainable position. Back no longer aggravated, and shoulder seems to be getting there.

The posture I have settled on is one where my hands hover in the air. This gives my shoulders more permission to relax however they want, which I find means that my neck and back also get to relax how they want. My arms don't get too tired holding my hands in place, either.

Hmmm.... I'm probably going to want to start collecting these thoughts in an organized manner again. Should make sure to review all my meditation topic blogs and see if I wrote about any of them in my daily thinking.

Added a reminder.

Also, my focus seemed to be pretty good today. I might want to make later-in-the-day meditations a more regular possibility when I want to start the work day early or something....

I'll think about it.

Extracurricular Stuff

Yesterday ended up having some meetings run long, so I didn't do much beyond music stuff with wife. I'll try to set aside a half-hour today, though.

....

Nevermind! Had errands to run today. Not even doing music with wife today. Ate up too much of the day.

Dream

Tried out wake-back-to-sleep this morning, but I think I woke up too late to manage to get back to sleep to dream again, though I did have some hynagogic experiences. Maybe I should work on writing those down as well. It was quite like I was on the verge of falling into a dream, but never quite fell asleep.

I remember one dream from last night. I properly wrote it down in present tense this time.

Pack it up, pack it in

At compound. My dad needs to take my brother and his family somewhere, but first he needs to mail some stuff from my place for me. (Apparently, I'm living in Tucson in this dream. Possibly dream signal?)

My dad is trying to talk to me about something but I know he needs to hurry up so I rush him. My mom is waiting in the car so they can run the errand.

My dad really wants to finish the conversation we're having. I offer to drive with him. He doesn't like the idea. He eventually leaves, and I realize I need to pack and do some laundry.

I look at the mess of my stuff, and that's the last thing I remember.

Meditation (Day 80)

Intentions for the day:

• Label the distractions, do it over and over so that it becomes automatic
• Anything I have control over, try to do anticipate it mindfully
  • E.g. swallowing, introspective check-ins, even
• 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
• Try to note where the breath was when you label a distraction (attention, awareness, or forgotten)
• Only adjust posture mindfully, microadjustments due to relaxation too (though just "relax" as a mindful cue is good)

Post-Meditation

Today was just super solid. Maybe the best day yet. Forgot the breath 2 times, but I have the resources to really know now, whereas on days that I "didn't", maybe I did?

Unfortunately, I didn't have a reminder to write it down shortly after the session, so I'm lacking on the specifics I had right after.

Oh, well, maybe I'll be reminded tomorrow.

Extracurricular Stuff

Main goal is to develop programming question habit today. May do some writing. Been working on my Japanese studying habits recently, as well. Installed a new extension, Yomichan, for gathering Japanese in the wild. Have set it up so that I can create Anki cards with a click. The plan is, for now, to try learning some Japanese songs that I like.

Dream

Three dreams again, but really only one I properly remember at all. None lucid. I believe a lucid dream could come any night. Though thinking about it, it seems my reality checks only come when I think about dreams, which I don't do in dreams (yet).

Food seems to be pretty common in dreams. As is thinking about whether or not something is vegan. I should tie those to reality checks as well.

Blue Burgers

I was in a very small, basically one-room house. The kitchen had one of those metallic grills you sometimes see at restaurants. I noticed it was heated with 4 propane-fueled burners. Very sloppily, I make a bunch of beyond mean patties. For some reason, I put a bunch of these underneath the metal sheet grill next to the various gas fires.

The metal grill falls off the stove, and the patties fall into various areas around the stove. One patty was safe and untarnished, but I realized it was too big. I collect all the patties I can find, wash them if they were found in a suspect place, and start making two smaller patties out of the setups that are way too big.

During my search for all the fallen patties, I find this compartment on the right side of the stove. Everything inside it, and it itself, is blue. I realize they're blue from being frozen. I find two blue patties inside. I decide they couldn't possibly be the patties I was cooking with, were probably left from a previous tenant, and were probably not beyond meat patties (and thus not vegan).

The patties that I washed ended up cooking white. Sort of like cooking chicken. My brother said something about it being weird.

There's a lot of stuff in this dream that's hard to put into words, or put in the proper place chronologically. I had made comically large patties and (basically like two patties stacked on top of each other), and fixing them gave me many more than I expected. Further, at some point the metallic grill got lost and so I used a plastic cutting board, which worked just fine.

Oh, yeah, the book says I should write these in the present tense.... I'll try to do that next time.

Bojack, Diane baby

Diane has a baby? Not Bojack's. That's all I remember.

Living Room Reorganized

I was sitting in my living room, though something was off about it.

We had reorganized the room so that the TV was against a different wall, and thus everything else had to move as well. An old TV I had when I was seven (but broke in 2016) was situated on the other side of the armrest of the couch (like how I used to set it up so that I could have a gaming TV whilst the regular TV was being used).

"This setup is much better," I told my wife, who was suddenly there.

Things were way cleaner and brighter than I believe is truly possible (though the brightness wasn't overwhelming).

That's all I remember.

Meditation (Day 80)

Intentions for the day:

• Label the distractions, do it over and over so that it becomes automatic
• Anything I have control over, try to do anticipate it mindfully
  • E.g. swallowing, introspective check-ins, even
• 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
• Try to note where the breath was when you label a distraction (attention, awareness, or forgotten)
• Only adjust posture mindfully, microadjustments due to relaxation too (though just "relax" as a mindful cue is good)

Is there anything else I want to write down before sitting down to meditate?

Oh! Do I want to do a dream check while meditating?

....

No. I have yet to meditate during a dream (that I remember), so I do not think it's valuable to pollute the meditation with this.

Post-Meditation

I ended up not being able to help myself in checking if I was dreaming after a distraction related to lucid dreaming.

Today was super distraction-heavy. Also, I messed with timing a bit to see if I could have a quieter session, and... I didn't really. I think better to stick with orignal timing.

Also, had a rare give-in to the "look at timer" distraction. I resisted it many times, but the session felt longer than usual and I got paranoid that both my watch and my phone malfunctioned somehow (something that has yet to happen during a meditation). When I finally gave in there was but 2 minutes left in the session.

Not sure if a session feeling long is a good or bad sign. Once I got my mind settled, it did feel really good to be in a meditation. Even though it was hard to keep my mind settled. I may well have slid all the way back to stage 2 (condidering noticing I'm distracted a major win). But I think that's great? Somehow? Like, meditation still proving it's so valuable, and also I don't just give up.

Though giving up was something that occured to me today. Making it through that feeling though, unlocked that solid head feeling I always seem to have after meditation.

Extracurricular Stuff

I did do a tiny bit of writing yesterday! Hoping to have a blog post out next weekend. I'm going to go for one a month, I think (though I missed one in July, but that's fine).

The post will be called "Practicing Intentionality".

Also, friend seems like he still wants to do calls. So, maybe that'll happen today.

Dream

Three dreams today, with a wide spread on how much I remember. I believe this may be thanks to advice in A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming.

Magic Train

I was on some sort of incredibly long train. I had a deck of cards that was a simplified version of Monopoly. These cards were dangerous and/or deadly somehow. The person who gave me the cards sat down next to me.

"Going to need you to give those cards to that person sitting over there." The train car was a bunch of seats against the walls of the train with various tiny tables at point. I was sitting behind my own table, and this other person was the next table down (though there were a lot of empty space as it was the area you came in from the stairs).

"So I'm not going to die then?" I asked.

"Person who needed to die already died. Go play a game with him."

So, I went over and sat down at the same table. I'm pretty sure a chair materialized under me. I just sat there, being awkward. Not knowing how to start. "I know why you're here," he said, smirking. "A person doesn't sit down at a stranger's table unless... you want to play a game!" and he started taking out a deck of cards I recognized as some sort of MTG-like, though it was a made-up MTG-like that doesn't exist. He may have even said League of Legends (though that's a MOBA, not a card game).

Suddenly, two other people showed up, each with their own deck, at each end. "Yep, people just materialize to play this game," the target said.

"Actually, I was interested in playing Monopoly," I said, pulling out the cards. He looked disappointed at the word Monopoly, and then confused at the cards. I tried to explain it, "It's condensed into the good parts into a card game. You also get to be a character from the Simpsons or Futurama." I showed a Homer Simpson card. They smiled. I don't remember what happened after that.

There was also a bit of exploring of the train at one point. I passed by a pizza box two times. One time it was normal, and the other time it was upside-down. Both times open. The second time various pieces of pizza were suspended in the air somehow. It was some kind of crumbly sausage pizza. Don't think I took a bite, but I had considered. Didn't even wonder if it was vegan.

Metal Body

My body turned metallic. Like in T2. That's all I really remember.

Quakecon and Gas Station

Filled up a car at a gas station, going to Quakecon with some friends. There was a riddle involved in paying the fee. Had to do with 256 gallons and 2 days of driving. My friend Justin looked at me like it was an easy question to answer. "Doesn't something jump out to you about 256?"

"Square of 12?" dream-logic is hard.

But Justin nodded, seeming to agree, "And the 2 days is how long it'll last...." and then I don't remember anything else.

Meditation (Day 79)

Another prime number day!

Decided against pre-meditation writing, as I don't have anything new to add. Have reminder to add some stuff post-meditation.

Post-Meditation

So, I used some ideas in A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming during my prep today. Worked on setting more specific intentions:

• Label the distractions, do it over and over so that it becomes automatic
• Anything I have control over, try to do anticipate it mindfully
  • E.g. swallowing, introspective check-ins, even
• Guide myself back to breath quickly
• Trace distractions to source, see how much wandering happened
• Try to note where the breath was when you label a distraction (attention, awareness, or forgotten)
• Only adjust posture mindfully, microadjustments due to relaxation too (though just "relax" as a mindful cue is good)

I maybe did too many things, but it helped a lot! I even knew when the hard part was coming and set my intention to weather it. Still had some gross distractions, but today may have been the best day yet.

Extracurricular Stuff

Friend is officially out on extracurricular stuff. Meaning I need to fill that space. Or, rather, I want to. I s'pose I could continue doing programming questions and just work on the meta of that.

Maybe I'll share it here, even?

I could also see if other friends are interested in a similar setup.

Something to ruminate on.

Dream

I have A Field Guide to Lucid Dreaming available to read today. Here's hoping it helps me unlock some dreaming capabilities.

Oh, and I don't remember my dream today, nor do I remember having had a dream at all.

Meditation (Day 78)

Forgot about writing about meditation intention before meditation this morning. I have updated my daily routine document to remind me to do it.

Today was solid. A strong beginning, and a strong end with a lot of distractions to wade through in the middle. Posture fidgeting was limited to microadjustments, mostly, and I had a pretty strong alarm for distractions for most of the session, though I did have to trouble guiding my mind away from quite a few tempting distractions.

Extracurricular Stuff

Friend may be out of extracurricular stuff. Meaning I have to decide how I want it to look going alone.

Yesterday ended up being a fairly busy opslead day, so I didn't do any real extracurricular stuff. Will do editing with wife and... something after that today, though.

Dream

I actually got up to try to write down the dream. I laid in bed a while, repeating bits over and over again. Something about a school, but there was so much more. I got up and walked slowly to the office, but halfway there all that remained was "school".

And that is still all that remains.

Seems going to write it down won't necessarily help. There's a translation I need to do.... That'll be what I work on. Perhaps I'll sleep with my phone closer and try to record myself recanting the dream (lightly, so as to not wake the wife).

Meditation (Day 77)

Trying a new thing today. Writing in here before I meditate. This is for prep purposes. So, the main obstacles I'm dealing with are:

• tempting distractions
• posture fidgeting

Tempting distractions are distractions I mindfully note but still end up wandering down. These seem to be the main ones that can even still lead to forgetting (though not sure if breath ever leaves awareness considering that it's typically what finally brings me back).

So, my awareness seems to catch these fine, and so do my introspective check-ins, but that alone doesn't stop them. Sometimes I even notice an ever growing "focus on the breath" narration in the background that still does not break the distraction.

I know The Mind Illuminated has a section on this that I should revisit, but also I can maybe see what happens now that I've more carefully defined this issue.

Posture fidgetting is just something I need to grind out with my current intention of "do it mindfully". Aka, treat it like an itch or a sudden strange sensation. First try "relax and look for joy; observe, let it come, let it be, and let it go", and then if it refuses to calm down then I focus on it instead of the breath, and then after a bit of that I can slowly reposition and observe the feedback I receive carefully.

I've done this a bit here and there, and I've noticed that it is notably improving my posture, but I do find myself repositioning automatically. It's very similar to how I used to scratch an itch automatically, or even a lot like noticing I'm wandering down distractions. I think just giving myself the regular feedback and guiding it back to the desire flow should get me there eventually (again, been noticing progress anyways).

Extracurricular Stuff

Friend may or may not do call today. Might play with kubeflow. Might also do a bit of blog writing today (either on my "practice intentionality" post or maybe I'll pick something from my meditation list to write about).

Plan on doing music video editing with my wife, as well.

Meditation (Day 76)

Today was hard, but had lots of really good bits between the fidgeting and the mind-wandering. Perhaps that means it was a good learning day? In any case, as always it still feels great to meditate, and I don't ever feel too frustrated over feeling "slow progress" or "a lack of progerss". Like, I'm content with the progress I'm going at, and have never not felt that. Even when it's hard or slow or I'm not doing as well as before.

It's kind of magical.

Extracurricular Stuff

Friend hasn't been sleeping well, so not doing that today. May play around with kubeflow, as it seems like an interesting cloud setup thingy and also might be a fun way to start playing with machine learning.

Dream

I woke up thinking I didn't remember a dream, but was instead hynagogically remembering things that had just happened. Just like with a dream, however, I don't remember it now.

Should just build the habit upon waking up of going to a notebook or something and trying to write down what's in my head. If I feel like going back to bed, I can.

Perhaps this'll be in that lucid dreaming book I'm about to get from the library.

Meditation (Day 75)

Today is possibly tied as best day yet. Though there was a major readjustment to posture without first declaring my intention for it. Though even that major readjustment was a smaller one than usual. I tried to pick the posture I remembered ending in yesterday and it was solid, though had its own set of muscles that aren't usually relied on for 45 solid minutes.

Specifically, I had my hands hovering in the air for this session. This made keeping good shoulder posture easier, which also makes neck stuff easier. My right shoulder wasn't particularly happy about the whole situation, though it rarely is. My biceps also got a tiny bit fatigued from the whole thing.

I believe it was successful enough to try it again tomorrow, for sure.

Extracurricular Stuff

Same plan as yesterday, basically.