September 2018

The insomnia cure continued from August.  I also got off my other medication this month, accomplishing a goal I’ve been working towards since starting this path in 2013.  I felt a mild uptick in grumpiness in the first couple weeks, but then that went away & I didn’t feel any different from being on the meds.  I started using light therapy & melatonin (low dose, early) to further optimize my sleep, increase daytime energy & decrease lingering irritation.  Energy from the light allowed reduced caffeine intake.

Things have been very slow moving around ‘getting things done.’  In a debate with my newer mentor, I concluded that nondual perception won’t fix my aversion & there is no replacement for executive functioning.  I was able to do chores slightly more consistently & narrowed down my recurring task list, but still feel obstacles around motivation, time & energy.  I obsessed a lot around dating & psychology stuff. Also slow moving, but tension around that does seem to be slowly eroding.

The new exemplar has continued to emerge in practice & the whole-field-knowing remained baseline perception.  There was successful clean-up work around secondary conceptual proliferation patterns that had yet to match to primary perspective.  This involved seeing push-pull around past-future thinking & basic-delusion around present aversion to chores. Perhaps repeating August meditation at a slightly deeper level.  I tried lucid dreaming using reminders & journaling. It didn’t really work, but I’ll keep trying. The powersy experiences from August didn't continue but it feels like I might still have access if I tried. I continued off cushion muscle relaxation.

Heading into a new practice-phase after the July opening, I revisited my practice plan moving forward.  There are various mind-body systems to integrate, with an emphasis on surrender. A friend who is a couple steps ahead of me shared an inspiring practice report: a ‘sweet spot’ of metacognition giving rise to high-speed processing & non-referencing in terms of identity & space helped inspire these thoughts.

On 9/8 my spiritual friend (who I was on July retreat with) assigned a new practice of engaging in the wholistic knowing & then doing short intervals of distracted activity from within that.  This practice needs to be done on-cushion to reach high concentration & specific setup factors. I noticed that I got goosebumps & rushing euphoria each time I engaged in the intervals (effect occurred across nanas, moods & life situations).  The clarity of all sensory data greatly increased & it would feel like I was swimming through air when I moved. When I would engage thought, I was see-hearing the thoughts appear in front of me as part of the field. After a few weeks of this I got a micro shift of increased clarity in the entire field which continued into October.