April 2020

April was a fairly eventful month.  On the morality front, I continued with the same habits from prior months but added more, such as a house cleaning routine split up throughout the month.  I also switched to a different habit tracker app (called “Done”).  I had some back pain which I resolved through a calisthenics & stretching regimen throughout the week that I’ve continued into late June as of writing this.  I had some tiredness due to low blood pressure which stopped when I dropped my hypertension med.  I had some other health & wellness opportunities open up - all things that I would never have thought of in the past because I was lower on Maslow’s hierarchy.  

I talked 2 times to a TMI teacher whose granular instructions on mindful set up, checking in on quality of attention, really breaking down the sub elements of the breath with curiosity, as well exercises before & after each session, all helped boost my stage 4 practice.  It gave me a great blueprint for developing concentration in the future.  I did a lot of that practice for the 1st 3 weeks of April, sometimes for 3 to 4 hours per day.   I extended sit times to 70 minutes for convenience, which has gone up to 90 as of this writing (a longer sit once a day rather than multiple).  I practiced in quarter lotus posture and/or burmese, for longer periods of time, for the first time.  I also started doing the 9 purification breaths & 5 tsa lung exercises towards the end of the month, which I’ve also continued through May & June.  

On the studying front I read more Berzin stuff on lam rim & karma, as well as looking up the cognitive obscurations.  I had some strong A&P mappy-type thoughts & journaling.  I did some fun DIY red tara practice & some scrying-type synchronicities occurred.  

I did a 4 day home retreat where I had a couple big insights.  One was more on the ‘ultimate’ level, which involved seeing that negative emotions are a ‘choice’ in the sense that they arise out of a conceptual value system, even if that is subconscious.  This insight was helped by watching talks from Ajahn Sona & Ajahn Sumedho.  Behind every negative emotion, there is some original decision to care about something.  So if one stays mindful of this, it is possible to cause them not to arise.  This actually worked for me for about a month, including through most of May, I think.  Ultimately though, it didn’t last - probably because it contrasts with the fact that I’m living a complex & active life in the world.  I think it was also related to a meta-cycle of EQ (although there were definitely smaller cycles in there).  

The other insight seems to have effected a lasting change (at least for the past 2 months since April), but on a more ‘relative’ level.  It was around my masculine identity, intimacy, dating & relationships.  Seeing how I have self-sabotaged in this arena, not due to ‘trauma’ or ‘psychodynamics’, but rather a basic misunderstanding of the role of self in relationship with others & specifically how communication must be tailored to foster meaningful connections in life.  Without going into too much detail, some ‘problems’ have been ‘solved’ that have been an annoyance for over 10 years now.  I do believe this one will stick because it involves technical observations & mechanical adjustments that can be practiced, rather than positive moods, emotions & beliefs.