February 2021

 In February, I continued with the same practices from before.  I add a couple tummo hacks for stoking the fire.  I also started “letting it rip” (shoot up the spine) rather than the “slow & low” method I had been doing thus far out of an abundance of caution.  This new way was immediately & continues to be awesome, with the sense that the fire is massaging the petals of each chakra & ultimately causing a deeper sense of samadhi at the end.  Specifically I had some a&p’s with a sense of somatic opening that has likely continued to increase baseline wellbeing into April.  It has also correlated with chakra opening/healing that synced with personality insights that I’ll describe later.  These seem to be 2 sides of the same coin.  I also started adding some consort visualization at the beginning of tummo & noticed that lust energy sometimes worked well to further stoke the fire.

In thigle breathing, I fortified the mixing of hot & cold sensations which led to a bliss waves deeper in the soma that mirrored orgasm (as opposed to lighter/more shallow bliss without that extra effort).  I also added an entire step of descending (4 blisses) & then ascending (4 “empties”) the white thigle through the chakras using vase breath, locks & visualization.  This led to some initial positive reactions at the chakras & side channels, furthering the aforementioned healing.  This technique is known to be a natural progression from tummo & thigle breathing so I felt somewhat confident in it.  I also get some lineage-backed evidence that placing tummo before thigle breathing in practice sequence is traditionally valid, which was heartening.  Lastly, I started to get a sense of how the different aspects of visualization in dzogrim do not necessarily need to all be held in mind at once throughout the whole process.  Rather, different parts come up at different times based on their function.

In other formal practice notes, I added 10 min breath focus back into my regimen, hoping that I would now be able to make progress with calm abiding since the tsa-lung was going well.  I played with different attitudes towards samatha practice but have ultimately found that I am still not able to make significant progress.  I started emphasizing the “hero's journey” aspect of bodhicitta in preliminaries.  I deepened experience of the water element, turning all aspects of experience down to the very core into bubbles, ripples & eddies, finding this to be soothing.  I had a trippy, life-like guru yoga session that was a&p influenced.  In order to round out my devotion, I practiced feeling awe at the sheer age of the tradition & respect for the lineages which have transmitted it.

For off cushion practice, I tried “pure perception”/samaya/mandala view.  This led to rapid cycling through the POI, as it had in the past.  This time I persisted & found that it started to dig into limiting beliefs/critical-mind.  A few weeks of persistent off cushion application seemed to lock the lens in & lead to deep remappings of the narratives of self, other & world.  In particular, an emphasis on seeing others as full buddhas was poignant.  My spiritual friend helped clarify my understanding of it; the practice is for falling in love with the world, wishing to serve it & seeing it as organically sacred rather than artificially projecting celestial mansions on top of it.

In other off-cushion notes, I noticed that the dukkha nanas seem to be getting shorter & shorter over time.  Even when I fell off the habit wagon for a week in the month, I knew this was because of sleep debt & not due to POI/mood.  This has led to a deepening sense of efficacy, which is a new sensation for me.  Relatedly, I had some micro shifts into a deeper sense of ego/personality strength, feeling more confident in asking for things from others, which has long been an insecurity of mine.  I also had some shifts in terms of intimate relationships, finding that the sense of this as a “problem area” finally seems to be dissolving.  This came through recognizing the need to “re spiritualize” it in view & become more centered in myself.  I also incorporated brahmacarya & changed my media consumption habits around that, finding the lust circulation method & amino supplementation to be of great help in this regard.

In terms of habit formation, I did a 3 day water fast at the very beginning of the month, for reasons based around longevity & continued refining of the physical body for the path.  I wished I had gotten into ketosis beforehand, going into keto flu with some periods of ease interspersed.  I was amazed to see that I could do it, as compared to years of over eating in the past.  I think the fast helped throw me into the week of being off the habits.  Coming out of the fast (due to stretching my limits), I stopped eating breakfast & using caffeine.  This change has bought me an extra hour of daytime productivity & I switched to meditating in the morning, making it much more consistent & convenient.  This has continued into April.  I also continued with the habit appreciation from prior months.  

I had some cool dreams; in one I had a practice interview with HHDL & in another I got an empowerment from my eventual future enlightened self which synchronized my chakras.  I met with my naturopath & we decided to not make any changes to the supplements right now since they are working & to test my levels again in 6 months.  I relayed to her my satisfaction at being able to basically work all day now without needing really long breaks or building up agitation.  I started to think about further refining ethical habits (consumption, green) related to thinking from prior months but don’t quite have the bandwidth to make that change yet.  I considered starting teaching meditation 1-1 to raise money for GiveWell but did not follow through with it.

In my studies, I re-learned the difference between compassion & great compassion in the 2 vehicles which highlights the importance of altruism.  I contemplated the range of yidams in creation-stage & what their various functions are as related to psychology & completion stage.  I continued wrestling with the “rules” of the traditional approach.  I took a workshop on rituals & offerings which helped me grok the deeper principles of that aspect of the dharma.  I studied more on the 6 yogas, male v female tantric anatomy, stages of dissolution.  I took an online tummo workshop with a new/different teacher from the others & found it to be highly illuminating both in practice (new movements & ways of relating to the fire) & theory (how the yogas fit together & with the generation stage, levels of mind, etc).   I also thought more about how dzogchen has many correspondences which reflect the deep structure of reality.  In terms of non-Buddhist studies, I contemplated meta modernism more (what comes after?) & continued reading Beyond Inclusion, Beyond Empowerment, having an insight that allyship is primarily  about freeing oneself from the bondages of participation in oppression, not primarily about supporting “target rank” group members.