April 2017

To start, some notes on daily life: I got converted from contractor to FTE in my current job, which is a huge relief (job security) & allowed me to focus on practice much more.  I also started daily spiritual mind treatments for physical health, career, finance & social wellbeing.  In the last 10 days of the month, I began to try a neurogenerative nootropic with promising, healing benefits.  

I also wanted to add this in at the beginning to avoid this entry looking to much like a brag sheet - I had plenty of agitation, anxiety, restlessness, mania, narcissistic tendencies & other defilements come up this month (as in all other months).  I’m still on low levels of two mood stabilizers and struggle with medicating myself through other means such as stress eating.

That being said, I started hosting daylong retreats at my house with the SPUDS.  We do this schedule twice: 3 hour-long sits, separated by 2 15-minute walks.  The total practice time is 7 hours.  I found that by doing errands after work, or weekend mornings, I can comfortably do this schedule every Saturday & Sunday while still leading a functional, productive life. I also started meditating 1 hour in the mornings & an additional hour at night whenever I have time.  I clocked 80 hours on Insight Timer this month.  Paradoxically, I’m conventionally functioning better now than I ever have before.

I have continued with the perfect parent meditation, cycling through the 3 phases (one each day). On the retreat days I do one each sit.  Temporary effects/patterns included purification sensations, heart chakra volcanos and lots of vivid imagery. After I described my perceptual shift last month, my spiritual friend made it clear to me that insight is not enough and the goal with this practice is therapeutic in nature.  

It feels like the perfect parent technique is ‘crowbarring’ my heart open.  I tend to not care about intimacy, vulnerability and connection but I am stabilizing these qualities through the practice anyway.  In that spirit, I seemed to have had two, deep, therapy insights this month which feel like “permanent shifts” on the psycho-emotional level:

1. This one occurred gradually through my daylong sits.  It feels like I am coming to know my internal world (heart) with extreme vividness.  Thus, this understanding has matured - all parts of my mind-heart (internal family members) are like living organisms.  Therefore, they all deserve respect and it is an active of violence to try to silence one of them and promote another (which is what I have been doing up to this time).  
2. The second one occurred when I was imagining spending time with a perfect son.  Then my perfect father & grandfather appeared and I felt an overwhelming sense of lineage, connection and intimacy.  Suddenly, many more humans appeared.  My mental screen went white -- then a cessation.  Afterwards,it felt like the movie “Inception” in that a new belief was present in my mind: ‘All humans are one family.’  Some subtle sense of separation/pressure/tension surrounding being with (or thinking of) others has disappeared.  

Early in the month, I spoke with Daniel Ingram, who advised me to project the sense of agency out onto the holodeck of experience.  I noticed I was able to do this and after about 4 days of continuous investigation, I believe I got a micro shift.  I suspect I got other micro shifts in terms of reduced emotional reactivity from the perfect parent practice this month.  I have also been experiencing harder versions of the lite version of nirodha samapatti that I learned from Ron.  In these experiences, I truly black out for what might be five or ten seconds and I feel quite dazed and drunk for two to five minutes afterwards  I don’t know if this bears any significance, but it keeps happening.  

The perceptual shift from last month has continued.  It is odd to be in this level of nondual awareness at all times. The world seems much more “real” yet much more ephemeral at the same time.  There is a continuous “knowing” of all objects within the field right where they are and with marked clarity.  This seems to be nicely combined with the open spaciousness that had matured previously.  In my a&p experiences, it feels like I get a sneak peak at the next level beyond; all points watching all other points -- everything is watched from nowhere in particular -- the most subtle possible selfing processes are easily taken as part of the field with a diamond-like clarity.  

P.S. - SPUDS is rocking it!  Continuing to practice & hang out weekly. We’re starting to get recognition from mainstream teachers (Tuere Sala from SIMS has praised us & Tucker Peck from Dharma Treasure has agreed to host a retreat for us in May).  The reddit SE moderator Coach_Atlus came to visit us.  He is interested in doing a pragmatic dharma conference in Seattle.  The future is bright.