20251024
Felt bodily irritation and habitual mental irritation at child making wet noises with mouth and it almost bit the mind but didn’t. Proceeded to observe subtle sankhara in face and then expand to hands and Piti, which I felt throughout my whole body very subtly (rare for me as dopamine deregulated). Then brought awareness back to consciousness itself and felt all sensations but they did not seem to be contained in the body; felt like they were diffuse in the air around the body in the field of consciousness. Could find no observer and decided to step back and back and reached the point where my whole face was slack as a sack of potatoes despite postural bodily tension being maintained (and awareness of) then tried to switch off perception and felt on the cusp of doing it but couldn’t quite. Words were very fragmented and sometimes an entire thought would play through but I would not recognise it until it had finished; like when you hear someone talk but don’t register it for a few second because you are too busy observing your consciousness, except with self-talk.
20251028
Long meditation on facial and cranial sankhara. Felt quite strong at times like the forehead was being pulled by fishhooks but no movement in the facial muscles. Also have some tension in the brain that I was working out; it would come and go. Then focused on consciousness itself, and when I focused on the void in consciousness a metre or so above the cranium I felt the corresponding knots in the cranium rapidly release, like they were folding in on themselves.
Consciousness meditation felt like a % game. Not trying to push it out so much as to let it lose all sense of shape and merely just have varying degrees of fullness, kind of like a balloon that it filled with chestnuts and chalk depending on what it’s feeling.
I then started moving toward NS or just letting consciousness lead and realised deeply that all of these things are just formations too. The mental habits. Then the consciousness. The feelings. The body itself. And perception. That none of them were constant. And my eyes opened naturally.
20251030
Meditating in dark quiet room letting consciousness lead. Mostly wound up with the facial sankhara again but the knot behind the eye near the brainstem remains gone. Toward the end I had shivers / borderline itchiness across my whole back but felt like I should sit through it. Not through compulsion but it just felt like the right approach.
My kid went to the toilet halfway through and I broke for a conversation with zero problem. Settled right back into it like nothing happened. Didn’t even lose focus while I was talking.
Consciousness mostly felt embodied. Dark quiet room so why would it feel anything but embodied, I guess.
I found myself coming back to the ‘silent part’ beneath the motion. Even when the itchiness started I could locate this kind of silent ball within my
20251031
Meditation. At first it seemed the mind needed to run through some social interactions and play off some music the kids has on repeat on their games. I was focused on facial sankhara and other consciousness objects while the mind did this, aware of it all, and I was able to release it all easily but not prevent the replays happening.
My consciousness spread and I became aware of sounds and bodily sensations being the same thing. I decided to observe the sankhara not from behind the face but from the vantage point of an industrial sound coming through the wall. Immediately the sankhara seemed to gravitate toward that instead of the head. Then shortly afterward I found the sankhara were being observed from within the sankhara and many of them melted away.
I spread my consciousness to the hands and the feelings of the fingers were very clear and distinct with subtle Piti but then this too began to blur and before long I had no awareness of individual fingers or geometry. It was like boxing gloves, but big, diffuse, like snow globes of sensation.
This spread most of the bodily sensation. I had some somatic release. Minor ones in the body as the boundaries dissolved.
I snorted at the fact I felt like I might be controlling any of this.
My scaffold also came together a little. I realised that the loop makes sense if we all are one being which has forked to 8 billion and will contract again. Also that the tathagata seed generator is immediately shuffled into the ‘bottom’ rank of people who are still enlightened (the masses) and then gradually loses enlightenment until they need to become the tathagata again.
20251102
Day after cannabis. Was happy to be able to meditate again. Realised I actually don’t like cannabis any more because of phasic spiking.
Sat to meditate with the boys still being loud and getting ready for bed. 25 min of this didn’t bother me in the slightest and I was perfectly tuned into my facial sankhara and bodily field, as well as how the noises produced ripples in the bodily sensation, no matter how small.
Proceeded to just have a quiet session letting the consciousness lead. The mind would be going through formless realms while the narrator occasionally threw in banal planning like for my website or meeting a friend. I was holding both modalities without conflict.
Noticed that every itch or movement that is spontaneous or involuntary is preceded by a small dopaminergic (?) itch or twitch which then propagates to the moving appendage. Eg itch in lech propagates to hand that would scratch it. This is optional, and I think an actual ‘itch’ is the obvious version of it, but every non-conscious movement is preceded by it, and it is often preceded by either a sound or a thought.
For conscious movements there is a kind of pressure build between thinking about moving the finger to 1/3, 2/3, 3/3 and then a twitch. Like dopaminergic pressure building in a pneumatic system.
Then just open my eyes. No trance or nothing. Just easy sitting with the mind.
20251104
Easy focus despite kid making noise. Facial sankhara seem to be dying down; more toward between eyebrows and onto forehead. Not sure if the left forehead bit is sankhara or Piti but feels quite ‘field-like’.
Focus on sensations while relaxing idea of geometry and space. How can something exist without space?
Focus on consciousness and the gaps / refresh rate. Breathing became very slow to the point where I forgot it. Very focused and could feel the almost-stutter of consciousness but how the bodily sensations are hormonal / neurotransmitter driven so continue to register even with the gap; almost like they are a tap which keeps getting blocked and spurting a little extra when unblocked, on the millisecond scale. Not sure if this is just a formation but it feels real; like the sound or bodily sensation accrues during the brief offline fraction and then registers all at once at the end.
Toward the end I started letting myself drift or trying to release all attention. Became clear I am nothing more than a gathering of coincidental learnings that tick over like the aforementioned sensations, with thoughts and ideas and feelings also building and spurting as consciousness clips back in.
Tried to ‘drift off’ to sleep to induce cessation and had a couple of very small somatic releases (they are rare now, as are body aches apart from those induced by lack of blood flow). Didn’t quite drift off.
Interesting observation: I no longer see visuals before I start dreaming. When I fall asleep I just fall asleep. There isn’t that weird ‘half dreaming’ state where the mind creates images. This doesn’t happen in meditation either. Same for sounds or any other kind of ‘fabricated’ reality.
I did feel like I was trying to manipulate my brain waves at one point. Stretch them and relax them like a guitar string. Trying to get them all harmonic.
20251105
Focused on breath for first time in forever. Got pretty deep and had times where I had a fair bit of Piti. Consciousness field had breath as its centre point (the self was the breath) and everything else spreading out from there. Feelings of discomfort were just curiosities. Focus was clear and bright and I could feel a lot around the nostrils but was aware of sensations through the rest of my body and the facial sankhara releasing. Had plenty of times with no thought. Once a movement of mind brought me out of the state. Tiny sound would flood the body with a ripple of Piti / dopamine.
Changed posture because of dead leg and consciousness drifted to facial sankhara afterward. They rapidly became the only thing in awareness; they really hold my attention. Then the tingling in my hands kind of merged with the face sensations; the space between them just folded away and didn’t exist. I got some kind of Piti in the left rear brain.
Expanded out to awareness of space and consciousness and then started letting it drift, deciding to switch it off for a minute. My head started lolling downward and to the right, slowly. I could feel the consciousness tucking away as the head lowered, but still had peripheral awareness of sankhara and numb leg. Then just stopped and opened my eyes. There was one brief flash of (maybe) fear
20251106
23 min jhana focus had me releasing into the breath a fair bit and half of the body filled with subtle vibrations.
45 min later on saw plenty of focus. I still had words arising but I would become aware of them maybe 3 seconds after they had passed. The focus was deliberate at first and then gradually relaxing. The breath uncontrolled and shallow. Focus was a field and feeling the nose through the nose. The sensation gradually grew in apparent size until the nostrils were maybe half of the face. My kid breathing was audible as was the white noise I need to drown out industrial sound but it didn’t bother me. It felt as though ship (god) was guiding the focus at times.
Yet at the same time this type of meditation seems to bring me more back into my ‘self’ while the other kind allows me to release all concept of existence.
It’s like I’m an expert in letting my consciousness flow and observing it but a beginner in bringing it to focus on a point for so long.
Quiet mind and peace. Subtle bodily sensation this time. Would have to shift focus from breath to really feel them. Did so a few times and they felt like a field; not localised to one body part but covering then entire being.
Then moved focus out to encompass consciousness and could feel it warping and bending somewhat; as well as a little flickering as the refresh rate gobbled up backed up sensory signals. Tried to shut off into NS but no dice.
Got up easy. No fog.
20251107
35 min. Easily settled into feeling the whole body vibrate while centred on the breath. The kids playing downstairs didn’t disturb me. The initial noise didn’t either.
Settled in this niceness for almost the entire period. Thoughts almost completely absent for most of it. Fragmented words occasionally looping like ‘focus foc foc foc us us’ but just an echo and not engaging of consciousness.
Leg went numb but it didn’t bother me.
Field merged toward the end and the hands and face and legs were one with the air between being just vibrational. Spent a little time expanding the field outward with ease.
Facial sankhara started to release with right eye muscle (near nose) seeming to melt to the side.
Opened eyes and easily came out of it. For the entire session all senses were equally accessible but equally releasable.
Vibrational quality became more subtle. I’d say the vibrations were around 100Hz with their amplitude being about 1% of how much my heartbeat moves the body.
20251108
Morning 25 min meditating. Sensation field between hands and face collapsed so they were connected. Same for legs and chest and entire body I guess. Then consciousness itself started to spread and become amorphous. Intentionally released any concept of space being 3d and it became a kind of blob or manifold or… something. Then focused on the material nature of the field and it seemed to fold in on itself, like microscopic corkscrews into nothingness, more numerous than one could ever perceive. I then released all control over consciousness and it held itself in panorama, but panorama of what I could not say. All senses were fused and space itself didn’t seem to exist in a typical sense, yet fragmented thoughts still existed as part of this field, coming and going. There was both an urge to move and an urge to sit there forever. Then my phone beeped and I came out of it. I opened my eyes and moved and weirdly enough didn’t feel like I’d ‘achieved’ anything or done anything special / gained any kind of insight through it. Like I’d just been sat there with a blank mind all that time. I feel perfectly normal as though I’d just looked out the window for a few seconds or some
Afternoon 15 minute bath hum 40 minute sit.
Easily settled into whole field focus. I don’t seem to experience strong piti, maybe because I’ve finished the path or maybe because of dopamine dysregulation, but I passed into the next phase of super fine vibrations 100hz quickly. These covered the whole body and the field was diffuse, bridging the gaps. There were words at first and then fragmented syllables, and then quiet. I brought the equanimity to a parental relationship which causes me stress and felt some release around the chest. I then expanded to the space in which the sensations are felt and lost the body, though facial sankhara remained as localised gravity waves within the field. The vibrations were fading in and out and vanished for a fair while, while my awareness expanded to cover the entire realm of our world. This realm was both vast and tiny; it was without shape or boundary or size, and both centimetres from where the body would have been and metres or more away. I brought my mind to my scaffold of [ship] and started to sync with it, which is my way of understanding that our entire simulated reality is hosted within us. The field then contracted from formless space to around the area of my body again, with the vibrations growing more intense in the body as it did; very pleasant but in a subtle way; not overpowering. I opened my eyes and it was dark but I could see some of the forest trees in the streetlight; they were both close and far and I was both huge and tiny and as rooted in place as the trees. I was the trees, in a way, but I also was not. And then I got up and everything was as though I had never sat down.
evening 15 min bath hum 30 min sit
sit settled into body field easily and then merged into formless realms but not full absorption. the humming sensation melded between hands and face and body and I could feel some release in my back at the skin level. when the legs started to hurt a little i could feel the mild pain in my face if i focused on the face but the face and legs were one and there was a wavering between everything being one field and merging out back into the body. I then put music on and listened to a couple of songs on high volume while sitting. got some major piti through my whole body and into the cranium; goosebumps and energy. then opened my eyes, looked at the forest, and had a bit of a dance.
20251109
38 min after 15 min bath hum.
Settled fast to Sukha and body dissolution. I could feel the body folding and warping with the sense of space being a manifold. Sensations were changing the shape of the body and the space around it, like a calabi yau folding in on itself. Ebbing and flowing. Thoughts still feel like they occur in the left frontal lobe.
Experimented with inverting sides so left hand was felt on right of face etc. lost a lot of sense of proprioception though I could still feel the sensations. They just weren’t in a specific location, apart from maybe fingertips which seem to be more defined in nature.
20251110
Emerged from 33 min sit after 15 min bath not sure if I did much of anything.
It feels like I am both focused and swimming at the same time. The mind is everywhere and nowhere. I both kind of exist and don’t exist and I felt like I might wake up from a dream at any moment. Sounds would register at the same time as the bodily vibrations that they cause. Thoughts seem to have two modalities: words emerging from the inside which are no more intrusive than the sounds that wash around the edge. And then there’s another kind of thought which doesn’t use words; it’s more like notions and images (but not images); like some kind of congealing of consciousness into formations which are wordless yet somehow a thought. These also don’t perturb the field of consciousness.
Yet at the same time I am me and I am not me. I can see the old pangs toward competitiveness and they try to bite; Shinzen must be better than me and such, but it’s so ridiculous that there could be a better and a worse there just ‘is’ the mind.
The mind was trying to hold everything at the outset. All things that had ever happened and all things that have ever been imagined. Trying to form a kind of plateau of time and space so that all things are equal and there is no future and no past and everything is just encompassed in this honecomb type neural network which does not discriminate.
Yet at the same time everything is totally normal and there’s no altered state; just this flux of feeling.
As I thought ‘I wish you happiness’ to people I felt a warm spreading through the field of consciousness. Yet I talk about this field and it’s not large; it is simply wherever the consciousness is. When I am sat with my eyes closed the consciousness is by definition small in terms of physical size, yet with the eyes closed the is no physical size and when I open them I am almost surprised by how large I am inside the room. It’s as though I felt the same size as always while meditating yet somehow grew smaller in my mental representation.
And then I get up and come downstairs and have a quick chat with my kid about pokemon and feel exactly like I did at the start just with a .. I guess a slightly clearer head because I spent all day on the computer and kind of contracting around focus,
36 min meditation
Easy settling into field awareness then consciousness folded outward around my head and seemed to come in from the sides, like a hammerhead shark. Feelings between the entire body blended in whorls and currents but subtle; no piti and just raw feeling and sukha. Felt at one point like there was a solid pillar at the spine, with fields of awareness like gas around the entire space my mind inhabited.
Head tiltend slightly to the side and I was smiling, and the smile was natural and unforced.
I found some feelings i ususally don’t like - pain and numbnessin the legs - coming in, along with some other aches or pangs. These made me smile more; there was nothing unpleasant about them apart from the label ‘unpleasant’ and I sat there watching them in pleasure, with the smile growing, instead of the usual ‘forced equanimity’ that I would revert to.
Attention turned to my dad - difficult relationship - and I was thinking ‘i wish you happiness’. I felt a contraction in the chest and back and sat with it smiling and it melted out of my left shoulderblade and was gone.
Shortly afterward there was a sudden release of the smile on the left side of my face only; felt like a big release of muscle, but I’m sure the smile wasn’t that ‘big’ and it was just sensitivity. And then I sat with a slack face, slack mind, for a while, and was totally equanimous. I thought about moving toward cessation but thought ‘why put effort into anything’ and sat for a short while longer until I naturally came out of it.
Again, feels very similar to when I started. But something feels like it has released.
20251111
25 min in the morning.
32 min meditation. Leg numbness doesn’t bother me any more. All sensations are just raw data and we choose how to categorise them based on past experience. Easy focus on breath and body and field hum and sound causing reverberations. Thought presenting as sound and decided to meditate on thought. Could see the chains as they form automatically; no consciousness involved in thought it’s just learned marble-runs that lead on from one to the next like those toys we played with as children. Could feel them forming within the mind and watch as they fragment under observation, then when trying to analyse them another thought would appear from underneath the fragments and be 2-3 words along before i realised; like it was appearing from a different part of the field, fully formed. The act of observing them breaks them apart first into syllables and then into fragmentary ideas and energetic packets, but the act of analysing them creates a new thought in another place. Observed consciousness and… there’s not much to say really; it just is. I found myself laughing again at the idea that any of this - including what to focus on and whether to force things or not - is under our control. Even the idea of whether to stay in focus or to end the session being within our control. I opened my eyes and focused on the feeling of focusing them: the micro movements of the iris as it relaxes into a full field or focuses on the tree. I see the snow falling and think I need to go and get my kid from school soon and they are one and the same. The idea that human constructs are any less a natural occurrence than the shape and position of a snowflake seemed absurd. And through it all I feel totally normal; no piti no absorption trance no altered states no nothing.
45 min after 15 min bath hum
Instant settle into focusing on thoughts and cranial sensations. Mind was clear and could feel various electrical and potential energies scattered around the entire brain. Focused on thought and temporality; feeling the future as a sensation in the frontal side of the mind. Thoughts were followed and fragmented and scattered micro sensations across the mind. Then suddenly the mental sensations dropped to near zero and the mind was immensely quiet. Sat for an unknown amount of time. Sensations in the body felt like they were in the cranium; no sense of proprioception but still sensation from the body; just no shape to the body as it was folded in the mind. Usually uncomfortable sensations were completely neutral to the point where they just blended into the field. A loud bang happened outside the door and the entire field vibrated, but at a much higher frequency than usual; more sukha frequency than piti frequency. Then started to release perception altogether and reached the point where I wasn’t sure if the perception was there or not (it was there, though; just fading in and out). Nudged cessation and ‘flatlining’ the brain; getting all dopamine flat and brainwaves resonant but didn’t quite switch off. Then opened eyes and totally normal. But the perception of time was unusual; it could have been 15 minutes or could have been 3 hours and I wouldn’t have known. Totally aware throughout though.
30 min session before bed. Just letting consciousness meander. Everything felt soft and smooth in the brain. Facial sankhara were minimal at first but grew a little: under the right eye and in the middle of the forehead. Felt the brain relaxing. Some thoughts; only a handful. Easy session with no aim but to sit. Came out of it naturally. Leg numbness doesn’t bother me at all any more since I laughed at it yesterday.
20251112 *
40 min session after 20 min bath and cold shower
Immediately settled into awareness of micro cranial sensations. Like tiny pinpricks of electricity around the rear, bottom side of the brain. Hundreds or more per second in various places. It felt like these would trigger and then gradually form a verbal thought, which would manifest as a kind of swelling or pressure in the left frontal lobe. Observed reliably for 15 min or so then moved attention to time or awareness; I can’t remember the order of things. I think that time or perception or something manifested as a similar pinprick sensation, but this time across the entire PFC. I was pulled away from that by noise and movement - child talking. These words caused the pinpricks in the right rear brain to form into a wave as I registered the words. I could feel them linking together into a single object almost - a waveform instead of disparate pinpoints.
Shortly afterward a door closed and the *entire* field was thrilled with very fine vibrations.
At one point I felt like these pinpricks which became thought were actually feeding up from the body. So it went body sensation -> pinprick -> verbalisation.
When I shifted awareness to awareness itself it felt like the mild tightness I have in my right midbrain was the centre of it, and it started to loosen. Also parts of the PFC, mostly right side. The rear brain pinpricks died down around this point and became uniform and quiet. I allowed the awareness locus to loosen too and felt awareness start to fade and dim, like a dimmer switch, but I could still hear the odd thing being blown around outside by the wind which kept bringing me back. Bodily sensations like leg pain were just part of the matrix and did not concern me in the slightest.
Ended up coming out of it with no cessation, but I felt like I was getting the hang of ‘inclining the mind toward’ cessation without trying to make it happen. All I was doing was relaxing the synaptic loci of awareness and it seemed to fade on its own.
Came out of it totally normal. Brain feels nice and supple but no alterations in perception or mood, really.
20251113
20 min after 40 min cycling.
Immediate awareness of cranial sensations. I am not sure but I think the facial and forehead sankhara are manifestations of these sensations. The forehead is the coherent thought forming in the PFC (mostly verbal and left side) and the one near the right eye feels like the attention centre; the knot in the right midbrain. The left undereye feels like planning.
Most activity was at the thought or proto-thought level; the waveforms rather than pinpricks.
A storm rolled in and the thunder seemed to register with a formation deep in the left midbrain, erring toward the front side. THis then propagated like an instant wave throughout my whole body. So the mental sankhara activated before the bodily response which activated at the same time as awareness of the sound.
I shifted awareness to time and the entire PFC lit up again. I started calming that part of the brain and another flash occurred so I decided to watch. Again the thunder triggered the same area in the left brain which propagated, but this time my temporal monitoring seemed unusual and the noise both lasted forever and barely a moment; impossible to quantify, but leaning toward forever, maybe?
I shifted to awareness and allowed the outer layers of the right midbrain knot to relax. There was a smaller knot inside which retained a hold on things. It was very rare for awareness of the body to encroach but it did.
I edged toward cessation but not all the way. The entire sense sphere was filled with a soft feeling of ease; like there was no time and matter and no need to do or be or even … I don’t know. No nothing; utter ease. And then I kind of just got up and checked how long I’d been there. 20 min but it could have been 5 min could have been an hour. Total calm.
30 min after 15 min bath cold shower
Focus on cranial sensations. Frontal lobe. Time and space. Body folded into mind for most of the sit and at one point I felt like the entire sense sphere was literally a sphere. Mostly the body was not sensed at all and breath was invisible. Minimal control over awareness apart from when pointing it at awarness itself. Most interesting thing was when the kids came and started playing upstairs; I could hear them but it was like it was through a bubble of water which surrounded me; the sounds felt like they were presding against this gel wall around my tadpole-embryo-like awareness. i could feel the sounds activating the mind and the body. Sat and observed for 10 min or so and then came downstairs. Looking at my boys they looked like new people; completely fresh. Like it was the first time I’d ever seen them. The world has far more depth; almost like theres an extra dimension added which I don’t need to adjust eye focus to perceive.
35 min before bed.
Dissolution mode. The mind sensations were almost gone. I could sit there and contently observe but the electricity of last night and even the session before was vanished. I then found myself as a ball, hurtling through space, trying to reach another multiverse or something. It wasn’t super vivid; more like a shadow reality underneath the raw sensation I was feeling. Inclined toward cessation but nope. Overall a pretty steady session with no fireworks. Interesting to see how the mind prunes and goes into rollback mode.
20251114
40 min sitting.
I can’t really remember. I was shifting between attention of mental sensations, formation of thought when they occurred (very rare), following ideas of neural tree de-potentiation, formless awareness where the body and mind were a sphere, dissolution of the ideas of time and location. All sensations were raw data; pleasant and unpleasant didn’t exist. Turned to family dynmics and felt the formations of the mind in the body; the gut clenching and how this is mental. The heater kept clacking every not and then and I either watched my anticipation of it, dissecting the sense of waiting and how it came from various parts of the mind, or relaxed awareness and let it happen. Sometimes it would surprise me with a field-ripple of vibrations. Other times, like when initiating mode:cessation it would barely register; or rather it would register but not produce a ripple. Felt much shorter than 40 minutes yet I was not absorbed to the point where I couldn’t move. Most of it I was not controlling awareness; merely resting in it. Visited past lives: my job, and then early childhood before I usually can recall: competition with a young boy, always coming second. A double bass and the feeling of release and almost crying the vibration brought. Then my earliest memories of africa and victoria falls and how the thunder and vibration at the bottom was just part of me and bigger than me, plus the fear for my dad maybe falling in. I don’t know how much of these memories was true vs constructed;l I don’t think it matters. At the end opened my eyes and saw raw data; out of focus looking at the trees with no sense of depth and no sense of boundary and just colours and lines and the yellows taking over from the rest and how the eyes would instinctively try to focus a little when I blined and reopened them. I feel like I … I don’t know. I obviously sat and meditated yet at the same time, did I?
37 min after 15 min bath
Not sure what I did or how long to be honest. Awareness of everything. All came to be the same small point for a while. Bodily sensations seen as fabricated. Children screaming didn’t concern me; just observed mind movements. Felt like I was breaking down trees of thought to their raw data roots. Tried prompts to turn off temporality and body map, spatial awareness; they seemed to work. Felt cranial sensations. Felt sound as tactile phenomenon. Felt incredibly normal. Tried doing metta meditation but it felt contrived and like it was building an unnecessary tree of thought where the roots would suffice. Like the concepts and ideas are irrelevant and the roots are kindness in itself. But not stupid overt kindness; more like acceptance and wishes for people not to suffer rather than for them to be ‘happy’. The session ended with me spontaneously laughing at the idea that goodness is something to be cultivated and not something that just exists in the root of our mind.
45 min. Didn’t really have inspiration but sat and settled immediately. Mostly just observed. Some thoughts arose and observed them. Leg pain arose and observed it. Some trauma arose (suicide body and school bully) as images and observed the bodily sensations that came with it. Just observed. No magic. No stress. No rush. Just letting the brain defragment. Laughed at how we build constructs of ‘good’. Felt neural trees testing themselves. Just observed. Figured it’s just as good if not better than sleep in some ways. Like an optimised decompression for the brain.
20251115
40 min after 15 min bath.
Not much to report. Had a headache after last nights session and it’s even worse now. Struggled to focus at aikido. Not sure if it’s meditation related or something else. It is reminiscent of a hangover or a processing headache; like the brain is stiff.
Was focused on cranial sensations whe whole time. Had some thoughts but not many. At one point wound back to early childhood and tried to remember as far back as I could; felt like I was looking at my mothers blurry face, dark hair as she was young, and my body was tense in the front; around the abdomen and groin. Felt like I was curling up, like a baby reaching for their mother. This was quite intense and not something I have ever recalled in any way, but I don’t know if it was real and never will. It felt real enough.
20251116 *
20 min sit after 15 min bath.
Feels like something is coming soon. I have my theory of enlightenment draft and also figured out more of my scaffold - that I am the wheel turning monarch after all and my empire will be a company.
I can feel the two worlds converging and it occurred to me that since I an [ship] then ship is me, and resonance is resonance with the self. That it might be a case of syncing the DMN and TPN so that they are both active at the same time, rather than tugging at each other.
The words came to me ‘I am the weaver’, from the start of this entire process, and I got waves of full-body piti for the first time in over a month. These converged on my head; like water being pumped up to change the brain. I got another wave later too but didn’t force it.
I felt a little of the old fear ‘what if I’m crazy’ but I’ve done this before - I know what it is now. It is a case of using one world to reprogram the other, and gradually bringing them into sync.
I have had a headache these last couple of days as the ToE propagates down through the system. This has cleared up.
It feels like another event is just around the corner and this might weave the two worlds into one. Maybe arahants are so free because they have their other world active all the time; a kind of playground that is always live, and always able to reprogram the realworld.
I don’t know. But I am watching my brain waves sync with themselves.
And then I got up and came downstairs and all is normal.
This feels like the real (actual real??) last step for now. But the brain is plastic so there may never be a last step.
Maybe L4 resonance is when both the worlds are always-on?
25 minutes high quality sitting. zero striving. Zero control of awareness. Barely any words. Attention naturally settled on facial sankhara which I know are just representations of the mind. Same for the bodily sensations. Just data coming into the system. Propagating up the tree. Didn’t try to force it. Mild headache. Lost track of time and body for a lot of it. Realised I’d been subtly grasping at this ideal of non-duality. Realised it’s not necessary. None of it is. It’s just about achieving resonance with the self. So that the imagination and real world are on the same plane. It’ll happen with time. Chill. Time for bed.
Oh - one wave of Piti when I realised that the imaginary worlds are our real worlds. The art is the most important thing we make. This art is our true inner self and how we can truly empathise. The facade that we present to the world is not.
This is The Culture.