4. assimilation & understanding

With the cessation of valproate and discovery of the Buddhist insight maps my understanding of what had happened rapidly fell into place.

I seemed to have permanently removed all painful ADHD symptoms. I had no scatterbrain, no head noise, no rejection sensitive dysphoria, and no suffering and very little impatience.

I was getting occasional waves of dopamine (pīti), after which I would export parts of my own personal experience in articles like [rethinkingenlightenment] and [howtosavethespecies].

I started making the [j2.0] piece by selecting one piece of wood grain per day to create a self-portrait which captured how my first encounter with nibbāna felt.

From the mechanism of action of the drugs I inferred that dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine were central to the process. I created a behaviour-based regulation protocol to try to manipulate these neurotransmitters in a more controlled manner.

dvarfundamentals // planerandchisel

I reasoned that this all served to prune redundant deep learning and optimise the neural network, and that the external world would reflect the internal one, hence the importance of ethical conduct and thought, making the reprogrammingyoursim page to capture this idea.

Now that my mind was my own again I began building a more coherent philosophical and ethical framework, both through personal reflection and by reading the original suttas of the Buddha. The aim was to unwrap them from the dogma and the mystical detritus which would have accrued in the centuries of verbal transmission.

Personal: thetraumaofself // conditioned // whywesuffer // tiger/cage // theriver

Buddhist: rebirth // non-self // kamma // reprogramming // impermanence // craving // cessation // sensepleasures

>> more were added later in the process and can be found on the neobuddhism page <<

All this while I had been composing a working hypothesis for nibbāna, which I viewed as the install process for the ethical worldview I was cultivating.