Embedded Files
I got on the ferry and waved goodbye to my family. I had my homemade titanium touring bike, a tent, a mess tin, and a plan.
As I traversed the ferry I could hear my old bigotry like a radio in another room. ‘Look at those silly crocs’. ‘Bloody smokers’. ‘Alcoholics’. It no longer bit, and with each repetition it was getting weaker.
I skimmed MCTB2 to check the jhāna descriptions because I had never done them before. I sat in my bunk and meditated after 3x sauna / cold showers and sank into the 5th jhāna, where my body melted away and I felt shapeless and weightless. No need for the bodily jhāna as an entry-point.
Good things were around the corner.
I proceeded to cycle for 7 days, camping for 6 of them and staying in a hotel for 1. I would ride for 6 hours per day, without a clear destination in mind, in order to keep the focus on the process rather than achievement.
Each day was broken into 1 hour chunks of riding, where I would stop and text myself as thoughts coalesced, and then a short break to get water and food.
I avoided talking to people or consuming any media apart from trance music and the nikayas. The regular beat helped with getting ‘in the zone’ and the nikayas helped with planting good seeds.
Cycling had been my primary form of meditation all these years; I just never realised. The rhythmic motion of the legs, the focus on bodily sensations, the panoramic awareness of the road; it all combines to make something akin to deep vipassana meditation, without the need to sit still.
The first 3 days were my usual ‘cycle’ for these tours: I would fluctuate between the arising and passing (tingles and drive to surge), dissolution (man I’m tired), dark night (I can’t do this) and equanimity (I can go forever).
I did not vary my effort throughout the cycles. No surging, no stopping; just constant pedalling at all-day pace.
Day 4 the cycles died down and I spent the rest of the retreat in equanimity, apart from when inspiration would strike and I would write an article for the site.
Some of these articles are quite insightful. They were mostly focused on the teachings of the Buddha through a scientific lens the mental health industry and neurodivergence.
[BUDDHISM]
jhana:toolsforajob // sevenfactorsofawakening // sensepleasures // jhānaholic
Evening sessions would be a sauna and cold-plunge combo, three times. I am lucky here in Japan in that there is always a hot spring available. I would then sit with my mess tin and cook a simple dinner before meditating.
By the time I got to the return ferry my meditation skills were off the charts. I was tracking consciousness itself; feeling it as a waveform or gravity pressure in the cranium and the space around the head. [meditationobjects]
Before the explosive awakening I could barely sit still, never mind meditate. After n1 my meditation was all about calming dopaminergic tone and jagged bodily sensations. Now I was working with consciousness like warm putty and watching it fold in on itself as it expanded and contracted.
By day 4 my hands looked not my own. I could feel something in the mind getting primed.
[MENTAL HEALTH]
bipolarinsight // theconstructofself // theempathydilemma // adayindopamine
On the ferry home I did my evening routine and saw the most revolting old man climb into the bath in front of me and proceed to lie there with his finger on his penis, I guess as a form of self-soothing.
I did not flinch or move; I watched with equanimity as this specimen of old age and sickness shared the water with me.
I then went and meditated, some kind of formless realm again, and went to sleep.
n2 happened while I was asleep, in a dream. There were two discrete blips.
My dead grandad picked me up like a child doing airplane and ran, faster than any man ever could, to the end of the pier. He launched us into the air, 50 metres or more, before plunging into the place where the estuary meets the ocean. Down and down and down we went, him holding me and me grinning and into the darkness of all that ever was and ever will be.
Blip.
I’m on land, with a wealthy neighbour trying to eat a forest of curry rice. There are Buddhaheads guiding the way in the maze, and a sorceress appears and says ‘I lost my wizard I need you to be my new one’.
Blip.
My wife, saying, ‘remember: it’s a wire, not a lantern’.
Me, saying, ‘don’t worry; the wire was slack but now it is taut and I can walk it again’.
Wake up.
[N2 DREAM]
Something had changed.
I felt nothing but ease.
If n1 brought my dopaminergic signalling back in line, n2 was doing something with serotonin. I felt like I was on MDMA, but without any of the gurning or intensity. Just easy wellbeing and a sense that all was water.
Everything was ease. Strangers sat next to me in empty rooms and I didn’t feel any discomfort. I went to the hospital to have a saddle sore looked at and didn’t feel any awkwardness at getting my pants off in front of the cute nurse.
All was good in the world while I was silken dancing down the streets to my techno music, waterhands from the gatecrasher days, my own private afterparty that no-one else was privy to.
I proceeded to go deeper…
Raw entries
20250929 // wirenotlantern // shifted // neurodivergentbuddha // cycletour
20250928 // jhana:toolsforajob // meditationobjects
20250927 // sensepleasures // bipolarinsight
20250926 // partyboatdream // adayindopamine
20250925 // cycling // sevenfactorsofawakening
20250924 // jhānaholic // theconstructofself
20250923 // formlessrealms // findinggod
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse