Asia.
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My thought is:
Our relationships, particularly adult relationships, tend to fulfill many different functions in parallel. You made an appropriate stand and made appropriate choices based on your values. The values are solid and are in integrity with your vision.
That part is all good.
But they were still friends and colleagues, ‘co-creators’. And there are emotional and instinctual bonds of belonging, connections, and ‘place’/community to which such people contribute as well.
My thinking is that once those other needs, (needs which are probably less acknowledged by you, since that’s the norm for many well-adjusted adults), are being met in other ways or by other people, then it will be easier to release the anger.
Another way of putting this. Anger is the emotion of boundary-setting and boundary-keeping. Your healthy desire for connection leads you to think about reconnecting with those friends and colleagues. Your anger then arises to make sure that you don’t compromise the boundaries of your values and your vision. It’s performing a useful function. But maybe it’s also time to look at other communities and connections that are better aligned with your values.
That’s one way of thinking about it.
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There’s another thing that is nagging ay my mind. This Sherlock scene in particular sums it up perfectly.
Maybe I am lonely. I haven’t got many friends that I still really spend any time with, and between the reduced socializing recently thanks to Covid and generally being preoccupied with raising a child, even that has dropped to a few times a year at most.
I recently had a dream about a friend that I haven’t spoken to in a couple of years (has it really been that long?? wow) and in the dream, I went to visit him and discovered he had become very successful - both socially and financially. I was happy for him and felt a bit down for a few moments when I woke up.
I believe I’m having some ZP recon… I listened to RICH ZP yesterday and, like last Wednesday, felt awful afterward. So anxious I could barely sit still, and was simultaneously on the verge of both panic and deep sadness. Bad enough that I texted a friend who is also into subs that if this is the recon I’m getting from ZP then I’m going back to Ultima. I’ve never had such a reaction before, but 2 listen days with the same sub is approaching a pattern.
I think I’ll do a ZP washout for a week or so rather than deciding I’m not going to run it anymore, as the stuff I’m feeling does not match others experiences, so there may be other factors at play. Tomorrow is another listen day and I’ll be back on AEM, which never causes any issues for me… except when I’m primed to work and keep getting interrupted, but that’s another story.
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AEM yesterday… No major productive drive but no hellacious anxiety either. Terrible dreams last night, definitely feeling some recon today.
Yeah.
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My wife said something to me a few nights ago that was just an offhand comment for her, expressing a feeling relating to something that had happened with her father actually, but my brain heard it as “Be more alpha NOW!”
Her father was involved in a business deal and essentially got scammed. The person/people he hired to build a particular online asset delayed until the terms of the contract were up and then just disappeared with the money, never having delivered anything. What she said was…
“He’s too nice and trusting, like you.”
Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!
So, after nearly 2 years away from it… Emperor is back in my stack.
Updated stack:
- AEM
- Emperor
- QL2 - I need a brain boost to finish the current stage of my tech project by the end of the year
The observant ones will notice that there are no ZP titles in my stack anymore… not even RICH.
I ran RZP a few times and had a less-than-ideal response each time. I thought it over and I have some ideas on why it might be, but I’ve got a meeting in 4 minutes so I’ll save that for another post.
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First some background.
I started out, young and idealistic (and always ambitious of course)… fresh out of school I joined a nonprofit organization and was running it within 4 years. I’d hoped to transition that into a consulting career in the same field (green building, generally speaking). But… the reaction that I got, from most people, was that I was “selling out” and had become greedy, once I tried to monetize my time. I was fortunate to have a few contacts that realized (due to the presence of functioning brains) that I couldn’t keep living in an expensive city on the west coast while working as a volunteer indefinitely. I got a few contracts… $5k here, $10k there… that carried me through. But, I became thoroughly disillusioned with the anti-capitalist mindset that I was surrounded by.
I’ve already recounted the story of the final straw that made me split from that group entirely, so I won’t go into it again. The result was that I went full corporate. I made money my primary objective… not by doing anything counter to my morals, I wouldn’t participate in anything that was harmful… but I was done doing work for others without getting anything for myself.
Fast forward several years. Here I am, with access to some amazing subliminal technology that promises to change my reality. Hell yes, sign me up. I’ve had excellent results with RICH Ultima, some great productivity with my wealth custom, as well as some interesting opportunities for partnerships etc come into my life. So, of course when the new tech is announced… I’m all over that.
And then…
Consider me envious of the many successes that others have had with ZP, it has not had that effect for me yet. And I fully recognize that it’s an issue with my brain, NOT the ZP tech. In fact, my immediate “results” after RICH ZP were about $1,500 in unexpected bills and expenses… ouch. I also felt TERRIBLE. A deep despair and sense of hopelessness that I’d not felt in years. Also, deeply disturbing dreams that woke me up with a pounding chest and a ton of fear.
I chalked it up to a bad day, and kept on about my life. A few days later it was another ZP listen day, and once again I felt just… ugh. The worst recon I’ve ever felt… I couldn’t sit still, it was in between a constant panic attack and such overwhelming sadness that I couldn’t do anything but sit at my desk and breathe, trying not to cry. Then one of those big unexpected expenses came up, so I walked numbly to the bank (just down the street) to make the transfer.
Although one friend said I needed to just “push through it”, I couldn’t take it. Not right now, at least… it’s almost the holidays and I’d like to enjoy the time!
So, I’ve dropped ZP titles from my stack for now. As I mentioned previously I’ve gone to a stack of AEM, Emperor, and QL2, and those are working well for me. Dreams have become much more pleasant (though that took over a week until the nightmares subsided) and I feel good once again.
Ok, so why??? I know it’s not a problem with the tech, it’s me. I have some thoughts.
Recently I did a thought exercise. If income generation wasn’t a concern anymore… what would my interests be? I didn’t bother speculating on how that situation arose, just accepted it as a situational condition that I had all the money I needed.
The first thing to go would be the marketing and business books, email subscriptions, and software tools I pay for. That made sense, as I do business to serve my life, not the other way around.
The second thing, which greatly surprised me, was the technical books, subscriptions, etc relating to my business.
Huh?
I always had this mental picture in my head of being this Tony Stark-type character who tinkered with projects in a well-equipped shop, and spun off businesses to monetize what I came up with. That’s what I’ve done with 2 businesses now, though my shop is still rather modest. I figured if I were financially free, I’d continue doing that. But my SubC response was that I might not.
So what would I do?
I went through several answers, and only one truly resonated. I’d live a simple life, being as self sufficient as I could be. Not a lone cabin in the woods, but a house in the country with a big garden. What surprised me was most of the extravagances that I thought I wanted (indoor pool, home theater, museum-quality replica dinosaur skull on display… ok that one might be a bit much for anyone)… weren’t there. A simple house, for a simple life.
I’d happily spend my days doing woodworking, clearing bush, fixing things around the property, maybe some farming.
Am I chasing a dream that I only thought I wanted?
Here’s the kicker. I need considerable amounts of money to buy said land, to build said house in the country on… In this area, even a standard 1970s-era house in a normal neighborhood is near to a million dollars. Land outside the city is several million.
So clearly I need to keep pursuing wealth.
What’s the problem with my SubC then? Sure, I may not truly want as much as I thought I did, but I still need considerably more than I’ve got presently.
Anyway, that’s the loop my brain has been stuck in for the past couple of weeks.
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Man. I definitely want the shop. That’s what I’m working towards with my tinkering and empire-building.
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First of all, I LOVE that GIF. It so nicely expresses how I (and I think I’m not the only one) sometimes feel.
Your desired future and mine are very similar. I always see myself in a cabin close to a lake and a small town where people all know one another, but within driving distance of a larger city. I would still work freelance on projects for my town, not something that nobody really needs but something which actually helps the people and the town.
Makes me wish I had been a doctor or vet instead of an IT engineer. It would have made small town life easier.
At home I’d try out new techniques like vertical hydroponic farming to grow my own food, I’d have some solar panels or other ways of generating my own power. And of course a nice porch where I could cuddle with the girls (yeah, why not have more than one even if their periods unfortunately synchronize over time?) and maybe look at my kids running around playing with the dog.
Like you I realize I would need a ton of money to get there, and it is certainly not getting any less as I get older. And yet I have never seen wealth as a goal, only as a means to an end. So running wealth-subs and setting wealth goals is difficult.
The key I suppose is in finding a way to reframe the concept so that wealth is a goal but doesn’t feel like one.
For me, I maintain the idea of accepting wealth into my life. I don’t actively pursue it but I hold in my mind the idea that it is there to support me whenever I need it. A goal is that I would never have to check my bank balance and be able to buy anything I wanted. And when I do check my bank balance I always visualize an extra 1 in front of whatever number shows up as an exercise in visualization. Simply because I feel it should be there, the bank must have made a mistake.
This avoids me feeling like I’m chasing wealth I don’t believe I need to be comfortable.
I also see handling money as a game or form of art. There’s a skill to it which most people lack and it makes for an interesting and challenging pastime which makes me smile when I do it right. So I don’t do it for the money, that’s simply the end result of doing it right, like a little red hotel on a monopoly board. It’s satisfying to see.
But I don’t have the same passion (or desperation, a very effective one) for wealth that I see with some people having great successes here on the forum. I don’t know if that is the challenge I face at running wealth subs and seeing great results.
As far as the unexpected bills go, that sucks! All I can tell you is that it’s probably best to release the idea that it is somehow related to running RICH. I have found that once you mentally anchor things to one another, it is hard to get rid of that link. So I do my best to anchor my positive results to the subs and commit the negative results to my mindset or the universe giving me a teaching moment.
Sometimes I catch myself thinking I’m being delusional. Like some religious people claiming all good and bad things must be the will of a deity, not all things, good or bad, are linked to subs. Subs don’t have that power (and said deity certainly doesn’t micro-manage that much).
As a well-developed individual I acknowledge that in the end I and I alone carry the responsibility for it all. I manifested it, I wished for it somehow, even if the subs may have given me an edge. I simply got what I was asking for.
Then I consider if there’s any harm in relating good things to the subs and conclude that there’s not. But there is an upside however, as I’m teaching myself to trust the subs as something which can help me cause good stuff.
So when something good happens, I try and say to myself “you know, RICH or AM could have helped manifest that” and when something bad happens I say “what thought, action or behavior might have brought that one on and what could I have done differently?”
For example, when my upstairs neighbors moved in with their exceptionally noisy kids, it took all of my focus to convince myself that there was something to learn from it and that I must have done something to bring this upon me. I quickly concluded that I’d been telling myself for years that I wanted to renovate the house and add sound-proofing in. Then I told myself (and the universe) that there were less impactful ways to teach me. Why make me suffer this much when it could have been gradual instead?
Once I finally came to terms with it, it turned out the neighbors were decent people and the man happened to be in construction. By now, a significant part of my house is renovated and my home office had ludicrous amounts of soundproofing. And it cost me a fraction of hiring a contractor while helping me learn how to do things myself and overcome my fear of change. Bad things, something I manifested myself, but also an opportunity to grow.
On the money front, I’ve been doing that visualizing a 1 exercise every time I open my app, and even though the lottery still hasn’t come to its senses (see what I do there, I never lose the lottery, they simply made a mistake) I did get offered a job at the place I’m currently working. Starting January I get a 600 bucks month raise and a year-end bonus and my salary would be about 700 bucks higher compared to the norm with opportunity to rise another 1000 a month over the next few years.
So the question is, how can I link this to subs? It certainly isn’t a massive windfall. In the grand scheme of things I am still an employee and not an entrepreneur. Saint and Fire still haven’t made me their partner even though it frustrates me to no end that my thinking process might help them evolve subs exponentially and I have been unable to convince them to take a chance on something which could be truly magical for SubClub and its clientele. Which is my failure, not theirs. I’m also not a millionaire by the end of the year as far as I know right now.
But I am further along than I figured I would be a year ago. I get to work from home or close to home, allowing me to have a good work-life balance. I get supported in my growth and studies and I will have certain opportunities in the future since the job is for the federal government which always looks good on a resume.
I could have had my miracle wealth, but I might have required me to sacrifice in other areas of my life. Instead, I get an above average growth in wealth and my personal life, giving me time to focus on everything which matters. I may have subconsciously told the subs that I had other priorities besides wealth.
Somehow, since I’ve been running wealth subs, everything financially seems to be going in the right direction overall, at a higher speed compared to pre-subs. But we are talking a span of 2 years now.
Is it because of the subs? Maybe they cleared out the cobwebs and made it easier for me to see what needed doing and have the courage to do it. So sure, why not?
Thank you, subs, for clearing things up for me. Thank you for helping me grow, even though consciously I still have hope you’ll help me find my privately owned island while I am still young enough to enjoy it. I just might have to do some opening up my mind to the possibilities first.
But my comfortable financial growth could be the subs, so I say let it be because of the subs. They showed me what to do like a teacher would, without asking me to sacrifice like Scrooge did in his youth.
I am DarkPhilosopher and I approve of this essay.
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No subs yet today, have been awake off and on since ~4am as my daughter is ill at the moment… and on a “totally unrelated” note… we’re now quarantined, awaiting an appointment to get covid tests all around. No actual symptoms, but automatic testing recommendation if anyone has a cough…
Yay
Merry quarantinemas!
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How are you and your family?
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We’re good, thanks!! Kiddo’s cold is basically gone, we had a nice quiet xmas… and we’re enjoying a few quiet days off before I’m back in work mode and the munchkin is back at preschool.
It’s also definitely (and unseasonably) winter here at the moment… I grew up much further east, but winter on the west coast is interesting… there’s snow on palm trees. That never not seems weird to me. lol.
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The mental image that sentence created is hilarious.
Happy new year everyone!
Just a quick update re: EmperorZP.
Before xmas I sent a proposal to a business contact for some consulting, and I quoted him a rather low figure because A) he’s a friend and I know he’s working to get his business launched and B) I would like to do more consulting work in the future so we’re starting out small. However, after receiving the proposal he’s gone a bit quiet… granted, it’s the holiday season, but I wonder if he’s waffling over the price. Since listening to Emperor I’ve been thinking that either he goes for it or he won’t… I won’t lower my rates, as it’s already about half of what it ought to be. If he won’t meet my price then no sweat, I’ll put my efforts elsewhere…
This is a distraction from my real projects, really, but it would be fun and relatively easy $$. But, I’m not sweating it if the project doesn’t go ahead. There are always others.
I’m not saying I would have lowered my rates before, but there’s a perceptible mindset difference now about knowing what my time is worth and not backing down from that. I like it.
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Another ZP listen day. I’ve found I enjoy those more so than my Qv2 days, simply because I like how I feel after a loop of EmperprZP. I’m still feeling a lot of productivity drive toward my projects in general, though I’ve been focusing almost exclusively on my tech project.
I’ve had to teach myself a lot of the microelectronics stuff, which has been fascinating… and yet I know this is just to get a working prototype so I can get some real R&D grant funding to hire a ISO 13485-certified medical device company to (likely) re-design it, if just to make the FDA happy. Ah well.
A few nights ago I was having a back spasm, as well as a headache… (super fun party time…) I was lying facedown on my daughter’s foam play mat on the living room floor to stretch my back while my wife and the kiddo read books nearby. At some point I nodded off for a few seconds, maybe a couple of minutes, and I had a very weird dream/vision.
I saw myself in a mirror and I had a translucent, dark ghostly “shell” around my body, which was also chaining me to the floor with shackles. I could move, and the shackles moved with me, but I couldn’t lift my arms beyond a certain point. Somehow the ghostly shell prevented me from perceiving this. I was able to peer inside the shell, and was horrified to discover many grisly wounds on my body… chunks of flesh missing, burned away like Harvey Dent’s face in The Dark Knight (Batman). The shell also prevented me from noticing these injuries as well and may have been causing them itself. It was smooth, and looked like a constructed shape rather than a cloud or anything even organic…
I jolted awake, which caused yet another stab of pain in my back… freaky dream/vision… I’d be open to any insight into what such imagery might suggest. @Malkuth ? anyone else?
No subs that day, but the previous day I’d listened to EmperorZP and RegenZP. That’s also my stack today, fwiw.
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Mind’s blank for the moment.
I usually approach dreams in terms of emotional affect. Emotion’s like a language that various processes of mind share in common.
You mentioned feeling horrified at seeing the state of the body. That sticks out to me.
The contrast between the smooth dome or shell and the pitted, damaged body below is pretty evocative.
Possibly a disconnect between the socially acceptable face shown to others and the imperfect parts behind?
But also possibly a kind of cocoon within which a metamorphosis, a death and rebirth, is in the process of happening.
Finally, a cue for compassion, self-care, and patience with your self and your process.
That’s usually a good idea at any rate.
Also, you need more sleep. 
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Full disclosure, we had just watched the new Matrix movie the night before… that very may well have played into some of the imagery too… as well as the notion of an unseen prison, of course.
It felt like a wearable prison. Something I was trapped within, that I’d not been able to see before.
A definite possibility, though I’m well aware of my imperfections vs the public people have of me… in this case, it was a shocking revelation to see the damage.
It didn’t feel like a positive change, FWIW. More so like an attack. Something that had enshrouded me to trap and damage me.
Haha… yes… I always need more sleep. Sadly my sleep still relies somewhat heavily on several sleep supplements, and hasn’t been “good” for many years… despite what my Oura ring says. Though I get 2-3h of deep sleep many nights, which is quite good. My issue is that I’ll often be woken up by unpleasant dreams… even if they’re not overly “scary”, they just feel fundamentally wrong or disturbing somehow.
Like if you returned home one day to discover your family had been recast (as if they were in a movie/tv show), yet you didn’t consciously remember who they were previously. Just a subtle gnawing sense that something isn’t right.
That’s been a common feature of my dreams for years; many of them take place in an alternate version of reality that… here’s the weird part… is always the same. I’ve had multiple lucid dreams and have explored this world extensively, and it scares me. There’s nothing weird or obviously unpleasant about it, it just feels “wrong” compared to the actual world. If that makes sense. Things are in the wrong place, or people are in the wrong roles.
I had no original intention of sharing this next bit, but I feel it’s important.
The strangest part, which is a whole other thing, is a child I met in a dream 15-20 years ago. In the dream it was my niece… Half-asian, and the cutest most lovable little girl I’d ever seen. I scooped her up in my arms and wouldn’t let go. When I woke up and realized it was just a dream, I was heartbroken because I missed her so much.
Well, many years later my sister is not with an Asian guy (nor has she ever been) but… I’m the one with a Chinese wife, and a half-Asian daughter that feels very familiar. And her name is very similar to the girl from the dream too, though my kiddo’s name was the result of much deliberation with my wife, and I’d forgotten all about the dream until very recently.
Did I meet my future daughter in a dream many years ago or just a coincidence? Who knows. Dreams are weird lol.
I need to go take a breath.
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Yes, the domed shell covering a body is straight out of that movie.
Maybe Saint was right about it being an abomination.
That sounds really disturbing. I can only imagine what that must feel like.
And that sounds equally beautiful.
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Another listen day today, had a nice result in terms of mindset.
I’ve got a new business deal that’s been in the works for quite a few months now that will see me joining a new company to head up R&D, product design, etc. Very exciting technology to be working with. They have been rather quiet lately though, so my wife had been growing concerned that the deal would fall through. I’ve had some of the same concerns, as some parts of it seem a bit loosey-goosey, but the technology I’d gain access to is revolutionary so I’d be willing to cut quite a bit of slack with the confidence that I could whip everything into shape within a reasonable amount of time.
The stack of AEM + Emperor has given me a nice internal frame to hold the faith that the deal will go through, and today I texted the CEO personally to just touch base again and we have our meeting next week.
Previously I’d have felt anxiety to mirror what my wife was feeling, so this was a nice change. And… if the deal ends up being a dud, there are lots of other companies to work with, lots of my own projects I could invest in, etc.
It’s a pretty nice feeling to be looking at projects that I want to do and be able to walk away if not, rather than looking at something just for a paycheck because I need money. Huge contrast compared to a few years ago.
In other news, after we watched Matrix 4 the other night, my wife decided to have some fun and teach our daughter something to say. So yesterday my daughter ran into my office and said “Daddy! Daddy… I know kung fu!”
She also made her first pun, which amazed me.
She said “lā bǎ ba… lā bǎ ba…” which means to poopoo. Then she pointed at my wife and said “lā mā ma!! lā mā ma!! Mommy poopoo!!” and started giggling like crazy. This was funny because, for everyone that doesn’t speak Mandarin… bà ba means daddy…
15 months old, and already making understandable puns in addition to allegedly knowing kung fu. That’s my kiddo.
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Another listen day, AEM in rotation this morning. 6.5h sleep, 2:21 of that was deep sleep, so I feel good.
Today has been productive in a knowledge sense; I’ve been helping a buddy with some ideas for an online business. AEM really kicked in this morning; I was able to come up with a bunch of niche ideas and dove right into doing some keyword research for them to see which ones might be viable. I’ve got a business call in an hour, so I’ve wound down the searching stuff for now, but in the meantime, I’m setting up access in some of the SEO & content tools I’ve got so he can start learning the tech.
I also brainstormed some other monetization methods for him, including some services that can be fulfilled with the software tools mentioned above. I have no interest in doing those services myself, but what I came up with could generate $50-$60/hr relatively quickly, so I tossed it out there as a possibility. Getting into a “flow state” with internet marketing tasks with AEM is crazy easy, though I suppose that’s the point of the custom after all. I’m really liking how it pairs with EmperorZP too.
I also jumped into some research on another topic that’s interested me for years, going back to my green building days. I’m still super interested in that whole sector… the product and tech side at least; I left that space because it got too political… which always seemed foolish to me. I’ve set that aside as a “passion project” to pursue in the future, as I’d really need a much larger shop to really get into it.
Ideas and thoughts are flowing like a river, but it’s also easy to grab and understand each piece… very cool.
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