Dragon Emperor 2, Year of the Phoenix

Journals - Custom Subliminals
#21 
       **12/25/23 CYCLE 1 WEEK 1**

  • I felt kind of dragged out and tired when I woke up this morning. I don’t know if it was sub hangover or regular hangover.
    I didn’t get drunk the night before, but I did drink more than I’m used to. Which is nothing. I might average one drink a month.

  • I do remember dreaming last night. The part of the dream that I remember involved a person who is involved in something that has been bothering me for a while. I’m not going to get into that, but I’m trying to make sense of that part at the moment and not having much success.

  • What I felt when I woke up was definitely sub hangover. It wasn’t a physical feeling, but such a strong mental feeling of exhaustion that it almost felt physical. I described it as feeling like my mind has been beaten with a bag of doorknobs.
    And that’s from one single five minute loop.
    This thing hits me like a ton of bricks. I am definitely going to be very careful increasing my exposure time.

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#22

I had almost replied today to how I felt starting Phoenix when I finished my last cycle, but I had guests over.

I had one loop of Phoenix before my last washout, and I’d been running New Emperor and WB. I felt hit on all sides with that single loop. And what I’ve assumed since then is this:

Emperor uses multiple NSE scripts, and they were drastically different than how I’ve been coping with life. I frequently felt “pummeled” by this. WB seemed milder, but Emperor hit me daily. It was a less painful recon, but it hit consistently, making me question myself deeply.

When I added Phoenix for that single loop (5 minutes), it seemed heavier. As in, it took some more energy adjusting my mental frameworks.

I’m following your journal, wondering how much my perception was accurate. It’s all subjective, but I do learn from others.

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#23

  • The fact that I remembered a dream at this stage is actually fairly amazing.
    Normally, I either don’t dream more than a couple times a year, or at least have no memory of it.
    The only time that it’s normal for me is when I’ve been on a new sub for a while. I’ll have a couple dreams within a few days or a week. That’s a sign to me that the sub is really catching on and starting to do its thing within my psyche.
    Looking through my DE1 journal, I had a bit more than that going on in Stages two and three, but other than that it’s held true.
    DE2 hit that stage with a single five minute loop, and that the dream was directly pertinent to something going on in my life.
    Fucking amazing, and it bodes very well for this year’s run.

  • I just got to work. I’ve felt relatively normal since I got up today. There is a sense that something is changing under the hood, but at this point I can’t put my finger on anything specific.

  • I am sorely tempted to remake HG (Harem Gatherer from my last run) with the new PS in place of S&S.
    The whole reality bubble concept sounds a lot like what it felt like when I was successfully hooking up when I was younger.
    Mind you, I didn’t know what I was doing at the time.
    I had a lot of, let’s call it, short term romantic success between the ages of eighteen and about twenty five. Thing is, it was just something that happened, and I couldn’t tell you how.
    I’m not sure if I approached or they did, what I said, or anything. I’d just be talking to a girl and we’d wind up in bed a few hours later.
    It seemed like more the Wanted Black model of things, but that reality bubble effect definitely happened.
    Maybe combining the two would work amazingly for me.
    However I don’t think that’s the best of ideas until this program has helped me set my life up in such a way that I actually have contact with women regularly, and the free time to do something about it.

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#24

I don’t know at this point. I just combined two monsters into one custom, and they’re both new to me.
I’ve done Emperor quite a bit, but this is a very different version.
I’m not really expecting this to be a smooth run, especially in the beginning. I may have to “embrace the suck” for a while.

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#25

That made me smile. But yeah, be easy on yourself with this one. Neither will be nice as they “adjust” you.

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#26
  • I am reminded of something I wrote in my DR1 journal.
    A lot of people do the ambitious New Year’s resolution thing, but most fail.
    Here’s why.
    Most people think “new year, new me” means that you’re the “new you” on January first and going forward.
    I’m thinking of the new me that I want to see on 12/31/24.
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#27

It’s a military saying that a lot of my friends who are veterans use.

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#28

That’s some true wisdom there.

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#29
  • Having a strong urge to run a second loop. Not happening. Not with the sledgehammer power this hits me.
    Odd effect though. This thing is extremely impactful. I feel a strong sense of restless energy. I just want to do SOMETHING. Unfortunately, I’m stuck at work doing essentially nothing.
    This doesn’t feel like DR at all. On that I had a sense of peace with taking some time out to heal my internal bullshit. This one is making me want to get out there and fix all of my problems so life can be the way I want it. RIGHT THE FUCK NOW.
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#30
  • I feel a kind of nervous energy right now. This is something I figured out while I was running DR.
    I’m not actually nervous or anxious, I just have some of the physical symptoms of it.
    It may be recon, it may be something happening to my energetic system because of the script. Don’t know.
    In the past, my mind would find something that would cause me anxiety, I suppose to make the feeling make sense. That of course made it worse in a vicious cycle.
    Not on this one. I just feel kind of jittery, but I recognize that nothing is wrong, and it’s just coming from the sub.
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#31
  • OK. I just thought of girlfriend #3. The shortest relationship, but the one I tortured myself about for the longest.
    I mostly got over what was still there on DR, but something remained. Not enough to cause a problem, but I thought of her wistfully once in a while.
    It had been happening a bit more as I started this program.
    Tonight, NOTHING. No feeling whatever.
    I played a song that reminds me of her, and has this tendency of bringing some of the feeling back. FUCKING NOTHING.
    I’ve had that pocket of pain stuck in a back closet of my mind for decades. More because of what she represented I found out on DR but still.
    And one five minute mini loop wiped it out of existence.
    This thing is scary.
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#32
  • I slept well today. When I got up, the processing feeling was gone and I feel normal.
    There’s still something going on, and I still can’t put my finger on it.
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#33

  • I’ve only run one loop, but I’m getting the impression that DRP is going to be a less visible process than DR was.
    On DR I got a lot of insights into what exactly my problems were and why I had them. In this, I just get the impression that stuff is just gone. No muss, no fuss, no fanfare.

  • I had a mildly irritating day today. The roommate had an appointment today. She tried to come home by bus, but managed to take the wrong one. Going entirely the wrong way.
    I wound up being the one to drive all the way across town to bail her out.
    I was mildly annoyed, but no worse than that.

  • Reading my DR journal and the one after it really highlighted how effective RICH was. Since money is still a problem, I’m going to be running a five minute loop of it along with DE2 this cycle.

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#34

  • Done with five minutes of DE2 and RICH. I feel a little floating sensation in my head, but other than that they both felt smooth.
    I’ve got some processing feeling back, but not too bad.

  • There are a number of things that I hope DRP gets rid of. The first is my lifelong embedded impression that “you can’t have it”. I got into the whys and wherefores of this on DR, but the long and short of it is that I got it into my head in earliest childhood that I will never get anything that I want. The more I want something, the more energy I put into that wanting, the less likely I am to get it.
    The short version of the reason for that can be summed up in one word. Mom.
    My mother, let’s just say that she had problems of her own.
    She had to prove to herself over and over again that she had absolute power and control over me.
    One of the ways she did that was to make sure that if I wanted something, especially something that was masculine in nature and all of the boys I was around had, I would absolutely never get it.
    That went for possessions, experiences, everything.
    Later, even if I saved up enough money for something I wanted, she wouldn’t allow me to have it.
    I could have what she told me I could have, and nothing more.
    Since that happened so early in life, my memories of the wanting and frustration translated into a kind of universal rule in my subconscious.
    That is to say that if I really want something, a part of my mind will see it as unrealistic no matter how realistic and ordinary it actually is, and short circuit my efforts to get it.
    It doesn’t always work. Sometimes I can “beat the system” but when I do, there’s a sense of (holy shit, I just realized this) call it guilt associated with it. I have sometimes lost whatever it was shortly after gaining it as well.
    That lead me to spend my life kind of accepting what came my way and not “going for it when I wanted something.
    There are of course exceptions to this, and the effect is not as bad as it was before DR, but it is most definitely still here.
    It’s led me to make some very poor financial decisions too.
    Occasionally when I really do want something, and I have the means to get it even if that wouldn’t be a great move at the time, I have “grabbed it while the grabbing was good” because I subconsciously saw it as an opportunity to “beat the system” that wouldn’t last for long. Also, I just plain have a defiant streak when it comes to the perceived “authority figure” in my head that likes to deny me things, so I’ll thwart it if I can.
    Come to think of it, that’s a great trait, or would be if I channeled it into working hard for something consistently over time.
    Not how I see it though, not from the part of my child mind that’s operating here.
    Opportinities to get what I wanted against my mother’s will weren’t long term things. They were fleeting windows that would slam shut as quickly as they opened. So I had to grab hold of whatever it was and either experience it, or secrete it where she wouldn’t find it.
    If I got caught there would be hell to pay of course.
    Come to think of it, what I feel when I buck the system and get what I want isn’t guilt in the traditional sense that I think I’ve done something wrong. It’s fear of consequences. I never thought that Mom was right when she denied me things for no good reason. I didn’t understand, but I sensed that it was just a petty power game that she liked to play. It’s just plain old fear of consequences. Consequences that no one will impose on me in the here and now.

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#35

I had one of those “holy shit!” moments seeing guilt with Phoenix just last week. I had never seen that myself

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#36

Was it really guilt though, or fear of punishment?

#37
  • Interesting. So, the way I saw things, anything I really wanted had to be gotten by “stealing” it or “smuggling” it or some similar act of subterfuge.
    If the “powers” (whatever the hell those are) found out I wanted something, they’d prevent me from getting it, or take it away if I already had it.
    Once again, it’s not that I thought I was doing something wrong, or that I didn’t deserve what I wanted. It was that I had this vague impression that some power wouldn’t let me get whatever it was no matter how hard I tried, or how right I did things.
    Since directly working toward a goal is a blatant and visible act, I had very little faith that that would ever work for me.
    It’s not that I never went for what I wanted. But when I did, my efforts were hampered by hesitancy, self sabotage, and fear.
    That applies to any form of just going for it.
    This has effected my scholastic career, my love/sex life, my financial condition, everything.
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#38

It was a core guilt, a blaming of myself.

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#39

I suppose I have some of that too, but it’s more about something else.
With this issue I knew the game was rigged, and I didn’t feel the least bit bad about breaking the rules to even the playing field when I could.

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#40

  • Interesting things happening in my head today. There seem to be two dueling perspectives on the future in my head.
    One is focused on all of the problems I’ve let myself fall into over the years. It sees all kinds of things coming to a head, and and disaster ensuing. It also doesn’t see any way for me to move life forward and tells me that I’ve gotten as far as I’m going to in life and from here on all I have to look forward to is a constant desperate struggle to hold onto what I have as I inevitably lose ground.
    The other is pretty insistent that everything is a lot more OK than it looks on paper right now, and that solutions are right around the corner.
    I don’t know what those solutions will be, but about half of me definitely believes that they’re there.
    This is more of a subtle feeling than I’ve had on previous programs. Like it’s happening further below the surface. Less distressing. It’s happening more on the feeling level, and it’s kind of like I’m arguing with myself about how stressed out I should be.

  • Another thing that I’d like DRP to get rid of is the tendency I have to stay in a position where life is a constant struggle. We have stayed on a financial knife edge for quite a few years. Part of the reason for that has been circumstances, but another part has been that I have made some financial decisions that put us back there. Specifically when the wife got her back pay for her disability. I could have not done a few things and we’d be at least a bit more comfortable now.
    I did them though, and I am responsible for that.
    I have a clue why I do this. There are a couple of reasons actually, but the one I’m thinking about tonight is quite simply that I’m addicted to stress.
    I kind of covered this in my DR journal.
    My childhood sucked. I felt constant high grade anxiety from among other things thinking that my father was going to kill him self at any minute from about age five onward. Also the impression I had that I was responsible for his condition and it would be my fault.
    My brain developed in an unending bath of stress hormones.
    In the good side, I can function really well under extremely stressful conditions up to and including people trying to kill me.
    The bad side of that coin though is that I really have trouble functioning without that highly unpleasant chemical cocktail.
    Seriously. At points in my life where I did have the leeway to relax a bit, I just didn’t know what to do. I just kind of wandered around in a fog not really doing much of anything, but feeling a sense of formless dread. I guess that my brain couldn’t deal with the concept that there wasn’t a disaster hanging over my head.
    I think that the best illustration of this was the first time I went to college.
    I had successfully “saved” girlfriend #1 from her abusive parents and seen her off to the out of state school she went to against their wishes. And I found myself in a place without my own abusive parents adding stress, anger, and emotional damage to me.
    I did ok for the first few months, but then I just kind of lost direction and didn’t know what to do.
    I had no direction or ambition or clue about how to interact with people. I was just kind of in a haze until I flunked out a couple years later.
    I didn’t realize that I could have reinvented myself.

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