So I guess I’ll have to change the [SOLO] part of the title for this journal because, yesterday, I finally gave in and bought Beyond Limitless Ultima.
I just run my first loop, and something VERY trippy happened. I was listening to the track off my phone using the 1MORE in-ear headphones I recently bought. During the last 10 minutes or so, I decided to concentrate on the sound, doing an exercise that I learned a few years ago. This exercise involves focusing all your senses on one thing; in this case, the sound of the water flowing. With practice, you can experience some sort of synesthesia effects. I’ve never been able to experience anything as crazy as “smelling the sound” —but I can feel the individual components of a song and get a sense of “weight” of each of them. It’s hard to explain, but the whole idea is that you can experience sensory input on many levels. It’s very relaxing too because you concentrate so much on that one thing that everything else disappears.
Anyway, as soon as the track ended, I removed my earphones and got back to work. That’s when I noticed that I was still hearing the water flowing. Initially, I thought I might have left the app running and that it was playing the next masked track. I checked my phone and nothing…I had actually closed the app, so that couldn’t be what I was hearing. I also checked my work phone, which I sometimes use for subs and found nothing was playing either.
I kept hearing the water flowing for like 2 or 3 minutes. I was beginning to worry I had fucked something up in my ears. I remembered Saint saying that Ultima has ultrasonic and masked mixed, so I thought that I might have been playing this too loud for in-ear headphones. I was starting to freak out when it suddenly stopped. It didn’t fade out, it just stopped, like someone pushing the stop button.
I’m super curious to know if anyone has experienced anything like this. I wonder if it had to do with the exercise I did, or with this track being Ultima. I didn’t do this exercise before with any subs, so I can’t tell if this is what triggered the experience.
Other than that, I don’t have anything special to report in terms of results. It’s still too soon, of course. I plan to run BLU once a day and will keep running Emperor as usual.
In terms of Emperor, I’ve been running it for a bit longer than usual. Especially during the day over the past 2 or 3 days. I noticed that the more I run it, the better I feel. I still don’t feel okay during rest days. I always experience very heavy reconciliation and feel off in general. Not less confident, but generally pissed off, moody and frustrated. Very restless. On the other side, I’ve been noticing that if I limit exposure overnight, I tend to wake up feeling more energized. Not a huge difference but still noticeable.
I keep progressing with Emperor but definitely at a lower rate. This is not a bad thing. I still feel super confident, but now it’s more like this is my new normal. I feel well-grounded most of the time. My sense of pride, self-respect, and expectations towards other people, and how I allow them to treat me keeps gradually increasing.
On Sunday, my wife wanted me to reach out to a couple of people I knew from business school to discuss a potential job opportunity. I’ve reached out to these people in the past, and they had ignored me. So I told her I’m done asking for favors. I’m done with accepting less than what I would gladly give or have given. After all, nothing is lost. Every single job I’ve had and every degree I got was a result of my own effort.
I have always been ready to offer a helping hand to anyone, whether I know them or not. Emperor is giving me the perspective that this is still a good thing, but it has a limit. The limit is that there are people who don’t deserve it. People that, time and time again, have disappointed me. People that never reply in kind, never do anything if it’s not for their own benefit. People that only show up when they need something from me. In those cases, my generous nature interferes with my sense of self-respect. If I keep giving and acting like nothing happens when people disrespect me or ignore me, I am undermining my progress at building a healthy sense of pride. My time and efforts are better spent elsewhere.
Finally, that situation with my kid and the x-ray turned out well —nothing to worry about. That was a HUGE relief, and I can now focus better on other things and go on with my life. I think over worrying for my family is a weakness that no amount of Emperor can help me overcome.
and seeing what happens…