Today:
Ecstasy of the Golden One: 3:43
Alchemist Stage 1: 3:24
Khan Black Stage 1: 7:48
Was cooking while doing that last one. Time got away from me.
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I, for one, lolād so hard. Just one of those unexpected, hilarious moments. It reminded me of a few weeks ago, I met up with a cousin that I hadnāt seen in years and was explaining my Qigong practice to him. After I finished, he had this weird look on his face and simply said:
So your life is changing because youāre moving your arms?
And all I could say isā¦ āwell, when you put it like thatā¦ā
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An unintentional koan if I ever heard one lol.
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Iām really allowing myself to explore and think about RECONCILIATION in new ways and with an open mind.
I rarely experience very obvious, direct effects from the subliminal.
ā¦Maybe.
But Iāve been allowing myself to play with the notion that maybe āunobviousā, environmental, or situational features and challenges might also be connected to the processing of my programs.
The truth is that I am a person who draws lines of causality very tentatively.
It takes a lot for me to say āX definitely caused Yā. Sometimes this helps me and sometimes it hurts me.
Anyway, Iāve been allowing myself to go to the other extreme, and almost over-identify reconciliation.
So, Iāve beeen allowing mood, external circumstances, problems and challenges to all be potential signs.
Probably wonāt do that indefinitely, but itās a kind of experiment for the time being.
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In meditation just now, I was ālisteningā again to (my memory of) that song for Into The Wonder.
In meditation you can āwalk aroundā thoughts and sensations the way you might walk around a dinosaur skeleton in a museum of natural history.
I walked around this one part of the song, and noticed that the interval that stuck out to me was similar to one used in Vince Guaraldiās āLinus and Lucyā. Then I started remembering and appreciating how great his music was.
Itās funny how a whole generation (or several generations) of children just instantly appreciated how great that music was. And, of course, adult music lovers and jazz lovers had been appreciating him already.
But what an amazing job creating music that just synergized completely with the feel and ethos of the Peanuts world. Together with that use of children to voice the parts and Schulzā humor, writing, and creative sensibility, it created something unique and lasting.
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An interesting (to me, anyway) observation:
I think I have a āconsciousness-directlyā orientation. Iāve noticed it in a variety of contexts.
In meditation, for example: it is common (probably the most common way) to introduce people to meditation by having them focus on their breathing or on some external or internal sensory object. I worked at these for many years, but I never found it very smooth. I tried anyway.
Yet, when I focused on the mind itself, on the nature of experiencing, the physical experience of thought, I found that to be a very compelling object, and, still to this day, I find that this is what seems to most effectively ground and contextualize my practice.
The same thing happened in hypnosis. Itās common to have people tune into the sensations of relaxation, or to take them through some imaginary images or visualized scenario. Because of how motivated I was to participate in this kind of practice, I would try to force myself to follow those instructions, yet, they always felt unnatural or like āreachingā to me.
Then one day, just by chance, a practice partner had me enter the process by focusing on mind and thought themselves. Again, it was very natural and easy, and I was amazed to find that I was even approaching something that seemed like it might be a simple jhana state; or at the very least access concentration.
So, I guess that, based on my own experiences, perhaps some people are just like this. I think that approaches like gnana yoga might appeal to me more if I were going that route. Consciousness itself feels like an object and a compelling one.
So, there you go.
And I suppose that itās no coincidence that Iām thinking this and connecting these points after running my 3 minute long loops of Alchemist and Khan Black last night (together with The Ecstasy of the Golden One). Iāll take this as a sign (I think) that things may be moving along sufficiently smoothly.
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p.s. and I want to add that, most interestingly, once I started to use consciousness-itself as a grounding object for practice, I found/am finding that over time, I am beginning to slowly integrate some of those other meditation objects. Observing and appreciating the breath, for example, is arising naturally. It wasnāt necessarily the most organic starting point for me, but itās becoming more salient as the process evolves.
This makes me think that the optimal order of stages for different people need not be identical.
I think of the metaphor of a clock. The task is to attend and be present for all 12 hours of the clockās passage. But your journeyās start is at whatever time it is when you begin. Thus, if you begin your journey at 5:35 pm then you will begin from that clock position and move through 6, 7, 8, until you reach all the way back to 5:35.
Your finish line may be my starting line and vice versa.
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I ended up very naturally taking a rest day yesterday.
So on 2 October 2025 my listening times:
The Ecstasy of the Golden One - 0:00
Alchemist Stage 1 - 0:00
Khan Black Stage 1 - 0:00
Life is complex and I am not going to try to isolate individual lines of causation. I felt tired and a bit oppressed or discouraged. Had an unhappy work situation. Found myself feeling a bit hunted.
Wondered about recon and how it figured into it all. Shout out to @Tobyone .
Either way, decided on a rest day.
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Taking a rest day seems to have been the right choice.
Feels easier to act today.
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3:12 of each program today.
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And today, we increased to 7 minutes per program.
Ecstasy of the Golden One 7:30
Alchemist Stage 1 7:00
Khan Black Stage 1 7:15
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Just wanna randomly share that I also just reached 7m EoG1 for the first time (since beginning the microloop stragery) 
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Today was the first day that I tried full loops with all three. In a couple of weeks, Iāll be moving to Alchemist and Khan Black stage 2, and those programs will be on 30 seconds again.
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Interestingly, yesterday, I did a full loop of Ecstasy of the Golden One, waited a while and did a full loop of Alchemist Pathfinder (Stage I). But after a while the day was getting on and I was taking care of various things, and I ended up going to bed without running my Khan Black Stage I. Only realized this morning.
I do tend to attribute such developments to the processes and machinations of my mind and circumstances. So, I think it was ādecidedā for me to take a 3 day break from Khan Black before returning to it on Wednesday.
Iām continuing to do subliminals separately from my meditation hour for now, even though weāre on to full loops (so I donāt need to press pause on the track and could just let it play out). But just trying that out for now.
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For what they are worth, todayās observations:
The relationship between language and phenomena sometimes seems to me as that between colonizer and Land. At least, as language is most often positioned and applied.
The nuance and meta-irony is that the colonizer is the land and is of the land.; and similarly language is of Nature and is a natural phenomenon.
What weāre considering is the second order context that is established and created by means of linguistic process and by means of the colonizing agenda and assumptions. This second-order context evinces an obfuscating myopia that erases, by neglecting to represent, its roots and provenance in the first-order context.
Thus language often takes a long time to get around to conceptualizing alingualism .
Meditation addresses this self-obfuscation; or more accurately, the act of addressing this self-obfuscation can be framed as āmeditationā.
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Friday was originally planned to be a listening day, but Thursday night I did not get much sleep.
Iāve been finding that my mind seems to be doing some internal heavy lifting and shifting and processing these days. Itās one of those periods in which thereās not a lot of extra bandwidth, so I canāt really get away with adding more Challenge Factors, such as listening while tired, etc.
So Friday was a rest day.
Originally, wasnāt sure about today because, once again, sleep last night was not deep and ideal. Somehow a little buzzing, biting guy got into the room and seemed to be satisfying its nocturnal hungers on my skin or blood or whatever.
Got up at 5:30 am, very tired and thinking, āWell, guess itāll be another rest day.ā
But then I fell back asleep and dozed peacefully until 8:50 or something like that. Felt renewed after that.
So, when I sat down to do meditation, I chose to combine it with my subs. Full loops of each program now: Ecstasy of the Golden One, Alchemist Stage One, and Khan Black Stage One.
Today was loop 26. So about a week is left in this period.
Iāll take 5 days of rest and processing, then Iāll begin with
Ecstasy of the Golden One
Alchemist Stage Two
Khan Black Stage Two
At this particular moment, Iām feeling pretty good and peaceful.
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A resourceful thinker is one who adapts their plans to reality in order to adapt reality to their ideals.
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