To the best of Chase

[Chase]

This paragraph was gonna start simply with the sentence “The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak”. While that sentence did come to my mind and was related to my experiences the past days, I am rewriting this in a way that sends a clear signal to myself that it’s nothing but a little side note.

Let’s get the flesh part out of the way. The obstacles were physical, e.g. Information retention wasn’t as satisfactory, the old negative neural pathways came alive and strengthened their connections at the first opportunities, fuel consumption per being more extroverted and active could do better. Also got irritated easily if I listened to full loop even though my mind felt like it. There are the areas that need attention and be handled with delicacy.

The spirit part is Stark is working undeniably. I am happy to have it in my life and I have been following its instructions. I feel like am already being addicted to it. The last time I felt like I couldn’t wean a sub was when I used Emperor. Stark and Emperor, two completely different archetypes, yet I was at one point addicted to one and was in huge recon with another.

SC always emphasizes on taking actions; me before simply associated taking actions with opening pathways, and that’s it. To me now it’s something more rudimentary; if sub is anthropomorphized, I am showing it I do listen and care about what it is teaching me, I am showing my willingness and efforts to learn and learn hard, I am showing appreciation and respect toward it by taking actions. And isn’t it actions speak louder than words.

This moment this thought just came to me - there is light/psyche within us that for whatever reasons fragmented, by honoring the inside through action taking, by living a full life, we are one by one putting the pieces back together.

[Lion]

Why do I get the feeling that Stark is improving your brain power and IQ. Your recent writings are even more interesting to read and insightful. And yeah I do remember that Stark does improve writing prowess too.

I think you are embodying the Stark archetype more and more everyday.

[Chase]

Thank you brother! This confirmation and encouragement mean a lot to me and comes at the right moment as recon/doubt has been poking its head here and there. Yet as soon as I began typing this reply the mental image whac-a-mole came to me and the whole mood is lighter now lol

[Chase]

Done washout. The stack for this cycle for the moment is made up with Stark and Commander.

I had been being pulled to drop LBFH for awhile now. Part of it was no doubt recon as on the surface it appeared as hitting plateau while I believe it was drilling deeper behind the scene. Another reason was I am looking for more drive/fire/motivation.

As paradoxical as it sounds, LBFH working well/exceeding my anticipation slowly becomes a limiting belief that taking root in my mind. When I first chose it it was because I wished to be a self-appreciated/sustained person with inner strength/love as foundation. While the inner effects of LBFH worked as I laughed more easily and looked at things with a sense of humor, turned out LBFH had a surprisingly much stronger effects on my eternal world to the point where, although a family issue isn’t solved, it stopped that issue escalating just like that. The astonishing thing is I wasn’t even directly involved in that matter, I didn’t lift a finger, yet an olive branch was offered to my family out of nowhere.

Of course I was nicely surprised by that, and that gave me faith in LBFH, partly why I was able to run it for a few cycles (normally subs were drop within one to two cycles; LBFH is the longest running sub for me). Yet I slowly noticed the reason I ran it shifted from me to others. Now I ran it for them; I felt like I was holding the protection aura/bubble 24/7 for them, and sometimes I felt like I could be the only thing stand between them and the escalation.

Another paradoxical way LBFH became a limiting belief was it gave me an excuse to be passive. I conflated what happened above to as if things would turn out fine despite not putting into efforts, almost like it’s fine doing nothing as a miracle would come. I feel like this prevents Stark from working properly.

What I am trying to say is I feel like lately my mind began to twist LBFH into something that it shouldn’t be. And I need to prevent the limiting belief from taking root in my mind, hence the break from it even though I am already missing it.

[Chase]

Which brings me to Commander. Taking what I said above as context, it is the opposite of LBFH. It is aggressive, it participates in circumstances, it is self-mastery. When I was listening to it the sentences “take back control, go out there and face the world and deal with it” came to me. I was hit with the concept - Being active is being a man (masculine), being passive is being a woman (feminine). Sitting around acting helpless not knowing what to do is woman, while taking actions, facing difficulty head on and never giving up is man.

It worked after one listening. I went out to a store and needed to open an app for an item I was gonna get. The app wouldn’t open and it took a few mins to get it done while the saleslady in front of me and people behind me waiting. Before I’d get anxious and my mind would be overloaded with “shit people are waiting I am being a hassle, stupid phone, come on etc.”, basically I’d see this as a bad reflection on me, and those minutes would feel like eternity. But this time I felt grounded, mind was calm, in fact I was able to deduct “what poor wifi this store has”, I was able to separate the incident from me.

I am counting on Commander to complement Stark nicely. Stark inspires while Commander helps implement the inspirations.

Also pre-results striked again. When I was deciding whether to keep LBFH for another cycle or pick up Commander, a song came to me that I knew was pointing to Commander.

Simple Plan - When I'm Gone (Official Audio)

[Chase]

@Malkuth

It’s true that, compared to the vastness of the Cosmos, our individual, human attentional capacity is tinier than the smallest electron;

But we can use this to our advantage.

When you are working towards your goals, your dreams, aim to place your attention on those factors that encourage you to keep going. The simple practical fact is that we don’t have enough space in our attention to both focus on these encouraging factors and feel discouraged at the same time.

Like so much the realization of we human are not able to hold two opposite focuses at the same time. Put it here to remind myself why taking action is useful and why it is essential and practical to direct my attention/tunneling my focus to only good stuff.

[Chase]

This is an scary observation that I made a long time ago which always nagged in the back of my head when I was low or in recon.

Have you seen or heard of those people who weight 400kg+ who can’t do anything but sitting down, jailed people with face tattoo of a crying clown, or hoarders with a super filthy house full of shits, or homeless drug addicts with diseases? We see the extreme difficult life they are having, deep down we got that their life has already passed the no-return point.

Of course there are people out there are able to turn their life around even under the aforementioned circumstances. Yet what scared me the most was - every wrong turn makes it harder to do so, every little wrong take compounds; they weight us down they hold us back, and before one knows it, it is already passed the critical point. A vicious cycle in live.

And the effort to correction/turn around is exponentially consuming than committing the mistakes. The way I see it is when the mistake level is one, the effort to correction/turn around is one, when the mistake level is two, the effort becomes four, when the mistake level is four, the effort becomes 16, and etc. Every kg gained, every garbage added, every tattoo needled, every disease infected, it takes one further away from being able to correct them. Like a car crash happening in slow motion right in front of us.

I am writing this all down even though it sounds dark and disheartening as I have to find a way to turn the table before this drags me down by putting all this under the light. Let the world see and hear what the voice has been brainwashing me, blackmailing me. It might hold me hostage but it certainly can’t trick others here. For too long it uses shame, insecurity, fear etc. to keep me shut up but no more, from now on I am gonna write out what it says and it must be subjected to scrutiny and dissection.

[Lion]

Brilliant!

It is the realist thing to know that there can come a time that we are so lost that even though we can find ourselves and go back, why become lost in the first place? Or to at least go back now when it will be easier compared to giving in to digging an even bigger ditch for ourselves.

[Chase]

Oh recon what am I gonna do with you and your thousand faces. Depression is your favorite poison against me but once in awhile you like to spice things up with OCD.

Began a 2 week washout. The recon of Commander hit me like a ton of bricks. My body is tight, neck and shoulders pain, and mild headaches. That alone wasn’t enough for me to stop listening, it was the OCD it triggered.

To begin with I was greatly bothered by Stark being named as experimental while Commander being V2. I need the subs in stack either all be experimental or all be V2. Renaming the files doesn’t work as I know what the original file name of them are.

Then there were the created time of the files. They were not exactly the same, by that I mean down to the seconds. So I copied the files to make them identical but then I was stuck worrying the quality of the copied files were worse than the originals due to glitch or digital errors (rare but not impossible).

Then I remembered the issue of categorization of subs and felt like physically crawl into the store to organize the labels myself. The fact that Commander is “Status” alone made me not want to listen to it. I needed it to also be under “Productivity”, and I needed all subs to be labeled with clear rationale with certainty.

I really can’t stand discrepancy.

I know the recon was caused by Commander as 1. Stark was doing great last cycle and the beginning of this cycle, not to mention I don’t have the urge dropping Stark. 2. Commander has high level of executive functioning and executive functions are supposed to relieve OCD, and yet what happened was the opposite of it.

Yea I know part of me found the above funny too. They are comical…in a Shakespearean way

[Geoff]

@Chase

Commander has high level of executive functioning and executive functions are supposed to relieve OCD, and yet what happened was the opposite of it.

I had the same thought about commander too. Are you going to continue using it? Things usually get worse before it gets better. I totally understood your plight reading your post.

Anyways, sooner or later I’ll try commander. Aside from the recon, do you feel good about commander.

[Chase]

This moment my answer is unlikely, I am thinking to go back to LBFH but will make the final decision after washout as by then I’ll gain mental clarity.

Commander did give me confidence and self assurance after the first listening; I listened to it 9 mins. Nothing unusual happened after the second listening and the day after third listening (5 mins each time). The recon I wrote just hit out of the blue.

One thing I realized was I can’t be sure how a sub works unless I experience it myself. Reviews are for general knowledge and reference for me. Personally when it comes to physical subs I was able to replicate similar benefits as other members. Yet when it comes to internal changes the results were varied.

What I am trying to say is if you feel the pull towards Commander go for it. Many reviews here praise it especially when it is used solo apparently.

[Chase]

Finished the 2 week washout. The first 11 days or so I craved listening to subs, kept looking for reason to cut the washout short. At around day 10 I had a short lasting blooming, that day (and the day after) I was in a good mood, super friendly and sociable.

Now that LBFH was dropped for more than 3 weeks, with hindsight I can say it did actually help me internally quite a lot. A few days into washout (around day 10 or so after being dropped), my heart was closed off. I realized that as when the sentence “hard as Pharaoh’s heart” came to me, I felt strongly that that was what I’d like to have, that a hardened heart was stable, and protected, and in its own way fearless. Also my sense of humor is largely gone, at least nowhere near when LBFH was with me.

2 week washout actually didn’t provide me as much the mental clarity as I thought it would, especially when it came to my current stack. Looking at my past entries, it took about 18 days to reach the state where I calmly didn’t want to listen to any subs, as in subs didn’t matter at all. “Disenchanted” was the word I found fitting.

Anyway my stack this cycle is made up of CFW and Stark. Full loop of both in one day, then 2 rest days, one full loop of CFW, 1 rest day, one full loop of Stark, 1 rest day, and repeat. I picked CFW as I simply want that inner strength, and that it’s focus on one’s self instead of others. However it is subjected to change as I am open to exchange CFW for LBFH if I got too introverted or depressed.

The recon of Stark came in the form of thinking to drop it. I see why it is better and easier to have a foundation before going for subs like Stark or HOM; not necessarily but a foundation does make the subs breathe easier. Stark gave me ideas and inspiration, and brought me information needed but since I lacked the related knowledge and connections, I spent a lot of time on figuring the 101 stuff. Also my efforts were not consistent, e.g. I spent the whole Saturday doing research and planning, then only worked perfunctorily the whole next week.

[Chase]

Since beginning this stack I dreamt a lot; while I don’t remember the details of them I know there were easily 2-3 plus dreams/themes each night. This cycle when I listened to CFW I had a dream fighting with family members, I was beyond frustrated in it. A very similar dream also happened when I listened to CFW the very first time.

Overall my mood and inner voices had been more negative than positive. Sometimes giving it all up felt comforting because then one’d never be disappointed. Not trying felt safe because then one’d always have the Schrödinger’s success.

On the other hand I actually enjoyed listening to subs this cycle. By that I mean literally. During the listening session/full 15 mins loop, my brain almost felt like being massaged physically, my eyes circulated rapidly and I fell asleep soon after the session.

Also I noticed that for some reason the music taste of those around me changed to classical music when I ran subs like LBFH or CFW.

Went out and bought a pair of pants. Just picked up a pair with my usual size and went to pay them. What happened was the cashier girl asked me if I’d tried them on, I said no, and she told me there’s a fitting room over there. So I was oh okay and went to try them. Turned out they were a size too big for me lol When I went back to pay with the new pair, it was a different cashier. Just when I finished paying, the girl jumped in and quickly took that pair of pants from the other cashier, warped them up for me and smiled to me. I assumed she didn’t normally act this way since the other cashier was side eyeing her A sure sign of Stark and CFW working

[Chase]

It’s very subtle but CFW is operating; the feeling of dysthymia/numbness is around but the inner voices are quieter or less negative.

Last year Stark didn’t do much especially when it came to libido (as mentioned previously there was resistance or misalignment between us). This time with Stark my libido went up and I pmoed a few times. I wasn’t sure until recently since I always thought it was caused by the lingering effect of Wanted. However I dropped Wanted in Feb and unlikely the effect lasts to this day.

Usually for various reasons I felt conflicted pmoing but this time I took that as an opportunity to “charge” the subs instead. Then in clarity I thought the more I charge the subs - mainly Stark - the more effective Stark gets, the higher libido I have, and the more I pmo to charge Stark. Wouldn’t it be akin to perpetual motion mechanism?

Jokes aside in general I still wish I rid of pmo completely, which leaded me to think of dropping CFW and pick up Limit Destroyer. From there I suddenly thought of listening to my one of the ZP1 customs which consists of Stark and LD as cores. For the former as much as I like LD, I feel that it doesn’t provide the particular kind of inner strength needed to supplements Stark, at least not currently. For the latter when I looked up the modules list I found a couple modules no longer served my current state.

Which explains why I no longer make customs these days because through experiences I learnt that, especially during recon, a resistance or dislike to the custom as a whole was easily bred through the disfavor of one or two modules, and rendered the custom being dropped.

Regardless Stark is growing on me more than ever. I just have this compelling liking towards it and know that no matter what it is gonna stay in my stack. I have no explanation but I feel like CFW actually involves in this liking somehow.

[Chase]

CFW works in a perplexing way. On one hand I have been feeling numb + meaningless + dispirited, on another my outward posture is confident, e.g. I am naturally standing tall and straight, head up, walk with a force, and my gaze is sure. I also began to take cold shower.

It’s likely that I am gonna drop CFW (70-80% likely); partly because of the recon/negative feelings and thoughts, but also because it seems Stark doesn’t like being pushed aside or not being on the spotlight (no pun intended). It is difficult to explain but during non Stark listening days I would have this craving to listen to it, and I began to have this impression that having one archetype, in this case Stark, is enough. Basically something is nudging me that Stark needs to be the lead.

Today is meant to be a listening day but I am thinking to take an early washout to prepare for the sub that replaces CFW. It is gonna be either LD or LBFH. If I am honest I think LD is the more fitting sub as all it does is supporting whatever sub it is paired with; it has no personality. LBFH however has its own agenda but I really miss the humor and the protection of it.

[Chase]

Decided not to take an early washout and instead finish the rest of the cycle (a few more days) with Stark and LD, in that order.

I fell asleep easier this cycle but it was only because my brain was processing CFW hard. Slowly I began to stay up late as I got familiar with the script.

Went to a bakery and ordered a cake for a family member. The flavor they preferred wasn’t available so I ordered another flavor. But literally within a minute after I ordered the cake with the flavor preferred came out so I asked the clerk to change the order. He did but gave me a huge attitude. Part of me tolerated that but another part of me felt disrespected and was angry.

The incident above got my mind went through a few subs and learnt a few things. First it was Stark; when I made the order Stark did nudge me to ask the clerk about the preferred flavor but for whatever reason (maybe a blocked throat chakra) I just decided not to, and the consequence of not following it was the incident. Then it was LBFH; after receiving the attitude I thought this wouldn’t have happened if LBFH was in my stack, it would prevent or lessen the attitude. From there finally, and more revealingly, CFW; what CFW revealed was actually the most important insight - I’d always be at others’ mercy if I care this much about external impressions. The reason I wanted to listen to LBFH was because I wanted others to like me to be kind to me, to have others to make my life easier without me trying. I was actually putting more attention and faith in the external world which was the opposite of self love. What CFW told me wasn’t exactly news but the way it said it was precise and hit the bullseye.

It is true that as CFW was written in a focused manner it worked quite effectively. However, even though there’s no denying it brought insights and changes in me, with hesitation, it really might need to go; Stark doesn’t like sharing (too much) resources with another sub, not to mention CFW, which overtook the driving seat.

[Chase]

Technically finished washout. Ran a full loop of LBFH and Stark but not sure if it’s the stack for this cycle.

Since I began CFW last cycle I have been feeling numbed and meaningless, and feel like not bothering with improvement or life in general. Just floating aimlessly in an ocean.

Throughout the whole washout period I strongly felt giving up subs once and for all. This kind of recon was new to me as I was used to exchanging one sub to another, making a new custom, and feeling confused or fomo about subs. Yet this time I felt like dropping all subs; lost all interests in them. Still feel like that tbh maybe my brain is still processing subs hard.

Apart from dropping all subs, the extension of not really feel like listening to subs is I am okay with listen to them once or no more than twice per week, which was unthinkable previously.

As said I actually didn’t feel like listening, the only reason I broke the washout was I didn’t wanna keep living like a shadow and wanted to experience the joyful feeling of LBFH. Yet so far it didn’t bring back the good feelings. Probably because I reverted back to the old notion that love is conditional, even for self love.

During the listening of LBFH I got some philosophical (and theological) realizations - if the higher loves everyone/everything without bias this would inevitably result in apathy in action/nature in the end, and I don’t want to be loved I want to be favored.

[Chase]

Feeling wise have been having a slight pull to Ascension, but rationally speaking it makes much more sense to get Ascended Mogul instead. Also wanna wait to see what the big reveals will be later this month according to Saint.

I noticed that for me it took around one cycle to build a stable and noticeable expression of subs but only took a couple listenings to throw off that stability. Once the rhythem or momentum was off it took a long while to get back to it, and even then it sometimes felt like it wasn’t as good as before.

Even that I dropped CFW for two weeks and picked up LBFH since then things just ain’t the same. Try as I may I just can’t seem to get the blessed and humorous expression of LBFH back into my life.

Maybe the first phase/honey moon period of subs was passed and now it reached the phase where subs hitting deep hence the tougher recon. On top of capitulation, sometimes I had this sense of impending doom.

Good thing instead of sub hopping I am consistent with Stark. No question that it is still my lead. However for some reasons I keep feeling it alone is incomplete and that I have to add one more sub to support it. It sounds finicky but with the whole selection in the main store none of it feels 100% fitting to pair with Stark. For example the way I see it LBFH lacks alphaness, CFW focuses on leadership which I don’t need yet (and overriding Stark), Ascension may be too blunt and aggressive (I already speak too honestly and straightforwardly irl).

Maybe it’s a way of handling subs recon/processing but my appetite increased for awhile; I got hungry easily even though I listen to no physical shifting subs.

[Lion]

That is a hell of a recon bro. Am here to encourage you. Stay the course

[Chase]

Thanks brother was away from the forum but now I m back