Now for some odd reason I’m flashing back to the saxophone solo (?) in Hall and Oates’ Maneater. I love it AND it’s also something like a very simple saxophone tutorial 
.
I’m imagining John Coltrane listening to that with an extremely flat facial expression.
This is what sleep deprivation looks like.
argh.
logistical bump-in-the-road (looking for a lost document) just cost me 2 hours plus stress. Then because of that I then needed to have an interaction that I had specifically been planning and working to avoid having. One of those moments in which you are committed to the exact opposite of what is happening. I thought I’d got everything worked out, and then at the last minute it went the other way. So, I was cursing myself, cursing the situation, feeling disappointment at my failure to arrange it properly, and dreading the interaction. But then I bit the bullet and just got into it.
And all of that was just supposed to have been handled in about 30 minutes this morning.
Now I need to rein it in and salvage the rest of the day. The stress and discomfort are still alive in my body. But I am not giving them anymore of my day, so I guess they can just hang out until they’re ready to go.
I’m grateful that it’s not always like this. I’m grateful to be alive to even have an uncomfortable experience. I’m grateful for the 98% of things that are still going great.
Freedom to create
Vision to create
Power to create
Plays today
Mind’s Eye Terminus2 meditation
4 loops of Alchemist Awakening (originally planned to play 3, but the 4th loop already started and I decided to let it keep playing for one more loop)
After this:
1 loop of Quantum Focus
and then
RICH Ultima, I think
I just caught a strong gust of sleepiness listening to my second loop of RICH Ultima.
Instead of looking for someone or something to save you, save yourself.
Stand up and realize that you’ve been drowning in a wading pool,.
Overcome your addiction to human connection and human approval. Grow your capacity to approach human interaction not from desperation, but from a place of enjoyment, choice, and balance.
First, run Alchemist. Find, nourish, and strengthen your root.
Next, run Quantum Limitless and apply yourself to learning the knowledge, skills, and insights that express your soul, your potential, and who you really are.
Next, run Dragon Reborn and Ascension and make it your goal to build a life that you love.
Continue on, gradually replacing Ascension with Emperor and establishing a flexible but adamantine structure, both within yourself and in the sphere of your external influence. Let it be a sphere that inspires you and that is of some degree of compassionate contribution to others.
Now, you’re there. Your foundation is strong, vital, and established.
Now begin your creative projects and your interactional/sexual projects, games, and adventures. Venture out from your circle, enjoy others, and benefit them; without losing your own center.
Deepen internally and broaden externally.
Walk your path
Live your life
Discover your potential to give
It is not the specific details of your story that make it great
(after all, for any given condition that is impressive to you, we can find someone else who finds it ordinary, unimportant, or even aversive)
Rather, it is your genuine conviction that your story is great;
and your ongoing capacity to inhabit your conditions and your experience in a state of greatness;
These and not much else are what make your life great.
Thus, it is essentially an internal status that we seek; though due to the projective tendency of our minds, we are often compelled to seek that internal status through the establishment of various external conditions. That is the only way most of us can truly inhabit strong conviction.
Managed to run one loop of DUAT and one of Paragon after midnight.
Then this morning, I did a meditation session (Mind’s Eye powered) from 5:45 to 6:45 AM. Been having a bunch of late night, early morning wakings recently.
After that, I went back to sleep with Alchemist Awakening. Got up in the middle of the 2nd loop. And started the day with a last 3rd loop. On Tuesday, I played 4 loops and ended up feeling kind of wonky that day. Today, just 3 as planned.
It’s 2:22 right now. So that.
Around noon, I played 2 loops of RICH. And now I’m in silence. Tomorrow, as usual, is back to PATHS of Wealth Terminus and Quantum Focus.
And we’re working towards 3 months from now when the whole machine comes together.
@Malkuth I am curious, have you done Metta Meditation? Have you found it useful for emotional healing or for its stated properties (“loving-kindness?”) I’m itching to try this one out soon in addition to Nadi Shodhana Pranayama
Most of what people say is not true
All of what people say is real
In the same way that Alice in Wonderland is not true, but is real.
Formal metta or tonglen practice, no. Not very much anyway.
But we practice these things in many ways.
My current approach to meditation is more like art; rather than a technique-based curriculum. Less structure and more intuition at the moment.
Were you born in the year of the Tiger?
If I could somehow go back in time and mentor my younger self, one of the earliest lessons I would try to teach him would be the difference between ‘what is true’ and ‘what is real’. A person who grasps this difference can develop a more sophisticated and competent relationship to power.
If I could somehow go back in time and meet my younger self, I would give him the longest hug ever and tell him “you did nothing wrong, it wasnt your fault, I love you” in fact Im gonna do that now.
Thanks for the inspiration!!
After all its true, even if it didnt feel real.
Little bit of a weird Sunday.
Woke up later than normal. Well, woke up at 8 AM and then went back to sleep and woke again at 9:15.
Had to help my son with some random tasks, which went from 10 to 12. Then as soon as he walked out the door, my daughter called. haha. We talked for an hour.
Interestingly, I have had this habit since I was younger of pacing and walking while talking to people or talking on the phone. At about 45 minutes, I checked my pedometer and saw that I’d already walked about 3500 or 4000 steps or so. 
So, when we got off the phone, I decided to literally just keep walking in the same path (in the apartment). I listened to a great conversation between Marc Maron and David Duchovny. And by the time that was done, I had my daily 10000 steps. A very weird way to get it, but good enough.
Once that was done, I finally did my daily workings and meditation. And completed them by about 4:15 pm or so. Usually, I’d have been at that point by about 10:30. So, here I am now, having a different routine than normal.
Does the carpet look a bit less of what it once was now 
When I was 20 years old, I had to write a senior thesis as part of the requirements for my undergraduate degree.
There was email at that time, but not the hugely developed internet that exists today. Cassette tapes and tape recorders were still a common thing and it was still some years before widespread access to CD and DVD burners.
Point is, I used to, at any given time, own a personal cassette recorder and player.
While working on my thesis, I encountered a typical writers block situation, and one way that I found to get through it was to take my cassette recorder to the track on campus and just dictate my thoughts while walking.
To this day, I still find that I tend to prefer the tempo, feel, and heft of my thought process when they’re more grounded in and integrated with my physical sensations. Feels more real and more honest.
The thesis itself could have been better; but my learning process was legitimate.
My brain continues to automatically process the fabulous catastrophe that is Midsommar. This time I noticed definite resonances between this movie and Peter Jackson’s 1996 or so movie Heavenly Creatures about a friendship/romance between two adolescent girls in New Zealand who end up committing a murder.
The aesthetics include similar elements: sunlight, beauty, rituals and rites of maidenhood and the sacred feminine as a gateway into both the numinous and the chaotically destructive. Both filmed by young auteur male directors. Interesting.
Made me wonder how much these movies are masculinist-driven fear fantasies of women’s power.