To continue the practice and life log. May it be of benefit to someone.

About this name:
I notice again and again that people have difficulty spelling and pronouncing my name, which is totally expected. I included a voxifier video if anyone is interested in the correct pronounciation:
It's pronounced like:
See-ya-vash

Log history:

This is the initial part on fire kasina:
https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/13223904

1st:
https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/13519742

2nd:
https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/17421695

3rd:
https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/20832167

4th:
https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/21689099

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Tuesday, February 2, 2021, 6:39 PM

After recent Liferay upgrade, it's been difficult to navigate threads with high number of posts, so better to create a new thread.

Last two days there was a strong urge to practice that became stronger last night. After I finished my work I started practicing, focusing on the change in all sensations, but I became sleepy and at some point I guess I fell asleep. After that for more than an hour I was trying to stay awake and practice but I couldn't sustain wakefulness. Then I forced my eyes to stay open, but even with that the dominant perception was the dream-like one, and I was switching back and forth between a distorted perception of things and the actual sights and sounds of external experience.

The "negative" emotions that I had last days, it seemed to me quite clearly that it's like a thick cloud or fog that fills everywhere and just like when the air is polluted, all of space and experience is filled with this unpleasant negativity that makes it metaphorically difficult to breathe. But last night toward the end of night I noticed that the density of this thick cloud is decreasing, and some "sunlight" and "fresh air" is coming. When I was going to bed, instead of a thick cloud there was a thin one, and I continued practice in bed and for the first part of sleep/dream, I guess there was some awareness present, although I've forgotten all the content of it.

After I woke up, I noticed that the cloud is gone, and it's clear with fresh air. There was equanimity, and an interest to listen to music. I listened to a few old songs, and there was some enjoyment and quiet stillness. I had a meeting in the other company's office. We have given them the source code for one of the projects and I had to go and make sure they can build it and deliver it formally. Unlike the last months there wasn't any restlessness about that. And I went there and did what I had to do, which led to a few minutes of satisfaction, but then again the same kind of feelings that I had last week arose. The same thick cloud of negativity, a loss of purpose and meaning and definition maybe? Then while returning, I visited one of the managers there that we have some friendship and have worked together long ago which made that cloud go away. And after that I notice that these two emotions/mind-states come and go. One is the satisfaction, and clarity and openness in the experience, and the other that is contractedness, and all those negative things that I said before. Ah, I don't like this word "negative".
  

+1 "negative" comes and goes. I notice that the less I dislike it, the quicker it goes! 

 Yes, I've noticed that too. Although a lot of time there isn't that little clarity and open space in the experience to just remember that I can cultivate more equanimity with what is!

The video that I shared yesterday about working with emotions from Shinzen, last night I started applying its techniques to my experience, and maybe that had some effect, I don't know.
 

Wednesday, February 3, 2021, 4:32 AM

That back and forth between negativity and non-negativity has stopped, and in the last several hours there wasn't any obviously noticible negative mind-state.
I did two fire kasina sits. Earlier red dots were pretty bright. Red, yellow, green, and some blue green and circular, but then the dot went away and didn't show up much, although with eyes open it was present in a green color. There was some movement in the visual field while looking at the candle flame, that the visual field around the candle were moving slightly up and down, and there was some pixelation in the borders of the flame that was new I guess, which kind of reduced its beauty. There was strong sleeiness toward the end of both sits, though I had sleepiness for some hours before that too. Still there are strong energetic sensations in the body, some painful.

Saturday, February 6, 2021, 1:00 AM

Last two nights I did fire kasina too. Like always when doing this for a few days, the dot was not bright anymore, and there was lots of color statics around it in different colors, but mostly pale colors and in the gray end of them, moving, rotating and flickering fast. Last night there was more pixelation around the candle flame, and the color statics around the flame turned into the colors of tainbow, which I think one reason for that was because I used a different candle. After the dot show, I focused on the movements of the color statics but then got sleepy and was locked in a sleepy/dreamy state for some time. I had a distorted perception of those statics, and the name of one the dho members was tied to those statics, and I was waiting for something to happen to end the sit, but I couldn't discern what that was. After maybe an hour I could get out of that state. And after that and while in bed I continued focusing on the changing sensations. There were some new forms of movements in the color statics, and also with the mental images of the body, I was perceiving them in smaller chunks, and they were arising and passing faster than usual. Temperature of the body was higher like the last few days with constant sweating in the head, and strong energetic sensations in the body, but after I went to bed, sleepiness went away and I couldn't sleep. It took maybe 3-5 hours to fall asleep. I had some dreamy images while awake with eyes open, and then a few rounds of dreams with family members and a close friend, that like previous days were very emotional, with one carpet weaving dream.

Yesterday and today after waking up there was quiet stillness, with an urge to listen to music, that was enjoyable and awe inducing. But that went away after a few hours today. The body feels sick, and I had a chat with my friend about covid that made me feel bad afterwards. Also the heater had problem yesterday and I don't have hot water since then and that causes some extra thinking too. I wanted to ask the guy to come and fix it but then I thought better to wait until I get the salary. Then I had a dream about hot water and making tea. Poor fucking idiot. This technology has turned us into these little selfish arrogant bastards.

I hope you get your hot water fixed soon. I don't think wanting a cup of tea makes you selfish!

 Thanks .
No it's not that bad! That's the running hot water (for bathroom and shower..). I don't use it for making tea, I boil water separately for tea, which that is ok and working  . (But it was interesting that it caused a dream about tea!).
Sorry I wasn't clear.​​​​​​​ 

 Saturday, February 6, 2021, 6:39 AM

I had a sit that ended now, doing kasina for near two hours without a candle, and focusing mostly on the visual statics with a combination of bodily sensations and mental images of the body. In the first part of the sit there were strong energetics that a few of them felt scary, but then the energy subsided, and there were dream-like perceptions. I think it was some months ago that I had this kind of experience for some days. There isn't any reduction in the clarity of sensations, but the perception is the mix of wakefulness and dreamy experiences, mostly mental images. For instance, I tested a software yesterday, and during the sit I had this perception at one point, that if I configure that software, it will change these color statics and bodily images/sensations, but the effects of it will spread only on half of my experience, which would be the left side of the body, and I had a vague mental image as if a set of sensations just spread over the left side of the body, and since it's only half of the body, it will affect only some members of my family like my mother, and not affect the others like my father! And it's interesting that this goes on for relatively long periods without losing clarity or falling asleep.

I was feeling pretty uncomfortable physically and mentally/emotionally before the sit. Now there is much more comfort compared to before.

-- Edit:
Did another sit for 85 minutes with the same technique for its first part, and for the second part after I noticed that the breath has become subtle, I focused on the sensations of relaxation in my hands and legs. It brought some vibrations and tingling, then there was sleepiness, and then some intense pain arose on the tail bone and perineum, that became so strong that I had to stop the sit.

Technology seems to be an important theme, a paradigm of control, and it's interesting that it extends to your mother but not your narcissistic father. When I look back at my own depression, I can see it as a form of "learned helplessness" which I acquired from my mother, and it seems to be a common defense strategy when one is living in thrall of an angry narcissist.

I think the relevance of technology is that it was a current concern, and also it has formed a kind of language in my mind to describe and organize things (Although one could say that any kind of language is a form of control), but I can be wrong.
About the inclusion or exclusion of family members, I don't know, it's not clear to me yet. I don't know what are the underlying concerns.
 

 Sunday, February 7, 2021, 1:26 AM

I continued practicing in the morning before going to bed and while in bed. There were strong painful energetics while I was in bed, that most of them had that tickling flavor. Previously that kind of sensations would arise occasionally in one or two locations, but this time it was in most parts of the body. In recent weeks and months I've tried to train the body to not move when these sensations arise, and while in bed I could stay still with all of that, but then there was another one in my left hand which was different. Previously I've had this kind of sensations a number of times, but they were in a very small area and less strong, but this one was in whole of my left hand. It was like a zap of energy, a mix of electric shock and vibrations, like you are holding an armature in your hand while it's working. It made the body jump up, but after that the energy subsided. It felt like this wild energy got released by that zap in left hand. Although some time after that there were occasional energetics again, and I would wake up and notice that my legs are throbbing, and I kept focusing on that while going in and out of sleep/dream.

Now a few hours after waking up there are some unbroken vibration in my right leg that sometimes spread.
 

 Sunday, February 7, 2021, 5:16 AM

Did a sit for a little more than an hour with a few times adjusting the body, and focusing on the colors and movements in the visuals and the body. It started with painful energetics that were getting intense, so I imagined that the body and the space around it is filled with light and this energy in the body can move freely in that space. The energy subsided and the pains went away and that dreamy perceptions started happening. I forgot about the pain and the trick that I did and I continued focusing on visuals, then I noticed lots of mental talks happening in the mind so I added them to the focus range too.
I have some aversion again to eating so I was hungry and that was creating an urge to go and eat something, but I decided to perceive it as something that is not bothering and it worked. After the sit and during eating and washing dishes I continued focusing on the mental talks. It's like the meetings that we had last year with the other company when there was conflict. Everyone tries to defend themselves and explain things the way they like. It's almost non-stop. If I remember I'll try to be more aware of it.

I like to continue practicing but I have to work. I guess the buddha and his spiritual kids had realized that sitting on your butt and meditating is easier than working, sometimes.
 

 Sunday, February 7, 2021, 7:46 PM

Practiced for 3-4 hours after I finished working, started with a fire kasina sit and continued focusing on the changes in sensations in all sense doors. After the first 30-60 minutes there was less energetics and lesser painful sensations. Now the sleepiness has filled all of the experience and I have to go to bed. I notice a little coolness on the tale bone, that probably means this round of energetics is coming to its end, and there may be a gap or the next round may start.
 

 Tuesday, February 9, 2021, 2:40 AM

Today was productive at work partly because I was very angry for most of it and it increased my speed, clarity and energy, but it was painful.
Had 2-3 sits too that ended with a fire kasina, but because of the residue of anger and restlessness, attention was not stable enought, so there wasn't much energetics, there was a few painful ones, and some of the locations that usually have pain, had a coolness briefly.
 

Wednesday, February 10, 2021, 5:03 AM

Did some practice on the color statics, trying to see the exact moment that these tiny thin lines that are moving flickering fast (I guess 10-20 pulses per second), come to being and then disappear and the next lines show up, but I didn't get that much clarity. Like yesterday there were a few momentary feelings of starting to glide/move without feeling any movement, and for a few times very brienfly while looking into the image space, it felt like there is an even-ness, that instead of I am outside of the image space looking at it, it was I am inside it and looking at its inside or seeing it, that lasted only 1-3 seconds each time. A few times perception of a face has showed up in the murk in front of the face, but without seeing its colors noticeably. A few times mental talks became louder as if someone just said it, something in-between mental talk and physical voice.

Then some practice on the body. A few painful ticklings in the center of soles, and brief coolness (it's like you put a wet ice cube on that location) in some of the locations that usually have pain. Then strong sleepiness. Dissatisfaction that today I couldn't spend time on the other project that I've started. And the body shows similar pattern of sickness that I had in the spring. The day before yesterday I felt sick, yesterday I had no symptoms, and today I feel sick with fatigue and low energy and such.

Practiced a little more but it was consumed by sleepiness. The body feels like it wants to burst out something.

I wasn't sure from your last post: how's your practice going? Are you still practicing fire kasina? Thanks for your support on my log recently.

Hey Sam,
I use visuals as a focus object a lot. One may say it's kasina practice, but when I don't use a candle, I don't use the term fire kasina usually. These last days yeah I've done some fire kasina most days, and most of my practice was focusing on visuals (The murk - color statics etc) with a mix of awareness on body, or sometimes exclusively focusing on the body. I usually don't lose touch with visuals. Since I am a fire lover, wherever there is a flame, I am interested in that. Today I am doing the same practices too, although I did Malcolm's breath tech suggestion and that caused some stronger energetics and then some tranquality.

Thanks for asking by the way
I wasn't motivated to write a log, but this was a mini-log-post!

Thursday, February 11, 2021, 3:03 AM

Today I didn't work at all and didn't have enough sleep because after I woke up there was restlessness and sexual desires. For some hours there was ongoing dissatisfaction, but then I tried to convince myself that today was holiday and it was ok to not work.

Did Malcolm's breath technique in his new thread. There was a very sharp pain in the center of spine, then some energetics in the base of spine and vibrations and tinglings in lower body, but they went away and there was tranquality after that. For the last part of I continued doing whole body breath for 40-50 minutes I guess. Then some practice on the body and the visuals in the mind. Then I did a fire kasina for 90 minutes.

This time I turned off all of lights in the room and that caused a higher contrast in the colors. Some seconds after focusing on the candle flame, at one moment it looked like the whole scene around the candle just fell down like there is a big screen in front of you and one frame showes up after another frame. Then there was clear expansion and contraction in the scene, and I noticed craving an clinging to that. The next times since the flame had become smaller, there was less effects like these.

I tried to pay attention to the boundry between the face and the visuals space, and the boundry between mental image of the face and the colors, and occasionally the boundries would become less defined. Constantly I noticed that while being aware of the body and the colors, I had a dreamy expisode with a stroy-line, then I would come back and try to recollect what was going on, where I was and what was the story and how I went into that dreamy space and came back, that after some time that the sleepiness became predominant, I started labeling the content of the murk: green, black, flickering, leg, face, black... . A few times some very low resolution images appeared in front of the face. Yesterday and today I listened to a few episodes of Tucker and Upali's "Teaching Meditation" podcast, and during this sit I kept hearing them talking, and continuing their conversations. There were strong pain in the feet and some of it with a kind of vibration-tickling-electricity-shock flavor, and some coolness and similar sensations at the base of spine and inside the hips with vibrations and tinglings here and there. I kept focusing on a dark/black spot when there was less colors, and always some color comes out of the dark/black spots.

  Sunday, February 14, 2021, 12:12 AM

I've continued the same practices since the last post: Fire kasina + impermanence of color statics + body. The night before last night I lit the candle just before going to bed, and took a dot with me to bed. Yesterday after I woke up I lit the candle and kept that on for some hours to have a dot with me while walking and doing things to maintain concentration, but because I was angry, I guess the anger washed away the good effects of that. Today I was very angry too. I see that I look for stories to justify the anger, like these neighbors making noises and etc, but I don't think that's the root cause. That shit is there always but usually doesn't make me angry. Oh I remembered now, I was angry in a dream yesterday too. I saw a couple walking together, the woman was younger, the guy was older, very short and with some disabilities I guess, also he seemed to be having mental disabilities. The woman tried to show that she doesn't take her husband seriously, and 2-3 guys were there in that market, they tried to ridicule that guy. That made me very upset, and I started yelling at them and asking them with strong force to apologize that guy and pay respect to him. Of course those guys were older than me, to not have a fight with few young men, so that the anger have a chance to display and not get covered by fear!

There are more colors in the visual space, with eyes open and closed. Again and again I notice that all of the visuals I see with closed eyes, are there with open eyes too, only that there is less contrast because the background is not dark, except when it's dark.
Once in a Q&A I asked Shinzen that these color statics behind closed eyelids (At that time it was only black/white/gray for me, but with vibrations) are part of See In (Internal image space) or See Out (External image space), he said: It's subtle...you could say it's see out.

I guess since yesterday the image space has more depth and volume.

​​​​​​​Sometimes during practice I notice a shift. It's like I fall asleep for a moment and then come back.

Last two days I didn't have enough sleep. Couldn't fall asleep and woke up several times after falling asleep. There was some awareness during sleep/dream. Once or twice I followed experience from sleep to wakefulness, but the moment of transition was not clear.
There are more vibrations. Some short range energy movements in the spine and legs (Sorry verbs). Some energy hits in left ear and some kind of not-hearing in right ear. That sticky sleepiness is our guest tonight.
  

Monday, February 15, 2021, 6:58 PM

Same practices as before, playing with fire kasina and body and image space.
Yesterday there was stillness after I woke up, but again body was sick. The pains in the base of spine and whole pelvic area came back, that feels like a piece of metal is inside the body. Some electric shocks in left toes. And lots of vibrations and tingles in the body.
More colors in the visual field, and more depth. Without using a candle, often there is a dot in the center of the field, it changes colors and has some transparency, black, white, green, blue, violet, red, magenta, blue green, yellow green, dark green,... .Some times there are more than one dots. Last night before going to bed I used the candle a little. It's a new candle with bigger brighter flame which makes its dot to be magenta with blue green around it. There main dot was bigger, and there was another dot in the center of it, mostly black.

There was fear and terror in the dream. There was a young guy that I had trusted him, but I came home and noticed that he has stolen everything. There was a reset and I trusted him again! And again when going home I saw he has stolen everything. Then I went after him, and noticed that he is part of a criminal band that uses kids as their slaves. They got me and used something like a shocker to transfer something to my hands, maybe a virus I don't know. I tried to escape a few times but they had already thought about the things that I could think.  I tried to escape again and reached a place where there was police force and tried to let them know. They came to help, but then the policeman take control and became the head of that group. And I lost all my hopes of escaping. Then I started thinking what can I do that they haven't already thought about it. I thought maybe I could start flying, or using my mind to influence their minds, but I woke up. I was awake in bed for some minutes after that and I couldn't get out of that fearful space. Eventually it went away. The next time I woke up with another similar dream, but I couldn't remember what that was. This one was more subtle and abstract.

Later when I got up, I thought that the first dream is just a representation of my habits. They have control over me and I can't escape. I am trying to escape but the forces are stronger than my intent. Once you let something in, it won't go out easily.

Monday, February 15, 2021, 10:02 PM

Yesterday although the body was uncomfortable, but I had more equanimity. After waking up there was less urge to practice and I'd forget it but later I tried to be more aware. Today the symptoms of sickness are mostly gone (the pattern), but there is anger again. I can't be sure but I am guessing that this is that same despair that I had in the past year, now is showing up in this form. Sometimes it has more energy and is more expressive, but other times it leans towards sadness and despair. Some of the usual comforts are not present, and that triggers the anger. But I think that's just how it's expressed.
When I see my face expression in the mental image of the face, it reminds me of my parents face expression, not always but a lot of times they have that face expression. Just guessing, when you live with life circumstances that you don't like and is going on for a long time, then there will be anger of course.

I used to be angry in the earlier years of high school, mainly because I wanted to learn and study music and literature, but we didn't have money to even buy a cheap instrument, and my family would say, forget about all this, you should study math to find a job. There was less anger after I got into religion, but in later years when I started working as a coder and was not religious anymore, there was anger again especially toward my family. They had a real difficulty to figure out how they should communicate with me that wouldn't make me angry. And often I would express my anger by silence, which is very painful for the other person. After some years I learned to treat them better because it was very obvious to me that they don't deserve it and it's not fair, but I guess the issue has been there and suppressed.

Wednesday, February 17, 2021, 1:19 AM

Today again this anger was a big issue and it consumed my day. It seems to me that it's the other side of despair. I guess I don't have hope for better possibilities and that creates anger. Life circumstances should have a part too. There has been too much pain in the body in this 4-5 weeks, pain in teeth, back and ribs, knees, eyes, and I think I am tired of that. My niece and her husband are coming here this morning, with this empty fridge and broken heater, I didn't want anyone to come here in this situation, but she has an exam and must come, and that is another source of discomfort. I have to give them strong warnings to not talk about it with the rest of the family. Worst of all, I haven't been able to work more than an hour each day yesterday and today, and my next task requires lots of thinking but I don't have the patience for it. And I am tired of complaining about these shits too. I've been thinking to stop writing about all of this, but I don't know yet. I won't lose much if I don't remember these in the future.

I have to find a way to transform the energy of the anger to a resource for working. Earlier in the day it has more energy and clarity, but I guess because it's not released, the energy diminishes, but the body becomes very tired and exhausted.

An hour ago I was thinking about finding a way to change this mind-state, and I thought, let's see what is there in the experience that I like? Is there anything that has pleasantness or beauty? And I noticed that when focusing on external objects and their shapes, I see beauty in them. Colors and shapes are beautiful if I can stay focued on them. Problem is I often forget to do it, or another part of me resists as if there is no point to do anything. Will try.

Last night I tried  to keep the space of the room in awareness for a few hours after I heard Daniel talk about it in an interview, and that caused some tranquility, but then I forgot it until now.

 Hi Siavash,

I’m sorry to hear about the general shitiness of your situation at the moment.

What’s really been helping me with anger and family issues is inner child work. I’ve known my family “story” for a long time, but I’m only just discovering how deeply repressed are the original emotions of pain, anger, sadness, grief, fear, and loneliness, as well as the associated memories. That’s just what neglected or abused kids have to do in order to survive – push down the pain, put their parents on a pedestal, assume the blame themselves (toxic shame) and create a false identity which is “good enough” for their parents. I would rationalize it to myself with thoughts like ‘it’s not real trauma because victims of physical or sexual abuse have it much worse’ or ‘at least I was fed and clothed and educated, unlike many, therefore I should be grateful and not blame my parents’.

It’s an axiom of inner child work that the deeply held emotional pain in your body and how you feel about yourself are an accurate reflection of how your parents treated you and felt about you, whether you remember it or think about it that way or not. Allowing myself to deeply feel the original repressed emotional pain in my body – without blaming or judging myself – has been really powerful and liberating. Accepting the reality of that actually removes the guilt element – I don’t blame my parents because this is the same way they were treated as kids, and it was too painful for them to acknowledge it, so they passed it on automatically and unconsciously, which is just the way this stuff works unfortunately.

I really don’t know your situation and things may be very different for you. All I know is that you said your father had strong narcissistic behaviors – which is enough to deeply wound a child – and you are struggling with anger, sadness and despair, which is often a consequence of such parenting. If you feel like there might be any connection then I would recommend looking at either of these books and see if anything resonates for you – The Drama Of The Gifted Child by Alice Miller or Homecoming by John Bradshaw.

I really feel the pain you are going through right now.
Best wishes,
George
 

 Hi George,
Thank you for your support.

Yes, there should be a ton of repressed stuff. We never had any physical misbehavior in our family since both my parent are strongly against it, but there has been a lot of other problems. My father almost always had himself as the main priority in everything (in recent years he has changed somewhat, although not much), so for example things like watching cartoons for half an hour was a big problem for us because he was always watching news on a TV that my brother and me had paid its money by carpet weaving, and my mother always puts herself as the last priority and tries to cover what my father has neglected, and that creates problems too. And their constant fights (not much now, they try to keep a distance now), and not understanding what we would want and blaming it as something wrong, by both of them. Now they have learned to respect more for the difference in opinions, so they have treated grandchildren very differently, but for us the damage is done. I used to blame them in the past, but I don't do it anymore. The more I think about it now, the more I feel compassion for them because they have lived in a very tough situation, and they have done what they could, whay should I expect more. But there is work to do.

Thanks for suggesting books. I'll see if there is a free version of those or not (Sanctions and not having access to paid material...).

Thank you. 

That’s a lot of responsibility for a young kid to carry, supporting their parents like that. And when the parents are constantly arguing it’s natural for the children to assume the blame on some level – ‘if we weren’t here then they wouldn’t have such problems’. When the parents place their own emotional needs above those of the children then the children don’t develop the ability to take care of their own emotional needs, which eventually leads them to be so hard on themselves.

I had a sort of “rational” compassion before which went something like ‘Well my mother’s father disappeared and my father’s family was consumed by incest, suicide and alcoholism. Therefore my parents had it worse than me. They did the best they could and it’s wrong of me to expect more.’ Factually that might be true, my parents probably did a better job than theirs. Still, if their upbringing was a 3 and mine was a 5, that was still far short of what I needed to develop until a healthy self-regarding adult. Hell, even people whose upbringing was a 7 or 8 sometimes feel deep deeply wounded and spend years in therapy and spiritual practice. I doubt there are many 9s or 10s, outside of fantasy.

This inner child work in no way involves blaming or judging the parents, or even communicating with them at all about it. For years I had this fantasy that one day I would work it out with my parents, get to the bottom of it with them and finally get what I really needed from them. In many ways I tried, but eventually I had to accept that it was never going to happen. It was that acceptance, giving up that fantasy, which enabled me to begin the real work of accepting the painful emotional reality of my childhood.

I would be happy to send you the books if it’s possible – you can email me at agnostic123@yahoo.com if you want.

Now that you said it, I remembered that I had similar thoughts too. I am not sure, but I guess in the past I had such thoughts to think that one day I could sit and talk with them about things. Although that may have happened in a tiny scale, but yeah, there is no point in having hope for other people to change as a way of resolving such issues. I've stopped having that hope years ago. For this short remaining time in life that we are together, I try to make things better if I can, and when I see that I can't, I keep my distance and let them do however they want.


Thank you so much. Please let me think about it for some time.

 

I think Shinzen's analagy applies here. He says that when the light of awareness starts reaching the deeper layers of mind and emotional body and stuff starts releasing, that frightened animal in the core of our being starts shrinking, but as it shrinks, it becomes wilder, more frightened and more primitive.
A lot of the dreams that I usually have about my family, usually is about me, but a few days ago I had a dream that was exactly like situations that we had in the family, and they started arguing over the money in the dream, and my brother tried to prevent it -- it was a symbolic act by him. I thought in the dream that: No, that should not happen again, not anymore... . And then I woke up, and I had memories of similar situations, that they would have a few fights then they would stop talking with each other for days.

Also it's been a few weeks that I have dreams about a few old friends that are not friends anymore. I haven't been thinking about any of them, but I've had 6-7 dreams about them. With one of them I did something wrong that ended our friendship, but with others I don't know. Maybe I had done something wrong maybe not. As far as I know I don't feel guilty about any of them, but I am not sure what my body thinks, and I don't know what they think!

Thursday, February 18, 2021, 11:30 AM

It's interesting that since yesterday morning that my niece and her husband came here, that anger went away. Emotional tone has been overally neutral. Probable causes would be tending to guests, raining, sleeping in the other room that has more light in the morning, and is colder that creates a situation similar to sleeping in my hometown and my close friend's house in another city in that area. I had similar feelings specially because of raining.

I didn't have sitting practice yesterday but there was lots of energetics, but not painful. Practiced while in bed. There were more blue and cyan colors, and a few flashes of red-yellow-orange lights for a fraction of a second. Eariler doing fire kasina I didn't have any blue and red colors and for some time I tried to bring those colors but I had very little success. Later blue showed up itself but not much. Last week that I've used candle flame in a lit room a lot and with bigger brighter candle flame, that seems to create more magenta-red and blue-cyan colors. While in bed there was going in and out of a dreamy sleepy state which was not clear enough to know what it is. I had another of those recurring dreams. I was back in university again wanting to finish my studies, and as usual it was the end of semester and I didn't know what book I should study and what are the subjects of the course. It was a math course (Some math courses were the triggers for not finishing my studies at the time, like Linear Algebra and Numerical Analysis, that I thought this is not related to coding and why should I study them. I tried to talk with their teachers but they wouldn't understand.), and I was explaining to the teacher that I have no idea what this course is about.

Last night I heard that since yesterday my father has vertigo and nausea (They took him to hispotal and found nothing wrong with his body), and that caused some remorse that why did I criticize him for what has happened decades ago. Of course I don't citicize him, but these thoughts don't ask permission when arising.​​​​​​​

Saturday, February 20, 2021, 12:28 AM

Last two days I only had 10-30 minutes sitting practice because I had guests, and I only practiced while in bed. Today I had some anger toward family members, then some worry and guilt mixed in together related to work and family. My niece and her husband left in the afternoon, and since a few hours before that I had strong feeling of caring toward her, which became stronger after they left, and I felt very sad for some hours. That used to happen with her brother too when he would come here regularly before covid. I don't have any kids so I don't know how it feels to be a parent, but I notice a clear difference between my feelings towards my sisters' children and other people.

Last night while in bed I noticed a difference in mental space+images. The mental images that I had that included myself, was not from a first person perspective. Instead I was seeing mental image of my whole body from a distance. I did a fire kasina sit tonight and I noticed same quality again during this sit a few times, but it was less clear this time. Also it happens (I guess since 1-2 ago) that mental and physical images become clearer, and mental image space become bigger.

During this sit there was a few surge of tickling+tingling/vibrations in the center of the torso, that spread throughout a line going from lower abdomen to the center of the throat.

Because of less practice these 2-3 days, I felt clearly that my mind is less collected. Now trying to bring more collectedness.

Again I've been thinking about the content of this log, should I keep it only a practice log or a life and practice log.

At a certain point I realized that I couldn't keep my life and practice separate any longer, because my reactivity was becoming so obvious in daily life with work and family. The advantage of combining the two is that you can make faster progress because you are really working on your core reactive patterns, which tend to show up more clearly in stressful daily life situations. The tough part is that you feel more exposed because there's no part of your life which is safe from your practice ... less places to hide! Having said that, everyone on here has been very supportive and I got a wider variety of perspectives than if I had worked on my "life issues" separately with a therapist or something (not to say you shouldn't do that as well, although obviously cost and accessibility are factors). It's a personal decision, although looking back I can see it was going that way anyway. 

You are right.
I've decided long ago that I'll try to be public about most or all aspects of my life with as many people in my circles as I could, because I've had experienced so much pain from hiding or being forced to hide things, so I've convinced myself that that is what I want to do, but still some part of me sometimes wants to go in the direction of being more private.

As Hokai said in an interview, your life happens inside your practice. I'd say my practice happens inside my life and my life happens inside my practice. I don't see any separation there too, but old habits are still functioning in terms of privacy/fears and etc.

Thanks for sharing your viewpoint. It's helpful.

If you like I can reflect back what I see going on for you the last few days.

Please.
I'd like to know that.

(Going to bed now, will read tomorrow, thanks.)​​​​​​​

I know you said that you didn’t want your niece and her husband to come due to your situation, but I wonder whether it also had something to do with the responsibility of having to look after them. Perhaps it unconsciously reminded you of the burden you carried as a child to look after your parents. There is also the fact that your parents treat their grandchildren very differently from how they treated you, which could also create some resentment.

As the time approached for them to leave, you felt strong feelings of care for her and then sad after they left. It’s interesting that you feel a strong affinity for fire, because the fire element is the archetypal reaction to isolation and loneliness. In its “distorted” form it manifests as compulsively consuming things for comfort as an intimacy substitute (food, cigarettes, media … anything really). In its “enlightened” form it manifests as compassion, which is what you were showing by hosting your niece and her husband under challenging conditions.

Regarding your work frustrations, it’s hard not to link this to the fact that you were forced to work as a child to support your father’s TV habit (and then later again your family again pushed you into a vocation you didn’t want, away from your love of music and literature). One of your dreams was about a man you repeatedly trust even although he steals everything from you, and this man is part of a criminal band that uses kids as slaves. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that your father stole your childhood from you. And yet you still feel compassion for your parents, which shows that you have a huge heart. You say that your mother always puts herself as the last priority, but I suspect that might be you.

I don’t know how much communication you currently have with your parents, but it might be significant that your father was just hospitalized for vertigo and nausea, even though they could find nothing wrong with him. Narcissists have an extremely good sense for when people are starting to slip out of their control. It’s possible that he senses you are waking up to the way he has abused you and is now switching into victim mode in order to keep you supporting him. (Or maybe I’m reading too much into this and he really is sick.)

 Thanks George,


This is the pattern that keeps repeating every time someone comes here. I have resistance because there is the fear of losing my comforts and control, but after they come here, usually it's ok and I want them to stay more if I can. I don't worry about reponsibility as far as I know, because I've told them since many years ago that you have to tend to yourself, just don't come close to my stuff (computer, books, etc), other than that feed yourself and do whatever you want. Fear of losing control is the main issue I think.

Yes. Clinging to comforts.


Yeah, I am tired of responsibility. It has been that way for some years now.
I think all kids should be treated properly, doesn't matter whose kid. I've always asked my parents and sisters to listen to their kids and try to understand them and be friend with them, and let them leave when they have to leave. It's not easy for them though to let go.


No, he was sick, and my sister was worried so they took him to hospital. And despite all the issues, he is honest about things.

Thanks again. 

 Sunday, February 21, 2021, 2:12 AM

Today I slept longer and had difficulty getting up. There was a lot of grief, dissatisfaction and despair, and maybe insecurity, that I couldn't work because of that. All I could do was washing a dish, going to a short walk and doing some practice. My current tasks at work require doing some design and starting new implementations, that as usual causes overwhelm and makes it much more difficult to start it (Feels like space element).

Did some fire kasina and some practice on the body. There was some distortions in the image space similar to the ones that I had when practicing with Leigh Brasington's instructions. That the shape of the body in its mental image changes, or I see myself sitting above the ground, and things like that. There was some dreamy distortions in perceptions too. I forgot most of them the moment coming out of them. One that I remembered to some extent was that while getting sleepy, a vague mental image came to mind that represented sleep, that sleep was like a shirt that I would wear when falling asleep and take it off when waking up. There were extra details about it that looked cool, but I forgot.

During the first part of the practice I had many mental images and some feeling flavors of childhood memories.
 

I found the audiobook of this book that George recommended on youtube. The Drama of the Gifted Child by Alice Miller.
First I thought it's published on youtube by the publisher, but then noticed that is not the case. But found that Alice Miller is dead and I can'd check with her for the permissions, so I continued listening.

It's interesting that the following phenomenon happens more often, specially while doing things like this (Listening to new material) that needs paying attention, that suddenly my mind becomes foggy, my eyes defocus, and I stop doing whatever that I am doing, or prefer to stop it because the attention does not stay on its object and slips away if I try to put it on an object, and I just sit doing nothing, with not many thoughts in the mind, but with a vague quality in the mind like day-dreaming. Sometimes it leads to getting lost in memories. It has happened frequently yesterday and today.
 
Haven't worked today too. Yesterday and today I am trying to give permission to myself to not work and not feel guilty about it. I notice that my mental talks around it are things like: What does it have to do with them? I've not worked and it's non of their business.....fuck you all.
As mentioned above, it's very similar to the situations that we had in childhood. I didn't want to work but I had to.

I call my parents house every day, and talk with my mother. In one sense it's a good thing, in another, it's very bad. I'd like to have a week without a phone call, without talking to anyone, but she has become very unhealthy, and she gets worried and become really sick. She always asks me what's your food today, and I don't like it, and often have a water reaction, change the subject, lie, etc. A few times I've told her that don't ask it, and I won't say anything about my food, but she didn't like it. Tonight she asked again, and I told her that stop doing that, I won't tell you anymore. Of course she didn't like it, and went to the other question: You haven't told us what is your salary rate, why don't you tell it?
Same talks like always: Why do you want to know it? It only creates problems if you know it, forget about it... .

I think my days are structured around two worries: What would I tell to my colleagues, and what would I tell to my mother!

Monday, February 22, 2021, 2:59 AM

Tonight there were more colors in the visual field which were pretty clear with eyes open too. More blue, different shades of green, and lots of dark cyan. At some point I saw shadows around some objects in dark cyan.
Did some practice on the body and on the sensations of sadness-despair-anger-frustration. Some childhood memories were present for some time. There were release-like sensations in the body. An itch-like feeling in the nose and face similar to when having sneeze, and a kind of itching in bones, and orgasm-like sensations in the lower body. Then tranquality and spacousness. Image space seemed bigger, and I had mental images of vast open spaces. Then did fire kasina. Focused on the dots with eyes open first, then it became smaller, and I closed my eyes. Overally the dot was smaller and stayed longer, and there were less colors after that. Energy and negativity subsided, spaciousness was gone, and there was strong sleepiness that an hour or more passed and I didn't notice it was that long. Now there is that sticky feeling in the muscles because of this sleepiness. I noted all the thoughts about working and responded to them by Fuck You label.

Once you start noticing the elemental reaction patterns in yourself, it can be interesting to observe how they arise in reaction to different elements in other people. So for example, the person who shows excessive "concern" for others is often being a kind of hungry ghost and is acting from the earth element - to counteract feeling insignificant they try to build up a feeling of power from controlling other people with their concern. When one is on the receiving end of this kind of manipulative behavior it's natural to get angry - water element arising to disperse the controlling energy, landing you in hell realm. Then she senses loss of control and gets annoyed herself (water) which makes you feel guilty, so you have to keep calling her (hungry ghost) and the pattern keeps repeating. I might have got the particulars of your situation wrong here, but that's the kind of samsaric dynamic you can start observing.

Regarding the fogginess, day-dreaming, sleepiness etc, this is classic distorted reaction to "space" element, and it can arise when one starts to notice the other patterns. As you realize that a lot of your life is driven by these patterns, you sense that there could be freedom (space) beyond them. This causes the patterns themselves to feel threatened (!) so they start to "fight back" for survival (like Shinzen's frightened animal). You have a distorted reaction to space and shut down to avoid it with feelings of dullness etc.

I hope this is helpful, but please tell me if I'm going to far with this stuff!

Thanks George,
Yes it's helpful.
That's pretty much what happens.

 Monday, February 22, 2021, 6:27 PM

I had a few dreams today that I guess the first one had a kinds of pattern that Daniel describes for his dreams, starting with A&P and going to the next phases. I was gliding on the ground and I enjoyed it, I don't know if it was on snow or I was in our faculty building in that beloved university (Damn I didn't finish my studies, I loved to go there and have a lab and play with kids on coding and find the talented ones). Then some high ranking officials came and started interrogating me and a few other people, as if there was a national security issue. I explained to them that I've only sent a few emails to the tech support (before going to bed I sent a support email to where I buy vpn accounts!), and there was fear. But then the problem was resolved and there was a mutual respect and we started talking about other things. (This dream has been repeating in the last few years, that I get arrested, there is fear and uncertainty, then it gets resolved, there is mutual respect and we continue talking-- a few of these dreams were with the highest officials in the country.)

After two days of greeting every thought about working with fuck you label (in different languages), today there is more lightness and openness, but there is a lot of rocking and swaying. I've been thinking that probably I had tourette syndrome. In childhood a lot of times I couldn't sit still and I woud rock and sway, and move my shoulders and adjust my shirt because it always felt uncomfortable and not in the right position, or I would rub my palms on my thighs or rub or scratch my finger and fingernails. Of course there was blame around that from my family. I had these repetitive movements in later years too but not to that extent.

I had to send the monthly report that I had not been able to do in the last few days. I thought I feel better now, let's finish it and send it. I played some military march tunes with my mouth to bring more lightness. But the moment I opened the document, I got hit by a wave of uncertainty and anxiety. I am not sure what reaction it was, maybe an earth reaction followed by an air reaction, or just an air reaction. I continued updating the document, but I noticed my hands and body are shaking, palms sweating, more saliva in the mouth and swallowing it constantly, and these repetitive movements got worse, more rocking and swaying, and checking things obsessively again and again. After I finished and sent it, these anxiety symptoms gradually decreased, although my hands are still shaky.
 

Tuesday, February 23, 2021, 3:50 AM

Continued listening to the Drama book.
Didn't work after sending the report. There was no impulse to work and I respected that. I hope to have different impulses tomorrow. Then there was some worry about working since I had forgotten to greet these thoughts with fuck you. Remembered it and there was less worry after that.

I was thinking that maybe these sickness symptoms that I've had repeatedly are because of depression and loneliness. Then a memory came to mind from first day of the second week of the first year of middle school, that was the first day of staying in the campus in that school in a small town near my hometown, that most of the other kids were there with their parents, and talking and playing and jumping up and down, and I was sitting lonely and sad in the corner of my bed watching them and thinking what should I do, and the next day afternoon when I was in the yard and saw my mother that walked into the school yard, I almost cried. I was quite sick when my mother came that day. This memory kept coming back again and again and a few times brought tears. (I always remembered that night and the afternoon of its next day, although I don't remember what happened inbetween that night and next afternoon.)

Did a sit focusing on my hands on my thighs. Attention was not stable most of the time, and I didn't try to force it to be stable, that doesn't help. There were vibrations for part of it in different parts of the body, I guess others call it champagne bubbles. Then sleepiness. I lit the candle after that to have some dots in the space. Before the sit there were colors with eyes open dancing around. Shades of green and blue, but that most beautiful one which appears more these days, I am not sure what to call it, green or blue green or dark cyan.

There was much less foggyness/day-dreaming/spacy quality today, and overall less negativity.

That seems like a significant memory. It's certainly possible that getting sick was sometimes your way of getting attention from your overburdened mother, which became associated with loneliness and later morphed into depression. What you are doing - replaying the memories and really feeling the feelings and grieving over them - is what will set you free, because you couldn't do it at the time and the repressed emotions have been festering inside all those years (I'm speaking to myself here as well).

Air element covers everything from physical anxiety to paranoia, basically busyness to assuage feelings of terror. I started to develop nervous tics and OCD behaviors when I was 5 because I was always on red alert around my angry father. My mother would tell me not to do it and mimic me, which layered shame on top and made the whole problem worse of course. (Only later did I realize she suffered from the same anxiety, so of course it made her anxious and she wasn't able to soothe me.)

It's nice to hear that you you used to love coding. In some ways it's like musical composition, you know an elegant piece of code which has been refined down to its simplest form where all the parts work together in sparse harmony like a string quartet ... 

Yeah, I have memories that I liked to be sick, because I'd get extra attention, even sometimes from my father.
For all these years I've used my fingertips to prevent flood... . It's past, it's gone.., you need to be tough, caring.., everyone did what they could.. . And I've used stuff to numb myself, now that I am trying to make holes in the walls of that prison, well I should expect, yeah something.

Thanks.​​​​​​​

Last night and today I was playing with Shinzen's See Hear Feel technique to maintain mindfulness, but I notice that it becomes repetitive and labels don't match with sensations a lot of times, because it becomes mantra-like and there is mind-wandering plus the repetition of these labels without noticing the sensations related to each label. I've been playing with a few variants of this technique before, and I've found one that works better than others, so tonight I started using that. Since I usually forget it, I record it here. Maybe someone else could find it helpful too.

Left side is the labels, and the right side describes when to use those labels.

Self ==> When I see mental image of myself and it looks like I am watching from behind my eyes/face while seeing a vague image of my face. It can be used for mental talks that are about myself too, but I don't have a clear formulation for that yet.

Other(s) ==> Any mental image or mental talk that is about anyone other than myself.

See ==> Any other visual sensation, internal or external.

Hear ==> Any other auditory sensation, internal or external.

Names of body parts ==> When noticing physcial sensations in the body, labeling it with the name of that location that is currently at the center of the attention. Would be something like: Hand, back, nose, toes, etc. Use Feel for all bodily sensations if you don't want to label body parts.

Wednesday, February 24, 2021, 9:50 PM

Today started with grief. That memory of middle school kept coming back frequently. Then I went to call my mother to get finished with it and be back and do my things, whatever that is, the call is a burden a lot of times, but she was not home, she goes to my sister's house most days, they didn't answer too, and then anger arose. Anger became more intense as I tried to call a few more times, and when she finally answered, I wanted to throw some of the anger to her, but she said she had difficulty walking because of pain in her knees and was waiting for one of the kids to bring her. The anger made me remember some memories that I had not remembered for many years. In early years she would go out somewhere, and I would wait and wait, desperate and angry and frustrated, and the house would feel empty and cold, finally when she would arrive.., where were you.., looking for some cheap onions.., or in visiting some fucking relative.

Then I noticed the same pattern that I had with a few of my close friends. First one in high school, next one in university campus, and next one a friend that we were homemates for 1-2 years after I rented a house. I had become very dependent to them, and wanted them to be always available, but they were not, and I would be angry, sad and frustrated. It was always a question for me, there is nothing special about them, why am I so dependent to them? And that was a source of another conflict.

That's why I could never stand in lines, just a few seconds of it often made me very angry. And there were two other situations for that kind of frustration. My father's torturing behavior, when we wanted to watch something on TV or go to a relative's house, he would do something else and we would wait and wait, and a lot of time without any reward at the end of that waiting. Another was the TV programs itself. Before each program that was popular, often there were other unscheduled long programs, either religious/idiologic propaganda or commercials, and sometimes as a replacement for the program itself without any announcement, and that was torturous.

I guess that's why I would fall in love with girls that were not available. There was very little chance to be with them, or they were married or in another place. And the ones that were available, hmm that wasn't interesting. I guess I've tried to recreate that torture situation.

And there is the guilt, but fuck it, I don't have the energy to think or write. The fight between the part that seeks attention and the part that condemns and represses it.

It seems that there is feeling of guilt in a lot of what I think and do. What I do is not good enough, or right enough, or mature enough, or whatever enough. And when the action itself has nothing to feel guilty about, then I am the wrong person, so the action has less value. Probably there are different sides to it, one should be the family, the other should be the history with religion. Guilt should lead to sadness and loneliness, and not having hope.

My experience is that looking after kids well is really hard. For a parent with unresolved issues it’s pretty much impossible to give the kids enough of the kind of attention they need. There are more times than I care to admit that I’ve used some variant of the cheap onions gambit to get some time away from my kids. 

If we didn’t get enough good attention as kids then - unless we’ve resolved this issue - it’s very likely we well have an unhealthy relationship with attention as adults, veering between wanting too much attention or else saying ‘fuck it I don’t need any’. That’s why we are attracted to people who are either unavailable (unsatisfying but familiar, also will not replace mother) or else overly attentive (what we think we want, but suffocating, also guilt about replacing mother).

This all-or-nothing relationship with external attention is totally draining because your body is pulling in two different directions. The guilt arises because, even though your rational adult mind knows that your parents were far from perfect, inside there’s still a trapped little child who needed to see their parents as omnipotent and infallible in order to survive. This is the source of the the shame (‘it must have been my fault, there’s something wrong with me.’)

The good news is that once you recognize this is the issue then you can start to resolve it. You did nothing wrong, you just didn’t get enough of the unconditional attention that every child needs (and it’s not your parents fault either, in the sense that they were just acting out their own unmet needs). The amazing thing is that by recognizing this unmet need of your inner child and bathing it with your own adult attention, you can “reparent” your inner child, i.e. give him the unconditional attention he needs, which will allow him to become a healthy adult. A healthy adult (so I’ve heard) gives their own needs enough attention that they are much less reliant on getting or avoiding the attention of others.

Yes. It's hard. I've always thought that deciding to have a child or not is the most difficult decision. Especially if you are living in very difficult conditions. (She really was looking for cheap onions a lot of times for many years.)

Yeah, exactly. These two forces tear apart the system.

Thanks for your support.

 I'm sorry to make light of your tough conditions. I know things were very hard there during that period (and still are). However I do know some kids who grew up poor and had good parenting, and some who grew up rich and were totally fucked up by lack of attention.

I think a lot of people don't make much of a decision whether or not to have kids - even if they think they do - it just happens according to their programming. For me it was pretty much an unquestioned assumption, which in retrospect was part egotistical (I'm great therefore my kids should reflect my greatness) and part wishful (subconsciously hoping to create a better experience than I had). The situation changed dramatically when I hit the ground. 

It's my impression that hardly anyone emerges from childhood and adolescence without some heavy wounds of one kind or another. The two most significant biographical facts that we supposedly know about the buddha are that his mother died after his birth and he abandoned his own wife and newborn son, thereby recreating the experience of an absent parent. You're not alone - this is the heart of samsara-dukkha.
 

Na, it's okay. I just wanted to be clear about the facts.


Yes, you are right. It's only a matter of degrees. These wounds are part of the package. Anything we do will create some pain for someone.

The important thing is you are seeing the "torn-in-two" aspect of this. Now you can see that no one benefits from being torn-in-two, there really isn't any wisdom there and so you can drop the needless suffering (it might take a while, but it gets easier and easier).&nbsp;<br /><br />My sense is that when kids don't get what they need, they need to take on the role of being a child and being a parent at the same time. That's the torn-in-two dynamic. And the self-created parent, that's basically what guilt is: the child creating a mental model of a parent in their own mind, which seems to pay attention to what we do and a voice in our head that seems to tells what to do. The only problem is that it's a naive/simple child creating this thing, so that internal voice isn't very smart! It mostly tells us how everything we do is not good enough and doesn't give us any good advice. <br /><br />Sometimes it's hard to let go of this inner voice because it feels so much like "me".&nbsp;&nbsp;I still have moments in my life where I'll notice my reaction to something is exaggerated... and sure enough it's something that reminds me of the things that totally used to send me into a shame spiral. And going "into" that experience and digesting it is still work, even though I know that in the end I'll just notice it's litteral just a voice in my head, saying a sentence or two, that I'm taking waaaaaaaaaaaaay too seriously because it seems like "me". But I'm the one hearing the words, not speaking the words.

Hey shargrol,

I need to remember that point about "I am the one hearing the words, not speaking the words".
Although I don't notice much mental talks. It's often mental images with bodily sensations, specifically face expressions, seeing a face expression is enough to know what is going on. But the principal applies to images too.

Thanks.

 Thursday, February 25, 2021, 8:33 PM

Last night the anger left me tired, sad and exhuasted. I sat to focus on the sensations of it, that were most obvious in my face and the mental image of the face that is like a mask in front of the watching point that seems to be present with most sensations. Led to some coolness and vibrations and energetics, and this bright white light that arises when focusing on the body, but in recent months it arises below the nose and very close to the watching point that I can't discern its shape.

A friend showed some craziness, although she couldn't come too far, but that was enough to bring some dreams. I was reunited with someone that I loved in the past knowing that she is not interested, which ruined our friendship, and after spending some time together in the dream, she said now it's time to leave and we should move on. I didn't want to do it, but there was some satisfaction, and I thought yeah maybe we can let go now. After I woke up, I noticed there was some satisfaction and similar mind-state that.., let's move on.

There was fear and uncertainty and some hope and satisfaction in the other dreams. While waking up from one of the dreams, I was absorbed into the colors in the murk, that were like lava, melting and morphing and expanding and contracting in different colors. I thought it would be like that after waking up, but when I woke up, it was how usually is without that much nuance and beauty.

Today although the mind-state is quiet sadness so far, I notice that the feeling of guilt, and the need to gain attention doesn't move me that much. I care much less than before, but I think it will change.
 

hi shroubw, "quiet sadness" sounds about right as a first fruit of your recent cycle of intense emotions: a gentle grief for all that time and humanity fuck up. The heart of this is the quiet, which is acceptance. Like EQ: nothing to do with that quiet but be grateful for it, sit with it, let it be. And the sadness can be the bittersweetness of Reobservation, a poignancy which yields to a weird tenderness as it ripens. A kind of gentle, strangely forgiving awe at the shitstorms, looking back. Again, rooted in the grace of a deeper visceral acceptance, which is always a mystery.

Hi Tim,
Thank you.

Yes, yesterday there was that quiet sadness for the first part of the day, that there was a kind of equanimity and poise and tenderness with it, and I noticed a clear reduction of craving and worry and guilt. But later some worries joined in, and the sadness took a more painful quality because the guilt was back and there was uncertainty and reduction of equanimity. Long way to go. Thanks for the reminder.

  Saturday, February 27, 2021, 7:57 PM

Yesterday was very painful, I guess the most painful experience that I've had in these weeks. Started with anger because there was a delay in the payment of salary and this neighbor upstairs had constant loud noises all night and day (I wonder when she sleeps), and the guilt that I haven't started working yet. We rarely have delay in payments but when there is, it's very painful for me since waiting in uncertainty is the most painful experience for me. It turned to a kind of sickness toward the end, with headache, impluse to vomit, and weakness in the body that I could barely walk. Only had informal sitting practice but practiced longer in bed. There was maybe 10-20 instances in bed that I could catch myself coming out of a sleepy or hypnagogic state to wakefulness. I guess what characterizes wakefulness in the present moment, is that I see the mental image of my face in front of the watching point, and see the image of my body in the space of the room.

Had a strange dream. It was a carpet weaving workplace that my brother and uncle were working there, and I had went there to visit. Then I saw a guy there that was collecting garbages and preparing food for others. He was working there, for them. He started talking to me while having a smile as if we know each other. I thought look how familiar is this guy, where have I seen him. I couldn't remember at all, but he kept talking as if we know each other well. Then I told him: Is this you M? And he smiled. He was an old friend, we were friend since childhood, very close friends. He stayed in my house for some time, we would sit in silence for hours, and would understand each other just by our face expressions. But because of the circumstances and because we both were unskillfull, that unique friendship ended very painfully. After I recognized him in the dream, it was shocking. How have I forgotten him. While trying to remember I noticed that part of me wants to remember but another part says no, don't go there. I felt guilty, ashamed, embarrassed after that, also sad that he had to work there and not on his profession as a musician. I had covered my face with my hands, shocked, trying to understand what was going on. I don't remember what happened later.

I paid attention to the movements and changes in the sensations in my back and abdomen while in bed, and that caused some vibrations there, and energetic in whole body.

A point about age was in my mind yesterday and today. How I would be mindful of my age and others age, because as a child a lot of times I'd think that these people don't understand shit, but they don't take my opinion seriously, but if I was 10-20 years older, they'd take it seriously. That has been always a factor. Fortunately I've taken children seriously, always/often(?), I guess.
  

I feel like this is a common pattern of "two steps forward, one step back" when digging into this deeper stuff. Except often it feels more like "one step forward, two steps back" when you are in the middle of it, because each step forward involves digging into a deeper level of pain and it takes time to adjust to that. There are the painful forgotten memories of course, but also somehow current circumstances seem to conspire to produce exactly the pain we "need" to experience. It's only when you look back afterwards that you can see 'ah yes, of course, it had to happen this way'.

 Yeah, I think that's the pattern, and how it feels internally.

I've had a relatively good memory in the past (not that good in recent years), and rarely there is a memory that I had forgotten completely. But for years a lot of times I have intentionally suppressed the unpleasant memories, trying to distract myself when they arise. Now that I intend to not do that, what happens is that, there is an emotion with an unpleasant feeling tone, and then I remember some memories that had the same kind of unpleasantness, and then the resonance between current feeling and how it felt at that time, brings more details of that memory that I've forgotten. Remembering some of the forgotten details suddenly opens door to other memories, and this keeps going on, which intensifies the feelings, but also gives a chance for healing.

A memory from middle school was in the mind for the last few days, which was very unpleasant at that time, shame and guilt, I had its images in the mind but didn't remember clearly how it felt. But last night when the unpleasantness became too intense, that memory again came to mind, and I remembered that it felt exactly like how I felt last night, that I wanted to put my head under ground and hide, or find a place inside my body to hide there, or disappear my whole body and hide it somewhere.., but where can I hide from myself!

Thanks.
 

Sunday, February 28, 2021, 2:17 AM

I need to remember these few lines:

Tonight there was similar feelings as yesterday but with less intensity. After I finished listening to the Drama book a few days ago (I need to listen to it a few more times), I resumed listening to Ken's WUTYL book. While listening tonight, first there was the urge to go practice instead of listening, but while practicing I get the urge to listen to the book that will help my practice, so the pattern again, two forces, tearing apart, with guilt in both of them. Then as I was focusing on the sensations while listening, there was hightened clarity and equanimity, but I noticed a number of times that guilt arises for a moment, as if there was a little movement of the air, or the light in part of a corner of the room went dim. A vague image maybe. But immediately I felt weak after the moment it arose. Then I thought maybe it's related to our understanding of guilt: The one who is guilty, has done something wrong, should be ashamed, and should not do anything more since he is incapable of doing good, and should wait for others to determine his fate. They have the power and control and strength, and he is the weak and powerless. So non-doing is the result.

Monday, March 1, 2021, 8:24 PM

Finally the heater started working again! I've been resisting to call the guy to come and fix it for the last few days, but today finally I called him, and he said it can be related to its water pressure so increase the pressure and test it. It didn't work at first but after I played with its other options, it started working! I can take a shower finally. A few lessons learned.

I've been using the sensations in the torso specially abdomen these 2-3 days. And last night I tried as much as I could to relax my body and keep it relaxed. I notice that I immediately tense it when I want to focus on an area, it has become a bad habit since tensing it makes easier to notice the sensations. Teachers need to check that with students I think, to ask them can you relax it now. Also part of the tension in the abdomen is because I make in-breaths longer. I don't remember when and why I started doing that, but it's unnecessary. Probably misapplying some techniques plus the difficulty in breathing that I had because of anxiety that has led to hyper ventilation.

Previously I'd use abdomen, but because there was too much pain and worry of energetic problems, I stopped doing that. Now focusing on it creates similar pains. As far as I remember, I'd always tense my muscles, and that has created lots of pain. Also there is this idea in the mind that all the pains that I've experienced before, I have to experience them again but mindfully, at least it looks like that sometimes.

Had some unpleasant dreams. In one of them a few old friends were there. At that time I was a smoker but they were not, and they'd have that shitty look in their face about my smoking. Later years some of them started smoking and it was a surprise to me. In the dream they all were gathered in a small room and smoking there. I told them: Shame on you all, you were the ones saying to me why am I smoking, now all you idiots are smoking.

I'm glad you got your hot water fixed! Hyper-ventilation is closely linked to anxiety and intense emotional reactions. I found the Buteyko breathing technique incredibly helpful with this. The limiting factor in actually getting enough oxygen into our cells is not the amount of oxygen we breathe in but the amount of carbon dioxide in our blood (Bohr Effect - CO2 needed for hemoglobin to release O2). This means that when we over breathe we are simply breathing out too much CO2 and actually getting less O2 to the cells. The amount of O2 we need at rest is very small, so many of us are chronic over-breathers even if we don't think of ourelselves as "hyperventilating" like a panic attack. The solution is to take much smaller breaths and pause after the outbreath, which allows the blood CO2 to build up. It sounds totally counterintuitive, but it really does work and immediately produce a nice relaxation reaction (as well as deeper absorptions). There's free exercises online if you want to give it a try.

That's an interesting dream. That seems to be the same dynamic by which the shamed kid becomes a shame-inducing parent (including to their inner child). Shameful habits are often just distorted way of taking care of ourselves. If our parents didn't give us the care we needed and shamed us, we didn't learn to take care of ourselves and we associate this need with feeling ashamed ... hence the comforting but shameful adult addictions. Once we see through this then we can start to take care of ourselves without feeling ashamed (talking to myself here as well).

Hey George,
Thank you. Yeah I was looking like a monster! After shaving my beard and taking a shower, I looked at the mirror, and thought: Wow, is this me!? It looks 10-15 years younger now!

After I read about hyper-ventilation in your log some months ago, I became more aware of that and started taking less air, and that helped. Thanks for that. Although I haven't tried Buteyko breathing, I may try it, I don't know. But still a lof of times I take too much air specially when practicing. Last night I intentionally had short and shallow in-breaths, and it made the body more relaxed with much less tension in the abdomen.

Yeah, shame.
It's almost mechanical, that reproduces itself.
I don't remember when I started to clearly notice it, but it should be very early in childhood. It was always a torture in the school, that I was the best student in terms of studies, but I could never answer the questions that teachers would ask from kids, and most times I knew the answer because I had studied all the books in first few weeks of the year. Other kids would present their answer and get praised for it, and if a teacher called my name, that was like the end of the world, shaking sweating.. . Or in the early years of high school, walking in street was a big problem for me, to the point that I'd lose my balance frequently, because I thought every one is watching me! And the addictions. I was strongly against these addiction in people around me, but I ended up having them, and went much deeper than all of them.

I think for most people, they can't understand diversity. Their way is the right way, and if yours is different, then you are wrong, which leads to shame a lof of times specially when they have a higher position in the hierarchy of whatever society that you are in. Probably there is no way to treat other people in a way that doesn't produce shame, but at least it can be minimized if our parents and teachers etc have higher respect for diversity, I hope.
Thanks.

Shame and guilt have an evolutionary function to maintain social norms, which I agree makes diversity a challenge. I haven't studied it, however I imagine that the individual component of shame outweighs the social component. Lots of people in "shameful" minorities seem proud of their identity, whereas a significant proportion of the majority suffers from pathological levels of shame. Everything I've read so far suggests that toxic shame is largely due to the parents. Obviously schooling and socialization can be shaming experiences, but good parenting can override these. Also worth bearing in mind, it’s always hard to accept that one’s parents were lacking, but it’s even harder in cultures which dictate a higher level of respect for parents. I don’t know if it’s just my perverse english sense of humor, but the following light-hearted ditty always appealed to me.

I like this Verse.

Yeah I think parents and in general care takers have significant impact on this. I haven't thought much about it, but one thing that comes to mind that I think determines what kind of feeling one will have, is that, the very first reaction that one gets from the people that are supposed to be having a relationship of love, care/support, respect with the person, is maybe the most important component in what the person feels next. And that first reaction is an emotional one, based on their own fears and shames etc.


Yeah, this was a source of confusion and conflict for me during my teens. The culture and religion said that you should pay high respect to them no matter what they do, but I wanted to yell at them.

Yes, it's so obvious that I can't believe it took me so long to get it - the way I felt about and treated myself (and others) was essentially a reflection of the way my parents felt about and treated me. I just always assumed that there was something intrinsically wrong with me, which comes back to the child's existential need to believe in the infallibility of their parents (even long after they rationally know this not to be the case). Even writing this now is enough to give me an anxious guilt reaction.

Yes. I've been thinking about this, and I guess probably that's how our relationships with people are formed too. X is a friend, a good person a respected one..., because there is something intrinsically right/good about them, and Y is the opposite because there is something intrinsically wrong/bad about them. Assuming permanence, then assuming intrinsic right and wrong with myself and others.

 Thursday, March 4, 2021, 12:32 AM

Today again I don't know why should I write a log, and I don't know why shouldn't I write it, and it's the same with other activities too, because I don't like the intentions.

Last night I didn't do much formal sitting practice, instead I spent time contemplating death and impermanence while listening to Ken talking about it in his book. These days I sleep much longer, can't get out of bed, and have that unpleasant sticky feeling in the body when waking up. Last night since I still had not worked, I went to bed earlier hoping to wake up earlier, but it took a long time to fall asleep, having a headache and difficulty in breathing, and I woke up late again. There were brief periods of hypnagogia(?) that suddenly the perception of current experience had dramatic changes, but I forgot most of them immediately after coming out of it. The theme was that the perception of myself and the body would get divided into different parts, each a separate person or a group of people. In one of them, while having tension in the abdomen and some pain in legs, an intention arose to pay attention to those areas to have more vibrations, then I had a perception of someone taking advantage of other people's problems, as if there is shortage of a resource that people need, and the person that have them sells it to a higher price because those people need it. The intention to have more vibrations was that greedy person, and those parts of the body having tension and pain where the people in need.

Listening to the rest of Ken's book, I notice that how much of my time is spent in hungry ghosts realm, always looking for a little bit of satisfaction but never finding it.
 

Friday, March 5, 2021, 5:24 AM

These 3-4 days I've been trying to maintain an ongoing awareness of the body, so that I can keep it relaxed and catch it when it tenses and relax it, because what usually/always happens is that the moment I relax the body, immediately or maximum seconds later different parts of the body tenses and stays like that for long periods.
Also while listening to Ken talking about how fucked up I am, I've been trying to pay attention to the patterns of thoughts+emotional-sensations and how they relate to each other and to the body and to the perception of time, space, openness, hope and etc, and see what the fuck is going on that I can not work.
Also I've tried to relate to the thoughts+emotions about work and the guilt around it differently, since I thought if I just repeat the shit that I've done so far, I'll get the same shit again, and why should I expect anything different, and what's helpful about it all? Okay, I haven't worked, but does feeling guilty or worrying helps it? I guess there was a time that it could help, but now it doesn't, so it doesn't move me any closer to anything better.

And the effect of all of that has been that, specially yesterday and today although there is some negativity in the experience, but its intensity was less than before, and I could have the body relatively relaxed for longer periods, and often there is an awareness of the body and the room that makes me to be more present and have less mind-wandering episodes. Also for a good portion of time the body moves slowly, or I don't have interest in moving it, because often what moves the body is a set of unpleasant sensations of emotions, and the slower pace makes it easier to maintain the awareness of the body+space. There are some vibrations and pains in the body too that I think is because of all of the above. Still I guess I am not close to the root cause.

I remembered 3 of the dreams today, in one of them it was night and I was in front of a big open space that was in front of the a university here, but there was a fence around it and it was covered by snow. I noticed a few white birds flying and one or two of them came closer. They had little gray spots on their wings that made me think they are not completely white. I don't know if I knew that I was dreaming or not, but I had the thought that: "...I am seeing white birds, that probably means good fortune, or maybe not, I don't know...".

Sounds like good investigations. 

One thing I'll mention is that there is rarely a "ah, now I have it figured out" complete realization until the problem is mostly gone. In other words, there are going to be days when you are feeling like crap but feeling okay enough to work and it will be a slog to to get through the day.

(I struggled with a very very heavy depression when I started working and even though I was doing all sorts of meditation and investigation, it was still not easy to get on the train and go to work and get on the train and come home... I felt like I was just a broken machine for a while, but I also new I had to be active, going out of the home, and confronting all of the stuff that would make me depressed at work because somehow, I _was_ slowly learning how to give up being depressed even though work was depressive....)

So in a way, it kinda feels like being a actor... pretending to be a worker, but living another life in the head. Working on meditation while doing all of this also made me feel like a spy or an undercover cop, because I was also starting to crawl out of the psychological shadows that covered my family and coworkers, too. So I also felt secretly more powerful than those around me, even though I was still a broken machine.

Probably the biggest idea that helped me was the 6 Realms: the six realms happen when we don't "see" out attitude toward the world. So in other words, Hungry Ghosts (preta) don't see that they are making it impossible to enjoy life. Hungry ghosts consume things as fast as they can and then they feel like they don't have enough and need more --- so it's impossible to feel satisfied. Even if they find satisfaction, they "eat" it too fast and it goes away. They always focus on what _isn't_ here instead of what is. etc.  Same thing with Titans (asura), except Titans are powerful. Titans can achieve awesome accomplishments except the problem is they always try too hard for too long and so they fail. Nothing is good enough for Titans. They are jealous of others and want to beat them, but once they win they just move on to some other competition. Never satisfied.

So six realms can help us see our tautologies or our "self fulfilling worldviews". But the neat thing is that once we see what world we are in, we're no longer fully in that world anymore. Like a spy, we have cracked the code!

The other big thing that helped me was reminding myself 50 times a day "Just because the world seems like shit, it doesn't mean I have to feel like shit." And eventually I really did understand that just because the world seemed like shit, it didn't mean I had to feel like shit.

What a beautiful gift of a post, shargrol. Thank you.

Rehearse your joy when everything sucks.

 Hi Chris,
Thanks for the reminder, I needed that.
I used to do some activities for fun, but since I started practicing, gradually I stopped all of them. This hungry ghosts mentality has pushed me to be more productive and use every second of my time, but the result is the opposite.

Last night I was listening to Ken, he was talking about the duck walking into a bar and asking for grapes, and it made me burst into laughter. I tried to listen to the rest of it but the laughter took over, and I just had the images that Ken, with his serious look explains to the duck that, no we don't have any grapes in these 6 realms!
 

Thanks shargrol,
Yeah I find it easier to notice realms than elemental reaction, and the moment I notice the realm I'm in, there is a little openness, and it makes it easier to see what happens before and after that.

Yeah, there's a tendency to get very serious about everything as we pursue our meditation/dharma practice. It's happened to a lot of us and it's probably just part of the process - striving and all that. But it's not a requirement. I'm glad to see you're being open about it. That's the first step, you know - admitting that you have a problem.

 Thanks.
Yeah, there are problems.
 

 I also found realms easier to work with at first because they are more noticeable - they are external manifestations with duration. Right before I started meditating I spent 5 years in a hungry ghost realm just killing myself with work, making myself suicidally depressed, trying to satisfy the internal voice of my perfectionist father. I was basically paralyzed by two opposing internal drives - the voice of my father pushing me to work, to do more, to be good enough vs. the voice of my inner child who just wanted to be cared for and play. Eventually I had to find out how to take care of myself.

The elements are harder to notice because they are on the border between realms - the reaction happens in a second and before you know it you are lost in the next realm. To start working with elements I found it easier to take a smaller reaction, something less serious that happened during the day. So for example, suppose I was trying to lose weight and binged on chocolate in the afternoon (hungry ghost) and ended up feeling guilty. In my evening meditation I would replay the events in my head, trying to really feel the whole feeling-reaction process in my body. I would notice that I was feeling lonely and empty before the binge, so the chocolate eating was a fire reaction - creating an intimacy substitute to counter those feelings. Initially it felt good of course, before fading and being replaced with guilt and even more emptiness. As I replayed it multiple times though, I would notice that if I really allowed myself to feel the loneliness/emptiness part fully then the reaction would stop occurring in my mind - in effect I was becoming intimate with my own experience and that meant the reaction was no longer required. Eventually I started seeing and getting traction with the element reaction patterns for the big realms - work and family relationships - but those take more time (still ongoing!)


 

 Yeah, it seems that I should use similar approach.

I've tried to apply pattern recognition to my resistance to working, although often I notice some tension in the abdomen and throat, or shallowness of breathing or the urge to go to bed, but it doesn't become clearer than that, but with other issues that are more obvious, it's easier to detect. For instance when listening to music I notice that I want to make the volume louder so that other people hear what I am listening to! Because in early years I'd struggle to find someone that liked the same musics that I liked, to feel a sense of connection and being understood. I had become pretty sensitive to which parts of the musics my family like, and I'd increase the volume when reaching those parts, and decreasing it for the rest of it, that became a habit. Similar with commenting on social media, one part wants to make it likeable by others, the other parts blames it and feels guilty about it. As a result, one part wants to hide things and maintain the feeling of connection that way, the other part wants to be very open and gain attention and connection that way-- fire, fear of rejection. At least these patterns are more obvious to notice.

​​​​​​​Thanks.
 

  Sunday, March 7, 2021, 9:01 PM

Had some interesting dreams. The Mandelbrot sequence that Chris shared yesterday, I downloaded its gif and stared at it for some minutes, I guess it had some effect on the dreams. In the dream, lying down in my bed which is somewhere in the street, while I am aware of the body, and I am gliding very fast which is enjoyable, and staring at the sky and clouds,and there are all kinds of visuals coming toward me with high speed, and the brightness of the light and intensity of the visuals is bothering me, so I intend to go under the bridge that is there (That bridge is a in a street around here), and then I lie down under that bridge, now there is less light, and visuals that come toward me are not that fast and intense, and it's more enjoyable, and I am moving between seeing the sky from these little holes in the bridge, or seeing it directly with the more intense visuals. There were two movements at the same time, one horizontal, that I was moving forward on the ground, the other vertical that were the visuals coming from the above, it was like sky is falling on me but vanishing before reaching me. At some point I started flying, and went very high, there were many little birds flying around me, and a few times their beak hit around my eyes, so I got worries and came down. Similar to that I was in a lake or pool and swimming there with a coach, but he was swimming under the water, and said to me that I should go under water too, but I thought: I don't know how to swim, how I can go under water. But then I thought: Well I don't know how to swim, but I've been in the water for a while and nothing bad happened.
  

Monday, March 8, 2021, 5:22 AM

I need to remember these:

Relax,
Enjoy,
See the beauty in it,
Be grateful.
This moment is the beginning of your life.

But then I thought: Well I don't know how to swim, but I've been in the water for a while and nothing bad happened.

This is how I feel about meditation, life, everything, and nothing, lol. 

Be grateful indeed, amen, my friend.
 

<bow>

Tuesday, March 9, 2021, 3:12 AM

After more than two weeks of not working, finally tonight I started and was able to work for around 3 hours. These two days I've tried over and over again to bring more positive thoughts to mind and let go of the more negative ones, and ignore the "context" for working. The context is that by default my perception of working seems to be like this: I should work for a 100 hours to cover my expenses, but I don't like it, and if there is anything good that makes it worth putting the effort , it would be if I work more than that 100 hours, but I won't be able to do it, and there is no point to do it. The context for the technical part is that: I don't know what to do, where to start, I'll fail. And other similar thoughts that define the whole context. I tried to bring to mind the times that I enjoyed working, or someone appreciated my work and things like that, and tried to motivate myself to see it as a playful achievement instead of a boring obligation: Let's see how much I can accomplish, and how much money I can earn, instead of even if I work 3 hours, I am already at -97 and I can't fill that gap.

I don't know if these gymnastics have any effect, or when something is meant to happen it just happens, but at least today I felt less resistance. Although after I started, there was resistance again, fear/anxiety, sadness/despair, that felt like it's just about to explode and I have to do something immediately. I had to say to myself a few times: It's okay, you are safe, you are home.

Now there is despair/sadness/disappointment filling the space. But I guess I'll continue to work tomorrow. Let's see what happens.
One thing that makes me have some hope is that when I started that house cleaning routine a few months ago and did it every day for a month, after that I have much less resistance to make food, eat it and wash its dishes and a lot of times it's not a problem anymore. I hope to have the same kind of improvements in other areas too.

Last night for the formal sit I used the sensations of relaxation in the body, and there were some subtly pleasant coolness and tingling for brief periods.

Sometimes these intractable work situations have a solution that's staring you in the face ... but it means letting go of something that you think you really need to hold onto. Then afterwards you realize that it was what you were holding onto that was making you unhappy and it wasn't necessary after all. It's usually something that you are really afraid to let go of, because it defines your "current identity".

 Yes, I think you are right.
It seems that there is a part of suffering that I am afraid to let go, because if I did I wouldn't know what/who I am, but I can't see it, until I see it.
 

Wednesday, March 10, 2021, 3:00 AM

Tonight I worked for 1-2 hours, and while doing that it occured to me that probably the difficulty that I have working from home, is similar/related to an obsession that I have.

With the websites and applications that display notifications or have a read/unread status for their messages, I have an obsessions that I have to make all of the notifications or messages to be read/seen, otherwise it makes me very uncomfortable. For instance with my work email, there are some email messages that are related to HR, and usually I don't have to do anything about them and I don't have to even check them, but I receive them, and I open all of them just to update their status to read. Or with DhO after its recent upgrade, in the recent posts page, I open all the threads even when I am not interested in their content just to have the unread number to be on zero. This shows up in other areas of daily life too. In recent weeks/months that I've been able to wash the dishes after eating the food, I notice that I get the same kind of discomfort these days when there is a dish that I have to wash but I want to do it a little later-- to have the not-washed number on zero. Similar to these, the moment that I start to work, it feels that I have to finish all my tasks immediately and do it in a way that I don't miss anything or do anything wrong. I guess that's why I get all these tension and restlessness when I start to work. Tonight I noticed that just after starting, tension/contraction arose in the abdomen, legs, hands, face/eyes etc, I tried to relax them one by one, but before relaxing one another one arose in some other location.

I am not sure that the main thing behind that kind of discomfort is guilt or fear or both, but it seems that I need to cultivate more equanimity with having that red badge on notifications area, and not doing anything about it.

Another thing that I notice these days is a strong craving for food sometimes, specially meat/chicken. Usually I don't have much craving for eating, and a lot of times I'd prefer to not eat if I didn't have hunger, but these days sometimes I get that strong craving and it persists as long as that food is not available. Tonight I didn't want to make any food, but the smell of the food that neighbors had caused that craving. At first I resisted but the craving persisted, so I made some chicken with rice and potato and its smell made the craving even stronger. But now that it's ready, there is disappointment and I don't have any desire to eat it!

Wednesday, March 10, 2021, 5:28 AM

I need to remember that these were the things that helped me the last time that I had difficulty with working:

• Stick to a sleeping schedule: Sleep at night no matter what.
• Every day do something unrelated to work that you like its activity or outcome, like cleaning house or reading a physical book or physical exercise.
• When thinking about what you shoud do, only think about the smallest piece of work that needs to be done. You can think about the rest of it later.
• When there is too much thinking, cut it by doing something, whatever that something is.
• Pay attention to the visual objects, and the space around them, and their silence/stillness.

And: Relax, enjoy, and be grateful.

Yeah!

Don't worry, be happy.

It's a very common technique... but I find that the old trick of setting a timer for 20 minutes and just doing something is a great way to break a feeling of stagnation/apathy.

 Thanks.
I haven't tried it recently, but I had tried it in the past but It'd increase my anxiety and was not helpful at the time. Maybe I should try it again.
 

Chris I don't think I get it. Is that a technique?
I use the things that I wrote above as techniques for practice. I used to write it in diffirent places in my computer/house, but I forget those quickly, writing here makes easier to remember.
 

This approach will increase anxiety... because we're making a change. So some part of our "don't want to change" self will feel some anxiety, but the "I don't want to do nothing" self will feel better. A lot of healing is difficult because anxiety/worry/fear comes up as we heal, because life is changing. But that's just part of it and no big deal. It's much better to be healed and sane. Life doesn't become easy when we're healed and sane, but we have much better problems than before!

 It seems that there is a part of me that always can find a justification, that says no it's not possible, it doesn't work... .

I guess I don't have to listen to it too much!

Thanks.
 

Those are lyrics to a Reggae song by Bob Marley:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3HQMbQAWRc

It very well could be a technique 

Bobby McFerrin, but still a great song 

For Bob Marley we've got Three Little Birds:

Thanks, I liked it. Such a silly and playful song ​​​​​​​

I have always thought it was Bobby McFerrin – and not Bobby McMarley – who stole those four words from Meher Baba. Who probably stole them from someone else. Maybe they even go back to the Buddha? In any case, they are dhamma in a nut shell

EDIT: Shiavash, cross-posting, you beat me to it!

Yeah, there is this other video of Bobby McFerrin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-diB65scQU

They all steal from each other always!

BTW, it reminded me of a story:
There was a poet-mystic here that died some decades ago. His son, a poet, says that once we were gathered somewhere, someone came in and told my father that a thief has stolen all the carpets that you had in your house. My father said: Where they have taken them? Have they taken them out of universe or are they still in this universe? The guy said: No I think they are still in this universe. My father said: Then it's alright. So far we were using them, now let's them use it.

I replied to your post Niels, but at the end of the thread ;)

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Don%27t_Worry,_Be_Happy

Thanks Chris.

Now that there is music in the air, let's end this thread with a piece of music from younger generations:

https://youtu.be/QYbUWOMdglU


Link to the next log (noted obsession):

https://www.dharmaoverground.org/discussion/-/message_boards/message/22409581