I’ve continued to play video games some each day and had a celibacy accident. Damn that every movie has stuff not helpful to someone trying to be celibate. While the game playing costs energy, my thinking seems simpler, as I hoped (and thus more like normal people).

On Friday at work, I took notes to meditate on later and this looks like it’ll continue and goes well with thought provoking podcasts. I also cut back to only one one hour meditation to see if it improves quality. So far I don’t see it.

Main topic I was trying to meditate on was what do I want out of life. I figure if I can get it in words, I can measure my life by it much easier. This is maybe the 5th time I’ve tried. At our retreat I had “permanence” but didn’t think much about it. And this week, I went from to answer existential angst, to enlightenment, to right now it’s just feeling want/lacking, all words are interpretations.

A few more inisghts. Also I acted on 2 inspirations, 1. getting a mini-confrontation group on decisions started with others who expressed doubts about decision making and 2. to add something I enjoy to my life: playing some video games. I don’t know whether it’s unfortunate or not, but, as I feared, “1 hour” never happened. I couldn’t turn away for a long time, missing all but two morning meditations, not sleeping enough for work, and watching my energy dissapear but my decision always to keep playing, or after a break, go back.

This morning I woke up disgusted with the game but as the day wears on and I realize it’s chalk full of unpleasantries (and why so damn many?) ignoring them and playing looks appealing again. A little game playing usually has a good effect on my mind: life doesn’t feel like an endless miserable to-do list, my honesty with others and in my thinking increases, and I feel more on a same plane with others. But I can never keep it to a little.

I don’t know what I want next week. On one level I want to put time into some of these insights, on another level, I see a miserable to-do list before me and want to find a kinder experience. I don’t want to keep putting off my to-do list but I’d also like to not be such a miserable slave to it. But I’m afraid I am.

The retreat was very good. Silent periods, silent rapport sittings, participant led sessions, Art and Paul led sessions, and talking until 3am at the fire. I got a huge number of insights and felt after the first day this week had been productive if nothing else happens.

Insights:
My 3 main moods are: 1. an insecure mood I spend the most time in, 2. a very insecure mood I was in that first session Sunday night, 3. a pity/despair mood which is usually, to always, a reaction to tension.
My 4 secondary moods are: 1. Ego boost, which can come from surprising positive feedback from life, 2. spiritual/existential longing, 3. awakeness, 4. an inspired/courageous mood.
Self knowledge is the question. That is: this is my experience, whose experience is it? Dan is the experience.
Two of Shawn’s poems seemed like things I could see so that, “unexpectedly close,” “closer than close,” made possible sense for a moment.

I committed to 30 minutes/day reviewing notes slowly for the next three weeks.

Feedback I got:
– I am happier
– am I too comfortable?
– happier/less weighty
– only awake sometimes – maybe I should work on this (?)
– lighter
– not sureing I’d dave right under the surface (?)
– I should consider studying my dreams. The one I shared for our dreamwork session was a good one
– not having one clear goal for the retreat but rather several goals is “shotgun” approach rather than “rifle” approach
– being not present, spending time in my head
– stoic, able to persist

My mood is pretty influenced by our first day of a week long retreat. Just a little confrontation sends me into a strong self-pity mood. I get convinced I’m totally stuck, a drain on the other seekers who get it, and I wish I could quit but I can’t, or at least crawl in a hole and stop participating in life until it becomes reasonable, but I can’t.

Before this, my week was decent. Some meditation on what do I want out of life, which could get somewhere. I had a very good conversation with Ben. I feel I’m holding back a little but am also pleasantly surprised to hear someone else taking the search seriously. Had an interesting discussion on Landmark Education – do I know I’m going to die? Also: whether this life is the final dream-within-a-dream or not, doesn’t matter, it’s the same observer. Even if other consciousnesses could be experienced, it’d still be by me, the observer. And finally we discussed, does observation/observing end when observation/observed will end? I assume the latter event will occur with the body’s death (or final dream’s body’s death, as the case may be) but if observation/observing’s source is unknown, there may be room to question this.

High tension returned on Thursday. I eat a lot. I don’t know what is going on but worry it’s not even the final tension. That seeing girls when postering increases it so much it seems unfortunately possible it’s not final – unfortunate because one conviction I’m having is I don’t want to fight life any more, which means I’m ignoring my to-do list and haven’t been able to focus on any of my meditations this week. But this can’t go on.

I did have something good when listening to a podcast summarizing Spinoza’s The Ethics. (4/8/09 @ http://www.learnoutloud.com/Catalog/Philosophy/-/The-Philosophy-Podcast/19669) I wrote on Wednesday “Affected me more than anything else today, though I couldn’t follow the logic, even listening to it multiple times.” This made me stop, rewind and listen again:

“The idea is the first thing which forms the being of the human mind. It must be an idea of an individual thing actually existing. … Man thinks. Modes of thought, such as love, desire, or affections of the mind under whatever designation do not exist unless in the same individual exists an idea of a thing loved, desired, etc. But the idea may exist though no other mode of thinking exists. Therefore the essence of man does not necessarily involve existence.”

Did most of my meditations and I seem to be getting back to working off finding an answer after two weeks of slowness. I felt at the time I had to do that and now I think I was right. I’m more conscious of why I meditate but this always happens briefly after a break so I’m hesitant to say it’ll stick though I wish so much it would. I can just see I want to work towards facing the hound of heaven, I want to work towards a clean mental house and when I sit to meditate I feel that more often.

On Saturday I woke up to loud music from my neighbor and so couldn’t fall back asleep the way I normally would to delay the day a bit farther (sleep is productive). While lying in bed the idea hit me I wanted to focus the day on a line of questioning that’d come up in yesterday’s meditation. This is something of a dream for me – to feel inspired to have a priority for a day. I didn’t act on it much but did remember it often. I hope it’ll happen again and I’ll act on it more.

Lots of tension after Sunday PSI meeting. Pity and anger and frustration. Fear. Perfect conflicts. My life is empty and can never be otherwise and I am scared to stop moving. I finally requested time off for retreats and isolations for the year and the company spazzed. I do not see it as unreasonable and think if I ask to see it from their perspective that will be interpreted as asking too many questions.

Worse than usual I didn’t get much done – missed some meditations and not keeping up with my to-do list. I was trying to do what I wanted to, which was reading a personality type web forum I like. Someone sent me an excerpt from John Kent’s thesis which has this line on progress I can identify with this week:

“Rose asserts that Realization is all at once, or not at all: “You don’t go anywhere until you arrive.” Yet, there is a qualifying aspect to this. One can “position” oneself for its happening. The task can be likened to a large balloon tied to the earth by a thousand cords. The balloon cannot fly away until every cord is cut. It either remains bound or it is free; there is nothing in-between. Yet, the work is in the form of severing each cord, one at a time; the cords being ignorance, identification, egotism, delusion, lust, and so on. Until the final cord is cut, it is true that the balloon remains fastened to the earth and it seems to the seeker that no progress has been made, despite all of one’s efforts. Yet, progress can be considered to consist of the continual severance of the bonds, until the last one is finally cut—or the lift of the balloon’s force impatiently tears it out of the ground, stake and all.”

Two conviction states

My mood varied this week: It went from lows of I am making no progress and never will, to optimism. The lowest one came from some combination of feedback that indicated I’m still on beginner stuff (so have 20 years of work left) and seeing my weight has gone up (which undoubtedly contributed to my mood). Optimism would just return eventually as some encouraging fact would show up.

My weekend was at my mother’s house, and on the way down I watched my mood switch from I-want-to-drive-my-car-off-the-road-but-am-afraid despair to maybe-I-am-making-progress optimism. On the drive back there wasn’t as much volatility but in a mood I composed a poem, which is unusual. It’s too embarrassing to post.

It would be frightening and unbalancing how convinced I am in these two opposite convictions states, but I’m currently in the optimistic one.

High Tension

I want to stab this week. My last meditation restored some hope but my tension over feeling I’m so in my head, I’m not seeking, never started, and am in a very uncomfortable rut, was getting huge and maybe it was just a temporary release valve. When it gets this confrontational (like most days) I want the fetal position, but that isn’t enough. Inspiration could be a way out — or more non-action, procrastination of getting serious.

This sense I haven’t moved is so horrible and usually I dissipate its tension by indulging in ego boosts and false inspirations (apparently false after the confrontation I’ve gotten). I am running, but I remember that too infrequently to act on that perspective.

Egotism and progress

Meditation-wise I missed half. I’ve been splitting the two one-hour sessions commitment into one one-hour session with five minutes prior to choose a topic and one one-hour session where I work on insecurity. One day I noted “action is so nice”.

Went to TAT’s April meeting and was caught in my thoughts and spinning almost the whole time. Actually, this is probably not unusual – paying attention would be unusual. My two main battles were 1. between a part that wants to expand my ego and a part that is afraid of the inevitable feeling of new attachments being torn away and 2. between putting attention on that battle of egotism and defensiveness and a part that values truth. On the good side I did see some of my psychology, some new robotic viewable stuff, at least for now.