There remained one last lesson to perfect my koan setup. It had not undergone a true suffering test – the fatigue/pain cycle characteristic of my illness.
In my latest health trial, I’d cut down to just shrimp and rice. I hypothesized that either shrimp or Blue Ice was causing problems. Gradually I reduced shrimp intake until I was getting either insufficient protein or salt, or both. As malnutrition increased, various symptoms of fatigue and salt depletion increased. I began eating more to compensate, until I overloaded my weak digestive system, triggering a sharp cramp cycle.
This was all very painful in various ways and stages, and tested my ability to maintain work ethic and right action through suffering and fatigue. Adherence to koans and right action dropped off as my biological capacities diminished.
I rallied by placing a skull beneath the heart symbol. Meaning: memento mori, to the death, unconditional commitment. Instead of placing one foot on the koans, now I placed both there. I surrendered personality and overmind ndependence. The koans became the only thing. Gazing at my hands became the default gesture.
The qualitative difference in my work was profound. I had surroundered overmind control and was operating on pure subconscious/holistic insight.
A journal entry capturing the epiphany of this new method:
koans are directing my life from now on, making all decisions. amazing experience. like water. don’t really know who i am anymore. i’m not me, i’m them. it. whatever. like thinking you’re the ocean and looking down from above, all you see is pointless expanse of grey waves. but then you take a piece of glass, flatten that water, break surface tension, suddenly you can see the whole ocean. the glass doesn’t change the ocean, just reveals it. what’s there is there. you can’t change what’s there. you can only apply the koans, and reveal it. then the ocean does what it wants. end of story. the only overt willpower i can apply is through the koans.
For example, I immediately put into place a comprehensive, intelligent, disciplined, sustainable health experiment tracking and regimen adherence system combining Emacs Cyborganize workflow, checklists, custom FileMaker Pro database, phone alarms, and taped printouts. It is orders of magnitude better than my previous abortive attempts.
Why did my previous attempts at holistic systems fail, while this one succeeded? Because one root system must rule them all. That root system is the koans. All other systems must expand or contract to according to the dictates of the master system. Otherwise, dissonance arises over conflicting and suboptimal demands from subsystems and sub-objectives.
This is the permanent stable point I was seeking.
After the koan system, the second most important system is health/regimen control and tracking, with an info management system adequate to support it. All that is now in place.
It appears from my data that I already found the correct health regimen, then drifted from it due to Circadian stress from work and insufficient systematization of regimen habits and food quantities. In any case, my newly structured experimental apparatus will quickly resolve remaining ambiguities. As far as Google can tell me, there is nothing like my system in existence. I look forward to sharing it, after a bit more testing and elaboration.
Furthermore, what I am doing with Cyborganize, Filemaker Pro and Xplorer is fully extensible. I see a possibility to build similarly practical fuzzymetadata+richtext experimenttracking+adherence+infomanagement+execution systems for multiple life domains. The future is here, it just isn’t evenly distributed.
UPDATE: Expect a month’s delay on posts. I eventually got fed up with the Post Autoschedule plugin – it simply doesn’t work if you revise articles in the queue. That explains the recent weirdness with posts appearing and then moving to different time stamps or back into queue.
I don’t want posts to go live right as I write them, so from now on I’ll just increment the datestamp one month ahead. That will permit me time to revise and digest. I prefer not to interact with commenters while I’m still near the heat of the writing process.
UPDATE II:
One last addition to make to the koans.
The skull works for pain, when defiance is an option, due to the adrenaline rush. But eventually all reserves are exhausted. The end of my typical illness cycle always features this. Then any overmind will-push falters and fails, generating frustration and anxiety. The shattered mind turns against itself, creating self-destructive behavior.
At first, this cycle was no different. I had lost the capacity for defiance necessary to activate the skull trigger; I had nothing left. But then I realized the last non-dissonance-inducing trigger left to me – rest. The only thing left that I could do. I added that trigger below the skull, and once again slipped into the proper state and right action. So now all phases are covered.