It’s a bizarre feeling when everything starts to work at once. There were so many necessary but not sufficient components to return me to a reasonably functional level. I seem to have finally stepped over that threshold. Instead of merely having achieved minimal biological stability and productivity for some of each day, I’m at moderately subpar biological health and moderately above average productivity each day.
The rice content of my meals had indeed crept up too high, a conservative tendency that resulted in a subtle buildup of malnutrition forcing overeating to get at the buried meat nutrients. Cutting back by half fixed the problem dramatically. I estimate it cut fatigue at least by half, and improvements continue to accrue.
At the same time, I noticed my meditation getting a little bit fuzzy. Switching between using visualizing a point and using chains diluted its efficacy. Yet neither could be discarded. I also noticed that the point visualization was strong on inhale and weak on exhale. The chains visualization on the other hand displayed the opposite tendency.
So I combined them. Point on inhale, chains on exhale. And the meditative results immediately jumped from great to absurd.
- Problems I wasn’t even trying to solve with meditation were solved. Problems I thought were permanent features of my psyche, things I simply had to live with, were solved.
- I lost or mostly lost the need to switch in and out of meditation when engaging overmind thought, e.g. in writing or speaking or thinking. Words became vastly less necessary, thoughts vastly less distracting. The subconscious was processing everything. I think benefits will continue to accrue as I lose the dependence on linear discursive inner monologue thought.
- Productivity improved greatly, qualitatitively and quantitatively. I simultaneously grew more aware of the operation of the real engine of productivity, the r-mode brain. I came to understand that I had previously been trying to over-optimize l-mode task switching for productivity, to the detriment of r-mode needs and style. Task switching incurs a cost because relevant context must be loaded into r-mode “RAM” in order to make intelligent holistic evaluations.
- Frictional resistance to starting and continuing work greatly decreased. The friction that remained was no longer undesirable, but beneficial. It represented the time needed for r-mode to disengage from the previous problem and load the next. E.g., when solving a complex technical problem, my conscience wanted me to switch to another task during a lengthy download. I didn’t do so, which would’ve previously occasioned guilt stress and friction. But this time I realized I needed to keep the problem loaded in r-mode, thus requiring single-tasking. High fatigue levels at that time meant I needed to single-task, that I couldn’t afford task switching without an unacceptable voltage drop. The new meditation permitted me to complete the task optimally – on time and under budget.
- The harmful effects of the info-obsessive concentration trance appear to be broken. This held true both for engrossing entertainment and complex frustrating work. Appropriate switching occurred naturally and without l-mode involvement. I consumed entertainment where appropriate to rest, closed eyes for deeper rest, and worked, all intertwined in a congruent weave far beyond the capabilities of l-mode to orchestrate. Guilt was silenced, conscience satisfied, and the l-mode awed into silence.
- The impact of all negative emotions was severely blunted and attenuated, yet without the soul deadening or suppression that typically accompanies such effects when achieved by word-based koans. In other words, I became absurdly tough, without losing humanity or misaligning personality.
- The burden of conscious thought and decisionmaking was lifted, replaced by superior and effort-free automaticity. The only act of will necessary was that of maintaining the meditation itself, which is pleasurable and fairly light. True, the higher the fatigue, the greater the effort required, and the spottier the results. However, the meditation degrades very gracefully as fatigue increases. Nothing really bad happens, except that the proportion of rest/entertainment to work changes, without ever becoming pathological.
I haven’t finished testing the social effects yet, but preliminary data indicates a similar trend of great to absurd.
The best part of this is that it appears I can simply throw out all my words and act unconsciously from now on. This means the largest workload in my life, l-mode due diligence to ensure compliance with conscience, is now just gone.
In entertainment news, I’m watching the Fargo series and playing the Lana Del Ray for background music videos.
I’ve got some logistical tangles to fix before I start work on KS again. Problems I lacked strength to solve for several weeks have been knocked out in a couple of days, with the combination of reduced rice and improved meditation. In my previous posts, I was celebrating being off Death Row, basically. Now I’m celebrating escape from the chain gang, and the beginning of life on easy mode. These things are relative. As Manson said, it’s a long hard road out of hell.
None of this could’ve happened if I hadn’t spent the entire summer incapacitated, deliberately pushing myself to the edge of malnutrition and holding there to collect valid data. I’ve been through hell many times, but I had to return and painstakingly chart every step through it to find my way out. The one good thing about the place is it’s hot enough to burn away every false hypothesis.