Hello friends. I hope you're all well and making progress in your chosen paths, wherever you happen to be wandering.
It sure did get deathly quiet around here - I feel like everyone sank into solitary contemplation at around the same time. But a pandemic is as good an excuse as any to touch base and see how everyone's going. I don't have anything groundbreaking to share so I thought I'd do a quick where I'm at post. I'd love to hear where you're at as well.
For my own part - I finally acknowledged to myself that the pursuit of wisdom, knowledge and power is the abiding and sole focus of my life, and has been, really, from as early as I can remember. I relieved myself of a lot of unnecessary guilt in coming to terms with this. It's not that I don't care about other things, or other people - but I perceive them differently now, as fitting within the framework of my pursuit, not in competition with it. They're sub-headings, not a whole different essay.
To this end, I made a lot of changes, rearranging things so that contemplation and practice were at the centre of my life. What did this achieve?
Well. Lol. Things never move as fast as I want them to.
I'm always engaged in "kicking the walls of reality," so to speak. I feel like this is less skilful practice and more frustration-driven destruction - but seeing the occasional crack appear in the plaster of our physical experience is satisfying! Even if it doesn't happen nearly enough. Some strange things happened. I saw what I can only describe as a "cloaked" spider walking across the ceiling of my house one day, only to have it disappear when I got up and examined it closely. A bunch of standard "haunted house" stuff started happening around me - being held down in bed while wide awake, doors opening of their own volition, yadda yadda.
None of it was frightening nor, I think, particularly meaningful (well... the spider DOES make me stop and think from time to time). Basically if you randomly kick walls you're going to randomly cause destruction and that's probably all there is to say about that - but I mention it because it's mildly interesting.
Contemplation-wise, the nature of self, personality and identity continues to hold my attention. I had a lucid dream recently - one of those gift from the gods types, where I hadn't even been trying to LD but wham! There I was, with a high degree of lucidity.
In this dream I was fully aware of this life, of the body in the bed dreaming the encounter. What made this LD novel for me though was the sense that I was emotionally attached to and detached from that dreamer's life at one and the same time. I wasn't quite occupying the position of omniscience and omnipotence that I aim for, but I was in a "higher" state than in waking life because I had more choices. The emotional attachments and things I find important in this life felt real and vital but they did not feel urgent. There are other dreams - infinite other dreams - with attachments and concerns of their own and there is time (or no time) for all of them. It was nice to experience, if only for a brief moment, something that we theorise about a lot here. It's a good state, I now know, to inhabit. Worth striving for.
Worthiness continues to plague me. This is an unhealthy recurrent pattern for me. u/mindseal has a great post somewhere here about the trap of feeling as if you have to gain confidence through overcoming challenges. Right now I'm stuck between knowing this is true and knowing this is true. If anyone has tips or tricks they've used to tackle this particular hurdle, feel free to send 'em my way!
Other than that - over to you guys. I hope your travels have brought you something you think worth sharing!