turtle log

Thank you, Joel, much appreciated. Seems like compassion and surrender are kind of mixing in with this on their own right now.

Sat a.m 65 mins. Noting predominant sensation from 4Fs. Pressure, pulsing, tingling, pleasant, head tension relaxing, pain, unpleasant, relaxing, softness, pleasant, contact, uncertainty, image, mild pressure and pulling lower center forehead, itches on top of head, slightly painful tingling at the middle of the top of my head, felt like energy pushing up there, interest, checking in with lower body, soft pressure higher up in the center of forehead, eyes aiming there, eyes started fluttering, remembered practice of looking at strobing, investigating, searching for a word, more subtle than usual anxiety, investigating, wondering how to note, image, remembering, anxiety against backdrop of softness, catching urge to change current uncertainty and anxiety by noting something else, stayed with the general unpleasant uncertainty across the upper trunk, a couple of interruptions. Recent memory and anticipation fragments. Feeling of worry, tension. Brief brake to write the sequence of sensations so far.

Noting uncertainty, feeling like I need to settle on something but don't know what, displacement endorphin energy up to the head, sense of slightly weary/wary surrender back into the chest and abdomen, acknowledging underlying state of uneasy, wavering, uncertainty. Not knowing what to do, not feeling safe. No way to settle. Since yesterday I'd been feeling into Rob_Mtl's "Did I make this moment happen? Can I make it un-happen?" So tried to allow the unpleasant, unsettledness even though didn't seem to be any handle I could get on it. Experimented with how to stay with steady noting without stirring up stress in the head and constriction in the chest, and investigating how to notice the thought/effort to change or judge what's happening.

Sun a.m. 1hr: hit the ground hoping it would be running, noting predominant from 4Fs. A quick sequence of sila/karma thoughts and wondered if that was 2nd nana. Relatively very strong, fast and energetic sensations all over. Fairly ordinary, but hyped up. Felt very energized for noting about .5 hz. Objectively most of the sensations were upleasant, jagged, hyper, a lot of tension and pressure, some pain. But I felt like noting them as pleasant because they were so energized and easy to note and I felt so revved up. I read about the dukkha nanas, that I never remember, last night, and was surprised this morning to see that I seemed well into them so quickly this sitting. Uncertainty and trepidation, face contortions and grimacing. Strong feeling of despair and like who cares about this s**t in my life. A rabid feeling like I'm just going to do this! Most of the time, though, I was just noting and finding it interesting, almost enjoying the clarity and energy of being able to note the changing sensations. At the same time, though, I had an aversion to taking an objective stance but wanted to note the sensations full on.

(Last night my wife and I went to dinner with some old friends who have been going to lots of retreats for years. We used to have in common commiserating about our lack of progress but by now he is into stages of enlightment, and I feel self conscious and inadequate when we get together. Sat for a bit before going and, instead trying to chill out and get calm and centered, I tried to find any anxiety and tension and stir it up, make it even worse, and note the sensations. This has been bringing me to an unpleasantly fearful place in the middle of my chest. It feels caved in and claustrophobic. It's most obviously anxious but it seems like under that is uncertainty.)

During 2nd half of this sitting tried exploring this area of chest-related sensations. Seems like it required being a little choiceless and not over focusing at it, but having an interest in that direction. Started getting the hang of it and, instead of a vaguely amorphous aversive anxiety, started finding the gradations and changes of tightness, pressure, pain, claustrophobia, vibratory, vulnerable, uncertainty, unclarity, pulsing, rising and falling.

Immediately after felt unusually open and expressive with my wife for a littl while, before starting to get a little maxed out with hyper agitation and tightness all around and over my head. This continues a couple of hours later and hard to have any kind of settled mindfullness. Just trying to go with how it is.

In 201-203, above, it was mostly a working weekend before this hugely hi-profile deadline on Monday morning. But I had practice momentum going so did extra sitting all weekend anyway. Then, being a programming project, ended up working until 4:30 am and dashing off to work on 2 hours sleep. Followed by a couple more long days and short nights scrambling to finish a fairly big-deal deadline on Wednesday, and finally an ordinary deadline on Friday. Felt like I was toast and my practice a train wreck.

Spent the next week trying to get my practice back on track and beyond discouraged, kind of like grimly determined fatalism. This cycle of getting my practice revved and running, then rug pulled out by crazy work demands is as predictable as a hamster wheel.

So, with new years coming up, reflected on how to approach this more successfully. I mean, am I expecting something other than that circumstances will be good, for more or less time, then bad, and then get worse or better? So, started reading MCTB, which 1st made me believe I could really do this despite being a circumstance driven householder. I forgot that nothing gets me more fired up and detail-oriented than MCTB. Including this zinger "Until you can get into access concentration, you ain't got squat."

"The essential point about meditation is this: to get anywhere in
meditation you need to be able to really steady the mind and be present.
That's just all there is to it and it is largely a question of just doing it.
There is an important shift that happens in people's practice when they
really make the commitment to developing concentration and follow
through with it. Until one does this, not much is likely to happen in
one's meditative practice! If you decide to do a concentration practice,
stay on that object like a rabid dog until you have enough stability and
skill to let the mind rest on it naturally."

The past few days my determination and rabidity have been high and I'm devoted to getting concentrated in a deliberate, effortful, striving and straining kind of way. Mostly I'm noting but doing it with an umph and no pretense of choiceless awareness. If I do get quiet and still then I rev up the conentration again to make sure it's happening. Things are vibrating pretty much and I feel like I can see more of what's going on and keep practicing more off the cushion. It feels like a hypomanic, A&P kind of state, also familiar. But I'm trying to get the concentration and dedication up to a higher level to see if I can keep from folding the next time work hits me with a truck, probably in a few days. Also trying to catch the start of the little choices I make during the day, do they support mindfulness. And break the day down into bits, if I can remember, and start them with an intention to be mindful.

" to get anywhere in meditation you need to be able to really steady the mind and be present.
That's just all there is to it and it is largely a question of just doing it.
There is an important shift that happens in people's practice when they
really make the commitment to developing concentration and follow
through with it. Until one does this, not much is likely to happen in
one's meditative practice! If you decide to do a concentration practice,
stay on that object like a rabid dog until you have enough stability and
skill to let the mind rest on it naturally.""

This has always been an inspiring passage for me as well. However, with the work demands that you've got, it seems like understanding the process of how suffering comes into being--regardless of your own level of concentration--might be equally important. I'm not exactly the best yogi to give someone advice, so take it with a grain of salt!
But it seems like you might be almost setting yourself up here because it's really hard to maintain a high level of concentration if you have to burn the candle and both ends and use all of your processing power thinking in computer code for hours and hours. It's almost like having metta for yourself and being super-vigilant about not making things worse with 'second arrow' stuff once the first arrow strikes, which you know it will based on past work-history patterns, might be helpful. Still, your level of determination is inspiring.

Joel, I know what you mean and don't actually know what I'm going to do the next time circumstances get turned up to 11. Hoping to approach it with as much energy as I can summon.

Sunday a.m., 85 mins: Felt buzzy and jumpy, so focused on attention shifting between tingling of left and right index finger tips. My interest was piqued after reading D.Ingram's description of how to note impermance of thoughts as sensations and started trying that. When an evaluation, judgement or intention came up, it looked like there was always an image associated with it in my head. Run-on words might be halted or truncated by attention, but an image was still prevalent. So, tried catching any changes in the image. Even just an image fragement -- of a boss or co-worker, party I have to go to later, something I should do -- was followed by constriction sensations in my chest, but I focused on image changes.

This turned out to be pretty see-able. Not only did they change but were interrupted by other sensations. Occured to me, as per MCTB, I do usually have an unconscious assumption the self image persists while it's "interrupted", so I tried to see whether it actually ends and is replaced by the next sensation followed by a new self image. This was really interesting, and I just felt interested not like in a deep state. Noticed that investigating this way put me in a very attentive physical and mental position. Then I tried focusing on beginnings of image thought impulses, just trying to catch start ups. That seemed to work and was disorienting but I went with it. Seemed possible to apply this to everything that came up including restlessness and irritation when my neighbor cranked the music up and the start of thoughts that it's too hard to meditate through loud bad music (though that finally got to me).

Eye fluttering and strobing started toward the end, and I was interested to check it out, since I've never had much sense of catching beginnings before. Usually with strobing I just don't know what you're supposed to see about it. This time it seemed more intriguing but strobing didn't last long. Right after, getting something to eat and talking with my daughter, I could kind of catch from corner of my eye image impulse beginnings but seemed like maybe it was the habit force of eating and talking and stimuli overload that I couldn't keep following it.

Sun pm, 30 mins. The last 2 days I've frequently remembered my strongish intention to be mindful, and then I try but it feels like I don't have the strength to maintain that through the subsequent complexity of activity. When I'm trying to be mindful in activity there's this puzzling relationship with mental self-image I've been struggling with, often trying to overcome or get thru it, and sometimes just to investigate. A literal, visible self image, somewhere around my eyes, comes up continually. Amazingly it almost always represents how I would think I look to match the mood and/or action I'm having or doing at that moment. If I'm not paying attention to it, there's a feeling that seems to be identifying with it. Strangely, it seems like in-attention rests on that image, almost like it rides on it while I move around acting out ideas and volitions. When I remember to try to pay attention, it's like the 1st thing I see is that image stream I'd been cruising on, that supposedly is how I'm supposed to look while having the current emotion, thought or intention.

It feels like a big problem, but I can't quite put my finger on what the problem is. Maybe it's like even when I'm somewhat aware, while I'm moving aroud, active the attention is too weak and the idenfication feeling remains strong. Or like the identification feeling is like a magnet that pulls my week attention on to the image and then doesn't see all the other changing sensations. So if I deliberately note fast, I can push the attention off the image and start catching the usual sensations. But it ends up feeling like a battle with the imaging process. The whole thing seems kind of bizzare, but I've been more or less struggling with for years. Although recently I seem to be investigating it more.

(Makes me cringe to use the word, "identification". It just seems to match this particular, local sensation. The processes of *ego* identification must be much more complicated than that.)

Sitting tonight this image thing felt more impersonal, like the identification feeling wasn't much there. I noticed a tension that when relaxed it must have been a struggle to hold the images down, and energy just came up and felt lighter. It seemed like images and even thoughts were kind of obviously not a problem and didn't need any effort to mess with them. Attention would waver and the thoughts would take off but there was some awareness that that was happening, so it still didn't seem like a problem and then attention would come back apparently on its own. But in retrospect that was being seen and it didn't seem desirable to jump in on the side of attention. very interesting.

Another interesting thing is that when I try to note, there is an image of me trying to note, that I don't usually catch and note. Typing this there is a series of images of me doing the things I'm describing, or of me typing and explaining. What a trip. I'm catching that part of the reason I don't feel like I'm fully seeing the image of what I'm doing while active, is that I want to do that thing and settling down to square-on see the image would also relax the urge to do what I'm wanting. Cool. Relaxing the wanting doesn't necessarly sound cool.

Mon 90 mins. Since I believe this is a&p territory I've been in for at least a couple of days, I skimmed MTCB for some DK details. But starting to sit, seemed I went right back into a&p. The self-pictures were prominent, so I tried to see them changing. The changes in the images went with a movement of sensation across some bodily area, like an energy wave. Or they were followed by a constriction reaction usually in my trunk, and/or a volition reaction, which involved a pressure or contraction. I tried to catch how any parts changed, and when one sensation had shifted to another. In retrospect, I think I was catching middles of sensations at that point. It was pretty good to realize that last moment's sensation was no longer happening and clearly see that this was a new and different one.

Then started noticing that the idea of an image as a wave, coming up and then getting replaced by a body sensation etc, the changes and alternations were actually happening faster than that. Since all this seemed so visible, On tip from MCTB starting trying to catch any sensations around this I could find. And noticed things like that looking at a sensation changing was itself changing sensations. At this point seeing was so continuous that I had stopped noting. It seemed like I was catching thoughts, intentions, reactions and images as they were coming up. And for awhile I was taking in beginnings. Focusing at the images was obvioulsy one of the things changing, and kind of constrictive or disturbing, so things became passive. But at this point I was so into catching things change that I wasn't hanging out for long to think about what the state was, or get involved in changing or continuing it or the usual stuff.

It seemed like the sense of continuity of self pictures has been like a glue holding sensations tightly together. Seeing images have gaps and then get replaced by uncertainty or unfamiliar discontinuity and just staying with how all that changed, felt like the glue was unsticking and there were a lot of shaking kriyas with this. It felt like attention was not just coming from my head but might be at the area of some sensation in another part of my body. This started seeming like that some of the background was getting penetrated, not just the foreground. Also interesting to notice sometimes when images were connected with the left or right eye. Almost like consciousness was coming from one side of the head or the other and sometimes switching.

At some point I noticed that things were going away quickly after I noticed them. This my first taste of catching the endings of things. Which is supposed to be scarey but it was a relief when an anxious contraction would end as soon as I noticed it. This was also the first time I've been really obviously in disolution for an extended time. I had become really chilled out and quiet by this time but it didn't matter because I could still notice things changing, so didn't make much difference if it was a&p or disolution. At this point I got into the phase where it was hard to move. Any time there was some momentarty disatisfaction with my posture, or thought of getting up, it was easy to watch it end and I wasn't motivated to make a big effort to stop. I almost couldn't even put my hands down after shaking kriyas.

Finally got up because I wanted to journal this. I caught a lot more of changes while typing the beginning of this but eventually just got into the memories and describing and started mostly losing my noticing of typing, though it's back right now. Woops it was gone again.

The rest of the day, yesterday, I felt like I'd been at an all day sitting. During the night I woke up feeling some anxiety and became very interested whether I was in DKs. I've been a chronic DK yogi for years, but pretty unconscious of the details of the territory. I've been hoping to start getting a good look at DK nanas and understand them. The energy in my body definitely felt different. I tried triggering an A&P energy surge up the center of the trunk and into my head, that has always been there the last couple of days. And sure enough, it was gone. That area wasn't triggering. Instead, my trunk and especially arms and legs were rippling with an energy that reminded me of oscillating, contigous cells, or like plastic bubble packing filler. It was unpleasant but I was pretty excited about it. Even though it had a kind of out-of-sync vibration, it was so strong and pervasive, it was easy to stay grounded in the arms and legs, as long as aversion didn't get to me.

After about 1/2 hour it suddenly switched to a much quiter, finer energy that still felt distributed like a field uniformly accross my trunk and limbs. On top of the kind of find pointilism, was again a kind of out of sync wave.

A.M. sitting 50 mins. Didn't have enough sleep, but had to sit and see what was happening. Shoot, can't quite remember. I think that fine field with an out of sync wave was continuing. Yesterday I'd been watching what came up and noting "when will it change?". That still seemed to work but resorted to noting more. I was amazed and disappointed when the time was up, felt like 20 mins.

At work today I was thinking, some DKs, felt fine and kind of cheerful. In a meeting something felt different,like I wasn't so much in my own way, and just naturally contributing without so much self concern. Sometimes these sitting states seem so implausible compared to the caught-up-in-habitual-activity states that follow, I wonder if I just imagined them. When something feels different at work, though, it seems to validate that I didn't just fantasize it.

PM 1hr. A full blown cold and sore throat made for very sensuous sitting. Plus sittings lately trigger my migraines, so all of that to notice. Again didn't seem to need to note. Sensations were fast and I was just laying back from them. That developed into a kind of aversion to sensations and knowing sensations, like everything that came up I just wanted to recoil from it and not know it. I've been here a few times before but not recently. Just checked the nana chart and thinking this could be Disgust, which is just below Desire for Deliverance, which I know I've had before and can kind of feel it brewing right now. Right on. I don't know what Reobservation would be like, but hoping I can clearly get there and consciously check it out.

Wed am: 45 mins. Hoped to get up early and sit extra long, but alarm battery died. DKs disappeared! Just a low-key, un-eventful sitting. Figured I might have landed back in 3rd nana. Mild vibratory sensations around trunk and limbs. A few mild itches, not much posture discomfort or kriyas. Anti-climatic. Mostly noted body sensations as well as images, feelings and thoughts. Mindfulness and continuity were OK.

At work more mindful than usual. I noticed that my mindfulness had crossed a familiar threshhold that I haven't been to for awhile; where instead of finding and focusing on sensations, sensations were sometimes coming to me, including mental images. I find that from this more laid back and choiceless stance it's much easier and more interesting to note during daily activity. (I only seem to reach this state if I've been sitting for an hour every morning for awhile.) Sometimes during the day I became interested in how I was seeing indoor lighting or sunlight, investigating that and trying to note it along with sounds, body sensations, and mental images.

PM 1hr. Laid back and quiet. For stretches, didn't feel a need, or at least not a desire, to note. A version of the feeling that my mind didn't want to know, or focus on sensations that came up returned. Kind of like involuntary hot potato. Feeling that sensations were coming to me rather than me going out to them was more pronounced. Started noting when I felt too spacey. Can't remember much about specific sensations, mostly just ordinary. Except for paying attention to seeing light behind closed eyelids and whether I was also making kind of a mental image of the light, or making some kind of unexamined assumptions about it. Like assuming that it was wrap around, 3-D even though I wasn't actually seeing that at any given moment. I wondered if I had slipped past reobservation into some equanimity.

Thursday a.m.got up extra early planning on 90 mins sit, but got into reading KFD journals and ended up with only 50 mins. (Doh! Have to stay away from the PC until after I sit.) I remember that I felt like this sitting was pretty laid back and offered some more evidence that I could be in equanimity, but a few hours later when I tried to journal it, couldn't bring back a single detail. I hope I get paths before alzheimers.

During the day Thursday felt more relaxed and mindful than usual. And when my mind and head started to constrict around a typical work-related thought train and related self image, since the body and mind were more relaxed than that, the constriction was obvious and and the associated mind state felt almost like it had discrete borders, so it felt natural just to let it go. Most of the time I'm so indentified with that constriction/self image/mind state.

Friday, took my wife to the airport real early, no a.m. sitting. Lots of good relating with family Friday evening, so just a short sleepy sit, but felt more mindful than usual.

Saturday a.m. 2 hours. Went to bed and woke up replaying thoughts about a dysfunctional family dynamic, anticipating some confrontation around it. While sitting I kept role playing scenarios for more positive engagement around the issue. Since thinking seemed more creative than usual and anyway irrepressible, I tried to consciously imagine and feel into the scenarios and notice what happened in my body. This felt like breaking the good meditator rules, but I noticed I had so much constriction, literal posture twisting and holding, and fear around the imagined encounters. It was amazing to realize I had never really turned toward this dynamic and actually looked at what was going on. Rather I always turned away from it with defensive and offensive reactions. My scenarios evolved from imagined skillful means (manipulation) to increasingly spare and fact-limited responses and words to say. This took about an hour.

After that I was pretty settled and just relaxed into what seemed like the shikantaza I used to do for a few years at a zen center. I wondered if this is the same as equanimity. It felt like my mind wanted to be motionless and not take anything up that presented. Noting felt disruptive, loud and like something added on. This went on for 1/2 hour until enough restlessness to stir a few thoughts made me try noting again. Especially when I realized I was appreciating and holding on to some of the laid back mind states. Often my attention goes naturally to my head and I have to make some effort to include the body. By this time it felt like the head had nearly quieted down enough so the body could present on its own. I do feel like I need to be more careful about complacency, as others have noted recently.

I noticed yesterday that I was at least some of the time grooving on my laid back and sometimes mindful states and feeling good that I was having them, that my practice was going well. But then I remembered the point is paying attention and noting. Probably sooner than later, this has to change into un-cool states, when it will be clearer there's nothing better than noting to fall back on. It was confusing though, feeling so much more mellow and potentially present, it was hard to tell how often I was actually present. And I felt resistent to energetic, focused noting.

When I sat a couple of times in the p.m., I still felt kind of quiet and chilled out but I noticed my sensations included a lot of tingles and itches, kind of like 3rd nana stuff. On waking this morning, there was a rough, jagged energy and I felt reluctant to leave this and go back to DKs. Last week, coming up from A&P I was looking forward like an adventurer to DKs.

Sun a.m., 85 mins. Still rolling. Felt quiet and still right off. One thing really different about (what I think is) equanimity is the lack of pressures and energy in my head, and feeling more down in the body. I still found attention available for fine detail and changes. But not real great continuity. I tried investigating onset of any spaced out, hypnogogic feelings, which often come with a feeling that my head is filled with comfortable, diffuse, off-white light. There are always changing sensations behind that. Then noticed I was having the sensations of drowsing off and having lucid dream images but awake to and seeing it.

I started having a lot of itches and some posture discomfort, tingly vibrations. Seemed like typical 3rd nana. So, stepped up the effort for detailed noting, attention to quick detail still seemed kind of strong, and felt like I went into A&P sensations with energy coming up to my forehead and eyes strobing. The odd thing was that I felt like I was watching all this from a laid back, chilled out space, and the A&p rush felt like it had a muted impact on my body. So much for amateur diagnostics. Felt like nearly an hour had gone by, surprised when it was an hour & 1/2.

"Then noticed I was having the sensations of drowsing off and having lucid dream images but awake to and seeing it.
"

I get this alot in Low/Mid equanimity.. Dream-like mental images and sounds, people talking , etc.

Interesting. I'm paying a lot of attention to yogis' equanimity discussions lately. This past week is the 1st time I could follow transitioning from A&P to dissolution to some of DK (went by fast) to E. And 1st time I've hung out in equanimity long enough to scope it out some. Maybe it's fall-out from a week long retreat I went to a few weeks ago.

I'm not clear about how to handle an equanimity phase. Is that it will inevitable cycle down thru DKs again, or that you try to cultivate and stabilize E?

I believe the way to handle E is to not care about back-sliding into dark night, which is inevitable and even if you dont, you will experience the DN in later paths so who cares?
Let DN teach you its lessons, embrace it, whenever I get the DN vibrations I think - great, this is another opportunity to develop more equanimity towards ****** sensations, this will serve me well.
^^ Sometimes I also have a hard time with this, but I find this general outlook very helpful in my current practice.
in E i believe the instruction is to widen one's attention and try to see what kind of mental formations you're missing.

Just keep doing what you're doing. The temptation might be to practice less. Note/notice it and move on.
It's not inevitable that you'll slide back down to dark night, but if it happens, that's OK. You don't need to try to stabilize equanimity. You really don't need to force anything at that point.
It can be interesting and valuable, as Yadid points out, to include more subtle grasping/manipulating/projecting/comparing etc kind of stuff relating to the desire to get stream entry, doubt, etc. If that's not helpful to you, don't worry about it and see my previous comments about not needing to force anything, and keep doing what you're doing.

Thanks Yadid and nadavspi! This seems like good advice, I've been trying it out. I'll catch up my log on that later.

I feel kind of bad about dissing the years of meditating and retreats I went to because they failed to get me to paths. I wonder if the strata of mind could have a pathological basement, where a physio-energetic process could potentially move up decreasingly damaged levels to reach the vipassana map baseline. Aside from periods of spinning my wheels it has often felt like that to me over the years.

For example, across at least 4 generations of my father's line there's been a "family curse" that's nowdays regarded as a high prevelance of schizophrenia, autism, neurological and cognitive disorders. And these are increasingly considered physiological, but with potential for plasticity. And huge percent of this family have been ministers, missionaries, converts and with a tendency to zero in on the meditation parts of a religion. And sometimes to get better and more functional over time.

Such as, when I was young I was a ship wreck with a grim outlook but eventually pulled off quasi-middle class life style (shakily) with education, career and family. On the other hand, if I don't continue meditating a lot, I start to backslide into states that I usually feel like I'm beyond. But if I keep meditating it seems like there's development. Like the last couple of years I've been recognizing and feeling capable of relaxing from the habit of using meditation to hold myself together. Maybe that's where paths would make all the difference if they permanently changed the wiring.

From that perspective, all the meditation and retreats don't seem like a waste.

For about a week it felt like my practice was power assisted. The stretch of equanimity was really interesting. Trying to balance between complacency and too much effort. Last Sunday night I felt like I needed extra sitting right then, but had to do programming work. During the night had some harsh energies.

At work I seemed to have a whole new angle on mindfulness. Since I've had these standards about what states are mindful, my project has been to get back to the mindful ones. So even though I had recollection I could still fail to be mindful because I wasn't doing it right. Now it struck me that just being present was all that was required because it was all objectifiable. Sounds so obvious.

I was single-Dad for a week with my wife out of town. And with the usual work schedule, sitting time took a hit. At first the new mindfulness held up anyway, but the insight gradually became less obvious as the week of less sitting went on. So I had to work with my new understanding by practicing it rather than just having it served up. Basically this means noting the self images and intentions but catching their discontinuity by seeing how they change and get replaced by other sensations.

Today was my first chance to get extra sitting again but not as much as I wanted because of the need to practice family sila, which feels very solid. It's dawning on me that I need to and probably can find my mindfulness practice more in this good sila practice. I have to be efficient with my time and jump on chances to sit, but that can't be my only main practice time.

Spent a couple of days in some intense DKs and on day 2 had to reflect hard on that, even though it was totally convincing, my DK content was not for real. Now it feels like I'm back in 3rd/4th nanas. My wife is back. So back to focused concentration and effort. Had maybe a total of 2 hours sitting today and recharging my mindfulness batteries.