corbin learns deep okayness any%

20251129 notes

ok so starting today i'm trying the experiment of

i think the main thing that directly contributes to wellbeing gainz is the reactivity inquiry practice, but i think in the past i've had rly tangible gainz from all these other things so i wanna try using them as powerups

i was rly confused abt the mechanism and what is rly the gap

im kinda confused on what the "gap" is supposed to be in reactivity inquiry, it feels kinda abstract to me

rn i think abt things like

event --> uncomfy but mostly neutral sensations ("chest is tense lol") --> suffering, tension, mental flinching ("the blob of badness in my chest feels rly rly bad") --> action, coping mech, stories / mental chatter

where is the "gap" here that fetters ppl refer to?

cuz sometimes when i read abt it (eg owen) he's talking abt "when x, i feel sadness. where is the sadness button?" and so it seems like the gap is between [uncomfy sensations] and [suffery tension]

but then when i listen to angelo dilullo talk about it, it seems like he's talking about the gap being the place inbetween [uncomfy sensations] and "i have to leave" -- so it seems like he's referring to just sitting in what im referring to as the [suffery tension]

and then with simplytheseen website or Michael's explanations, i feel like what theyre articulating just doesnt rly click with me

after the past few days of thinking about reactivity inquiry + playing/tinkering around with some mini experiments (note, note), my current understanding is smth like . perhaps it's very very similar to the cold shower flinching mechanism (tweet, tweet, tweet)

rn im thinking about it like . cold shower --> uncomfy sensations ("it's cold") --> suffering, tension, mental flinching ("this feels rly bad, i wanna leave") --> action (stepping out of this cold water)

and then just trying to sit in the stage of "this feels rly bad, i wanna leave" and just kinda telling my mind "nah its okay let's sit in this cold water" (metaphorically, not literally, i mean for the sucky experience)

and then that over time that sorta softens the [action of leaving] and also softens the [impulse to leave]

(**)

and like maybe it's just abt progressive overload of getting used to cold showers and not getting out + less bracing/tensing/clenching/suffering + eventually not getting the urge to leave

which sorta matches angelo dilullo's explanation of it?

hopefully i'm getting it right and i could definitely see how i could construct some kind of mappings such that people are all talking abt the same thing -- but idk whatever WHATEVER im just gonna practice

i asked my friend uli about this and he said

i think you just wanna run many small experiments and see what causes a meaningful shift or change to reactivity
there are a lot of pointers. "See that there aren't two types of sensations, just one" "everything is see hear feel" "nothing can compel you" "what's reacting?" "where's the reaction button?" ... not all of these are that great but experiment a lot with like, 5min each imo

it's ok if you don't have enough sensory clarity to see what's going on, and it's just at the lvl of "I sit in this question and reactivity goes down... huh"

yeah another strategy is just do nothing practice after pulling up the trigger
to a large degree it's just habituating non reaction so if you can practice non reaction despite causal sensations arising from a trigger, profit. Another way

maybe call Teddy or someone to try and get an experiential pointer that's good for u?
idk
don't get discouraged tho measure progress wisely. this is all progress
time when no suffering reduction is happening actively is still progress cuz you're learning. at least for me that helps to keep in mind (And it's true)

provided you're doing experiments you expect to teach you something, you're learning

i also asked teddy and he responded saying

loosely here I would say
- the uncomfortable sensations are a sign of conditioning coming up
- the gap is between that and suffering+action (*ish*, the term suffering is kind of a black hole)

hm so I think there's an angle here where you can train reactivity by just repeatedly going into badness and allowing yourself to relax (into it), no need for gap stuff

since the gap is justa tool for unlearning habitual tensing against perceived-as-bad sensations (nothing wrong with that perception, though this is a whole nother rabbit hole), and being able to have bad sensations come up and automatically be accepted as "ok this is now in experience"

and the repeated relaxing may train the same thing

but idk no sample size on this yet

it's just that just like with you, the gap thing tends to be hard for people to do

though I think also this might be because there's a fixation on "am I doing this right"

rather than just doing this intention of going into and staying in the gap and letting the "mind" figure it out, ie invoke/invent this whole motion and concept just from that firmly confidently held intention

so right now my current understanding is yeah okay maybe i can think about it like the cold shower. or at least for now let's experiment with that frame and see how it turns out

some notes:

i think also it may just be like . i'm reminded of when i started running and the first few weeks i was sorta confused about how to make progress, bc the feedback loop was sorta large (like you can't do an experiment and get immediate feedback, it takes days to weeks to see any results) and so i think it may be kinda like that -- and it may just even take 1-2 weeks before "your body sorta gets that you're trying to build this muscle" in a sense

and i feel like one of my concerns is smth like . i can't see the gap betw [uncomfy sensations] and [suffering experience] . but i can definitely do the thing that i talked abt in (**) and maybe it'll just take 1-2 weeks of practice (or like 3-10 hours) before things become legible and whatnot, and maybe i'll actually see the "gap" a lot clearer or smth

also, i'm starting to think that Maybe my one month of meditation during summer 2022 i actually slightly weakened reactivity maybe, even tho i was just doing another technique. i do remember feeling like my mind was much more collected (or "present" and opposite of scattered) and feeling significantly less neurotic and i could handle triggering situations more skillfully/grounded/present (not crazy OOMs but definitely significant difference). there was also cold shower practice in there and i remember feeling like cold showers rly helped teach me that i dont need to pull away from smth even if it seemingly feels bad or wtvr, like i dont need to listen to that impulse, or wtvr.

it seems sorta reasonable that i might have been indirectly slightly weakening reactivity
and it also seems sorta reasonable that if we targetted the fundamental mechanism more directly, then it could have actual OOMs of effect and eventually just "break" or "drop"

like, it seems reasonable that it's much simpler than i think and this simple ""secret"" was just hidden here and it's rly no more complex than DRSB mental motions. like it's totally common across pedagogy/metalearning that people are learning the foundational first things LAST and they're learning the last things FIRST (re: MLT, re: SLA, re: DRSB, [2025-11-27 at 03:54])

it seems sorta reasonable to me but at the same time it still sorta feels rly surprising that empirically we have literally seen seemingly reproducible Crazy Crazy OOMs of wellbeing gainz in less than 4 months of practice with <100 hrs practice. like wtf..? but i mean we've seen that with DRSB and Jhourney

oh also idk where to put this but: i think this blog post from owen rly matches how i feel abt my "am i stream entry or not"

but idk, maybe i'll work with michael about it sometime or wtvr, but for now i'll just not rly think about it too much