2025.11.30 meditation log
slept at 4am woke up at 9am today for church, yikes 5 hrs of sleep but it's okay i usually get 9-10hrs anyway. i just wanted to reset my sleep schedule to smth like 2am-11am instead of like 4am-2pm
discord convo w uli, 1:25pm
corb — 1:25 PM idk if it’s placebo or natural variation or if it’s actual noobie gainz, but . the past day or two i’ve felt noticeably less social anxiety and i feel noticeably less scared of positive emotion and my suckiness/anxiety is noticeably less looping/self-feeding/spiraling ?? too early for stat sig about effects on my default/baseline, but hm this feels promising also i drank coffee so theres many confounding factors but i do wanna log how im feeling daily bc i think itd be cool to see the data
ulisse — 1:28 PM I think meditating can def increase your baseline pretty immediately as long as you keep meditating relatively regularly. if that's how you mean baseline. but if you totally stop it'll prob mostly go away before you've got stuff really in there and persistent/paying for itself in some way (eg breaking reactivity but there can be smaller fractional versions of things that stick) my guess at least
corb — 1:28 PM Mmm
ulisse — 1:29 PM I mean every time you notice you were hitting yourself you'll stop and to the degree you remember you won't do that particular instance again. how generally and deeply you get that lesson is kinda most of it this is not really an analogy it's just literally the same as the everyday thing of noticing a clear error and then doing it less in the future automatically
corb — 1:31 PM Oh Ya that makes sense lolz
ulisse — 1:31 PM even if the experience isn't one of noticing this probably still happens if you're in a high equinimity or joy state a lot
corb — 1:31 PM ?
ulisse — 1:32 PM I mean you can explicitly notice "ah that was an error oops" with e.g. insight practices OR you can just cook in jhana or other high equinimity states and you'll probably also train the brain to do less of the bad and more of the good and these can be combined ofc no strict separation here
corb — 1:32 PM Ohh okok i c what u mean
corb — 1:33 PM it’s interesting how humans can do this but then eventually there’s some step shift where you sorta “fully drop” reactivity
ulisse — 1:34 PM yeah idk how that works lol I think there are times where it feels like you're grokking the generality of the error, where instead of just "in this case I don't have to react, in this case too" it's "wow, I think I really just never have to react???" and this probably works similar to everyday ways we update particular cases vs more wide reaching general things
corb — 1:36 PM ya like wtf? it’s good news that it isnt just asymptotic
> i feel noticeably less scared of positive emotion
i just wanted to elaborate a little on this bc i feel like i havent talked abt it yet. i remember a few days ago writing smth to the effect of like . i just feel so used to being tense and neg emotion etc, and it's such a default, and pos emotion just feels so foreign blah blah. and i wanted to add like, not only does pos emotion feel foreign but it's like, almost scary to engage with it? like when i make the mental motion to engage with it or try to savor it etc wtvr, there's some fear or hesitancy about it, sometimes big sometimes small.
almost kinda analogous to a child being hesitant about receiving a gift bc they know their parents will just turn it into smth to feel bad about, or wtvr. or when they do receive the gift then it's almost like they wanna pre-move the feeling-bad-ness. plus they feel rly nervous asking for any gift.
but also i feel like that analogy is only part of it . it feels like the acute fear that comes up also has some other textures but tbh it's hard for me to rly see it clearly. Maybe it's smth like.. it feels like i'm repressing the neg emotions in a way? but like in a mostly false way, i think. not that i'm actually repressing the neg emotions / tension, but it's just like. i'm just choosing not to loop on them. or maybe i am slightly repressing it too (which i'm working on, obviously). but anyway it just sometimes feels kinda rly scary and unsafe to engage with pos emotion or savor it or wtvr. almost like if i were leaving a rly bad toxic friend group to hang out with more wholesome good friends, smth like that maybe.
idk anyway yeah just wanted to elaborate on that a little bit but tbh idk if im articulating it well or even seeing it clearly
and also same thing with . not just [engaging with pos emotion], but also [not looping/spiraling on neg emotion / tension / etc]
OH DUDE yknow what a good analogy might be . it kinda reminds me a lot of my OCD compulsions and the process of stopping them
2pm jhana practice
i said i would read [owen's 500 word how to jhana guide] before my next practice. i read it and i realized Wait Whoa i'm actually doing almost all of these things, wtf? good job corbin. but it was a rly good reminder + nice to know i'm on the right track / directionally approx correct!
did 21m jhana practice, not very fruitful, had a decent amt of lingering neg emotion/tension from before the sit and couldnt get it to go away or dissolve or wtvr and couldnt get past it
did 11m jhana practice while listening to one of my favorite songs
i wanted to control less, scramble less
set long term intention to jhana then just followed my body's cues and went with the flow
(bc it felt like a lot of my attempts to generate/loop positive emotion were thwarted pretty quickly by some parts of myself just really not being on board.)
related: i was also thinking of like . thought abt [scrambling to apply equations, trying too hard to control the score] vs [my idealized idea of federer, actual mastery, rly understanding the eqns and rly understanding the problem]
i realized i was scrambling to apply techniques to control the score, instead of just building ground-up mastery, so i set the intention to do the opposite
acted like a rly warm caring jovial friendly grandmother host (but like cartoonish vibes) who's running a small lil social event, mingled with my parts and tried comforting and/or cheering up the sad/anxious/frustrated/tense parts...
no rush to jhana, but also we dont have to stay in our neg emotions. if a part needs some attention or care or wtvr then im here for you, but also we dont have to throw the pity party forever, the other parts can start the dance party first and then rope you in.
(i think i am learning more abt how to differentiate between "i feel tension and i need to show it some attention/care/wtvr" vs "i feel tension but we can ignore it for now, cheer it up later after positive emotion is there")
after a few mins, it felt like all the parts were "on board" with me trying to do a jhana attempt / loop on positive emotion / get unstuck from neutral/negative.
i'm sorta reminded of joe hudson's "Joy is the matriarch of a family of emotions. She won't come into your house if her children are not welcome." (tweet)
then it was like they were all cheering each other on and being rocket thrusters working hard for my sake -- they really cared about me!! wow! they really wanted me to be happy!
then holy moly that was the first time i felt that good in months?? i cried tears of joy for the first time in a long time.
that was the first time in at least 3 years that i've felt that much pure, distilled, untainted joy for multiple consecutive seconds (bc usually it's just either pleasure (not rly pos emotion) or comedy (not big pos emotion) or the joy is quickly tainted by anxiety/wtvr)
i can totally see how, with some more hours of practice and building mastery, i could make this experience reproducible!!! i'm excited for J2.
8pm
did 9 min jhana practice . fuck i have a vague sad/anxious tension in my chest mannnnn its ok
i did 10 min reactivity practice Wtf