My water went off yesterday afternoon. Annoying and anxiety-inducing; I don't know when it'll come back on. I don't know if the landlord gave warning and I didn't get it because I don't have a phone. The last time it happened about 5 years ago, he knocked on my door and gave me an estimate for the outage so I was able to fill the bathtub beforehand for my water needs. I don't know if he didn't knock on my door this time because my cousin managed at some point to suggest to him that I "didn't want to be bothered", which is totally untrue and would be rude, and I told her to communicate to him that was not the case, but I don't know if she did that. Lots gets lost in translation in this family – and not just in language. 

And somehow, without going into any TMI detail, my gut knew about it and the accompanying inability to flush the toilet more than once, and the chronic issues with my digestive system over the past few years disappeared for the time being. It's a minor miracle maybe. 

So far, it's fair to consider it a minor disturbance and I tried to maintain my evening routine Saturday, but I did opt to not drink until way late. Maybe I didn't want to be distracted from the distraction of not having running water (and perhaps avoiding the need to pee more often). Not washing hands or brushing teeth are something I just had to endure, but not being able to take a shower triggered the neurotic in me. I won't crawl under the covers to sleep if I haven't showered. It's just not comfortable and I knew I wouldn't be able to fall asleep, so I knew I was going to sleep on top of the covers (which is no big deal since that's how I nap) and in that case why bother changing clothes to sleep? No different from crashing at someone's place when I was younger.

I did have trouble sleeping, which I anticipated and didn't set the timer on my CD player, but did slip into sleep at some point and had a pretty disturbing and harrowing dream. I was kidnapped and stabbed twice in the process. This is likely a reflection of my true anxiety about having no water; uncertainty and a hunkering down mentality. The kidnap situation lasted the whole dream through a variety of sundry scenarios including a blood-sport, fight club-ish free-for-all amongst the kidnappees. I mostly laid low and hoped not to be targeted while not expecting to survive. Towards the end of the dream there was rumor that lawyers were being sent for to deal with the situation and I thought, "Lawyers? What good are lawyers? That's even dangerous". At some point I established we were in Thailand as I (irrationally) wondered why kidnappings always happen in Thailand. But the lawyer arrived from England and came up the stairs asking about the "Yank", as in Yankee, as in me, and he took one look at me and continued to ask for the Yank. As he assumed I wasn't the droid American he was looking for, I waited for a few beats to let him hang in ignorance before I voiced up. 

Twenty five years ago that would've been racist. Nowadays it would be called "racist" but would also be stupid to call racist. I'm not gonna get into it, but from what I've witnessed in the progressive political scene from afar, the political left has really dropped the ball and gotten stupid, overreacting to every little thing and just putting people on the defensive instead of trying to educate and promote sensitivity. My dream British lawyer would've been racist before because it was institutionalized with negative assumptions and real effects. Today, the British lawyer should be recognized as having come from a certain background with his own experience that informs his subjective view of the world, and he may make assumptions and even mistakes, such as "American" equals "white" or Asian-looking equals "not American", but that doesn't necessarily make him racist now. Plurality needs to acknowledge that. Constantly putting people on the defensive for infractions they didn't even know of eventually leads to a backlash and them going on the offensive and that's pretty much where we are now; a cycle of brazen stupidity is complete with the true racists coming out the woodwork and proud of it.

And, yes, the lawyer in the dream was white and male. Would anyone imagine otherwise when I said "British lawyer"? Actually my true dream British lawyer would've been South Asian and female, but that's a different kind of dream (mm, that accent). He also had long hair and a ponytail, kinda like that Virgin Branson guy. This is all immaterial, mind you, I didn't need to bring it up but it was in the dream that he assumed I wasn't American and I noticed it. 

What I'm actually seriously curious or concerned about is why mindfulness practice doesn't come up when I'm dreaming? I noticed that afterwards. Is my practice not deep enough to have reached my subconscious? Are my reactions in dreams a more accurate reflection of the success of my practice? I kinda think so, maybe. In a dream, if I'm reacting to the dream situation like it was real, then that may indicate that in physical life I'm reacting to situations too much like they're real. The actual reaction should be appropriate, but in extreme and harrowing situations, I think a conscious acknowledgement of mindfulness practice should be present maybe. 

I was watching a dharma talk by a Tibetan lama on YouTube and during the Q&A, someone asked whether the dream state produces karma. I quickly intuitively answered out loud, "no", and then the lama matter-of-factly responded, "oh yes" and I quickly changed my answer to "yes". Not just because he said yes, but once he said yes it was easy to realize yes and why. So much for intuition.

My error was in too closely aligning karma with action and there is no acting per se in the dream state. If you can't act, you can't produce karma. That's wrong. Karma is rather the mental impression of all experience. Karma creation is the mind being impressed (seeded) with stimulus and karma manifestation is the form the impression takes through action when causes and conditions arise for it to manifest (germinates). That can and does happen in the dream state.

That night I had a dream that put not too fine a point on it. I don't quite remember the dream; a situation including my mother being in town and calling to ask to meet earlier than we had agreed and suggesting what I could do to make it earlier and that not sitting too well with me. I woke up and was able to identify various emotional reactions in the dream indicative of how my mind is karmically impressed. 

I remember feeling pressured. I remember being anxious, stressed, resentful, resistant. Those aren't things I feel these days in the physical world, possibly/probably/obviously/definitely because I've engineered my life to avoid scenarios whereby those feelings would arise and challenge me. I can brush off external pressure and anxiety. I can fool myself into believing I don't get stressed or anxious anymore because of mindfulness practice, but in the dream, there they were.

The key about karma and transformation is, of course, how you react to and handle situations (stimulus) that arise. The usual way of living life is thinking we are simply separate, individual agents accepting reality as it's presented. We have our experience and our feelings and we accept them exactly at face value and we react to them and outside factors in the myriad ways we do, generally unmindful that karma is at work at every moment and with every thought and feeling.

Part of mindfulness practice trains the mind to pay close attention to every moment and thought and realize how we perceive and react is karma. Collectively they are not isolated or separate incidents, but part of a continuum having come from something in the past and lead to something in the future. It works on the subtlest levels. If you're thinking about something and change your mind, that's karma. What you were initially thinking about was already karma, but then something from the past made you change your mind. It didn't come out of the blue from absolutely nowhere, and what you changed your mind to may influence something in the future in ways you wouldn't notice. The idea of being able to change your mind is karma. If you're the kind of person who finds it hard to change your mind, that's also karma; that came from something. These small karma examples can be translated up to bigger things in our lives, personalities and psychologies.

Experience is important for transformation. Dreams qualify. My attitude in my present world and avoiding those situations may be totally fine and acceptable in working to change the karma in the future. It is also karma. Being neurotically avoidant isn't great, but I don't think that's necessarily what I'm doing. Not that I have a great argument against that. But it does allow me to work on cultivating attitudes and perspectives to deal with difficult interactions with people in the future, whether this life or further on. It's not like I'm not challenged at all, after all I am who I am and the challenge is always here. My situation allows me to mull over interactions and cultivate best courses of action instead of being thrown into them for reals and failing by reacting with anger and negativity.

The ideal is to become a person who doesn't automatically react to negative stimulus with anger and negativity. There are people who are like that, I shouldn't wonder, where such a reaction is totally foreign. That's a great way of being. It's a wonderful way of being to always be able to see the light side of situations and laugh things off; to not groan about how I've got the practice all wrong, but to laugh and make light of my errors and set me straight. At the very least in that dream, I felt those karmic seeds that I no doubt have, but I didn't react. I didn't snap in anger or say anything snide or sarcastic. I think I didn't say anything, which is a good neutral starting point.

My brother offered me a slice of pizza.

My dreams are just going haywire! There is no consistency nor any indication of anything except total chaos; full metal subconscious implosion. After months of whenever my brothers appeared in dreams, it was confrontational, lukewarm or cold at best, and then one of them is offering me pizza?! The greatest offering of all?! Am I a king, a god?!

"Hey, you want a slice?", lifting a slice out of the pizza box for me.

I've been hampered by several days of full-blown insomnia which hasn't happened in a while. Insomnia has been recurrent, but not this bad. Mostly one- or two-offs and then a period of recovery. Even one night of insomnia hits hard and despite full nights of sleep following, waking up and days are still rough. This recent bout might be a real mess.

I try to force myself down into a dream state during insomnia, and when I do: a) it doesn't last long before I wake up again; and b) the dreams are nothing, they make no sense; they're like flipping through radio stations driving through a foreign country. If dreams are the antennae of our subconscious, I'm picking up random shit from wherever.

If that hasn't been brutal enough, Taipei's summer heat is out of control. Summer months used to be prime riding season despite summer heat. I like hot weather. I usually thrive in hot weather and San Francisco was lame for its cold summers.

Two summers ago, I still went riding during the summer, but I felt the heat and noted it. Then last year; I looked at my GPS records of riding last year and wondered why I stopped riding after a spring that looked like I was gearing up for the bigger climbs.

It took a while to figure out it was the heat that stopped me. About May or June, it came to pass that I would try to take my bike out and was met with a wave of heat that said, "hell no". Going outside was like stepping in front of a blast furnace, and if it felt like that just outside I figured any kind of ride would be nothing short of masochistic. Same thing happened this year.

The few people I've spoken to have agreed that Taipei has been getting hotter just these past few years. It's unbearable to stay outside for any extended period of time. Going outside means going from one air-conditioned space to another.

I have started jogging after my gym membership ran out in June. Looking back, what a useless thing that gym membership was. I'd never do anything like that again. Within a week, I was going out in the evening for jogs and I've been going for jogs about five days a week since then.

It's not running, I go too slow to call it running. I'd say to call it running, I'd have to be doing 8:30 miles at slowest, maybe 8:45, and I've touched on that, but mostly I've been going upward 9 minute miles, which is a solid jog. Anything slower than 10 minute miles is a plod. I've gone plodding a few times.

And short. Three miles is the usual, with four mile jogs thrown in one or two times a week. I've plodded five miles once and hope to do more of those, but only once it starts getting cooler. But I'm not going to be ambitious at all. My age prevents that, as well as bad nutrition and lots of alcohol.

Twenty years ago, my goal was 7:30 miles over 4 or 5 miles, with reality more like anything under 8 minute miles. These days going slow as comfortable is fine and preventing injury is priority, although since it's me, some problem is always going to come up.

addendum 2:  I don't know if there's any connection between my dreams and efforts to generate compassion, but in a strange turn-around I had a full night sleep with positive feel-good dreams. That's strange because this is insomnia recovery sleep, which should be dead sleep with no dream recollection.

The two dreams I remembered were love related, both involved women I can't identify and were probably just archetypes; one or both may have been K-pop idols as the archetypes.

One was in a college dorm room-like setting, clean (in contrast to recent dream patterns) and there were other people there. I was lying in a bed when a woman crawled in basically saying she had gotten hints that I had feelings for her and she knew what her feelings were for me and she wanted to make things clear. That's it.

The other dream was like a date in an urban setting, a feel like Philadelphia, and the feelings were more ambiguous. We were on a date, buying tickets for something but she insisting on going dutch and not allowing me to cover, so there was no feeling of commitment or that she even liked me. It's just that it was a date.

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I have no desire for love or to have or pursue any "love interest". Dreams involving love I think are more a product of a basic human desire to be loved. I imagine on a basic level there is not a human being, however self-hating or cynical but without psychopathic pathologies, that doesn't mind being loved.

And I'm not that self-hating or cynical. It's just that on a practical level, it's not something I desire nor something I'd pursue or succumb to as an attachment. I accept and don't reject that love is a very important and powerful human component, including on spiritual and psychological levels.

So if there's a subconscious, psychological battle going on regarding compassion and manifesting in my dreams, I'd say my mind is fairly equivocal and flexible. Dreams can be hostile or they can be pleasant; either can manifest from trying to engage compassion. And considering my psychology, that makes perfect sense.

About cultivating compassion, the only interaction I have with other people is when I'm out and about in public. The only direct contact I have with people is when ordering food or buying something at a convenient store.

I don't have friends, I don't work, I only know one person in Taipei with whom I meet about three or four times per year for coffee or a hike. I don't have to deal with any interpersonal conflicts at all.

Virtually all my interactions with other people are indirect and abstract. When I'm out and about in public, I'm always listening to music (I turn it off when I interact directly with people). It is with these people that I gauge my ability to cultivate compassion.

What does it mean to cultivate compassion? First of all, it doesn't come naturally for me. I'm quick to judge (which is bad) and quick to be critical (which is bad). Since it's not natural, it's not visceral but more intellectual.

But that's not even right. When I say it doesn't come naturally for me, that's the result of current situation and experience and the cynicism that comes with experience. I look at my behavior and attitudes when I was younger, and I think it's fair to say I had a natural compassion towards people. I even used to consider myself a romantic, just to emphasize how much I've changed.

In my current situation, cultivating compassion is to look inside myself and locate and examine the energies of how I feel towards other people, and bending them towards the positive. To not be hostile, to want non-harm towards other people; to not be an agent of negativity in other people's interactions.

I've found that cultivating compassion is also key towards loosening my grip on my own ego and sense of the importance of myself. It's kind of embarrassing noting that this is something I struggle with when for many people it's natural and obvious.

Very important to the cultivation of compassion is recognizing emotions as energies within our bodies. That's also part of mindfulness training. When you feel an emotion, locate and identify it as an internal energy that is just as real as heartbeats, blood flowing and breathing in and out.

Once you do that, you can put a rein on emotions and not let them control behavior. It's no longer a matter of feeling anger or any emotion and accepting the emotion for what it feels like and reacting no matter how irrationally.

When you recognize it as energy, you can think of it as E. As in the equivalent of mass times the speed of light squared. How emotions fit in with Einstein's equation may make no sense, and that's fine. It kinda doesn't. But if you can visualize emotions as energy and abstractly consider it against E=mc², then you can start processing it as a physical property of the universe, as something controllable and not so mysterious.

According to the equation, a small amount of mass transferred into energy yields a huge amount of energy. So thinking of emotions as energy, that can be looked upon as a huge amount of energy. None of this to be taken literally, just to think about.

I've noticed common themes in my dreams lately. Like messy living quarters, even bordering on squalid. Disgusting floors, old buildings. Internal conflicts with other people in the dream that aren't confronted or resolved. General dissonance, chaos, mess. Dissonance with my environs. Dissonance with the absence of people in my life.

One recent morning, the feeling from the dreams was so distasteful that when I awoke, I finally didn't try to push myself back into a dream state even though I was having trouble sleeping. I was like, "fuck it, I'm not going back into that", and got up.

That's what I do when I have trouble staying asleep in the morning; when I can't just fall back to sleep and it's pretty much back-end insomnia. I can force my consciousness back down into a dream state, which is and isn't the same as getting back to sleep. When I wake up again, it seems like I was asleep, but it's not to be mistaken with restful sleep. It's very shallow and dominated by the dream state.

The nature of these dreams suggest that I'm obviously still disturbed by many things on unconscious levels despite mindfulness training and striving for Buddhist ideals of cultivating wisdom and compassion. No surprise there, since despite trying to cultivate transformation, I clearly cling to many negative conceptions and habits (karma).

I can still resort to being an asshole. Or if not overtly exhibiting asshole behavior, I act in a way that makes me feel like I was being an asshole. I was thinking like an asshole. I judge people by their behavior. In my mind I impose how I feel people should behave in this world on other people. Even giving someone a cold, judgmental stare is no good. And I did that recently.

I connect this with the dissonance in my subconscious. This outward hostility and judgment has very much to do with all the subtler levels of mind and stains them and makes them ugly. I need to make compassion and kindness more of a daily mindfulness meditation.

It has to be happening at every moment every day when I have to interact with other people even in the most superficial way. At every moment when I'm out, I have to be generating compassion to any and everyone around me. There can be no let up, even when I'm not interacting with anyone.

It's not easy. In the past, I've justified aggressive and asshole behavior by thinking of it as a "fierce" element which can be compassionate, especially when safety is involved. Sometimes being mean or presenting an illusion of danger alerts people of the need to pay attention, the theory goes.

But maybe that was just an excuse to allow primitive anger emotions to arise, despite being mindful of my emotions and claiming to myself I wasn't being angry. So many complex levels of conceptual thinking may be preventing progress. However I justify negative behavior, the bottom line is those excuses aren't in my job description.

My dreams are telling me something. I can't fool myself with sitting meditation and mindfulness practice and think there isn't a lot of ugliness in my karma that I can't work on. Even with limited time in my life, even with the implicit negativity of placing a limit on the time in my life, I can work on the ugliness and put compassion and positivity as a foremost meditation in my daily life.

Since I nominally "cut back on drinking" over a month ago, things have been pretty smooth. Maybe alcohol is, in fact, the root of all my petty grievances. Again, just by the numbers, I haven't cut back that much. Two to four drinks less per day, but still averaging around 12 over the course of the whole day. All I know is that I haven't been feeling like death daily, good enough for me.

I don't know if it's related, but I've since been getting to the gym ahead of my membership expiring in June, and getting out on bike weather permitting. I think I even rode over 200 miles total, a monthly benchmark, in April. Performance is still way down, but so are expectations. Don't have to worry about failure when just doing something is the goal.

Sleeping during the past month was fine until yesterday and today when back-end insomnia returned. I'd stopped keeping track of my sleep before then so I can't say if there was any correlation between drinking and insomnia after cutting back. 

I suspected not. Even when I noticed sleeping well after cutting back on drinking, I still expected insomnia to not be affected and to randomly return, and it has. 

During the month of sleeping well, I haven't noticed any dreams, but with insomnia the dream level is so shallow that memory is more possible. Family still making appearances despite my recent realizations that I have nothing to do with them anymore and no reason to ever visit them again. 

I'm not saying I won't, but if they want me to visit, their overtures have to be pretty convincing. As it seems, nobody gives a rat's ass if I ever visit again, and I'm fine with that. 

I also had another Amina dream. Very unusual at this juncture since that is such a far gone part of my life. In the dream, she was deeply in love with and committed to me, but there were forces (she's Muslim) conspiring to keep us apart that we were willing to go against.

In a nutshell, I used to consider her the love of my life, but all of that and any concept related to romantic love has been negated for me. When you negate the concept of romantic love, no individual stands a chance. As an ex, she now rarely comes to mind and never as anything special, but rather even as a lapse.

I suppose there's some subconscious suggestion involved in her still appearing in my dreams, perhaps that it's nice to feel loved. In this life, being involved with her did have a deep experiential impression upon my feeling being loved. Subconscious notwithstanding, in the waking world now it's not anywhere on my radar of what I could possibly want or pursue.

The insomnia did interrupt my morning sitting. Morning sitting has become conceptually the most important thing to do every day. Sometimes I'd wake up and feel like cancelling, but within a few minutes realizing that is not an option. The physical and psychic toll of insomnia beat that.

I wish there were a way to describe the journey of regular sitting over years and years . . . decades, even if it's just 45-50 minutes every morning. But I can't because the experience changes so much. The only thing to do is to do it, understanding that a daily regimen of meditation is a personal journey. The experience varies, but if regular meditation becomes a bug of one's experience, the journey and what one discovers on it is pretty priceless.

I wonder what it would be like if I had found a teacher in this lifetime. I've eschewed teachers and gone at it on my own. The idea of having a teacher never resonated, maybe because of karma. Some teachings describe the teacher as indispensable, and I accept that. Just not for me in this lifetime; that's just instinct.

I do probably need a teacher, but I'm still figuring out teachings I've received in the past, either in this or previous lives, on my own. When I discover the need for a teacher in a future lifetime, I'll go back to seeking one out. When it becomes pressing, I'll do it.

I had another odd dream that may suggest that my brothers and I have been siblings in past lives and that I may have been the eldest. The odd part is that instead of a random, unfamiliar setting, this dream was set in this lifetime during the 80s at my parents' house.

Of course, we had our established places at the dinner table. I came down to the dinner table as me, the youngest, and I sat at my oldest brother's place and started eating. Then realizing I was eating my oldest brother's dinner, I felt guilty, faux pas, and slightly panicked at what I should do.

Also interesting about the dream is that there was only one other dinner at the table, not two others. So even though the setting was familiar, it might have been a past life resonance of just two brothers and I was the older one. I was actually eating the right dinner.

My brothers, either one or the other or both, have been appearing in my dreams frequently as of late. Not necessarily with any specific impression that they have anything to do with past lives. However, just that they've been appearing in my dreams may suggest that these dreams may be past life resonances.

Of course, in this lifetime we have no particular affinity towards each other. We grew up fighting like dogs, and when the fighting stopped, the detente has mostly been only cordial, albeit kind and supportive when called for. Not much that can be called close. There has never been any going out of our way to meet up, nor any interaction just because we like each other. Truth to tell, I don't even know if we do.

It might support the suggestion that there is an aspect of karma that is out of our hands. Karmic attachments aren't necessarily a matter of choice, but a matter of course, driven by cause and effect. And in this case, if we are connected by karma, it's not necessarily positive karma. Negative karma often can connect people to each other. Even as little as habit can connect people by karma. Even if the habit is hating each other.

Other than that, something about my dreams I've started to notice, going back for quite a while, is that a subtle focus of a vast majority of them is a domestic scene; my residence, where I'm living. The characters change, the actual domiciles are totally different, and the action in the dreams vary widely, but on a subtle level, there is a focus on the living quarters.

There's always an awareness of the physical space, the rooms, the layout, the construction, the style, the decor. No opinion about them, just awareness of what they are. I'm not sure what to make of it. Maybe it's a reflection of the lack of home in my life.

I've never considered Taiwan home. Nor New Jersey, which if it was "home" when I was younger, it was always a hostile place. No people I consider home. I tried for home in San Francisco, but it was always undermined by dissatisfaction and the impulse towards suicide. 

I had a second dream about my brothers and I having been siblings before in a past life. The first dream was a while ago, I can't remember when or whether I mentioned it, but in that dream, I felt I was the oldest and had the most power, and may not have been particularly liked because of that.

The dream I had this morning was more impressionistic. It required post-wakem interpretation to think it had anything to do with a past life. What was happening in the dream was more about how I was feeling, rather than any visuals.

My interpretation was that I was very sick, possibly about to die. I was on medication. Walking was very difficult and precarious. And I was on a ventilator.

The on medication part I got from an early part of the dream where I was floating. This part may have been a semi-conscious dream that I had some control of and was struggling not to come out of. Actually, it may have started as a full dream.

The dream started in what felt like San Francisco, Richmond District, and might have involved a police car chase coming right off the Golden Gate Bridge and turning left. It didn't look like any of that (except the left turn), it just felt like that.

And there wasn't any real chase, it was rushing down a straight, grey, concrete, fluorescent-lit industrial corridor that felt like Clement or California Street, one of those long streets that run the length of the Richmond.

I was hanging off the side of the car, or it may have been a medical cart, hoping not to get slammed against the wall or by the swinging doors it was crashing through. When it stopped, that's when the semi-conscious floating part began, me trying to navigate back up through the corridor without waking up.

The next part was full dream. There was an image, perhaps a still image, of me and my brothers as children sitting in the back seat of our parents' car back in the 70s. There was some panning and recognition of who would be who of these children. The outside of the car looked like New York City.

The dream then switched to like a construction or demolition site (a pile of rubble) that was in the side of a building. It wasn't a restricted site as other people were making their way through and there were construction workers. My brothers and I were navigating our way through, I was having difficulty with my footing. This is the metaphor of a medical patient having difficulty walking.

My brothers were simultaneously helping me and getting frustrated at my inability. I remember a huge gloop of snot dripping out of my nose and trying to maintain my dignity. That's the first suggestion that I was ill.

The dream ended with me noticing a package of tissue on some rubble and trying to get a tissue to wipe my nose, but for some reason I couldn't do it. I kept getting thwarted or the tissue turned into something else and I actually got frustrated. All through this later part of the dream, and this was something I noticed semi-consciously, that my breathing was heavily labored and loud like trying to breathe through mucous, and that's where I get the ventilator part from.

When I woke up, I could still hear that raspy, labored breathing.

It's all interpretation. None of the imagery was about sickness, but after I woke up, that's the first thing that came to mind and that's how I put it together and tied it to my previous dream that suggested that my brothers and I were siblings in a past life.

Englewood Cliffs, NJ

I couldn't wait to get out of Taipei. I don't know if Taipei has gotten toxic for me, but I was anxious and stressed and just didn't feel well, and things hadn't been that much better in the weeks leading up to leaving this past Tuesday. It's possible that alcoholism is coming to a head. I could feel my body reacting differently to alcohol. Maybe more intolerant, maybe something else.

True to script, it started pouring rain right when I was planning to leave for the airport, but actually everything turned out fine. I caught a cab quick when someone was dropped off right where I was waiting for one, and then I was just able catch the airport bus. Smooth, but not necessary as I had plenty of time.

The flight was hellish getting a feeling several times that I "wasn't going to make it". Not sure what that meant. Pressure in my gut typical of gut problems that have become regular in Taiwan. Then it would ease off and I'd think I'd be fine if it stayed that way.

Overall the whole travel had its hitches but I finally got to where I needed to, albeit an hour and a half late. But an hour and a half late on travels that felt too long from the start.

The gut issues continued for maybe the next day and a half and then completely abated. The weather here is just God's country compared to the blast furnace heat of Taiwan. I was so sick of looking at daytime temps in Taiwan reading: temperature 93 degrees; feels like 103. Here it's: temperature 83.6; feels like 84. The first night I was lying in bed with the windows open, listening to the crickets, a light breeze caressing me, I felt like I was in the countryside.

I didn't sleep at all on the 14 hour flight. The times when I was so exhausted that I lapsed into sleep lasted only seconds and would increase my body temperature uncomfortably to the point that I would avoid even the respite those lapses kinda held.

Sleep continued to elude me for several days. Just quick lapses for very short periods before I'd wake up, and they quickly started becoming accompanied by vivid and stressful if not violent dreams that were increasingly full of foreboding and dread. I started being jarred awake or wrest myself out of them.

Periods of sleep increased slowly and the dreams started taking on apocalyptic qualities; serious end of the world, but as a cosmic math equation! Mind you other than these concepts, I remember absolutely zero details. The lack of recall was almost immediate upon waking. There may have been a fraction of a second of recall, but then even that dissolved even if I tried to hold onto them.

I'm still having some issue with body temperatures. As sleep times increased to over an hour, I'd be waking in cold sweats or I'd pull a blanket on and boil or throw them off and start freezing. Early on I'd wake up shaking (not shivering) for a while, but I think that had more to do with the near complete sleep deprivation at the time.

After realizing how much worse I was feeling before and after alcohol while I was still in Taipei, I have been cutting back while here. I toyed with the idea of going cold turkey, but that's not really realistic. The plan is to dole out shots and not drink freely. I don't expect that to hold all the time, though.

I managed to consciously push myself into a conscious dream state 2 or 3 times this morning. I've been trying since my last post, and it isn't easy. I'm still not sure what conditions are amenable to succeeding.

It reminds me of Star Trek-like scenarios where they're dealing with fabric of space challenges like trying to keep wormholes stable or negotiating different dimensional realities. But it's "psychic" space in this case. Difficult to induce, difficult to maintain.

As difficult as it is to induce these dream states, I'm not surprised that when I first managed it this morning, I was lying in a bed since that was what I was actually doing. When the dream coalesced, the color of the room was a cold light blue and bare. I could look down towards the foot of the bed and see the entrance of the bedroom and see that it led into a hall of a colonial-type architecture house. And that's all it was for a few seconds, just a framework dream image.

Then in what could have been a horror film image, a ghostly image floated into the room and came towards me lying in bed. When it reached me, it turned around and turns out it was a woman. She resembled a past girlfriend, Shiho, but her personality was too flighty to be her.

It was apparent we were intimate. I remember telling her that this was a dream and I was conscious of it, but she didn't respond to that. I don't remember how it ended, but it probably fell apart as I couldn't maintain it in my consciousness.

I'm remembering the second and third dreams as one dream, even though I remember a total of three instances of pushing myself into these dream states. There are both differences in the former and latter parts of the dream, but also a continuity, so I'm not really sure. No surprise, we're talking about dreams.

It was set in a corner apartment on the second or third floor of a building with an outside view, afternoon-ish, orange-y light, and also a mysterious woman with whom I had an ambiguous relationship. It seemed like our interactions indicated some level of intimacy and at one point I coyly asked her what her name was, which she coyly avoided answering.

That's interesting because I was consciously asking what her name was to try to get more information about the dream, but her avoidance is also a reflection of my subconscious. What about my subconscious, I don't know. Maybe it just didn't know who she was. That . . . makes sense.

In another part of the dream, I saw a post-it that included my name on it. I forget if there was any qualifier regarding it, like indicating an appointment, but I remember the awareness in the context of the dream that the people in the dream knew who I was. Or not.

Also as an indicator of my level of consciousness, at some point, one of the people in the dream suggested going to a certain place, naming it by name. It could've been a bar, an eatery or a record store. So I asked, "You mean so-and-so place in . . ." trying to prompt them to give an indication of where the dream was taking place. They didn't take the bait.

A difference between these forced consciousness dreams and ordinary sleep dreams is that I can remember them more clearly afterwards, whereas sleep dreams start fading within minutes and can completely disappear in hours. Still, as I try to recall them now, it's apparent I should still rely on recording them orally because they do fade.

As I mentioned, I still don't know what conditions are amenable to inducing these forced dream states. Insomnia or some sort of sleep disturbance seems to play a part. Otherwise I'd simply fall asleep.

There's some sort of balance involved between not being able to fall asleep, and navigating a liminal state where I know I haven't gotten a full night's rest, and I'm still trying to get more sleep.

I might just have found a way to take advantage of insomnia to help progress my training into the nature of mind. Insomnia may no longer be a source of frustration and suffering and become an opportunity to appreciate.

I've had two experiences during insomnia whereby I was able to force myself into a dream state while essentially still being aware that I was still awake.

The first time was a few months ago and I wasn't posting anything so I didn't write about it, but I remember it. It was a bout of insomnia and eventually I turned on the TV to something mindless, maybe LPGA or some other sport or CNN.

During the mindless listlessness, I would start drifting into light sleep and start having dreams, fading in and out. At one point I faded in during a dream that had been interesting and I didn't want to leave it. So I wondered if I could force myself to sink back into the dream. I tried it and it worked!

I was able to force myself into a dream state that certainly was no where near REM sleep. The dreams were vivid and chaotic, too chaotic to relate afterwards, but with many elements memorable for a while.

This morning was back-end insomnia. I woke up after a few hours of sleep and couldn't get back to sleep. After a couple hours of ritual music listening, and an uncomfortably high body temperature that may have been the source of the insomnia, I tried to see if I could force myself into a dream state instead of trying to sleep. It worked!

That's weird, right? But that's what's important. The dream state definitely wasn't sleep. I was awake, but dreaming. When I was trying this out while the music was still on, I was fully aware of each song that was playing. I was fully aware of the position I was lying in, which was dictated by discomfort from high body temperature. But I was dreaming.

It wasn't lucid dreaming, whereby being in a total dream state, and being consciously aware of it and having some degree of control where to go in the dream. I was actually awake with an active consciousness, and in the dreams I wasn't aware that it was a dream, I'd still be just going through the dream as I went through it, without the thought, "This is a dream and I'm aware of it". I had no control over it.

That's super weird even as I write it.

Actually, at one point there was a lucid dreaming-like incident where I remember wondering if I could create a situation and was briefly able to do so. But what that was is a secret at this point. Saying it's a secret possibly gives away what it was, but I'm still not sure how to breach the topic.

Another important aspect that is different from the first time is that back then it sort of happened organically. This time I was trying to force myself into a dream state and it was difficult to maintain it. All during it I was aware and worried that I'd lose it and come out of it. Sometimes I'd come right to the edge of coming out of it.

And one thing I clearly remember: the me in the dream state was like a "dream body" and distinct from my physical life consciousness, but there is a nexus between them where one becomes another. I remember there was one point that I was just getting into the dream body, but failed and coming back to consciousness was actually a shock, it kinda hurt.

I'm a little bowled over about what to make of this. Important to note that right now I'm in full conscious awareness and I know I can't go over and lie down on the bed and make it happen. It's that twilight, intermediate zone of mind between wake and sleep that is particular for insomniacs where these ideas can be revealed and explored.

If the true Buddhist path is anything, it's exploration of the nature of mind.

The night before last was another eight hour dead sleep. I'm not sure what that means having two nights like that in a row. Fatigue from all the poor sleep and that climb up to Yangmingshan? I don't know. Fatigue usually doesn't affect insomnia, but maybe I was SOOO fatigued that . . .

Maybe. Because I wanted to go the gym yesterday, but realized I was just too tired and that it would be a bad idea. It wasn't a matter of not wanting to get out and using that as an excuse to not go. I actually wanted to go and realized I was too tired. I even ended up taking a nap which I rarely do in the afternoon, so that all attests to being smart taking a rest day.

This morning I was back to back-end insomnia but with a twist. And it was a marginal back-end insomnia because I think I got almost five hours sleep before waking up. Five hours is enough rest to not consider it insomnia, even if I would like to sleep a few more hours. The twist was in the dreams. During the slides into light sleep that occur during back-end insomnia I do sometimes dream, I've mentioned before.

The first dream just naturally happened, a lot of random elements, no real plot. A tourist bus at a stop, lots of people. Then a distraction in a café and then realizing that I was late to rejoin the group, but my shoes were missing and I had to find them first. All the people were gone except for one little kid who was running back to the bus, also late, and I yelled to him, "Matthew! Tell them I'm right behind you". But running all over the site, I couldn't find my shoes. I was barefoot, anxious, I was making people wait for me, I was alone, there was no sign of my shoes. It sucked. I didn't like the feeling. 

I stopped and thought, "Forget it, I'm not doing this. I'm pushing out". I didn't think I was sleeping and dreaming, but there was an element of recognition that I could get out. On some level I must have been aware that it was a dream and I was forcing myself to wake up, but I didn't actually think I was lucid dreaming. But I pushed "up", upward towards consciousness, I suppose. I went up through several layers, even doubting if this was going to work, wondering how would I know what was waking reality and not another dream? But I finally visualized what I should see if I was awake and saw my room and the environs and then I opened my eyes and there I was.

And then I was frustrated with myself because I was having insomnia, I had fallen asleep since I was dreaming, and in the dream I forced myself awake. That was a groggy thought, though, since I know that kind of sleep is very light and I would've waken up anyway.

But that's not even the twist! The twist is at least two times afterwards I was able to push myself back down into a dream. I wasn't pushing myself into sleep but into a dream state. In an insomniac haze, I thought of trying it, visualized the sinking down out of wakefulness and it worked! 

The first one was very fragile and I knew it was tenuous and tried to move as little as possible while stuff happened around me. The dream started in a room and I could see out a window and saw some Asian faces, but then the scene was a collegiate-feeling urban courtyard and I couldn't tell if people were hostile or not.

A later dream I forced myself down into was more stable and I was aware that I was dreaming. In fact, I was so aware of it that there was a part with a woman I knew in California and I thought, "I'm dreaming, I can totally grab her boobs" and did and she had no problem with it. My, my, my, what the hell is my subconscious doing for realz? Just goes to show no matter how old a guy is, there's a libidinous 16-year old boy in there somewhere.

There was also a part where I was on a bus and one person there knew I was dreaming and another who didn't. I was looking out the window to try to get a reference to where it was so I could look it up later and see if it was a place I'd been before. Except I was having trouble reading, and what I could read I couldn't retain a memory of. The person who didn't know I was dreaming asked me what I was doing and I told him and he helped read out a place name, and I did retain that name even after waking up, but thinking I could remember it, left it at that and . . . have since forgotten it. Of course.

A lot of random, chaotic dream elements not worth mentioning, aside from knowing I was a dreamer and investigating the dream world. One thing I noticed was the feeling of each dream scene as being enclosed. Like being on that bus, but the bus wasn't traveling. It was moving but it wasn't leaving that town.

Another part involved being in a house with a bunch of people (there was a woman with a moustache and a penis, or maybe just a naked man, I didn't linger) and I couldn't find my way out of the house. I could see where the exits were, but couldn't navigate myself there. It felt like there were definite borders to each dreamscape that people might not notice if they were just dreaming.

To recap since my last post, it was definitely a low-grade cold that kept me in all day on Tuesday, too. Sniffling, sneezing, not feeling too bad, but enough to convince me to stay home, although honestly it doesn't take a lot to do that. It's a daily labor to get myself out the door.

On Wednesday I went on a short, 20-mile "recovery/fitness" ride, even though it wasn't that bad of a cold. However, I hadn't eaten anything substantial those two days, so no gas. 20 miles was about all I could handle.

On Thursday I went on a more substantial 35-mile bikeway ride, also not having eaten much on Wednesday. I bonked towards the end and took a short-cut home. My leg muscles were fried.

Then yesterday and today were gym days. Yesterday I probably went too hard on running and felt some aches I shouldn't have, but today I'm feeling my strength and nutrition are normalizing.

Sleep has been good until this morning, but it wasn't insomnia. It was fading in and out, and then came the crazy dreams and the lucid dreaming. There was so much going on in this sequence of dreaming that trying to describe it would just be visual gibberish.

So many details I can't even begin to describe, when apparently a Namie Amuro song came on outside the dream on my CD player, and suddenly there she was in the dream and out of nowhere her background dancers arrive and they dance the song.

Then the next song comes on, a teeny-bopper Taiwanese pop song that I was embarrassed to have liked when I first heard it in 2005. But I've adopted the principle that if I listen to a song and it hooks me and I like it, I'm gonna accept it as a good song (but I accept the descriptive of 'bad song that I inexplicably like'; everyone has those), therefore it's on the CD. Unlike my musical integrity.

I think I may have wondered if that singer was going to show, but then Namie is still there in a different costume and performs this song (I don't remember what either of these performances looked like, just that they happened). When I faded out of sleep, I groggily thought I should've known it was a dream when Namie's costume changed without explanation.

So I thought (still not very clearly) that if I find myself in another dream, I'd try to kick myself into lucid dreaming by telling myself that I'd go out from wherever I was and run down the street and put both hands against a wall. It sounds completely bonkers writing it out now, but it made sense at the time.

I'm not sure I was all that successful. I did go into a dream and I remembered and ran out of wherever I was, but there was no street to run down, just like a lawn on a college campus. But I ran anyway, but then there was this kid running ahead of me and he got to the wall of a building and put both hands against it.

Yea, I think at this point I think my dreaming mind hijacked the lucid attempt and I was just dreaming. But it continues and becomes inception-ish because I was in the dream thinking I was lucid dreaming, and I was supposed to meet someone else who was also lucid dreaming and we had some mission to do.

So I'm at the meeting point but I don't know who it is, but I notice someone who looks suspicious and I tentatively approach, and he makes a tentative response and then decides I'm not the person he's supposed to meet, but then I remember there's a code and I call out the first phrase of the code, of which he's supposed to give me the response, and so we do make contact.

That line of dream doesn't get any more interesting, kind of a bust, and we part ways as I feel my sleep getting lighter, but then going back to where I started in the dream I realized I was on a U.S. college campus! Pizza! And in a few steps I'm in a food area and a pizza counter is right in front of me.

But I'm having trouble reading the options, so the pizza guy hands me a menu but I'm still having trouble reading it. Suddenly a line starts to form behind me, and I hate being the guy who gets to the front of the line (although I was already there) and hasn't decided what to order.

So the pizza guy makes a suggestion and I say, "Yea, that!", and he goes to start preparing the ingredients without ringing me up first. While he's doing that, I reach for my back pocket where I always put my cash these days and realize I only have Taiwanese money. And I realize the only way out of it is to wake up, which I did.

Kind of a quasi-lucid dream.

* a final note about that insidious Taiwanese pop song that no one needs to know: I liked the song in 2005. I didn't get into K-pop until roughly 2010. If someone pressed me to name my favorite K-pop act, it wouldn't be a second Hallyu wave group, but solo singer Lee Jung Hyun who came to prominence during the domestic first Hallyu wave in the mid- to late-90s. It turns out that the Taiwanese song is a re-make of a Lee Jung Hyun song. Bam. (and strangely I think the Taiwanese song is "slightly better" because the hooks are clearer)

Total insomnia last night. Not bad, almost two weeks without reportable insomnia. Sleep hasn't always been great; there have been frequent incidents of fragile sleeplessness on both front or back-end, but not rising to insomnia. Even though that kind of sleep meant not getting a good rest and fatigue usually in the evening.

Last night, already exhausted and nodding off all night, I put on a CD with the timer set, as usual, extended the time as I continued to remain awake, and when the entire CD played, that's when it's officially insomnia. So then I put on one of my yearly mix CDs, which at least makes sleeplessness enjoyable as those songs include songs I love and never get sick of.

I might have been able to fall asleep during that CD and slept the rest of the way, making it only front-end insomnia. Except for the dream.

Upon reviewing the tracks later, I found that I did fall asleep for 2 tracks, but I remember the tracks that were playing when I went into the dream, so I was in a twilight state at that time.

There's a bit of insignificant precursor before it became The Dream. A portion that looked like a gas filling station before dawn. A portion there where I was wondering if my music was playing too loud and disturbing my non-dream neighbors here, being concerned because it looked in the dream like I was blasting the music.

Then I was in a suburban house, an offshoot or morph of the gas station, during daytime in a sparsely furnished den or family room. I was making a round of the room when I ran into some spider webs. There was a large pillow on the floor so I dropped down on it to wipe off the webs.

When I got up, I realized the pillow was quite dirty and I had all these specks in front of my face and thought I might need to jump into the shower. But I soon realized a bunch of the specks were baby spiders and looking closely at the pillow, it was covered with baby spiders.

That's when things quickly escalated and the spiders started growing in number until they were a seething swarm of frenzied spiders of all different sorts carpeting the floor. Then there were other people who I don't know, but it felt like we were renting the house together.

Someone got the idea to burn the furniture that the spiders were on and a fire was started and I yelled at them to do it outside, especially when I noticed a bunch of car tires on the pyre that was quickly becoming an inferno.

I stepped out of the room just as another housemate was arriving wondering what was going on and I encouraged him to tell the others to put the fire out and to take the fire extinguisher with him. I was pro-put out the fire, but in retrospect I realize the ONLY solution to the problem was to burn down the house. Burn it. Burn it down.

When I stepped back into the room, the fire had been extinguished but the spider problem remained. They weren't crawling over us, but they were still a seething mass and any object that had been on the floor were now riding on top of the mass as if on waves.

The spiders were aware of us, and when someone poked a stick at the mass, they reacted. There were so many it was impossible to move anything without killing them. The dream ended with me asking one of the housemates, "You know I'm afraid of spiders, right?", and him almost sarcastically answering, "Yes, I know. If there's anything I know about you, it's that".

Upon waking, my thought was, "I'll take the insomnia".

So I lay awake for several more hours, first listening to another mix CD and then a lecture on Tibetan Buddhism by Robert Thurman. Then same as last time, instead of getting up close to 9 o'clock, I tried to drift into twilight sleep and see if I could investigate dreams in that state.

At one point, I do remember in a dream thinking that I was in a dream, so that was successful from a lucid dream perspective, but the nature of the dreams became totally bizarre and hostile. It was almost as if my unconscious was testing me after realizing I was in my own dream.

I don't remember them clearly enough to relate, but enough impressions to recall that scene after scene, I found myself amidst hostile people, trying to maintain calm. Actually, as I just wrote "amidst hostile people", I remembered that is a projected experience in the Tibetan-described bardo death experience.

Not suggesting it's objective, as my subconscious could be projecting what I'd read in the Tibetan Book of the Dead. I do know that in the dream I never reminded myself that this was all projections from my own mind of reality, as the book suggests training towards.

Since last Tuesday's bout of total insomnia, which turns out was a one-off, sleep has been good. Full nights sleep; although the effects of that one-off insomnia episode may have had continuing effects of fatigue during waking hours.

Then last night's sleep was interrupted by a nasty bout of back-end insomnia. Went to sleep alright but then woke up and couldn't get back to sleep.

Although interesting was that at 9 o'clock, when I should have gotten up and proceeded with sitting, I continued to try to get some sleep. I couldn't quite get to sleep, but I would fade into a twilight sleep where I could dream, and the dreams were totally bizarre. My brothers figured into many of them although that's all I can remember about them.

It made me think that back-end insomnia may be an opportunity to explore that more – trying to get into that shallow dream state where I'm experiencing dreams but slightly aware that I'm not fully asleep and trying to turn it into a lucid dream.

I've been working out at the gym regularly, so it's not about physical fatigue. I should be sufficiently tired to get to sleep. But not.

I had an interesting dream experience; a first for me, I think.

I had a "normal" type of sleep (as opposed to the abnormal, insomaniacal types of sleep I have), whereby I get a sufficient amount of good sleep, and upon waking I go through a period of waking and falling back to sleep multiple times, and having dreams in the shallow sleep periods.

Usually the dreams are unremarkable or I otherwise forget them very quickly after waking. But this time, it was like one, same dream that I kept waking up from and then fading back into. There was continuity, even though much of the contents of a dream are indescribable because too many things kept changing and it would be a disjunct mess to try to explain everything I remember.

The setting was a constant; a small-knit community like a village or school campus. I didn't know most of the people and most of the people were white, which may be strange since I usually don't note the race of people in dreams (they were all very nice and non-threatening).

And for me, whatever was happening, I had this feeling everyone knew what was going on and there were things they were (supposed to be) doing, but I had no clue whatsoever and was constantly trying to figure out who these people were and what they were doing.

I know that may reflect my psyche in this physical perceived reality, but in the dream it was literal. Like an alien plopped on a college campus and has no idea what college is about and trying to figure out why everyone is going about doing what they're doing.

Another constant was that early on in the dream, I had won something and received a certificate. It was some photo thing, but the certificate I received was some arts and crafts thing with my picture on it, and had nothing to do with any photo I took. There was a name for it, but I don't remember it, and it was apparently a big deal because in all periods of the dream, people would walk up and congratulate me.

A lot of the dream, the plot as it were, was trying to figure out that award and why it was such a big deal.

Like I said, the dream was constantly shape-shifting and it'd be nonsensical to describe everything. One notable scene was when I had a dream within the dream.

There was a room, and it was my brother's room and he was there and we had some interaction. At some point he lies down on his bed to take a nap. I go off to another part of the dream, but then I come back and he's still asleep, so I decide to take a nap since he implicitly welcomed me to (I'm uncharacteristically not socially avoidant as I currently am in this physical perceived reality). He has a roommate, but there are three beds, so it's no problem.

So I'm lying on the bed and the roommate comes back and there's a vibe of "what the hell are you doing on my bed?". I don't say anything, assuming everything's cool, then he just accepts it and starts putting stuff on the bed and that's when I look up and notice there are only two beds, and I'm on his.

I get up and want to apologize saying that I had a dream and there were three beds in the dream, so I thought it was alright, but decided not to because of how crazy that would've sounded. That's all I'll say about that even though the scene continues but shape-shifts into something else, including more misunderstanding between this stranger and my brother.

Another section I noted because it involved some woman that involved . . . some woman. I noted it just because of the woman aspect, tapping into the biological fact of human reality. I forget the lead up, but I think it had something to do with the award and something being written down by me or someone else in relation to it.

But then a woman who was there looked at it and discovered it was a code and she was able to break it. It was kind of like a bunch of words, but then if you read just the first letter of each word they make up a sentence. I tried to look at it but didn't see it.

But she said it was a message and that it was time for me to "get together" with Noel. Or Noelle, I suppose is a woman's name. The implication was a relationship, but the woman is a bit of a mystery since I think I had met her before, but she was in another village or another part of the campus. She wasn't easily accessible.

Finally, the last section is notable because I ended up at my uncle's place and it was nearing midnight and I was about to go out and he was under the impression I was leaving that night and he didn't know when we'd see each other again (themes from reality), but I hadn't prepared to leave so I would probably come back and leave in the morning.

And I don't feel like I was lucid dreaming at that point, but I remember thinking "this is the end of the dream, this is the end of the episode". All that up to that point was fiction, and now the credits were about to roll.

I think there was a brief feeling of defiance that this was a dream and I wasn't staying in it for the fucking credits and I do remember forcing myself out of the dream and waking up. I don't know why I didn't try to go back in, but I got up for good. Maybe because sometimes you have to know when it's over.

It's all good and fine to do the best one can in tackling mindfulness issues, one of mine being negativity, with one push-button issue of (karmic) violence and aggression. I'm generally not violent or aggressive in any way. Even when I feel an instance of anger flare up, I'm quick to extinguish it.

That instance of anger is important and I'll come back to it, but as to violence and aggression, I'm wary about this part of my mindstream that runs through scenarios where I encounter a confrontational situation where I take offense and lose any mindfulness or equilibrium and go ape shit on the other person.

Part of me says not to worry about it, it will never manifest, I'll never act on it. But then yesterday morning I had a dream where I did act on it. I don't remember specifics of the dream except that a situation arose, there was a sense of either offense or threat, and I went all out and attacked with the intention to destroy.

I don't remember the result, except that I came out fine, and that the person was somewhat reminiscent of someone I knew in my first year of college. That person was someone I had no problem with and totally respected.

She was an upperclassman, a bass player and a bit of a bull dyke. I think she was an East Asian Studies major and spoke Japanese, so maybe she was a bit of a lesbian rice queen. No problem there. And in reality she could've kicked my ass, as I think she also had some military experience in her background. No idea there.

The point about the dream, and the rest of it was also filled with my own fear and being threatened, is that it was scary because it establishes that violent and aggressive nature in my karma in a definitive way. The way I see it is that as it manifested in a dream, it was proven that it is something real in my subconscious that I have to worry about and deal with.

That flaky mindfulness thing about "I'll do the best I can" is not good enough. And I think this may be an important point about enlightenment, where serious transformation must be faced and achieved. Where doing the best you can is, quite frankly, easy. How about doing what you can't. Open your eyes and don't see. I can't. Well, do it.

I'm led to believe my karma has issues of violence and aggression, and it's rooted in anger. I've gotten good at clamping down on anger flaring up. As soon as I encounter a situation where I react in even the mildest offense of "What the hell are you doing?", I shut it down.

That's no reason to pat myself on the back. That may be doing the best I can. The impossible is wiping out any mote of anger flaring up at all, and that's what needs to be done in the scan of my perception of reality. Wipe out that karma completely. How do you wipe out karma that was created by someone else (previous life/lives)?!

It has become instinctual and immediate. It is part of my fabric. How do I not get angry for even a microsecond, how do I not react? But it has to be done no matter how impossible it seems. That's what may be considered transformational.

I had another lucid dream, but it was different from the previous time I was successful. This time I don't know if it was my dream. I'm pretty sure I wasn't me in it.

Also I don't remember whether the last time I came up into the lucid state from a lower dream state, but this time I felt I went down into it from a waking state. I was lying on my bed watching my breathing, aware of the constant chatter and internal conversation going on in my head, which gets more intense when you haven't had direct in-person social contact in months.

Then as I fell into a quasi-sleep state, I was aware of things in my mind becoming really vivid. I was only quasi-aware of this as well. I'm not sure what those things that were becoming vivid were, if it was my awareness, or my sense perceptions, or the thoughts.

But then I was in a dream state and still fully aware of myself, but the content of the dream suggested it wasn't me or my dream. I actually don't know how to describe it or what was going on. I was totally clueless in the dream.

All I can describe are the very basic impressions and those I'm really squeezing to interpret into physical words and are nothing like the experience.

There were two groups of people, one male and one female. The male portion came first and it was like some white boy institution, like a frat house or military academy. I did feel a basic fear being in that situation, but when I realized they weren't treating me differently or being racist, I just went along with the flow of the dream, the content of which I've completely forgotten.

I had no idea who I was and I don't think I said anything, I just played it cool, but at the same time I was fully aware I was dreaming and that as a dream it was completely unfamiliar territory.

Next I wandered "down the hall" or something to the female section of the dream, and when I walked in a door. A person behind the door closed the door and accosted me. At first I think it was a guy, but then it was clearly female and she was hostile and pinned me down, and I get the sense that it was some issue over a guy, and then I realized I must've been female.

I wasn't resisting or doing or saying anything. It wasn't my dream, I didn't know what to do so I just remained passive. But then I don't know if it was me consciously changing the tenor of the dream, but then the whole incident with this woman on top of me changed and started getting intimate. She was no longer pinning me down and there was a sexual energy beginning. This, no one should be surprised, I tried to encourage and maintain.

The way I came out of it was interesting, too, because the scene transitioned without me changing my position. Still on my back, I was suddenly in a room that had the atmosphere of maybe my uncle's house in Kaohsiung 30 years ago. I was lying on a bed trying to maintain the lucid dream and the feel of intimacy from the previous scene.

I think someone was there, maybe a cousin, bumping or making some noise on a bed next to mine and I was thinking, "darn, they're going to wake me up out of this", but I also thought that I was already awake and vainly trying to maintain the lucid dream.

But then I realized that no, this isn't my room. I tried to imagine my room but couldn't, so then I realized I was still in the dream. But trying to imagine my room was irresistible, and when I did, that's when I woke up.

I don't know if this has any significance, but right after I woke up, I started feeling a sharp pain in my gut, similar to several months ago, but then it resided. Then I felt I should go to the bathroom and surprisingly took the BIGGEST FUCKING DUMP EVER. It felt great, like all the pipes got cleaned out. If someone were to have told me I was full of shit, I would've replied, "Not anymore!!".

I've heard about people who practice lucid dreaming as a way to prepare for traveling through the death bardos. There's more than one source suggesting the closest to the Tibetan bardo experience we can come to while living is dreaming, and lucid dreaming is analogous to being in control through the bardos, rather than swept through like in a stormy current.

I did get the sense after this lucid dream that my reactions in the dream were the result of my practice and how I would ideally like to handle myself through the death bardos. However, my experience was still a duality, I still had a sense of me and everything else as other.

It is said that enlightenment comes when one realizes a non-dual oneness. If one can realize in the bardo that everything is a manifestation of oneself – no separation between oneself and everything perceived around us – that would be enlightenment. I didn't think of that in the lucid dream, but I did remain unattached to what was happening around me.

Short of enlightenment in the bardo, I think that's the best way to go through it: Not being pulled in by what you're perceiving, and not thinking it's real and reacting to it as if it were real, either positively or negatively, which is a function of one's basic karma, which is a function of one's experiences and actions during life.

If what I've been practicing and cultivating as I go about my daily life led to my reactions in this lucid dream, then I should have a good degree of confidence heading into the death bardos. It's not a cold detachment, which could lead to a lack of compassion, but a concerted effort to not be attached or feel aversion to my perceptions and experiences.

It's true that I'm not engaged in life going on around me, but I do think it's important to maintain a base attitude that's prepared to be engaged and to engage it with compassion. The fact that I'm not engaged is circumstantial. And I know it's a reality that I've created by myself.

Wow, I did it. I verify having lucid dreamed. It was a messy, disturbed dream, possibly caused by the return of insomnia. After not being able to get to sleep, I got up for several hours and puttered around, then feeling some exhaustion lay back on my bed still not feeling like I would sleep, but then faded in and out of half-sleeps.

The key component in the dream was that I had my hardcover copy of the Tibetan Book of the Dead in my lap. I turned a certain way and ripped the paper covering over the hardcover, and was shocked and annoyed because it is supposedly a sacred book, which doesn't mean anything in itself, but it's one that I try to be mindful about.

I had negative thoughts, thinking things like, "damn", and realized it was only the paper covering that I could simply discard, and then saw the back of the covering had also ripped and more negative thinking, "total loss". Then I thought, "This isn't right, I can't have ripped the cover of the book because the book is sitting on my bookshelf. All I have to do is get out of "here" and it'll be there as always. Then I started struggling up through layers of consciousness.

As I was pushing myself out of sleep, I imagined the book on a bookshelf in my room that doesn't exist, but then as I came closer to consciousness, I revised the image so that it was sitting where it should be on my night table/altar, and I had the feeling that I was right, the book was fine, I'd been in a dream. When I broke the surface and woke up, the final position of the book on the table was a little different than I had imagined, but that's not the point.

This was a classic description of lucid dreaming – realizing being in a dream triggered by an object in the dream. However, I didn't navigate my way in the dream, but forced myself out of it, still realizing it was a dream.

This was very different from the strange sleep paralysis dream experiences I've had before. This felt like a dream in every way, whereas before I was in some lucid state where I didn't have a conscious sense I could "get out of". I never consciously processed that it was a dream, but was reacting like it was an actual experience, like in a dream. And in those states, even though I could move around, I did have a continued sense or connection with my physical body laying in bed but that it was paralyzed. That was still part of the actual experience, with no external thought of it being a dream.

I also have to totally retract what I said yesterday. Drowning in sleep doesn't suck nearly as much as insomnia. Furthermore, there is a difference between the insomnia I've been having, whereby I could sleep for 2 or 3 hours before waking up and not being able to fall back to sleep, and the type where you can't get into a full sleep at all, like today. That's worse. You don't even get the false comfort of being able to slip into a sleep state.

Aside from the lucid part, I have no recollection what was actually going on in this dream. It wasn't location specific, but some, if not all, of my family members were around and I think they were annoying me. It was in a public area, but I'm not sure if it was indoors or out. Just a lot of stuff going around, messy, but not all negative.

There was one situation that would have normally made me aggressive or combative, but I handled it calmly and wisely, the way I usually imagine handling a situation after an initial negative reaction and realizing that was wrong and would just make things worse.

This insomnia – yesterday and today – came as a total surprise after my last post and it's mucking my thoughts. I want to get out of the apartment either to ride or to shoot, it looks perfect outside for either – cloudy but unlikely to rain. But I'm not rested and I've been able to ride 3 days in a row, so I probably shouldn't.

I've been enjoying my brother's Nikon D80, to my surprise. It can't shoot sky for shit, the gradients come out all pixelized and may be why people recommend shooting in color and then removing the color components one-by-one to get black and white.

I've just been shooting in black and white mode because I don't even like the idea of shooting with an SLR in color. Not sure what my hang up is. Feels like I'm cheating somehow.

I'm gonna make coffee now. And make my fucking bed.

I haven't been remembering dreaming much lately, and even if I remembered that I had been dreaming, I had no recollection of the content of the dream. This time I woke up from the dream, remembered the dream and it happened to be an Amina dream.

Was it because it was an Amina dream that I was unconsciously particularly inspired to remember it? Meaning nothing else in my subconscious has been worthy of being remembered? And the whole Amina thing – hey, it's old. Or is it?

I was in the foyer area of a mansion, classic European-looking, perhaps Victorian? I'm not sure what that looks like. It was brightly lit by a large chandelier and had high ceilings. I was halfway up a curving staircase facing down towards the foyer area, and Amina was behind me, I couldn't see her, and I was shielding her because she was in some sort of state of undress. And I was being chivalrous.

I don't know who I was shielding her from, because down in the foyer were some completely naked, large and curvy women who were completely casual, didn't even take note of me there, and two of them separately walked by the staircase in all their glory into another unseen room.

My reaction was a bit of astonishment, but mindful of Amina behind me, we started to back our way up the stairs, where I knew on the next landing there was a bathroom that I could easily back her into and she could have her privacy. But when we got to the door, where I expected to stop and she could go in and close the door, we both continued in, and then she closed the door with both of us inside.

Calculating the situation and concluding my being there was consensual, I turned around and saw her for the first time in the dream. She was modestly dressed in a negligee and she was stunningly gorgeous, my reaction not being too far from the first time I saw her. Calculating some more, I concluded it was also consensual for me to approach her and start kissing her and then the camera of my perspective goes askew and I woke up.

So why did I remember this dream of all dreams? Was it because of Amina or because it dealt with romantic issues?

It's not because of Amina. Amina is most certainly now a fiction. So it probably had more to do with what Amina might still represent, which is romance, the human biological imperative, the crude human version of spiritual male/female union that represents a divine unity and oneness. Or not.

In the bright light of day, if I was in that same situation with Amina, I don't think my impulse now would be to kiss her. To love her. I don't think. Love is no longer a part of my equations anymore, I tell myself. Even if I could romantically love another person, which I doubt, my software then runs the program asking what next? What do I want from such a relationship? Do I want a relationship? Well, do I, punk?

But then why the dream? Why it was Amina is clear; it was because she was some sort of pinnacle, the love of my life I called her; but if I had the chance to even meet her again in this lifetime, I would probably decline unless she had some reason that was compelling enough for me to accept. Some love of my life.

I made the mistake when I was in New Jersey to mention to my sister-in-law my last relationship and the year it occurred, and smart cookie as she is being a medical doctor and all, she calculated how long it had been since I'd been in a relationship and made an exclamation to that effect.

Needless to rehash details, I'm clearly so out of practice that I can't be considered being able to give an objective assessment of the situation. It's simply out of my reality for even consideration. From the empirical evidence, I'm not even interesting, much less attractive, much less a pursuit, much less a catch. That's just reality and I have considered it and accepted it. It's even perfect.

I think I'm just going to have to relegate Amina dreams such as these as inconveniences of the human condition. Just because we're human beings, we crave love, attention, and we lust. If we can achieve communion with another human being, great, good for you. It's still an instinct for me, but it's not reality.

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