Prefacing with this album. Even if you don’t like the songs the cover is fascinating. 
Things are happening very quickly and I need to post some reminders to myself. Maybe it will be useful to someone else. I remember Geoffrey saying (way back) that he didn’t seem to make much progress when he was writing and then the inverse when not writing (correct me if I’m wrong) and I don’t see why that wouldn’t be true. I still want to write things down, and maybe get some feedback as well in the process.
Anyway, my baseline during the convivium week was unlike anything I’d experienced in years. I remember being a bit scared at the end of it (the “please grant me experiences” attitude is still alive and well, despite all my efforts to chip at it), afraid that I’d lose everything I’d shown myself and just go back to being a surly, lonely being.
The weather was dreadful when I landed back home late Saturday night, and some private issues that had been far away when being at the other end of Europe were now very much at the fore again, but I could still keep the baseline going and I remarked to myself how nothing seemed to be a problem as long as I was bathing in this enjoyment and appreciation.
I had to sing in a church on Sunday, which was ironically funny given how scared I’d been of anything religion the day before, but I managed to get the playfulness to come in during rehearsals and I had an absolutely lovely time leading up to the concert, with some random smiling and laughing to myself because I was enjoying myself so much. The relaxation coming from being very thin, and very playful, made the singing so easy and so pleasant that I think I might have sung better than ever. There was one song with piano comp where I could feel every note of it vibrating and playing around with me, and the overtones and the trilling sounds of the piano strings increased my enjoyment manifold. Then came the actual concert and the mass and I didn’t like it at all. I got it into my head that the “God” vibes were too strong. The rest of the day I kept the baseline up but didn’t have any particular experiences, but I had plenty of energy for cleaning up and walking.
On Monday I was getting a bit antsy though. I needed to be able to get somewhere at home. The weather felt oppressive (rainy and cold, and nature seemed to be dead and barren compared to Algarve). I told my colleagues I’d work from home and with my hours a bit skewed, and went out for a walk. I did think that maybe I was being a bit insane about the whole thing, and perhaps also a bit avoidant (I do tend to have this problem) but it seemed to me that proving to myself that I could do it at home had to be my priority above all else, and I had the margins at work to be flexible.
As I was walking around I started noticing that plants that had seemed dead to me started popping out when I took the time to relax and let things happen. I eventually found myself at a cliffside (with proper fencing! 
) looking out over the sea and the ships coming in and noticing that sweetness coming in from all sides. I could do it, even when it was raining! 
I played around with Gemini and plants again but had to keep an eye on other people wondering why the heck I was jumping around the cliffs looking at moss. There’s a lot of social identity there still and I need to whittle that part down.
With the cliffside experience I felt like I’d at least opened a possibility that I might have a shot at this even here (why I have it in my head that I can’t do it here is silly, but I keep bringing it up). My baseline was still astronomically better than it had been in years and I had a pleasant day overall. I finally dealt with setting up a 5G forward deployment modem I’d had laying around for ages, then unpacked my bags (who packed the shampoo so badly that it leaked all over my climbing shoes?) and kept cleaning up my apartment. In the evening I went out again and this time, even in the darkness, my enjoyment and playfulness ramped up. I decided to make a phone call and while it was pleasant at the start I did notice the person on the other end constantly trying to pull me into her issues. I held my own and wasn’t particularly bothered by it and by the end we had a reasonable discussion at least.
Tuesday though… I had to get into work now. We have mandatory presence and I didn’t want to avoid large groups of people for much longer. The whole “staying in and protecting my feelings” was starting to feel oppressive and completely anathema, so I had to stop hiding away and try my hands at keeping felicitous at work as well and not just while protected in my ivory tower. In the shower I came close to the same kind of experience as I had below the Elegant Dining Experience; I was thinking about how it was all “me” that made it happen in Portugal, and I traced it back to the first day and finally got it into my head that it was me that did that was well. I was overcome with laughter and a bit of a sniffle, looking up at the shower tiles and just being happy about it all.
The way in to work was lovely; I was enjoying just watching people and despite issues with my train I didn’t feel stressed. I remember being extremely appreciative as we were crossing the bridge from my island and over to the mainland, looking at the surrounding smaller islands all spread out in the water, a rainbow of leaf colours from the shifting trees reflected in masses of glittering sea. The early morning sun had this pale shade that it gets around this time of year, peeking through the clouds and creating almost a haze. I remember thinking that it was all so immensely good that I was here, living in this paradise, on my way in to work in this little carriage with all these people.
I started feeling my motivation ramping up. I really wanted this. I wanted what I’d experienced in Algarve like I’d never wanted anything before. I did start noticing how I was throwing myself indiscriminately at it like a rabid pit bull though. Whenever I thought of slowing down I could just hear myself going “turn down for WHAT!” and then I kept at it.
There was a constant issue I’d been having since coming back; hanging onto the whole convivium experience while not being able to be here, right now, barely at all. I would constantly hear Geoffrey’s words that “the actual is here, now” and I could bring myself back for a brief moment, but then I’d latch on to the pleasant feelings again. I could see it and I could feel it but I kept going back to those feelings since I was so scared of not being able to make it on my own (I’ve made it on my own across the globe multiple times, I’ve made it on my own since I was a kid, why this keeps popping up is probably obvious to everyone else and it’s already murkily obvious to me, but it still keeps popping up). I remember mentally saying goodbye to everyone somewhere on Monday because I noticed I kept a vice grip on everything while avoiding everything happening in the present, but still returning back to the happy memories and interactions. While sitting on the subway I was suddenly overcome with loving feelings for the fellow actualists I’d spent the week with. It came out of left field, but was probably fuelled by this whole back and forth I was engaging in.
I came into work infused with these feelings and while they were kind of pleasant (I remember having to tell myself that so as to not panic entirely), I noticed I had very little capacity to think, and the most unpleasant of it all; a pinpoint focus that I couldn’t get out of. I could concentrate like a glowing hot iron on what was right in front of me but everything around me was completely out of focus and earshot. I had yet another “what the fuck have I done now?” moment but I had to keep working. I felt out the whole experience and realised there was a massive wall of fear between whatever this was and where I wanted to be. I had to face it but right then and there I just couldn’t. As soon as I felt it out in my chest I could feel the waves of good feelings washing over me and I was trapped. It was like being in love (been there, done that and I know I can get out of it… I just don’t like the time it takes). I went for a walk around the lake below our office during lunch but still couldn’t pull myself out of it. I could feel the massive ego underneath it all. I started noticing I was getting irritated and realised I could probably use that to get out, and right after lunch something happened that well and truly irked me. I sat on my hands but ended up having take charge and being very sharp, and it helped me shed some of the cloyingly sickly mess I was in. Then I started feeling fearful and I could sense myself returning to “normal”. I was still feeling very muddled and incapable of functioning though. Towards the evening I was starting to wonder if I’d just made this more dramatic than I had to; my baseline had been so good, and I had been so thin for so long that getting back to being “me” felt disgusting. I’ve spent so many years being more or less entirely dissociated that getting out of it so cleanly, and then spending close to a week so close to the actual, was bound to give me some kind of whiplash getting back. It’s still up for grabs what happened, it could even have been the half tablet of antihistamine I took the night before to sleep.
I still felt like a massive failure though, envying the others that were a lot more measured in their approach and still enjoying the afterglow, while I was sitting here toiling and driving myself bonkers (even when writing this I can see how sorry I felt for myself). I went to sleep that evening having to physically pry myself from mindless YouTube surfing and dissociating.
I woke up to a storm around 3:30. I remember waking up and feeling quite good, reflecting on how I’d done my usual thing of ruminating myself into a mess. I looked at the forum and saw hunterad’s response in the convivium thread and something clicked in me. I went and got my heated blanket and snuggled up underneath it, softened my approach entirely and suddenly everything that had been bothering me just melted away. I could once again feel that undercurrent of sweetness that had suffused the entire convivium week, and this time without working myself into a pretzel just to get a whiff of it. I just lay in my bed, listening to the wind blowing things around outside and feeling calm for the first time in days. I knew already from before that I had to tune and turn myself down; again, I was throwing myself at things like a raging pit bull, and mixed with the anxiety and the constant ups and downs I wasn’t going to land anyplace nice. It’s a bit shameful to admit this but I didn’t see any other way then and there.
Some things that I’d written in my notes that I discovered over the past couple of days:
Sometime during a discussion, Geoffrey told me “we have all the time in the world” and it didn’t click for me. It should’ve, so I put a huge pin in it that moment, the phrase and my reaction, and it still hasn’t clicked other than intellectually. It still feels like I need to understand this experientially, also to stop stressing myself out.
Harmlessness came extremely easy during the convivium week, and I found myself sitting on my hands all the time because the milieu was so precious that I didn’t want to ruin it for anything, but I hadn’t noticed how tinged with morality harmlessness has always been for me. After coming home, I started “furling up the tentacles” (I think it was Adam who mentioned feeling himself to be like an octopus with its feelers out?) every now and then and noticed how much of a difference it made, and it clicked that it was never about morals, it was about not always being out trying to affect others and blobbing around existence like an amoeba. I noticed immediately the difference in quality of how I experienced others and myself without affecting the vibes. I didn’t realise how much it was necessary until I saw clearly how it operated.
And finally, I need to soften my approach. I’ve had a couple of really rocky days when I’ve tried to force things while pretending I wasn’t forcing things. I ended up ruminating numerous times while trying to pretend I was analysing things (and noticed immediately as I stopped forcing things that 90% of the stuff I was ruminating about really didn’t even have to be resolved). I kept thinking that the further I had “backslid” the more SeRiOuS ThInKiNg I had to do to get out of it. The key was just to let off the pressure and allow it to happen (why do I hear “allow” with Geoffrey’s accent, the heck dude?). Speaking of excursions, I don’t need to find my way back along the same path that I strayed on, I just need to let go and let it happen. The actual is here and now, never back a week in Portugal and not in March next year when the weather will turn back around, or sometime in the future when I’ll have magically become a better person who’s more suited to this
Something I didn’t write in my convivium report was how the whole God experience was followed by seeing, at the bottom of it, the weaver of dreams and fantasies, and how this weaver is me - and it has been (over)active since coming home. There’s a large part of me that wants to fail, because this is scary. It went so fast that I knew I could do it, and I could do it right away. I’ve tried to channel that part of me that wants to sabotage this as some kind of reckless abandon but I’m not sure it works. I even wrote, as one of my first notes to myself, that ‘I’ grow and stay alive in the friction, in the desperation and in the phugoid oscillations I keep creating for myself. If I succeed I’m gone and no longer needed, and that still frightens me. I can see, whenever I get closer to the sweetness and actuality, that I’m not needed, but I need to do this with more situations and also not working so hard for it, almost driving myself silly in the process.
Anyway, enough of this. I feel like I’m going to get yelled at for making things so complicated for myself but I still wanted to post this. 
