Day 500!!! & Nimitta

Day 500 Record Keeping
Day 469 Fixed Meditation (3nd jhana, beginings of 4th? -80)
Day 415 Bodyweight Exercise (2 typewriter pushups - 72)
Day 342 Writing (pitching - 66)
Day 515 Eating (75)

Day 500! A great day! Eating has rapidly gotten automatic - I had every opportunity to cheat and just didn’t. Fixed meditation has been going great, experienced what could possibly be:

Nimitta
The nimitta is a sign that some people take to be a self emergent property of a unifying mind. I was in what I think may be third jhana and thought, why not try for 4th? 

I focused on my object of visualization but it wasn’t coming clearly. I kept trying and this broad round light came into my field of vision. As I “looked” at it it gradually got smaller and focused, and as soon as I focused on it it went back to being broad again. It wasn’t a mental image, it felt more tangible, like actual sight.

I thought that perhaps I had a slight opening in my eyelids. I checked and I didn’t and it continued to occur. I had a great deal of difficulty figuring out whether or not my eyes were in fact shut.

All of these things are talked about in the literature.

In several texts 3rd jhana is where people say to start the progress of insight. When I looked at the stream of thoughts I found them much more spread a part and broken up. I never knew what people were talking about when they were saying they could see the emergent and passing away process of mind objects. But I did see it more clearly - I believe this is what is referred to by the stream of dependent origination.

Day 144 & Intermittent Fasting

Day 144 Record Keeping SRHI = 79
Day 112 Fixed Meditation SRHI = 82
Day 58 Bodyweight Exercise SRHI= 74 (3 bridges, 30 second plank)
Day 158 Eating SRHI = 57  
Great sleep, good wakeup.

Intermittent Fasting

I was just wondering the other day why my diet (now back on it from having it severely screwed with while traveling) wasn’t taking a hold of me like it used to. Before I had an extreme sense of satiety - I really didn’t get hungry, and would frequently find myself intermittently fasting even though I didn’t mean to. Later on it was a problem - I plateaued until I started upping my caloric intake, specifically of fats through having snacks or putting butter in my coffee (my take on bulletproof coffee).

Well it seems like I’m back on - either the eating is taking hold or the milk I had in my coffee yesterday morning had some weird effect, because other than a few nuts I only ate once yesterday, and I really didn’t feel like I had to do that. 

We’ll see if this trend continues.

Here’s Mark Sisson’s take on fasting.

Here’s a bit about Bulletproof Coffee. A lot of people are squeamish about the taste - I’ve had yak butter tea and that was horrible - this really doesn’t taste much different than regular coffee. A lot of people get really into blending it so that the solids don’t go up to the top. I mean they really stress blending, like it’s the most important thing on earth.  I don’t have the equipment and I really don’t care. I mix it with a knife and it’s fine.