Day 3

Alrighty then let's see.

Last night was Summer Solstice (12:36AM my time Sunday). I wanted to be meditating positively during that moment and I wanted to try my normal meditation style using the Procyon and see how the visual element might affect it.

I tried Procyon preset #22 'Deep Tranquility', a 60 minute session with the description: An hour's visit to the land of Hypnogogia -- mostly slow, deeply peaceful frequencies interspersed with unflickering baths of color.

In my first visualization, the photic visual did seem sort of interruptive. Then again if it felt hard to connect, I have to consider that (a) I'd only just begun the session and (b) I have not meditated with that approach for awhile so it likely would be a mild effect no matter what. Then I went to a different more common active meditation area. I was somewhere in the midst of requesting the positive things I wanted when I passed out. I had wanted to stay alert. However, since I was sleepy, and I was lying down, it's not surprising I fell asleep. I should have been sitting up.

And although you're supposed to be awake enough to 'perceive' whatever is going on for it to do you any good, the fact is I slept soundly for about 8.5 hours. This is a big deal. I have not sleep for that amount of time without waking in longer than I can even remember. It was so shocking that I was disoriented about time when I woke up; normally if I fell asleep around midnight I would be awake between 2 and 5 at the latest.

I consider that a good thing. If I had to boil down all my problems in life I think the #1 issue would be that I don't hardly sleep. The thing is, maybe most people would lie in bed trying and so they would say they were insomnic. Me, if I'm more than half awake, I'm DOing something and I'm happy to be alert enough to "get something accomplished." So I don't perceive profound and chronic insomnia as a problem, I perceive it as "I get a lot accomplished but I have to sacrifice sleep for it." However when I am objective and I look at my health and more, I see that this lack of sleep has got to be the cornerstone of a lot of not-good stuff. If AV-stim results in me actually sleeping like a normal human being, that alone will probably have been worth the money. Even though that is not actually my goal with it at all.

About an hour after waking I realized I had to do a remote viewing session for a deadline so I decided I would try my first AV-stim-as-remote-viewing-prep experiment. I wasn't worried about falling asleep given all the sleep I'd just had and that I was wide awake.

I used Procyon Preset #24 'Night Voyage', a 25-minute session with the description: A decent into slow washes of color, with emphasis on blues and greens; a somewhat longer version of the #23 with slower changes.

I liked this one, experientially. I like the slower beats. At one point there was a real low tone which I liked the feel of and I remember recently reading that some people respond badly to very low tones--no detail, just like some people maybe it frightens them or something else, will have to look into that. My body did reach the stage of feeling verrry relaxed to the point of being very still and my limbs feeling mostly asleep. I did have more interrupt than most people likely do because I am apnic -- even when awake I breathe too shallowly and too high -- so I several times had to force myself to take a deep low breath, and I expect that sort of thing interrupts the body falling asleep part. Anyway I had no real issue with my mind staying alert despite all that.

The session ended abruptly, as did the other sessions I have done on preset. Perhaps they are really ramping but still at the end of the ramp it seems abrupt. So far I've had the very very mild -- almost a 'sense of' rather than a feel of -- nausea after these waking sessions and I'm wondering if it's a somnatic shock thing and why they don't make those a lot more gradual.

There was some white noise (not session just the Procyon itself) still in the headphones a little plus I have a fan on next to me so I sat happily for a short time. That is around the levels where in hypnosis for example a subject could just sit there entranced with no desire to do anything. I used to drop to those levels so fast I always had to use taped instructions because I lost all volition very fast.

Then I did the session. My bleeping computer had shut down so going directly into it didn't work, took awhile a lot of light flashes and beta effort which was annoying and felt like it defeated some of the purpose of that as warmup. Anyway, the results were odd. I wasn't sure there would be any difference whatever, but I hope 'altered state' might actually help. I didn't feel very AS actually, once I got to the session.

But I did feel different. The only way I can describe this -- excuse me if it sounds retarded but we lack shared vocabulary here -- is that apparently, normally, I feel sort of "varied and variable and large and loose". Like my overall head and effort is a large very loose mass of soft tangled threads. I have never felt that; I only felt that this time, compared to previous times, that is how I must have felt 'comparatively'. But this time I felt "smaller and more condensed and more uniform." Since I have never felt that way before, I recorded it as session data as sometimes it comes through as a personal feeling, but I expect that to be wrong and this probably just to be an AV-stim effect.

The session experience didn't go well. I didn't really feel I could collect much of any data at all and nothing felt decent and even if everything I got was right it was still trivially irrelevant probably. I don't think that particular program worked well for the RV so next time I'll try something more theta and less delta. Feedback is in a couple hours but I don't have much hope.

Am planning to try another pre-set session later if I have time.

I feel this is making my eyes very tired. I have eye drops, when I had LASIK my doctor told me he felt the "GenTeal" brand especially the 'mild' was best for eyedrops (they certainly cost enough). I am going to keep a bottle of eyedrops with my Procyon and use these a few minutes before, and after, each session. LASIK really made me understand how profoundly the eyes are impacted by dehydration (it worsens that greatly) and I've already lost a lot of vision quality by not keeping my eyes and body hydrated enough, don't want to make that worse.

Updated 8pm: had a period today where it seemed like my body sort of fell asleep. My mind wasn't really but my body was slouching and I finally realized it was heavy and/or not-there in the same way as when it starts seriously falling asleep but you're still alert. I am not tired at all in my head but it's like it's trying to pull me down to that. I wonder if this is a side-effect.

PJ

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