Trip Report 2025-02-06 LSD

things to maybe consider

• followup on giving myself as much attention as I need/can
• ideal parenting, again and again
• do I want therapy / NET to work ?
• milam doesn't get it. no one gets it. no one gets how hard this has been for me. and I can't just let the therapy work because that would be failing to acknowledge how hard this is / has been

to the worry that I can't love the child, that I'm corrupt, that I'll harm it somehow: I DON'T BELIEVE YOU

the next day: I think there was probably a lot of good stuff in this trip, overall though it felt a bit frustrating. I wanted it to be a continuation of last week's Trip Report 2025-01-31 LSD, where I could really feel the love of the ideal parents, and was able to stay with some emotions --- some feelings that "I'll never get enough attention", "I couldn't possibly be looked at because it'll be terrible" --- long enough to be really transformative. But this week it felt like that quality of loving attention wasn't quite as available.

As I did the ideal parent figure practice, I really couldn't visualize being cared for. There was more of the sense of lack. I was disappointed that those feelings of care and security weren't arising. And a bit angry and frustrated (at myself? at my actual parents?) that that was the case.

It was more transformative when I moved to being the ideal parent. The first time through the practice, I had a sense of being broken, of not being able to love my child because of all my inadequacies. And yet there was the vulnerable crying child, and there was some part of me that just immediately responded. The sense that I'm broken and can't love a child is just a story and it was disproven. The moments of direct connection bubbled up through and despite the story. And that felt really powerful and healing.

My second time being the ideal parent was more disturbing. I didn't even get that sense of love. I felt more consumed with my own failures. I could hear the voice in my head accusing me that I had failed to love the child. And the only redemption at the end (such as it was), is that at the very end of the practice --- when Dan goes into being a loving parent for all beings and, in the great scope of the Mahayana, no one is left behind, no one is forgotten --- I could feel some compassion coming from outside myself, for the parent who felt that they'd failed their child. There also is suffering; the bohdisattvas see it and compassion.

Another powerful moment was (sitting on the toilet!) looking at my relationship with Jake and how the central fact is that I feel bad that I hurt him. I'm worried that, in any new relationship, I will be secretly bad, I will carry with me some hidden corruption, something about me that will inevitably hurt the other person. And there was a kind of clarity and purity to the realization --- just LOOK. Look at my feelings. I don't need to worry about carrying some sort of disconnected pain. The feelings might be complicated, they might still be painful. But fundamentally if I look at them and follow my heart with good faith, I have nothing to be ashamed of.

Still I spent much of the trip feeling a bit uncomfortable, on edge. There was a sense that things are still dire --- there was a massive trauma, the patient is still in a coma, still on life support, gasping for breath. The whole process of bringing him back is too daunting and painful. And I don't / didn't have the right quality of attention for it. I needed comforting and soothing and that just wasn't always there.

It felt like I spent a lot of the trip basically in my head. There wasn't the sense of aligned energy flowing through the body. When I would try to contact the body generally, I'd get contractions in my head, tensing of the forehead. For much of the trip, my neck and throat were just tense, sore, raw. Sometimes I tried to do more of a body scan, specifically feeling into regions that felt 'missing' or numb or aversive, and that actually almost always helped. I could probably have done more of that.

It felt like Ajahn Sona saved me several times on this trip. Some of his videos came up on YouTube and I started listening to him answering questions, from younger monks and online viewers. And he just has this steady compassionate clarity. He talked about teaching the dhamma, being responsive to what each person needs, meeting people where they are, and through all that I felt seen and understood. He talked about letting go of anger, that it must be let go of, with a kind of compassionate urgency.

Someone else asked about keeping a meditation practice when she's having trouble getting up in the morning and he just zoomed in so immediately and compassionately on the core problem of getting up in the morning. You need to like your life, to believe in what you're doing. Sometimes you want to stay with something even when it's a slog for a while, but consciously. And then you do it with loving kindness. Do something before bedtime to establish metta for yourself - a practice or routine or ritual where you feel loved as you go off to sleep. And try to set up the morning so you feel welcomed into the day --- like a child waking up to a comforting parent. Keep warm water in a thermos with a washcloth to comfort yourself as you wake. It's in the suttas that one of the benefits of loving kindness is that you sleep well, wake easily, and have good dreams. And I actually believe that.

He said something else about concentration: that attention is its own reward. I don't immediately "get it" but it feels resonant.

This whole trip was a bit rushed. I didn't have the time to really prepare, explore intentions, let my mind settle beforehand. I was doing it late in the day and kind of doing it "just to do it", with a lazy idea that I would repeat last week's trip. The timing was the result of my poor sleep cycle, which I'd been frustrated with myself about. So all that probably contributed to my mindset going into the trip.

It did feel like there was something empowering about just allowing myself to do the trip and stay up late. I turned staying up late from a practice of self-avoidance, to a deliberate practice of self-attention. I knew what I was doing and I accept the consequences.