A filthy academic mathematician's journal

[Christdas]

Productivity entry 1

 

This journal will be multifaceted, including my spiritual, mathematical, and philosophical work,  but a core component will be productivity - not swaying too hard from the path, which should tie in to a deep sub journal dedicated to peering into the nature of discipline. I'm currently in quite a pickle. I haven't been able to finish some assignments and my main tutor ( They do this at my uni - like a professor that you're very close with) has sent my some very aggressive emails that I currently can't will myself to look at. As a result of my poor character development, this gust of spiritual wind knocked me down and sent me into an unhealthy spiral of jerking off (up to 6 times a day!) and listening to stupid youtube videos, sustained by the fear of getting kicked out of uni. I'm determined to stop it by the end of the day, and be right where I was a week ago as soon as possible. It's currently 2:15 am and I have to go to bed at, say, 7:15 am, so here's a plan for the rest of the day:

1. Go on a short walk around the block, listening to Leo, then drink some tea YES
2. 25 min. visualize JUST finishing the last question of the Geometry of Surfaces assignment and sending it off as well as the incomplete assignment from before.
3. Do it. YES
4. 15 min. visualize sending off the two fluid mechanics assignments.
5. Do it.NO
6. Celebrate by walking Benny (which is a dog, not a cat) while listening to Leo. 
7. 10 min. visualize sending off your VERY incomplete numerical analysis assignment and pushing through the pain of what Victor (the tutor mentioned above) might think of you. 
8. Do it. NO
9. 15 min. visualizing spending 1:30 hours finishing up the classical mechanics you still have to do, and sending off whatever you have - again regardless of what Victor may think of you. NO
10. Celebrate with another walk.  
11. 20 min visualize sending victor a new email ( you don't have to check the hellhole of angry emails) saying: "Dear Victor, all of the coursework is submitted, and the schedule for report readings work for me. I apologise for not checking all your emails - it's hard for me to face the reality of the situation when I fall way behind like this. I am coming up with ways of fixing this character flaw. Sincerely, Scotty" and then send it. NO

 

I'm so excited to exit this little hell I've created for myself! Though this is like the at last the 6th time I've been in the same exact hell, so I will definitely be more strategic ( learning about the enemy is one of the pillars in the Strategic motherfucker video) about studying how I enter into this hell while I'm free from its bondage.

 

REVIEW: Though I barely did anything on the list, for the first time in a week, I got myself off my ass and managed to do some math, and sent it off, which put me in the right state. Tomorrow, I will complete the rest of the things on the list. 

 

 

 

Edited November 28, 2020 by Christdas

[Applegarden]

52 minutes ago, Christdas said:

I haven't been able to finish some assignments and my main tutor ( They do this at my uni - like a professor that you're very close with) has sent my some very aggressive emails that I currently can't will myself to look at. As a result of my poor character development, this gust of spiritual wind knocked me down and sent me into an unhealthy spiral of jerking off (up to 6 times a day!) and listening to stupid youtube videos, sustained by the fear of getting kicked out of uni.

You know, I see myself in your situation, worse in some ways and better in some, but I am shocked how incredibly well I can relate man. I got to a point I jerk maybe 0-2 times a week and I just don't see the point of it. You can get there and possibly more.

I would ask myself what is the time the average human being has sex in his life? Taking in the consideration that he will not be sexually active in good chunk of his lifetime, and if he will be, it will come down and have breaks. And with that I meant - the actual sex with a partner not jerking off.

The number for the average person, including the people who work 16 hours a day in Indonesia, including the incels, including the religious guys, the unhappily married e.c.t, women on their cycles that are not turned on at particular times, ill people, sexually frustrated people, people who have exhausted this desire and children who have not yet arrived at that view of life. 

The actual percentage is so incerdibly low, ridicilously low.

And take into the consideration, this is AFTER the oversexualized culture, augmented and artificial beauty, beauty products, digital editing, marketing with sexy people, the amount of pornography that it is there on the internet, the attitude and patterns of attraction people have due to the culture e.c.t. also the conservative ideology to an extent does say that relationships have to have sex in them and if your partner asks, you should put out or some nonsense.

After all that.

According to the numbers, life doesn't seem to be all that for sex.

I would suggest remembering before you fap, that people are not having all that much sex globally.

It is more like certain industries are using attraction to market stuff to you and industries like pornography blatantly make profits from the viewers and literally subjugate them to make them not creative and happy in their life. Of course all this comes after wage slavery, that is the more basic problem I am not going to talk about here.  

You will fundamentally need spirituality in some form. The goal here is to take life less seriously, then you have more clarity and can act more strategically. Repression and discipline can work, but it is more tricky and somewhat incomplete solution for the very long term.

Anyway, cool, you are a mathematician! I hated math in school for the most part but I fell in love with it when I used it in Warcraft III world editor custom triggers. As i wanted to simplify complex triggers with more refined math functions. Like enemy unit spawn timer refreshing and scaling in the late game, depending on hom many units you killed in what amount of time. All kinds of cos, sin and other coo functions I tried worked really funky, but could be developed pretty intelligently.  Also math works for music, but I have left that realm, since I just want to produce music. Cheers.

Just take away one thing from this if you will. People don't have much sex in general. Remember this, before you masturbate. It is fine to do it, no shame, but you are creating more attraction for viewing world trough sex and reinforcing your escapism pattern. So recognize this problem and you will see the depth more and more of this problem and that uglyness will make you want to come out of it. Cheers.

Here is some funny math video, I hope it is your last one and you don't need any more of em.

 

[Christdas]

@Applegarden It's so surreal to think that there's someone out in the world that cares about my masturbation habit. Thanks dude, appreciate the love.

[Applegarden]

27 minutes ago, Christdas said:

@Applegarden It's so surreal to think that there's someone out in the world that cares about my masturbation habit. Thanks dude, appreciate the love.

That is a repeating theme in my life to the point some strangers in various corners in the word taught me things that make my life work today.  This is why this forum exists.

[Christdas]

Productivity entry 2

Goal for the day: 

Do morning routine: 

1. get some tea/food/let benny out yes

2. go for a short walk with Leo yes

3. Shower yes

4. Do Leo's golf visualization yes

5. meditate for half an hour yes

The meditation technique I was going for was that after each time I woke up from being lost in thought, I would completely backtrack the history of this thought - how it arose and all the twist and turns it took. I did pretty poorly at this, and all I could remember from the three or so times I woke up was the same spiritual teacher David Hawkins talking about something. Also, I was imagining what it was like being a baby, and how I was more cautious than my sister when I was young. Next time, I hope I can immediately remember some big chunk and remember how the thought chain started. 

I'm going to eat a burger, then sit down for 15 minutes to send off the Fluid papers. Burger and milkshake were disgusting, couldn't eat more than a few bites - which makes me quite proud of myself. The chips with ketchup on the other hand were quite tasty. 

and complete all the things on the list from yesterday:

1. send in fluid mechanics sheets

I feel the stomach ache from the little piece of burger I ate. I understand that this is the only place where an authentic motivation to not eat the burger next time can be born, though experiencing the situation as such is another matter altogether. Finished sending them in.

2. finish up and send in Classical mechanics sheets

I still have to finish up a couple problems on the second sheet, which I'm very resistant to. 

3. finish up and send in numerical analysis sheets

4. Send Victor the email

 

All finished. FUCK YES. 

I am now going to celebrate by taking a 2 hour or so break by drinking tea + jerking and then walking with Leo. Then I will write up my main goals/visions and post it here.

Once I'm finished:

1. write up my vision and strategic intent for accomplishing it on this journal. 

Finished.

I have extra time left over, so I am going to build my knowledge base of third year course material - no cute philosophical shit where I try to pursue one of these grand unifying projects, but just straight up consolidation of material I've built up. My goal is consolidate as much of the numerical analysis stuff as I can, with good quality work.

Edited November 29, 2020 by Christdas

[Christdas]

Life purpose entry 1

There are three core components to my life purpose and two minor ones that I don't consider to be part of my purpose, but I've included them as a supplement to my life's creation.

 

Core component 1: My mathematical career

As a matter of survival, this is by far the most important one to master. This is also the one that I will be spending the most time on. I've known I wanted to be a mathematician since I was 3 years old, so I've had some time to be somewhat precise of what exactly this entails. There's three components to this that overlap in fundamental ways:

1. A continual building and polishing of a repertoire of projects

I've been having grand ideas of things I could create for a couple of years now, but no matter how many starts I make, I never quite have the mental resources to actualize these creations in the long run. After dedicating myself to Leo's teachings like an obedient bitch, I think my mental resources are at a high enough level that I can really get some shit done. 

2. Mastery within the realm of ( tbd specified kind of ) mathematics

What exactly entails mastery within the realm of mathematics is ( i.e. solving hard questions) has been a contemplative question of mine for many years - since my days of competition math. And recently, as I've built up enough self trust and discipline to take this recurring question seriously enough to make progress on it, I have broken into some aspect of its nature, revealing that at the heart of this particular domain of mastery is:

3. A continual building and polishing of a repertoire of associas

This is fundamental to my experience of things, and is explained elsewhere.

Trying to peer into the "middle" of the associa would be something akin to the pursuit of enlightenment, which is not the core vision of this pursuit, though work in that domain is certainly part of the journey.

What I really want to do is build associas, which I see as being the building blocks of the experience of problem solving, despite not having a full grasp on what its true existential nature is. Although in the next core component, it's a different game. 

In terms of where my paycheck is coming from, the goal is to be a full time mathematician. However, I understand that is a damn hard thing to do and maybe I can't do it (though all this personal development I think gives me a leg up). In that case, the type of math I'm trained in is practical enough so that I could (hopefully!) fall back on some kind of engineering job. 

Core component 2: My personal and spiritual development pursuits

As a matter of experience, this is by far the most worthwhile, and also helps fundamentally even in the pursuit of survival . There are different components to this work and even different views on what it means, which I attempt to illustrate. The different components are:

1. Building the ability to just concentrate

This is built through particular kinds of meditation. In particular, mindfulness is not a way of building concentration ( in my experience). 

2. Building all encompassing love

I happen to be somewhat skilled in this area - I've always leaned towards seeing the good in (even ethically controversial) things, even before I met Leo in a youtube video. Though one of the places where I have severe backups is when people are better than me at things I become very attached to. So just interacting with academically (mathematically) oriented sages gives me a good ass whipping in this domain.

3. Building discipline

Discipline has been a weakness of mine (similar to Leo) for all my life, and at some point in the last year I have had a fundamental change in view of what discipline is. On rare occasions I can break into this facet of its nature, that I would describe as: a transcendent state of consciousness that dissociates from the realm of ordinary human emotions. Equivalently I would say that some kind of duality between discipline and enlightenment breaks, though in these moments I wouldn't have considered myself fully enlightened.

4. Pursuing enlightenment

For me, I approach the situation less neurotically than Leo, in that I'm not really searching for some transcendent state as if some item to be attained (I'm not saying he has ever explicated this, but it is strongly implicated). Rather, I see my self as a collection of experiences, and I have completely and totally sold myself like a fucking whore to the pimp that is my Life's Purpose, which is fundamentally thought of as the nuts and bolts of how my life is an incarnation of love. And now the only question is "Where can I tinker with the experience at hand to make it better at what it's meant to do (love) ? And proceed to approach the situation like building up a tower - the more robust and bigger, the better. This way of thinking about it, for me, works much better than the way that is often strongly implicated in Leo's videos where he approaches the situation like fixing a lightbulb. Something along the lines of: "I'm not enlightened?! Let me do this and that to see if it gets me enlightened. It didn't work!? Fuck."

Even if the experience of enlightenment is inherently binary in terms of having the experience or not (which I'm not even sure is necessarily the case, at least when done soberly) , approaching it as such seems to be out of spirit with the lovingness that is supposedly embedded into the nature of the universe - all it does is make it very tempting to engage in a strong deficiency perception. You can see an example of this on Leo's blog where he attempts a thirty day retreat seeking to attain sahaja samadhi. 

To quote Ram Dass's spook friend, Emanuel: "Dick, you're in a school. You're so caught up in trying to be a holy man - why don't you just take the curriculum?"

... (tbc)

The first two components of my Life's vision are by far the most important and the rest will be covered in a separate post:

Core component 3: My general (philosophical) knowledge base

 

Minor component 1: My mastery of the Spanish language

Minor component 2: My mastery of the guitar

Edited November 29, 2020 by Christdas

[Christdas]

Philosophical insight entry 1

On my Life's Purpose post, I claim that the heart of mathematical mastery is that of 

A continual building and polishing of a repertoire of associas

The way Leo would put this is:  "A continual building and polishing of my knowledge graph", but I think the notion of an associa, which I came up with from observing my own experience, is a far more practical and representative view on the notion of a knowledge graph ( I'm sure ideas like this have been concocted by philosophers since the beginning of time - I'm just not well read). An associa refers to the experience of an idea that somehow transmutes into another idea - with emphasis on the fact that you are fully conscious of the two ends of this transmutation, but the space in between is somehow hidden from conscious experience. There are two main types of associas I (We) encounter in life

 

Type 1)  Any period of time lost in thought, can equivalently be experienced as a sequence of associas. The important thing being that the experience of getting lost in thought often happens like this (test this out, maybe this is incomplete/ not the case in your experience): 

There is one scenario that plays itself out, and then something happens in this first scenario that triggers the onset of a completely different scenario with an abstract structural similarity, that is usually outside the realm of language. The part in between the different scenarios is what I'm putting on a pedestal - it's like a wave somehow hidden from consciousness, but with enough pointed force, it's conceivable that full penetration into the experience can be had. This penetration can be thought of as a goal of meditation, and as someone who has lightly penetrated into it a handful of times, I can say that it is like a low order form of God. 

Type 2) When solving a math question (and this also happens in general philosophical questions of life, though it's much less potent) one often has the experience of being stuck on a question - especially when solving really tricky ones like those found on Olympiads or difficult university level questions. My self observation is that any state of stuckness can only exist because one is posed with a domain of objects (mostly referring to abstract objects, that are not generally thought of as objects) for which one has not constructed any associas. However, here are some examples where there are very obvious associas, and all these ones which I can only partially put into words are what I deem to be the tip of the iceberg:

1. When posed with a classical mechanics question, one always finds the Euler-Lagrange equations ( for an unconstrained system of particles, this means newton's second law)

2. When trying to show some quantity is constant, one tries to show that the derivative vanishes

3. When dealing with a couple of matrices, one multiplies them.

4. When doing real analysis, write x as (x - y) + y, and proceed with some kind of modulus argument, or otherwise.

5. In general, you might have a theorem that claims that 2 or 3 conditions are equivalent, and this can (in theory), always be turned into a strong associa, though some are more amenable to this than others in my experience

Again, naming the two experienced ends of an associa is hardly a complete identification of the experience, because really, behind the curtains, many associas get overlain into one experience - much like how distinctions (in Leo's Learning is distinction video) often overlay each other to produce the fullness of the experience. Understanding what happens in between is at the heart of this work. The mark of a good mathematical notion, under this regime, is that it can be experienced in consciousness in a couple different ways, e.g. 

1. When dealing with a matrix multiplying a vector, one switches the situation so that this is interpreted as a map sending a geometrical point to another point (Usually a rotation or reflection).

2. When dealing with a Poisson process, say, that is identified by a description of its inter arrival times. One switches the situation so that one thinks of the process in terms of intervals whose internal distributions are poison distributed. 

In these cases, the "head" and the "tail" of the associa are still the same object, but seen under wildly different perspectives.

So the object, referred to in the definition of an associa, for these cases, is really a perspective, which hopefully illustrates the abstractness inherent in the so-called "objects" of these associas. 

Edited November 29, 2020 by Christdas

[Christdas]

Productivity entry 3

Goal for the day: Complete a good deal math yes + look at all the emails no , meditate a few times during the day once because we get distracted

 

1. Morning routine 

Finished with pre meditation

The meditation I am going for is to, either during a right after getting lost in thought, backtrack the history of my thought forms, with emphasis on seeing how it started and the "Karmic energies", so to speak, fueling the chain of thought forms. 

Finished. I didn't do a great job at doing this, but there were a few instances where I could faintly see the start to end of a thought chain - though these were just droplets of thought, not the big, robust "lost in thought" chains. I didn't have many of these, and the ones I had were not too robust. After 10 minutes or so, I entered into somewhat of an altered state, which was quite nice. I was very rigorous at first of maintaining the "scientific spirit" of asking how is it that thoughts enter consciousness  - which became something of a mantra - as opposed to having the "achiever spirit" of having a "successful" meditation. But this was too difficult after a while and fell down (somewhat voluntarily) into a state of monkey mind. Next time, I want to include submission in the process to have a more well rounded experience. Was not disappointed. Should create a subjournal detailing the different meditative experiences. 

2. Solve Riemann surface question: Time limit 1.5 hours. There are three things we want to do:

• Solve the question ( at least try for 1.5 hours)

So I'll do what I need to do just to solve the question - i.e. I may use my (very amateur) experience with associas but not make them the core emphasis. - so the whole session itself will be longer than 1.5 hours since I want to detail the associa as well afterwards. 

• Learn the solution well ( I don't quite know exactly what this entails yet)
• Isolate the core associas that we spend the most time pining over, and record them in a book of associas

Finished. When I started, I didn't want to use the notes at all - just get my hands dirty with what was in front of me. But I really didn't understand what was going on, so I just read the notes, then tried to work from there. It went pretty well, but of course I don't have too deep of an understanding of what went on because I kind of just read the solution - it was quite complicated. I also wrote up the main associas. What I want to do now is get a deeper understanding of what I just did - NOT do a new problem. So This is how it will go

Taking a tea + music break, and short submission - type meditation. 

I feel overwhelmed and I don't know how to deal with it. On one level I think I should meditate, but here I am mindlessly scrolling through the forum. 

I have wasted several hours watching youtube. I should invest considerable time into preparing for this to happen tomorrow - it has to do with a sense of overwhelm, then feeling like I have to meditate, and an insecurity regarding my ways of doing mathematics. On to number 3. 

3. The kind of math you're currently doing isn't too rigorous. In the proof that you've just done, look into the parts that are not too logically precise and see if you can deduce something totally contradictory from using a similarly fuzzy technique - the key motivator here is that sometimes the mathematics can fundamentally be wrong because of some lack of analytical rigor. 

I'm changing my mind - I will try to understand how having different holomorphic coordinates is practical, and try to tie that into the Wierestrauss coordinates for a torus.

Finished. I effectively got nothing done - I was too ambitious. For the time being I just need to build my technical skills. I will to this. I will Build a set of differential geometry associas ( I have three now) go through the notes and find questions to solve. Then on every question if I can't figure how to do it immediately, see if it matches up with one of my previous associas and flesh out the similarity. 

4. Build up skills: 

Went quite well. Next I want to build traction with the associas that I'm isolating. How will I do this? Idk. My next goal is to completely rip apart the proof for the Riemann-Hurwitz theorem, in terms of its rigor (such as how do we know the pre-images of edges are themselves edges? What exactly is meant by f "looks" like z to the n near a ramification point? etc. )

 

I have wasted several hours and it is time to go to bed. This was not completed:

6. Go for a run with benny no

7. Check emails - this will be difficult so we'll break this down no

8. Collect more associas within the realm of geodesic and hyperbolic geometry. Just do something similar to last time, don't overthink it. no

 

Day review:

It was an improvement from yesterdayday so I'm not complaining. However, there are two things to mention

1. I really am cut for time in terms of checking my emails - they have to be done tomorrow or undesirable things will happen - maybe a negative visualization will help with this.

2. A large source of my failing to do work was that I'm not being consistent with what I'm doing. This has been an ongoing problem and a core reason why I decided to make a public journal. I'm making a (current) commitment, that my math sessions for the time being will be that of collecting a polishing (I will work on clarifying what this means) associas. Nothing fancy. Just do it, and don't fall into the paralysis that comes with analysis.

Edited November 30, 2020 by Christdas

[Christdas]

Productivity entry 4

Goal: 

•  8 hours of math - just keep it simple. no fancy philosophical ideas. Just collect and polish associas 2 hours
• Check emails + figure out when report readings are yes, 10:50 am, not all emails
• meditate 2 times - no fancy bullshit, like yesterday. Just do it. yes, and more!

1. Morning routine 

I'm currently wasting time scrolling the forum. I'm afraid of what's going to come. I guess this is better than youtube.

What am I going to do about this? All I need to do now is meditate. I'm so deeply afraid of owning up to my mistakes by checking those emails. Right now I simply can't see myself getting my ass to stay on schedule..?

This is a recurring problem and I feel that having public journal can really revolutionize the discipline aspect of my life because I have access to it in the middle of a mindless rut - like a stick to grab onto amidst drowning in quicksand. I'm done reading about Leo's relationship drama on the thread. I'm ready to meditate 

Meditated. Since starting the journal, I'm much better at it. 30 minutes passes by like a few seconds in the really good sessions. 

2. Golf visualization + visualize opening the emails + bad habits visualization (applied to this situation). Do for about 2 hours. 

I always get really distracted when I do the golf visualization. In particular I have this weird fear regarding the nature of what a visualization is, having to do with its ill defined-ness - I would really like to dig out exactly what this fear is. For the time being let's just do it. 

Did it. Went so well, because I acknowledged the existence of this strange fear. I feel so fortunate. And this made me want to golf again lol. I used to visualize my goals early in this work, but I have stopped since then. I realized that I better get my ass on that train again - have forgotten how powerful it is. I think what it was was that I started to learn about enlightenment, which made me kind of devalue a lot of the normal self help. I now realize how backwards this is, and am currently reorienting myself. 

Here is a recorded negative visualization of not shying away from fixing my mistakes

(too long to post)

3. Check the goddamn emails, focusing on the angry Victor ones for 10 min. Figure out when report readings are.

done. I checked some of the emails and the report reading is at 10:50 am. I am absolutely terrified right now, but peaceful at the same time. So I am going to take a short tamed break - tea, jerk off, eat, walk benny in 1: 45 min, then get on with math.

4. Go for a walk with 5 minutes or running and 20 pushups

done.

Meditated 2nd time.

I'm going to visualize for 15 min on collecting 10 associas, and the process will be spending 10 minutes on my own tryin to do it, then excavating an associa, so I don't dissolve into reading solutions. Again, you have this weird fear/resistance to visualizing, so, Scotty, I grant you permission to not feel that fear this one time ( and times to come). 

I visualized and then entered into this state of pure meditative bliss where I was letting all the "gifts of the ego" go. God was that sweet. Can't say I've experienced that before, though I have been in altered states. The difference with this one was that I was just letting every single thing go, and I knew how to do it. 

5. Collect associas for geodesic and hyperbolic geometry + Get like 10 in total with moderate generality. Get a notebook of these things. 

I'm changing my strategy a little bit. I'll proceed like so

1. Spend ten minutes finding until you get stuck
2. from the notes, excavate an associa - this doesn't have to have the found stuckness state as its head. The situation is a bit more nuanced than that
3. write down the head and the tail of the associa, clearly denoted and know that there could have been many (slightly different) others. Embrace the arbitrariness.
4. spend 2 minutes consolidating it in your head. Again, you have this weird fear relating to visualizations and you're free not to feel it. 

Do 6 of these. 

Incomplete. I did three of them.

Now I will drink some tea, jerk, meditate + visualize, then head to bed. Wake up early (say 9 am) for report reading. 

 

Day review:

Quite impressed that I checked emails. It was terrifying. The math session was short but sweet. Tomorrow I can fully focus on this part of the day - cut right to the chase. Then tomorrow, we can collect a bunch more associas, and maybe start to put them together in clever ways - like proof deconstruction, scouting out problems to apply them to and recording the effects, scouting out technical errors, or starting to solve actual problems. But don't be too fancy!

 

Edited December 2, 2020 by Christdas

[Christdas]

Productivity entry 5

Goal: 

• 8 hours of math 2.5
• 4 meditations/visualizations 2
• running with 30 pushups done with 10
• practice 30 minutes of guitar no

 

1. Morning routine

Finished with pre-meditation.

Wasted quite a bit of time stalling/reading the forum, but it's better than youtube. 

Ready to meditate - wow this journal helps a lot. Just knowing that other people are going to see it. Keeps my lazy ass in line.

Again, I have this anxiety regarding visualization, and I am giving myself permission to not sink into this stupidly weird anxiety. 

Will do a visualization and then a meditation. 

visualized and meditated. Totaled to about an hour. I'm truly so amazed at the ability of thoughts to pop into the mind. It's truly so amazing. There were a couple where I vaguely remembered how it entered into my mind, but then I forgot - and all this happens in like half a second. In the future I want to do an exploration of some kind into the formlessness behind the thoughts. I can sort of see it happening semi-frequently  but I don't have a sense of order - and I'm not even sure what exactly I want from it, considering it's the formless. But I think what I can do is something like finding an intermediate state from which the concrete thought comes and directing it an a different way - which will be the penetrative part of the process - into a form that's slightly different (from the perspective of the intermediate formless state, on paper the two forms may be totally unrelated). I guess what I need to do now is just keep seeing that formless space in between. I'm not that good at it. 

I'm very resistant right now to getting on with the math. 

2. 2 hours worth of associa collection. Our strategy is to do a ten minute attempt, then collect, then 2 minute consolidation. Then in between we learn what's necessary to move on. 

We'll do a short visualization of it because we're resistant. 

It seems as if we need to exhaust our capabilities fully in order to extract juice from the solution. So what I'll do is make full attempts at solving it, however long that takes, then spend 10 minutes raking my mind over a state stuckness. Then carry on as usual. This will be a delicate balancing act because I don't want to go down some useless rabbit hole. As always you're free not to feel the weird anxiety. 

Taking an dinner break. 

visualized. 

Done - went relatively smoothly.

3. Now we're going to figure out how to proceed from here. We're going to be somewhat experimental, but quickly reel it into the main fix. 

First: review all 6 of the associas that you've collected. You have a similar anxiety regarding this. You are allowed to not be anxious when reviewing them for 15 minutes or so. Just do it. Not perfectly, or even well. Just do it.

done. not done well, but done.

Now, I'm simply going to master a result - the geodesic equation for 15 minutes.  Just know it and put the other stuff in context with it. don't try to do it perfectly. Just make an attempt. 

Done.

I'm going to tea, jerk, walk, vis. 

Wow, I just went on a 6 hour long sexual binge. I need to find healthier ways to release my sexual energies. I feel like absolute shit right now. Totally killed my mood. the day's almost over, I'm going to go for a quick run around the block. Motherfucker, it's just so bad. 

4. Now, we're just going to master the material in a sort of brute force way. Master the geodesic DE proof, Gaussian curvature for geodesic coordinates, and the constant Gaussian curvature theorem. We want to be smart in terms of using associas, so do this - try to solve it until stuck for 5 minutes then look at the solution, then clarify it for yourself and proceed. Use the associas but they're not your primary goal. This may take 1 or 2 hours no

 

Edited December 3, 2020 by Christdas

[trenton]

@Christdas I just wanted to warn you that there is a rule stating that you can't use Leo's face in the profile picture.  You could get in trouble if you don't change the picture to something else.

[Christdas]

Oh thanks dude

[Christdas]

Productivity entry 6

Goal: 6 hours of math no

exercise  a little

Contemplative practice 4 times none so far

Watch out for:

1. Extreme sexual urges - let them go quickly I guess?
2.  depression regarding your path - embrace the confusion was too distracted to even get to this point.

 

I haven't done a goddamn thing today - got sucked in by the devil again. At the beginning of the day I learned something about how cars work from my friend, which was really fun. I want to combine my passion for fluid mechanics with modeling processes in the car. But I really need ( in the relative sense  ) to get my work ethic up. I feel like such a loser right now. Like a fucking helpless child.

Basically I'm going to backtrack exactly how distraction happened. It wasn't a sexual binge actually, which was quite nice. But I face-timed my friends (that I don't really want to be talking to as a self-actualizer) and chatted shit for like hours. Let's see... I woke up from a nap and then I think I just instinctively went on youtube, which I have also been watching too much of, and then I had the urge to call them, so I did. Yesterday I spent an unhealthy amount of time sexting this girl I, when I'm not thinking solely with my dick, want nothing to do with. It just sucks me in. So the key point (I'm no stranger to addictions  ) is to just focus really hard and detailed - a visualization of some sort - on the moment of relapse. It's like a higher order form of the middle of an associa - but for the world of thought forms. In a sense, life itself is a very metaphysically diverse string of thought forms, with associas of its own. One thing I could try is setting out time to deliberately binge on something (else!) , but do it with deliberate awareness, to build that muscle of engaging in unhealthy behavior with full awareness - an emphatically distinct skill from just being aware during a meditation. If I'm being more precise of the exact moment of relapse, it was definitely "enabled" by the youtube state that I was in - like the youtube wasn't stimulating enough, so it put the thought of binge-shit-talking with my "friends" in this very appealing light. The fact that I told myself (like a stage blue jewish mother) that I was forbidden from doing this sort of thing today, made the relapse more appealing - that very egoic pleasure we all know and love. 

Then I listened to a lot of hard rock and was air singing in the mirror, which in a sense was "spiritually" healthy for me, but at the same time, I could've had the same sort of effect by going on a run or something. So it wasn't ideal. Although it was better than hanging out with my, not necessarily toxic, but unconscious friends. Right now I've willed myself to sit on the laptop and record this, which in and of itself is refreshing. I'm still hopeful though. One thing that Leo's teachings have done to me is that I'm in this constant state of existential optimism, which I couldn't say was the case in my first year of college.  

Sometimes I'm depressed and disgusted. I'm very often afraid, and once in a blue moon I get angry. But even in those times, the spirit of Leo (and christ!) is so deeply infused into my being that it's always in this broader context of pure, proudly unjustified optimism. Which I could spend more time being grateful for. It's just quite amazing that such a spirit can be built up in less than a year. 

I could spend a lot more time being grateful. I'm just going to sit for 10 minutes doing a breathing exercise and then come back. 

-------------------------------------

Wow, that's amazing how ten minutes of meditation can totally change my state. I straight up went from being a helplessly wet dog, to being in a peacefully concentrated state. Now I'm going to replan the short rest of the day I have in front of me. Also, I think infusing meditativeness throughout my day is something I should explicitly be attempting to do. I've done it before, but now that I'm more advanced, I think I can do this quite well.

--------------------------------------

One problem I have is not having clear goals to strive for. Let's say we have 3 hours left in the day. Let's do it like this:

1. Let benny out, tea, go for a walk.

2. Articulate the goals that you've been unexplicitly striving for and post them on this journal, should take like 30 minutes or so. Don't be fancy about it. Only spend 30 minutes on it.

3. spend 30 minutes mastering the stuff you wanted to do the other day. - or do something else your newly articulated goals insist.

Went for a walk. Pissed away a bunch of time reading the forum, which in a way is the least of three evils, but still is pissing away my time. I've seen that non duality wars is very annoying to read - it's giving me a headache. Tomorrow will be better. Immediately when I wake up, I'll write up the first draft for the day's plan. Then follow through with a good morning routine. Then do some serious math - I want to start doing the "pushing on one point" phenomenon, as introduced in the strategic motherfucker video. Really focus all my energy into specific things - I'll start with spending a few hours trying to solve one problem (with the mindset of being open to the associas I've constructed). Then invest lots of energy into building one associa - for a couple hours. I'll have to design that as a session. I have hope.

Edited December 3, 2020 by Christdas

[Christdas]

Productivity entry 7

Goal: 2 problem solving sessions and 2 associa sessions (build up) 2 hours each

exercise

4 comteplative sessions

Set up a first draft of goals

1. morning routine

Got way distracted. But it's technically finished

2. One problem sheet question

I'm way too resistant to this. I'll meditate, then do Sedona then sit down to do this. 

3. One associa session

exercisE

4. repeat

 

Excellent! Another waste of the day. Basically an 8 hour sexting/porn session. My strategy will be different tomorrow. I will go through the morning routine as usual, and the first thing I will do is a 2 hour long bad habits session, where I really see how my vision is compromised as a result of my bad habits. Hopefully this sobers me up. And my primary goal will to have a sustained awareness throughout a binge ( there most certainly will be another one), long enough to make the bad habit undesirable 3 times ( I was almost able to make this happen without the goal). I still have hope. But god do my eyes hurt from staring at that goddamn screen so fucking long. And another goal will be to write down in this journal what time the bingge is happening and to record when it ends. And also see very clearly how it starts and how it ends

 

Edited December 4, 2020 by Christdas

[Christdas]

Productivity entry 8

1. morning routine

Finished with pre meditation. Now I'm ready to meditate, and btw I've let go of major waste of times splendidly so far today - setting the goal beforehand really helps a lot. Like I was having this self-righteous internal argument about materialistic lifestyles with my dad and my aunt, but then suddenly I was able to keep a kind of backdrop awareness of the whole thing, which made it slowly fade away. Brilliant! 

Finished meditation. I'm resistant to doing a proper session, so I think I'll baby step it. First I'll just lay back a rest - listen to some Leo, maybe nap. Then I'll do Sedona while laying down. Today's looking pretty good. 

2:22 watching youtube

only spent an hour and a half watching youtube, watched a high consciousness film and a bunch of Peter Ralston.

7:30

Now I'm going for a walk - visualize sitting down for 2 hours. I don't have to get anything done. But the aim will be to sort out my bad habits.

2. bad habits session where I visualize and articulate how my vision will be compromised if I don't clean up my work ethic

Done. We made a visualization similar to Leo's golf visualization. Quite useful 

3. 2 hours associa: breaking down the construction of the egregious proof. Don't know how this will go: make another visualization

 

4. 2 hours associa, ...

5. check emails at one point

 

Goals for the day:

1. sustained awareness throughout an unwanted behavior 3X : long imaginary arguments in my head with Leo or otherwise, youtube, sexting, chatting shit, more than 5 minutes of scrolling forum (yes, time yourself). Small porn session is fine. If it gets longer than 30 minutes, then it's unwanted. Definitely done 
2. get 4 2 hour sessions of high quality math done (don't care if you get distracted) 45 min
3. 4 contemplative sessions done 
4. 15 minutes total of running and 30 pushups. yes, though less running 
5. check recent emails no

I have hope for today. And I had the nerve to block and delete the number of the girl from before  

Day review:

The first bit was distracted. But overall, a major improvement from yesterday. We just gotta keep it up. I think I'll be able to do more math tomorrow. Just got to be okay with spending lots of time on a single question without making too much improvement - our pride can get in our way. Do some more visualizations tomorrow. 

 

Edited December 5, 2020 by Christdas

[Christdas]

Productivity entry 9

Goal: 2 problem solving sessions and 2 associa sessions (build up) 2 hours each

exercise

4 comteplative sessions

Set up a first draft of goals

1. morning routine

2. One problem sheet question

3. One associa session

exercisE

4. repeat

 

[Christdas]

Productivity entry 10

Our work ethic is now under control. I required I sort of intervention before. But we'll babystep it today. Let's just get 5 hours of studying in.

1. Morning routine done

2. An hour of math. Problem solving. done

3. An hour of math. Isolating associa. 

[Christdas]

Productivity entry 11

The last few days I haven't been on the journal because I felt like it was a bit of a distraction - wasn't solving my problem. But I've built up some momentum I the past few days where I feel like I can get a lot done today.

1. morning routine done

2. a couple hour of physics with breaks where I practice Sedona nonstop. 

.5 hour done; .5 hour done. 1.5 hr break

got 3.5 hours done. 

Tomorrow we can get 5 hours and have some sort of goal.  

Edited December 11, 2020 by Christdas

[Christdas]

Productivity entry 12

1. Morning routine

done. Meditated for an hour.

2. An hour putting two proofs on the same footing. 

done, but made little progress as expected.

Short break: about 2 hrs haha

3. An hour and a half of learning fluid mechanics - low Reynolds number flow. Write in notebook of important info

done. Don't feel like I learned much, but that's fine. I'm just getting my work ethic in order here.

Break: 30 min max. No leaving the house.

4. Half an hour of going back to Numerical analysis to set up old material in the notebook, then spend an hour mastering it. 

Done. Wow, I realized I've spent so much time trying to be fancy that I've forgotten the power of brute force learning. I like my existential insights of learning and my attempts of rapidly implementing them, but doing this at any faster of a rate than really slow is a huge mistake. Because that's what keeps making me fall down. I have something of a limiting belief regarding this kind of thing, because I've tried implementing it into my routine so many times before, and failed. But I didn't have a public journal before  . So I will make it explicit for myself: at least 1:30 of your work every day (ideally 8 hrs plus) should be rote, brute, no fancy bullshit learning - just digging the shit deep in your head with your dirty hands.

5. an hour of geometry

Done. Yay we've gotten 5 hours of studying done. I think we can do much better tomorrow because we have a good momentum going, and it's much clearer what tomorrow will look like. 

Check emails tomorrow, you haven't done that in a while. And then Build up the repertoires of your subjects - spend a lot of time organizing and spending a good deal of time on individual questions - say 20 min per question. Including the problem set questions from before, and your experimental stuff. I'm hopeful for tomorrow. 

Edited December 12, 2020 by Christdas

[Christdas]

Productivity entry 13

1. morning routine

Pre meditation done. 

meditation done.

Before the sun sets ( so at 4 ) we want to check all the emails. Don't let them pile up again, and send you into hell like last time. 

2. Hunt through your papers to find the relevant fluid mechanics sheets, say 6 of them. Then put them in your new folder, polished up, spending 20 min. on each of the pieces. 

2 hrs done. Next session, let's invest a lot of energy into just 1 piece - Let's make a piece just on all the boundary layer arguments, putting them into the same box, say for 2 hours. Spend the bulk period of that time just understanding one of them, say the derivation of Prandtl's equations.

3. Understand Prandtl's boundary layer stuff.

2 hrs done. I got to the point where I could start questioning the fundamentals of what was going on. Then I fell into some kind of frustration. It's becoming clear to me that half-assing this learning process won't cut it. For now on I will vow to be absolutely precise over which piece of information I am going over and not getting excited and skipping over details. 

In fact, for now on (assuming I'm not in some self destructive hole) I won't even consider Learning something new to be a proper session. I must first clearly define what segment of information I will be reviewing so I can learn it deep, and have room to question its existential nature. 

Next I will go over deriving the axisymmetric solution to slow flow around a sphere.

4. Check emails for like 5 minutes done.

done, and meditated second time today. Ok let's chip away at the emails in between every session. There are so many things going wrong.

 

5. Slow flow past sphere.

done. I sat there for a while trying to figure out what to do once I had the "standard" solution. I wanted to go deep but the thing I was focusing in on was just a calculation ( which I could have focused in on, but I want to do fluid mechanics - not calculus). So at the end I realized I have to better understand the nondimensionalization scheme I was working under because I was just taking it as dogma. In order to go deep I had to merge what I was working on and what I was working on top of. So Tomorrow I will invest a whole session dedicated to hashing out (and writing up) all the nondimensionalization schemes I've run into. Then just really knowing them - how they compare. Why do one over another. How it affects calculation. Really get into the spirit of it all - until I get to the point where I could get the same effect with different technical means or apply it to another situation. 

Today I got 6 hours done. Would've gotten 8, but the emails gave me a little PTSD. Speaking of which, I will check 10 minutes of it tomorrow in between both meditations - in particular answer the urgent ones from Freyja and Victor. I will relax now. Look forward to building up momentum on this stuff. 

Edited December 13, 2020 by Christdas