myth's DMSI 3.3.x Journal

[myth]

Great post, Myth.  It's interesting to see how The Wall affected you.

Thanks, RT. I can't necessarily claim that it was the Wall (even though I nodded to that as one possibility for for the effects, as well as others), but it may also be worth mentioning that it was difficult to see the effect and trace (what I believe to be) its mechanism of action until I stopped running the sub completely.

It makes sense that fantasizing motivates some people to have more sex, while others potentially use it to resist the goal.

Yup. I draw on my imagination to create reality. I try not to choose it as an alternative to live inside of.

Equally, while I do find enjoyment reflecting on my past, that's not because I choose to live inside it or feel a need to relive it. It's because it reminds me of what's possible other than my present conditions, as well as where I've been, what I've done, and who else was doing it with me. AFAIK, the past is not my enemy, my destiny, or the only good time that I'll have ever had; it's just the part of me that happened before now.

You were successfully executing and regularly experiencing the design goal on 3.1, no?

Well, the design goal's difficult to measure, given everyone's difference of opinion on what they seem to believe that the goal is. But, insofar as women trying to seduce me (above my previously-experienced baseline), that's occurred on several past versions of DMSI, including 3.1. 2.4 was still the most effective for me in terms of attraction and in feeling more socially outgoing, if memory serves, but that could just have been a matter of being in the right places at the right times with the right people. 3.1 was my favorite for discovering what I already knew.

Since switching to USLM4, the power level with the completed Magnus Engine makes me wonder if The Wall is necessary anymore.  It (ME) seems to bulldoze anything in its path.  It'll be interesting to see what the next version of DMSI does when it's installed.

That's one of several reasons why I'm curious to try LTU. The non-goal upsides that I experienced on 3.3.x have been extremely beneficial, and, as I've said, I don't begrudge the experience at all.

I'm thinking of doing another brief 4G or 3G sub run before LTU to let 3.3.1's P6 fade out. If the residual P6 from  3.3.1 clobbers it, fine, but I'd rather run into that for a few weeks than two P6 subs crossing streams.

[myth]

Yeah, three posts in a single weekend about a sub that I'm no longer running. Weird. I'll try not to make it into a habit.

So, after reflecting on what I'd written yesterday, something occurred to me that may have been glaringly obvious to anyone else. The memory effects that I'd described could have (as one tentative explanation) been the Disconnect from Negative Stress scripting, if I'd found any aspect of the experiences that comprise my sexual history negatively stressful -- which may possible, as sex could be considered physically or creatively stressful, even if sexual experiences are also extremely relaxing and stress-relieving, both emotionally and biochemically. While those stresses could be viewed as positive (or even net-positive or neutral) ones, terms like "positive" and "negative" are still subjectively defined by the observer, and the classification may not always be a conscious one.

Experiences are not necessarily only one thing, if it's even possible for them to be only one thing, nor are they necessarily perceived in only one way. If no experience is devoid of a quality that I bring to (or perceive in) every experience, then that quality could, ostensibly, permeate everything that I've ever done since that pattern began. Some experiences, like sex or exercise, may contain both stress-inducing and stress-relieving elements at the same time.

Admittedly, despite my own personal experiences on the sub, the Disconnect from Negative Stress scripting in 3.3.1 may already account for this. I know nothing of how it's designed or what it's truly intended to encourage, and 3.3 and 3.3.1 may be the first subs that I've run that have contained it. But this notion does make me see more value in a) reducing the investment of negative stress (or, at least, negative stress-perception) into new experiences than in b) attempting to reject, forget, or disown all old experiences that were ever infused with it. For me, a is a more appealing path to a calm and relaxed future than b. Especially if b means that large chunks of my personal history suddenly become unwelcome or depersonalized solely because of how the past version of myself chose to perceive them. Who I am now is not who I've been, but I'd still prefer to keep the option of remembering that who I've been was once also me. Wow, that's tricky to phrase.

[myth]

And I'm posting yet again about a sub that I'm no longer running. Gotta stop doing that.

Presuming that the semi-recent crop of "desire as fuel" posts are referencing this post by me in April, it seems that I've been misunderstood on a few key points, and, upon reflection, I think that I now see why that was.

Given that assumption, I'll hike up my suspenders, take the responsibility for the miscommunication, and reiterate:

What I was describing was that, during DMSI 3.3.x (not strictly because of DMSI 3.3.x), I'd observed myself feeling disconnected from my imagination and memories inside of relationships with my existing sexual partners and feeling less sexual connection and desire inside these relationships, two of which have each intermittently spanned a quarter century. Yes, inside relationships. Disconnected, like a spectator of my sexual relationships' past and present rather than as a historical and current participant inside them. Less connected to their past or future, relying very heavily on the present moment, but without really feeling like I was even in the present moment myself as much as watching it from a distance.

This had nothing to do with fantasizing abstractly about "women" (or any other gender that you are most... etc), and I apologize for not emphasizing that distinction in my earlier post. To the best of my recollection, my abstract sexual imagination was barely affected during 3.3.x. I have real partners, in reality, who typically outdo all of my fantasies anyhow, so, for me, abstract fantasizing hardly matters. Or, maybe, my abstract fantasies just aren't very good. Sexual dreams had been far fewer during 3.3.x, I'll admit, but the ones that I did have were still abstract ones, not dreams that included my partners.

So, really, what some readers may have thought that I was reporting in my post was, as far as I can tell, its converse. Or, maybe, its isomer? The omission of abstract fantasies in that earlier post, as I didn't find those fantasies important enough to mention, appears to have made them into the only thing that readers thought that I'd meant. Hello, irony, my old face-palm.

Anyhow, if the Wall only blocks escape routes (as Shannon diligently reminds us), I really can't compute how sexual creativity and historical connection with my sexual partners (what I was actually describing in that past post) would ever be an escape route from DMSI. This is why, two posts above this one, I balked at RT's assertion that these effects were caused by the Wall. For me, the diagnosis only barely fit the symptoms. If you stretched it. A lot.

If Shannon believes that the effect (that I've hopefully made clearer in this post) had anything to do with the Wall (which his replies to others only presented as an "if" conditional about escape routes), I would be interested in learning why he'd think that my female-initiated sexual relationships had been escape routes from DMSI. Of course, nothing that he's said so far would lead me to guess that he'd think that. Or that this had anything to do with the Wall.

Either way, I'm not on DMSI right now, as mentioned previously, so the point may be a moot one. But I didn't want to let the misunderstanding continue unaddressed, since it seems to have stirred up some mistrust about the Wall. That was not even remotely my intention.

[RTBoss]

Where ya at, Myth? Running anything?

[myth]

Where ya at, Myth? Running anything?

Hey, RT. You're not wrong to wonder. Haven't run anything in about 5 months or so, and, believe me, I wish that I'd had a different answer for you. It's not what I'd planned, but I'm just addressing things as they are, not as I might wish that they'd been.

But, yeah, in a less-than-desirable chicken-egg role reversal, two successive health problems trashed my LTU plan before it even started, and, while the first is behind me, the second problem has drastically degraded two things that are easy to take for granted: my general tolerance of sound and (consequently) my ability to reside in my own home. The problem is a long-term (if still unexplained) and formerly dormant one, revived by outside circumstances that temporarily disrupted several people's lives; I just happen to be more sensitive to (and slower to recover from) those circumstances than others are.

I'll get back on the sub-listening horse eventually (hopefully before the end of the year), but, for the moment, I'm setting the bar at being able to spend a full day in my own home without having it result in physical discomfort. Need to walk before I run, at least in an idiomatic sense.

When I get there, the newest ARA or the next MHS may take precedence over DMSI (or LTU), given recent events, but other factors may alter those priorities by then. Before my sub plans were so unwelcomely interrupted, I'd been running End Bruxism 3G, feeling healthier than ever (yeah, I know), so I'm hoping that the upcoming MHS might help with similar indirect/domino-effect (read: preventable) health problems.

EDIT: Half-asleep, so some of what I'd written may have been confusing to anyone who isn't me. If anyone's thinking that "chicken-egg role reversal" should've resulted in my life tuning up Life Tune Up (not tuning it down),  that's why the "less-than-desirable" twist was included.

[RTBoss]

Thanks for the update. Sorry to hear about your health issues. Hope you're up and running again soon!

[myth]

A months-delayed thanks for the well-wishes! Anyhow, since the curiosity was there earlier, I figured that I'd update the answer: I'd recovered enough to have been on MHS 5.75G since the start of the year.

Health, location, and more have kept me from following either instructed usage or my own instincts and audio format/encoding format preferences (I'd rather that it were otherwise), and the target issue involves atypical symptoms. With that in mind, any attempt to journal my MHS run publicly wouldn't be terribly relatable, comparable to my past journals, or (if detailed) anonymous, nor would my current sub usage set a very good example, even for me. Consequently, no MHS journal.

Really, what I probably need is a stronger version of End Bruxism 3G, a larger mouth, or a different set of teeth. In a roundabout sort of way, the cause is primarily (but not solely) looking like something dental, but, when the symptoms are unusual, the external indicators subtle or invisible, and the inflammation cyclical, the initial catalyst is harder to determine and may not be the only one. Until you know who did it, everyone's a suspect.

No, MHS isn't an obvious match for a (partly) dental issue, I know, but the problem's effects are more systemic, and that's why I'd chosen MHS. The stone may be what falls, but the pond still ripples. I've hoped that MHS might heal the ongoing tissue damage while I'm bouncing between various specialists.

The most obvious improvements with this problem during MHS have, unsurprisingly, coincided with physical interventions by others, not by my own healing. That isn't to say that I haven't had to heal from those changes or that there won't be more, nor is it to say that healing hasn't occurred in other areas, just that different jobs on the same project often require different tools. Disrupting chronic damage is just a more abrupt change than healing it.

Whether that healing has been at maximum speed or at usual speed, I can't quite say, but the physical interventions could make a few of MHS's own goals more attainable, so I'm seeing it all as a team effort, where each teammate makes everybody else's jobs that much easier. If it's unclear to me which teammate did what, then I'm pretty lousy at setting up a clear division of labor. With luck, I'll be off MHS soon, but, for the moment, that's where I am.

[myth]

To provide an update since my last post, even if my DMSI 3.3.x journal isn't really the right place for it, I've been on a sub break since late March.

Why did I stop MHS? Correlation, mostly. 3 weeks of sharing a bed with the flu in December, and I'd stayed healthy and unaffected for all 3 weeks, only to catch said flu within hours of starting MHS in January. Probably my own fault; when I focus, it's often to the exclusion of all else, and MHS isn't MIR.

Why stop MHS in March, then, if the flu didn't stop me in January? Wasn't interested in living out the Covid version of January.

How did my MHS run go? Well, first, I should probably repeat that, within the past year, health + environment restricted my options for listening according to MHS directions or my own instincts or even using my preferred audio format. Format aside, listening was closer to instructions and instincts than I'd expected.

Anyhow, it's halfway through the year, 3 months after I'd stopped MHS, and the target health issue's still an uncorrected mystery, but, speaking in a relative sense, my bodily intuition has skyrocketed. It turns out that, for several lifelong issues, I'd spent years looking for biochemical solutions to what now seem to have been biomechanical problems. Interconnected ones too. Not really what I was aiming to fix with MHS, but I'm not complaining.

Did MHS provide the wake-up call? If so, not obviously. If this is considered epigenetics or calibrating and tuning all of my physical parts and systems, maybe...? Really, the wake-up call was external, not internal, so, unless manifestation's an unadvertised part of MHS, it'd be precipitously close to fundamental attribution error for me to point fingers at MHS for that. The catalyst was one almost ignorable comment from my dentist, and, from there, the rest just snowballed.

Outside of the timing and degree of change, it's tricky to credit MHS with anything more specific than getting me out of my own way, as very few other observations lined up with the product description. But, in all fairness, I did stop letting my preconceptions and stubbornness blind me to (some) real problems and (apparently) effective solutions, and that's no small feat.

Healed scarring? Nope. Itching? No more/less than usual. Healed pain? A little, months after MHS, but via precise exercise, not by thinking the pain away. Healed damage? Difficult to tell. More hydrated skin quality? I'd be tempted to credit the collagen/increased water intake more. Genetic changes? Nothing obvious. Physical detoxification? Didn't notice any, but neither had I while running UD.

All in all, better health, but more by erasing certain amounts of ignorance, neglect, and pigheadedness, not by way of healing damage, and my target problem hasn't improved. Could be that I'd tuned myself to different parts of MHS than I'd hoped, could be that I had to cross one bridge before reaching the next, or, possibly, I'd just arrived where I am now by metaphorical bus, despite the plane ticket in my pocket. Lots of plausible explanations, and those are just a few.

Either way, I'm not knocking it. Been feeling better than I have in years. If MHS helped, great. If not, that's fine too. I'd never expected MHS to do the whole job for me, only to encourage me to heal myself and, ideally, to support my most pressing health issues. Not sure if it'd managed to do either, but I'm grateful toward anything that might've contributed to what did happen, MHS included.

At this point, after ~3 months off subs, resuming MHS is seeming the most likely plan, especially as my problem isn't resolved and as I'm still not home yet, but there's certainly a strong temptation to run OF (given recent reports of it) or to give DMSI 3.3.2 or SDM a spin (given where I am).