Subliminal Talk

Decided to move onto OF 5.75G after my shorter-but-still-productive second run of MHS 5.75G, so I thought that I'd start an OF journal. One with a long first post.

Before I dig into OF, I'll start with a quick MHS recap: MHS and I mixed well, and, even weeks after stopping MHS, other than my biggest health issue, my body still feels years younger than it'd felt last year. Exercising frequency jumped from 3-4 times/month to 4-5 times/week, but I should specify that my exercise goals had/have been about improved function and chronic pain reduction, not about aesthetics or athletics.

Speaking of exercise, yeah, given that some things take months or years when attempted through traditional means, even with expert help, I didn't expect the MHS goals to be accomplished quickly without physical effort. So, I actively participated, mostly to knock off the low-priority issues quickly and get through to the higher priorities sooner.

Why did I connect MHS with any changes that I'd observed, given that I was making additional effort? Well, first of all, it's effort that I wasn't making until well after I'd started MHS. Second, the biggest difference wasn't so much about making the effort as it was about intuitively knowing what and which effort to make. And, third, almost all of my effort required me to discard years of preconceptions about the what, the why, and the how before said effort could be made. I'd been barking up several wrong trees for years, no matter how otherwise helpful visiting those wrong trees may have been.

In any case, that was MHS, and this is an OF journal, so I should stop digressing and get back to the topic at hand: Overcoming Fear 5.75G.

Why did I choose something new and give MHS a break, if my highest priority with MHS wasn't resolved? Four reasons:

1. MHS had been my only sub for all of 2020. I'm a patient guy, but, sometimes, it takes more than one tool to complete the job.
   
2. While not necessarily the case, my long-standing health issue could feasibly involve an anxiety-based component or two.
   
3. There could be an irrational excuse for me to have resisted some of the healing that MHS had been encouraging me to achieve, and, IIRC, MHS has no FRM.
   
4. The adjustments made during MHS may take time to prove/disprove themselves, evolve, and grow. Listening may have stopped, but correcting lifelong mistakes hasn't. And those corrections could take time to demonstrate their full benefit.
   

Anyhow, been on OF for over a month now. Using the most recent jargon, I guess that you'd say that I'm midway through cycle #5. As I'd done with MHS, I'm running Hybrid/MP3/headphones instead of my usual US/FLAC/speakers, thanks to circumstances beyond my control. It's not ideal, but it's still listening.

So far, not much to tell. Can't echo most users' initially blissful reactions, but, then, I'm me, not most users. Many of them have been running some version of FRM for over a year, and some had a few extra weeks or months of DRS too. I'd only run FRM in DMSI 3.3.0 and 3.3.1 and had no prior exposure to DRS. Yeah, I'd run E1, E2, and years of DMSI's H&C, but those weren't FRM or DRS.

Do I feel more fearful/fearless than usual? Emotionally, I feel... more stressed and overworked. Not more fearful. Not more fearless. Not more angry. Not more depressed. Definitely feeling emotions, just not anything that others seem to be reporting. I feel busy, not unchanged. Not relaxed. Not tired. Just... busy.

Has the DRS offered any increased protection? Not if I adjust for the unwelcome need for it. Ordinarily, there's no need. With DRS around, there suddenly has been. I could be misreading the circumstances, but I seem to have traded not really needing any shield for carrying a shield with a neon bullseye painted on it. If the shield's as much of a magnet as it is a shield, I'm unlikely to view it as an asset.

What about intense or crazy dreams? Vivid, but otherwise mild. No adrenaline-pumping romps, not that I usually go out of my way for inspiration. Haven't purchased movie tickets in almost a decade, and haven't played a video game in nearly three. Even so, if I start dreaming that I'm Mr. Do!, Pitfall Harry, or Donkey Kong Junior, I'll be sure to make a note of it.

No recent itching, unless I count probable bug bites. If a bump on my skin itches in August, my first guess is mosquitoes, even if I didn't see them doing it.

No sudden headaches, unless I count verifiable atmospheric pressure drops or post-exercise pain.

No excess heat, outside of having no A/C where I've been staying.

The most notable change is that I've been grabbing more opportunities as they appear rather than wasting time anticipating the ones that may not. That's not uncommon for me, but I'm usually not as breezy about it. To put it another way, foresight isn't 20/20; I'm focusing on info that I've got, not info that I don't, and am decreasingly holding myself accountable for info that I never had. I'm not omniscient, and, without sufficient info, outcomes are far less predictable.

"Grabbing opportunities that appear" is also not quite as passive as it might sound, given the ambitious/challenging options that can be chosen from what's available. I'm just spending less time on options that aren't actually available. I still consider options as indirectly available if they'd become available under altered circumstances, but I don't seem to be bothering to do so unless altering those circumstances is also an available option.

And that's about it. Haven't observed much else during OF just yet.

So it's been two weeks since my last post.

Based on others' behavior (and my own), I've arrived at an unexpected and indirect observation. From what I can tell, I seem just as (or, possibly, even more) fearful while on OF, not less, but, interestingly, this detail appears to be hidden from me during days when I'm actively listening.

Haven't felt free or fearless on OF. Instead, I seem to feel fear-conscious-but-fear-oblivious on listening days and fear-affected on non-listening days. And, yeah, the first one sounds completely self-contradictory, so I'll explain: On listening days, I'm aware of when I'm experiencing a fearful situation or stimulus, I'm illogically convinced that I'm mostly calm and relaxed, and, yet, somehow, everybody else reacts as if I'm responding with a great deal of fear.

Rather than removing fear from the situation, it's as if I've removed the self-awareness that I'm feeling fear from the situation. While still outwardly exhibiting all of the signs of the fear that I'm unaware of feeling. Maybe more so, because I'm unaware that I'm feeling it and/or because I'm digging at a fear unrelated to the situation, so I'm not filtering any public expression of it out, as I normally would. So I might seem more scared than usual because I'm unaware of when I'm feeling it, making it harder to mute/hide it. And I might seem calmer to others on off-days, if I'm more self-aware of my fear and better able to mute/hide it.

It's disconcerting to feel less of something than usual while everyone else in the room thinks that I'm feeling more of it. In a way, it makes me feel like either my self-awareness, my internal communication, or my body language is broken. And I wouldn't even be aware of this discrepancy if not for others' reactions to their perceptions of me. I'd never have noticed this if I were on my own.

Now, it's easily arguable that I've drawn the incorrect conclusion from the evidence available. And I really hope that I have. An obvious alternative explanation is that my conscious mind or outer self is calm, but my body language is simply expressing the degree of fear that my subconscious or inner self is feeling, displaying more fear when actively encouraged to fight fears and less fear when the pressure to do so has ceased.

Another perfectly reasonable conclusion is that I'm just in denial of fearful responses on listening days, which is an odd thing to self-deny unless I'm trying to fake out OF's scripting by insisting that the fear isn't there to remove. (Even though I'm confirming, not denying, the fear that others have observed in me.) Or, possibly,  if my interpretation of OF scripting was that internal denial of the fear is an early step (for me, at least, not necessarily anyone else) in removing it.

I could list other possibilities as well, including another that just popped into my head, but I don't have enough information to be certain of any one conclusion.

Whatever it may be, I don't want to fall into the popular trap of drawing a single hasty conclusion (and then swearing unearned loyalty to it and defending it until the end of time) simply because I'm too lazy (or too uncomfortable with letting something remain undefined) to be thorough or creative about the existence of other equally valid conclusions, including those that, thanks to my own limitations, will never occur to me. But, whatever the actual cause and effect may be, it's still an odd sensation, to keep seesawing between feeling calmer than I seem and seeming calmer than I feel, and it seemed worthy of a mention. Whether I'm expressing fear or not, I'm usually far more congruent than this.

What you're seeing is almost certainly that different parts of your awareness are responding with different levels of execution vs fear. When you're using it, those parts that are executing do not experience fear; the rest do. When you're not using it, all of the fearful parts can take over.

In a case like this, what you'll notice is that over time, you'll see this gradually change. There is a reason why it's 8 months per usage cycle. And you may want to start using it every day without breaks until you become exhausted, and then rest as needed to recover, and then do it again until that fear is being overcome better. It will most likely be the best way for you specifically to run the program until the fear is mostly dealt with.

You see that parts of you are executing and fearless while you use it. The fearful parts are probably responding with more fear, both out of fear of not being afraid (having convinced themselves that "fear keeps me safe"), and because they can see some parts having executed and becoming more and more fear free.

This is proof that it's working; just needs enough time. It will progress further and further until each of the fears is dealt with. The ones still active just haven't been gotten to yet.

Thanks for the insight, explanation, and recommendation, Shannon. It's greatly appreciated.

I certainly hadn't doubted the progress. There's definitely some amount of fear reduction happening, but, as far as I can tell, that reduction has seemed incomplete on an individual fear-by-fear basis more than on a collective one. And, in that form, it seemed like it could delay progress through the metaphorical tangled ball of yarn, if the yarn were getting thinner rather than untangled, broken, or removed. And removal by whittling away seemed... unexpected, I guess?

Ahead of your suggestion, I'd already added a day of listening and subtracted a day of break on this past cycle. I'd have gone further with it, but, as you usually lean toward making incremental adjustments, I'd decided to start small. But I'm happy to push it further and see where that goes.

In general, though, sub breaks do me a lot of good. Not because I dislike being told what to do (even though I prefer a damned good reason for doing it), but, I suspect, for two completely different reasons:

1. I'm unpracticed (and, therefore, inefficient) at multi-tasking. Much of the world greedily tackles 20 things at once and completes 0-10, whereas I tackle 1, complete 1, and move onto the next. Fewer attempts, but lots of completions per attempt, and the shorter that the pulsed burst is, the faster that I am at making progress off of the previous accomplishments. Can I do it differently? Sure, being serial about things doesn't have to be an identity, but, as far as I'm aware, people tend to be better at the things that they practice. I see it a bit like asking non-driver to learn to drive (and, presumably, get a license and buy/insure a car) so that they can travel to your house; it's within the realm of possibility, but it's not the fastest (or cheapest) way for them to get there.
   
   More to the point, processing input (download/extract/read/comprehend/execute) is a series of stages, and, in my version of one-thing-at-a-time-land, focusing on download gives very little focus to the other steps. Sub breaks provide me time to focus on those other steps. I actually greatly enjoy the read and comprehend stages. Automatic writing takes over, and it's like, through typing, my subconscious is teaching my conscious a sub-inspired class through (very literal) dictation. The outer me enjoys the process of reading letters from (and asking questions of) the inner me(s), and the inner me(s) love the respect and attention of being heard by (and getting to respond to) the outer me. It's surreal, but it's also very enjoyable at multiple levels of consciousness. But... that conversation doesn't happen when I'm busy listening to subs. At least, not overtly. Not when I'm awake.
   
   
2. Thanks to my work environment/conditioning, my Pavlovian response to any request of me is like a two-step firewall procedure. First, I deny, then I allow. If asked to do something, my instinctive reaction is: "Wait. Let's back up. You asked me to do X, but, really, you want Y to happen. Tell me what Y is, and I'll see what I can do to help you find success. I'll riff on it for a bit, find sustainable and equitable win-wins, and the end result might be even more satisfying than X would've been. And, if, by the end, X is still our best bet, we'll go with X." Sub breaks allow me the time and space to riff on what the sub was encouraging me to do. I'm a logical guy, but I'm creative too. I can take a tiny bit of something and run pretty far with it, if given the latitude to do so.
   

So, for me, dropping or minimizing sub breaks might have some potential disadvantages. Or, I guess, more precisely, some sacrificed advantages. Doesn't mean that I'm not willing to (or going to) explore that, since I already am, but it could mean that it might backfire for me in ways that it wouldn't for others. Might not too, of course. There may be advantages that I'm not taking into account. Every sub's different, and I won't know until I've tried.

And, after a couple more short-term experiments, I think that I've found at least one thing that's been getting in my way on this one: encoding format.

Yesterday, it dawned on me, in a "Wow, I could've/should've had a V8!" foreheadpalm moment, that, while I don't have the drive space nearby to store the entire FLAC zipfile for OF, I do have the space to store a single FLAC file.

Now, it may be unique to my substitute listening setup (my usual setup is at the home that I haven't seen in months), but switching back to FLAC almost immediately produced more congruent results. Could be timing/coincidence or placebo, but I'm doing my best to measure the difference by observable results, not by expectation of results. Other changes (more volume, more loops) did not have the same effect.

It may be that the performance gap between MP3 and FLAC has widened over the years of build process changes, that my current listening setup is more affected by encoding format than my usual setup, or that it's specific to OF itself, but I don't recall this much difference between MP3 and FLAC previously.

... and this may also mean that my MHS runs during the first half of the year were less effective than they could've been. Argh. Oh well. Lesson learned.

So, per Shannon's recommendation of no breaks back on the 2nd, the only day that I haven't run OF in October was the 1st. No excess anger, fear, exhaustion, or freedom noted. As I'd mentioned in my last post, congruence was restored (afraid when fearful, relaxed when calm) after switching from MP3 to FLAC.  

Since taking zero break days in the past couple of weeks hasn't been tiring and since Shannon encouraged the idea of tiring out any internal struggles, I chose to run OF for 9 loops/day during the first Saturday and Sunday of October and 12 and 11 loops/day (respectively) on the second Saturday and Sunday. No excess exhaustion from either attempt. I've continued to feel extremely busy, but, on my tiny corner of this spherical planet, busy isn't quite the same thing as tired.

Interestingly, despite past experience implying that it might not transpire without breaks, I did encounter a brief burst of automatic writing yesterday. Not only did it occur on a listening day, but it occurred while actively listening to OF itself. It was barely coherent and, consequently, not remotely useful to my conscious mind, but it still happened, and that's certainly worth noting.

I'm happy to be proven wrong, since it often means that I've learned something new, but I can't deny that intelligible conversation between me and myself tends to provide far more rewarding insights than gibberish does. Also, garbled automatic writing doesn't appear to be quite as internally fulfilling either, probably because 1) the inner me doesn't feel any more well-heard when tongue-tied than it does when the microphone's switched off and 2) the outer me's stuck feeling befuddled instead of informed. But, hey, who knows? Automatic writing during listening might eventually gain clarity with further practice.

Either way, yesterday's experience may suggest that, once my subconscious stops speaking in stressed-out nonsense (which, admittedly, may still require a break to accomplish), some worthwhile revelation(s) might not be too far behind it.

Finally hitting some frustration, which is often the closest that I get to anger. My automatic writing's also less garbled now, if no more concise. If anyone's curious enough to take a peek (by all means, skip it if you're not), here's a lengthy (but hopefully forum-friendly) excerpt from my non-public journal:

myth's Offline Journal Privately (Until Now) Wrote:Frustration has resulted from someone conflating humility with irresponsibility. From what I can tell, they're equating bragging, complaining, and nagging  others with transparency and active participation, and, to them, if I'm not broadcasting my contributions or ordering others around, I must not be participating at all. The implication appears to be that, unless I make a mountain of every molehill, I'm either failing to pull my own weight, trying to hide something, or letting the moles take over. My own counter-reasoning is that I get far more accomplished (including things that others don't need to do for me) if I leave the transparency to when I'm actually asked a real question.

Would it be more appropriate for me to brag, complain, and nag... or for them to ask instead of assuming? For me, the value is that the accomplishment got done, not whether or not I get credit for doing it. If something's askew enough to cause concern, I'm tempted to adjust it correctively. No need for glory, recognition, gratitude (except maybe self-gratitude), whatever -- just the benefit of a problem ceasing to be problematic. I'll accept ownership over my own work, sure, but life's mundanities need accomplishment more than they need attribution.

I see no great need to 1) sign all of my work after completion and wait for a thank-you note, or, at the other extreme, 2) leave problems uncorrected with an accompanying complaint card. #1 seems like the actions of someone seeking attention, validation, and/or reward for their effort, attaching strings to generosity (I'll scratch your back, but only if you... etc) and giving the "hero" incentive to orchestrate problems that they can later solve in exchange for accolade currency. #2, on the other hand, seems unproductive, accusatory, and blindly aimed, implicitly asserting that the problem is better left unrepaired unless the problem's creator corrects it personally.

While I admit that the problem's creator learns less without taking responsibility for their actions, is it really better for the entire crew to drown in the sinking ship than to wait for the person who created the problem to own up to their mistake and fix it? Especially given that causing the problem is often at inverse proportions to one's competency at solving it? If my car breaks down because I'm a terrible automobile operator, is the rest of the road safer if I do the repair (because I directly or indirectly caused it) or if someone qualified does the repair?

But what's getting my goat is where else others demand accountability -- not for having caused the problem, but for having acted to correct it. Which doesn't even have the argument of a lesson learned to support it. And the complaint isn't over work quality, just the absent reporting. The "pics, or it didn't happen" thinking is (IMHO) painfully strong with so many people, and there's an encroaching belief that publicized progress is implicitly required, unsolicited, like mandatory incremental narration. Which, when applied to something like this, seems to be little more than saying: "Look what I did! Look what I did!" There's a difference between wanting proof that a good thing got done (Hooray!) and wanting proof that I was the one responsible for the good thing (Who cares that I did it, as long as everyone's happier for it being done?).

My difficulty embracing this achievement-advertizing behavior is that I'm not a 3-year-old. I find this irritating enough in a socially agreed-upon format, as in job applications, but job postings at least have the decency to ask what you've done before making uninformed assumptions about the answers. In the case of unspoken "Are you pulling your own weight around here?" questions that keep coming up, they're not even taking the time to ask the question. It's essentially "I don't trust you, and you haven't shown off your work, groaned about doing it, or even passed the buck to someone who didn't want it, so you must not be doing anything/as much as everyone else is. I could ask the questions that I want answered, but, instead, I'll continue to make assumptions until you answer what I've never asked."

The squeaky wheel may get the grease, but, in this case, it's as if the silent wheel is being criticized and distrusted for not squeaking enough. As if the only possible reason that a wheel doesn't squeak is because it's never turning. I like being invisible unless I choose to be visible.

If the person isn't doing the work for credit and would actively prefer to avoid the award ceremony, why force it on them? To misquote an X-Men crossover story that I'd read as 1985 became 1986, a gift isn't really a gift when it's not freely given, but it's also not really a gift when it isn't freely received. I don't want someone else's pride in my work; they weren't involved in doing it. I'll respectfully accept their gratitude, appreciation, and happiness in it being accomplished, if it's something that they wanted done, but their pride in my work is going a bit far. Conversely, if they're only seeking to assign credit as a means of checking up on me, out of distrust, for transparency, then whatever they're awarding me for my effort is, from my point of view, barely a reward at all.

Maybe this stems from school grading systems? Parents and teachers often make grades about whether the child did well on their own, not about what, as far as I can see, grades really signify: whether the teacher was able to impart information effectively to the student, with the nuances of its meaning and value intact, and gain positive confirmation of that information transfer through testing. In my view, however unpopular this view might be, the entire information transfer process is what got the grade, not solely the student. Of course, the quality of the transfer may not reflect the quality of the original information.

From my point of view, if the teacher failed to communicate effectively/the relationship was unideal, the grade indicates that the information failed to pass to the student with confirmation (homework, tests, etc), not that the student alone failed to pass muster. The grade was never about just me, so I never really associated the grade with pride in the student, just as a quality metric of the arbitrary juxtaposition between teacher, student, and curriculum. But that's merely my opinion. I'd anticipate that several parents and educators would strongly disagree, and they'd probably have valid arguments for doing so. But I still wonder if this is part of what conditioned the "each of us must be rewarded/punished (publicly, with pride/shame) for our work" line of thinking. Or if it's just an extension/symptom of the real cause.

Alternatively, maybe the lack of reporting makes them feel deprived of their directorial pride, if they demand something, find it complete, and don't know enough detail about the completion to confirm that they were really part of it? Possibly even considering it a loss of team pride or teamwork, somehow? Even so, if I were absent from the process other than "I want this done" desires, not even involved beyond the wishing-for-things stage,  I'd find it pretty cumbersome to find any team pride in that. I understand that teams often rely on coordination, but, if one teammate's missed their cue, isn't it OK for another (i.e. me) to sub in for them temporarily? Isn't that part of teamwork too?

Either way, I'm not looking for a pat on the head, for myself or as part of a team. Instead, I'm more motivated by an accomplishment's intrinsic value having been achieved (fulfilling its intended purpose) than by inspiring awe/complaint in others or a sense of accomplishment in myself. Even my creative works (music, writing, art, etc) were created out of appreciation/enjoyment of the work, its inspiration, and its result, of bringing the inside of me outside of me. But the blander tasks of life? They're probably worth even less audience opinion. Whether anyone grades my work in these areas is their own decision and, frankly, says at least as much (if not more) about their likes, dislikes, and priorities as it does about the quality of my work. The work  was never about soliciting approval from a fandom that it was never created to serve.

No idea what this has to do with OF, and I'll be the first to admit that posting the excerpt publicly undercuts its own anti-reporting point. But it's a topic that one part of me wanted to discuss with another. It's still below my usual quality of self-communication, but it's an improvement over last week's inner incoherence.

When I feel a strong emotion, this is the kind of conversation that I have with myself. When I asked myself why I was feeling frustrated earlier in the week, this was the answer that my fingers typed out for me. It's a bit like letting my fingers vent the emotion while my eyes act as the sympathetic listener.

And, following the first couple months of standard usage on OF, it's been another two months of Shannon's recommended usage (for me, specifically) without any break days. With weekends of extra loops and a scant few weekdays where I missed a loop. But, even so, every day, mostly on schedule.

As before, none of the side effects reported by others. Still haven't "become exhausted" by listening without any days off. The brief situational frustration experienced (as mentioned in the post before this one) was my closest brush with anger, and, even now, weeks later, I don't disagree with my reaction.

Dreams are still pretty mundane, but, for clarity's sake, I'll point out that:

• My OF listening is not done during sleep.
  
• My sleep habits should support a parasympathetic state, so a sympathetic state (fight-or-flight) is actively being discouraged.
  
• Caffeine and processed sugar are nil and rare, respectively.
  
• I avoid high-conflict news, entertainment, or lifestyle (no interest).
  
• My dream self is usually more interested observer than active participant.
  

My nights (both before and during OF) have been calm, restful, and regular, along Circadian timing, early to bed and early to rise. Roughly 8-9 hours/night.

Feeling no more free or fearless than usual, but, as mentioned in this thread's first post, I've been seizing more fleeting opportunities and applying somewhat different risk metrics to decisions since starting OF. Taking a slightly increased interest in decisions, intuition, and prospect theory.

My goal with OF isn't about 100% fearlessness, partly in light of Kahneman's (who, admittedly, despite his Nobel, may be as fallible as the rest of humanity) theorizing that new fears can easily generate out of associative memory processing. And partly because I'm not focused on polar outcomes. Most of my reasoning for continuing to run OF is that 1) FRM's specific notion of fear sounds like a hard shell wrapped around most new IML subs, so getting concentrated FRM practice under my belt might get me to the juicy center of the other subs more quickly and 2) OF might pave a clearer path for no-FRM subs too.

As far as other observations go, I've continued to make forward strides with my health that, had I continued on MHS, might not have otherwise occurred. That extra bit of perseverance has been enough for me to feel that OF isn't wasting my time.

Still, having said that, it feels like OF is mostly addressing hesitation and fear-based excuses, not long-held phobias or aversions to probable-but-not-guaranteed outcomes. I suppose that it could just be OF pointing me toward low-hanging fruit first. Even so, if OF were handed to me as a mystery sub, I doubt that I could guess its purpose from the results, and I'm not entirely certain that the few observations that I've made aren't pure confirmation bias.

Some remaining fears are just aversions to invariable consequences, the stove that's hot to me and room-temperature to others. Like a rare allergy. But there's the rub: Is it an irrational fear when no one else believes that the stove can ever be hot for anyone, or is it a logical aversion to a stove that reliably burns only me? To an outside/inexperienced observer, the two might seem the same. Does others' inexperience really make me the irrational one?

Other remaining fears are objectively irrational. More fear of the unexplained "or else" (like direct consequences of declining a forced Hobson's choice) than of the truly unknown (arbitrary consequences unconnected with obvious cause, prevention, predictable reaction, or anything else, the "what is" that I can't know until it's happened). The first results from a choice/direct influence over the outcome, while the second is independent of any choices/influence. Of course, that isn't to say that people can't convince themselves that the second is the first ("I control everything") or that the first is the second ("I control nothing").

These two camps of remaining fears (1 = unpopular consequences, 2 = an undefined Door #2 choice) have, thus far, not measurably changed.

I've respected the models' instructions for two months and Shannon's specific recommendation for another two months. As I've ignored my instincts to do so and as following my own progress bars has always outperformed the models' instructions on other subs, I'm now going to try usage that respects my own learning pace. Both official methods produced only light progress, so I don't see another usage switch as giving up on OF or on "what worked." If OF 5.75.5G (v2) sees daylight, I may jump on it, but I may also go with my instincts for usage. If that degrades the outcome, hey, that's on me, not the sub. I've tried to set a good example for four months, but, really, my sub listening isn't about proving to others that I'm disciplined; it's about learning something new for myself.

It sounds like you may be performing a very advanced and intricate form of mental gymnastics at the subconscious level in order to delay and derail the program from working, which is unfortunate but not an unsurprising result for someone who is sufficiently intelligent and educated. I of course could also be wrong. If I am right, then I'll need to add some very advanced counter-scripting, which will no doubt take a while to figure out the "how" of..

I say, go for it with your own intuitive responses to how and when to use it. See if that helps.

(12-14-2020, 05:09 PM)Shannon Wrote: [ -> ]It sounds like you may be performing a very advanced and intricate form of mental gymnastics at the subconscious level in order to delay and derail the program from working, which is unfortunate but not an unsurprising result for someone who is sufficiently intelligent and educated.  I of course could also be wrong.  If I am right, then I'll need to add some very advanced counter-scripting, which will no doubt take a while to figure out the "how" of..

I say, go for it with your own intuitive responses to how and when to use it.  See if that helps.

Thanks, Shannon, and, yeah, it might be. Or not. No idea. There's certainly no benefit in me rejecting the possibility that I'm slowing it down somehow, intentionally (subconsciously) or unintentionally (accidentally?). That'd only make it that much harder to stop doing it, if that's actually what's happening.

Even so, as I'd said, it's not that there's been no progress, just that there's been lighter progress than I've made on other subs in far less time. Unless, of course, this is the optimal pace for me to handle fear removal right now, which, while theoretically possible, still seems like it shouldn't be quite this glacial.

May also be a technical issue, as I haven't been able to use my home listening setup all year. The player side should be close enough to identical, but trading speakers for headphones alters two factors: 1) the device that's actually reproducing the audio and 2) headphones preclude using a pure US track.

Yeah, the switch to instinctive is just another thing to try. As the switch to v2 would also be. If they don't help to speed things up, then they don't, but at least I'll have given them a try.

Initially, though, I'm taking at least one day off, if only to see where things have settled after two months of no days off from OF.

What is your current setup?

(12-15-2020, 04:41 PM)London1 Wrote: [ -> ]What is your current setup?

Current: mplayer -> Linux  -> Intel sound card -> analog -> Sony collapsible headphones -> ears
Home: mplayer -> FreeBSD -> Realtek sound card -> HDMI -> Samsung TV speakers -> ears

And, until my home environment stops irritating my health issue, I'm stuck with current. Same set of ears in both cases, in case that wasn't obvious.

You should definitely notice a difference between v1 and v2 of OF, given the advancements that have been made in how I do things since v1 was built.

(12-17-2020, 09:13 PM)Shannon Wrote: [ -> ]You should definitely notice a difference between v1 and v2 of OF, given the advancements that have been made in how I do things since v1 was built.

While I'm an ardent skeptic of the "newer's always better" belief that often fuels upgrade chasers and early adopters, I'm also undeniably curious to see how these advancements affect both OF and the 5.75G series. Given the timing of my recent days off, I'll probably resume my OF listening on v2.

As far as what I might or might not notice, I expect nothing less than the unexpected! And that includes the release timing...