A new DMSI journal for a new version. My 3.1 journal can be found here. As I don't post often, I've decided that this pre-listening first post might best be done as a recap/brain-dump/journal forward to mark my starting point for 3.3. These mental snapshots help me to track changes.

A report of summarized specifics, observations, and perspectives. I'm not aiming to impress, entertain, or claim universal applicability, just to share what I see, how I respond to it, and, to the best of my self-awareness, why.

In the future. I'm not interested in making a premature commitment to (or in betraying myself with) a boatload of arbitrary expectations. Right now, I prefer to influence the variables and choices within (sometimes distant) reach rather than insisting on authorship over all present and future variables and constants. I'd rather react to (and decide based on) what does and can happen, not to (or on) what I think should've happened instead, with an attitude of adaptation (work with) instead of defiance (work against) or surrender (work for).

Besides, my available options change with each intervening decision, action, and event, so over-committing to the destination that the present me can see now only distracts and derails me from the many and potentially more wonderful destinations that await the future me. This isn't a race for me; it's a journey through everywhere. I care about all of the yet-to-be-possible destinations where I can finish, not just one finish line that I've chosen at the start (or how quickly I'd get there). I want to end up wherever my evolving self eventually chooses to take me, not necessarily where today's past self is still telling me that I originally wanted to go.

For me, walking the path helps me to choose the most satisfying destination that it offers, something that teleporting to a pre-chosen destination would not. Unless I make the journey (and keep my eyes and mind open during it), I know nothing of the many destinations it truly offers. That makes the journey itself a valuable resource in choosing where I end up.

As a three-legged race, a team effort. Or as a road trip where the suggestions are merely my navigator, reliably keeping me focused in the goal's direction. The vehicle still goes where I take us, and the navigator isn't doing the piloting.

If we end up somewhere other than the navigator suggested, I don't attack the navigator for what I did with its directions or, like a kid in the back seat, insist that we should have already arrived at our destination when we're only part-way there. If I disagree with the navigator and don't trust the navigator's directions in the first place, I simply don't take the trip with that navigator; as far as I'm concerned, there's no reason for me to take an untrusted navigator along and spend the entire trip telling it what directions to give me. For me, things like subliminals and hypnosis are about teamwork and trust, not about me expecting my toolbox to build a garden shed by itself or about me insisting that I'm the expert on directions to new places because familiar landmarks are nearby.

An ever-changing organism who will be a different conglomeration, from molecular and cellular structure upward, tomorrow from whatever he is today, yet still encounters old acquaintances who demand the secret of how he "hasn't changed at all" in the last quarter of a century. In adding, keeping, discarding, replacing, and re-prioritizing that which makes me who I am, I am, AFAIK, the intersection of same and different, of old and new, of predictable and unexpected. And I've frequently been called the exception to various rules, partly because I have rarely believed that the popular ideals from which I successfully deviate are, in actuality, rules (or, at minimum, truths) in the first place.

Who I am is not who I've been or who I will be, but all three comprise me. Life, for me, is decisive evolution, not a forced effort to remain the same, to "keep up" with others, or to become "done." I had four legs at sunrise, I have two legs during the day, and I may have three (or maybe twenty-seven?) at sunset, but I will have also been everything in-between too. Other people taking me for granted is one thing (what others think is their own business), but me taking myself for granted is something else.

I am now what I will never be again, but that's what's wonderful about it: I'm really the entire book, not just the current page. I don't buy the notion that the present or future will cause me to lose my past, even if my current page differs completely from every previous page, because my past is always still part of my book. I don't need to keep repeating Chapter 2 inside of every other chapter to ensure that it stays in the book. It was once, so it always will have been. I haven't lost Chapter 2 from the book by being in Chapter 14 now, so I don't need to fear or grieve its absence from the third chapter onward. It isn't gone, hasn't un-happened, doesn't need to un-happen, and needs no permanent addiction to it re-happening; it just happened earlier than now and, once written, edited, and faced (pun intended). can be appreciated (positively, negatively, or in some mixture of both) as it was (or "still is, previously") without endless reprise or regret. Life is experienced in motion, it allows me to have lived several different lives across one lifetime, and, until I reach the last page, there's still more story ahead.

After re-reading the last few paragraphs, I'm not sure if I've made "who I am" any clearer to anyone else, but I think that it says a lot to me about the current page that I'm on.

It'll be interesting to see what adding DMSI 3.3 as a teammate does to my story. So ends the forward. It's time to see what's on the next page.

Thanks! I'm mid-way through my fourth loop. Still too early to notice much, unless you count my daily realizations (I get those anyhow, even if I'm not on a sub), but I can definitely report a sense of calm during the loops. No headaches or discomfort so far, but I also don't overdo the volume (I stick with ultrasonic/FLAC). And, while it may or may not continue that way, it's very pleasant start to the journey.

With me on recent 5.5G, it's usually 10 or more hours after listening that I really notice anything happening, although, with all of the new tech in 3.3, that pattern may change again. I won't really know until I see what actually happens, but it'll be interesting to find out!

Other small perception shifts make me wonder if the EIP in DMSI got a more general upgrade. My mind feels somewhat more open to things (in general) that I'd ordinarily dismiss as impossible. As if previous life experience no longer matters regarding what could eventually prove possible. In the context of DMSI, I imagine that such a perspective shift could help the men who keep insisting that women can't approach (no matter how many of us have experienced otherwise), but what's interesting is how much this feeling of possibility falls entirely outside of the goals of the program, as if it wasn't just goal-supporting scripting. There's a very child-like quality to the point of view that's crept in. It's a very "From everything I (think that I) know, what I'm currently imagining shouldn't be possible, but, putting that aside, I wonder if..." sort of thinking.

Of course, that perception shift may be something else entirely, something updated in USLM2 or USLM3 (I only ran USLM1) that was never really referenced, or just my imagination playing tricks on me. It has been only one day, after all. Still, even if it's just my imagination, I like it,

Haven't posted much during 3.3 yet, so I'll post a change in perspective from my private journal:

I'm seeing a pattern in my preemption habits that might finally indicate why DMSI keeps bringing up the subject for me.

I logged in my 3.1 journal (here) how I've had a tendency toward preemption to avoid the stress of others' "needs" (desires) and expectations. If I do it before they ask, I don't have to endure their impatience over something that I never necessarily owed them in the first place (but they insist that I owe them -- and that everyone else owes them -- merely by the nature of their desire for it).

My pattern has tended to be that, if I grant their wish before they make it, I don't need to carry the repeated weight (and badgering) of their desires, starting from their initial request until I've finished. Probably stems from non-stop parental pressure in my formative years.

So I formed two reactions to manage this pressure, depending upon the specific desire-of-the-moment being demanded: 1) if their request passed the test of my own values (up to the point of compromise), do what was wanted before it was wanted, and 2) if their request didn't pass my value test, decide that their request had very little to do with me.

To a degree, I do see this as somewhat healthy, as no man is an island. I can't ignore other people entirely and still expect to interact positively with them, but I can't place them above my own needs either. My coping pattern here isn't perfect, but it does address both sides, even #1 of can lead to short-term stress while #2 can lead to conflict. Of course, if I forget to check with myself on whether or not I'm pre-fulfilling something against my own values, that could be problematic. In most situations, I do check in with myself first, though, I think, as I can and do say no, can debate as respectfully as possible with others on group decisions, and can make unpopular choices easily.

But, this week, I'm seeing something related that I've missed. Much as I preemptively fulfill, I may preemptively punish myself too (in the name of fulfillment). This might also be traced back to parents, both for punishment and pressure reasons. Unfortunately, this specific case looks like it's been getting a free pass not to check in with me before being pre-fulfilled. My parents didn't consult me on whether I deserved punishment, and I may have picked up their habitual discounting of my personal values when punishing me for a breach of their personal values.

Worse still, this all gets warped further by the fact that preemption, no matter its intent or subject matter, is (knowingly) based on speculation, however probable, rather than on reality. I don't know anyone else's values, really; I can only speculate (inaccurately) as to what they are.

What does this have to do with DMSI? Well, I suspect that I'm trying to point out to myself where my 95% no-people-at-all and 5% everybody-at-once social behavior comes from. On one hand, it reduces the stress of people's wants by reducing my contact with them, while still making me feel extremely social when I have the stomach to tolerate those demands. That hand makes it all seem very positive and well-managed. I get to bake my feeling of being very socially active and interactive, all according to my schedule, and I get to eat my lack of stress too. It feels very win-win. But there's the other hand that's been hiding in a pocket somewhere: I may be using the first hand as a seemingly positive way to punish myself. To send myself to my room for 95% of my life, only letting myself out 5% of the time for good behavior.

It's possible that I'm letting some degree of social self-imprisonment occur due to a fully operational (punishment-related) gate in my peer-pressure fence that I didn't know that I'd built, all because I'd gotten used to not being consulted on my own past punishments. And I may be feeding imaginary punishments through that gate, based on the speculation inherent in trying to pre-fulfill what isn't actually being requested.

And, because, in pre-fulfilling, I got to choose the punishment myself (sort of an unnoticed second exception to the first exception where I forget to consult myself, possibly also due to how my childhood punishments worked), I could make it a pleasant-but-strict one (without making sure that it was a necessary one first). So, forgetting to verify the need for punishment while also effectively disguising the punishment as a reward.

Others, particularly those who feel pain from rejection, abandonment, or loneliness more easily than I do, may see isolation as unbearable punishment, while I find it a relief from others' selfish demands. An analogy for me to make sense of this for others might be something along the lines of a gamer choosing to punish themselves by playing a slightly older version of their favorite video game to show that they were suffering, while still rewarding themselves with their favorite game (as it was before the new version turned the old one into a "punishment").

So, at this point, I'm beginning to question how much is or isn't self-punishment, despite how enjoyable the punishment might seem.

Thanks, Shannon. I can't quite claim to know yet what's actually being blocked by this behavior, given my existing female-initiated intimate relationships (that I do enjoy) and others that I could start just by saying yes (that aren't right for me), but, as doing well enough is not the same as doing as well as possible, I'm more than willing to give whatever's blocked a chance to clear.

Continuing along the same line of thought, much of the self-punishment, if that's what I'm doing, could possibly be traced to an ex who was often abusive toward me whenever her jealousy kicked up. If another woman so much as smiled at me, she'd spend hours or days accusing me of things that I hadn't been doing. It became safer to stop going out (which I resumed years ago), to stop putting any effort into my appearance (which I also resumed), to have less of an online presence (I have as much as I originally did, but not as much as others now do), and more.

Those safeties were almost certainly the same sort of pre-fulfilling self-punishment, at least at the time that I'd been applying them. It's also possible that there are some unrestored habits on the list that I'd missed because I wasn't actively looking for them, old pre-fulfilled punishments that are still in need of returning to their previous state or better. The case that I described in the last post may simply have been a case where I only restored (to previous) but still continue to hold myself back from improving (to better).

I certainly saw some of those self-punishments for what they were, but what I didn't see at the time was the pre-fulfillment gate (the exception in my peer-pressure fence) that allowed their creation. Or that restoring myself to previous (while holding myself back from better thereafter) might still have been the self-punishment continuing its hold on me.

Seeing that pre-fulfillment gate could hopefully allow me to close, lock, or remove it in the future. And seeing that the self-punishment might be covertly remaining in place, post-restoration, as a ceiling against future growth, might also allow me to remove those restrictions too.

I'm very grateful for finally seeing the how and why behind it, so, thank you again for that. I'll certainly be more grateful if seeing the problem effortlessly turns into preventing that problem/undoing its past effects with further DMSI use, but simply seeing what's been going on under the hood is already a welcome start. It allows for the possibility of actively changing it myself, even if no passive help comes along to aid me.

• More creativity at work. Just when I think that I'm done with a project that I thought was done (and would've satisfied everyone) two weeks ago, I find myself spending each day correcting newly-observed (if trivial) flaws that I'd been missing for several years, condensing redundancies where there's a common denominator, sharing features unique to one application across similar applications after they've been condensed, and a whole lot more. In a word, what I'm seeing is: opportunities. Things that don't need to be done but can be.
  
• More relaxed sleep, with less restlessness. Could also be the recent addition of postbiotics to my health regimen, but I can't rule out fear reduction providing a more peaceful slumber. Might be a little of each.
  
• Laughing and finding significantly more humor in funny things. It's as if I'm letting myself enjoy "what happens to me" more fully.
  
• Enjoying music in ways that I haven't in years. My lessened enjoyment of music was one of the reasons that I stopped making it, and throwing away my effort toward doing so was a consciously recognized self-punishment that I imposed on myself years ago, back when I was dating the aforementioned ex. It'll be interesting if these changes lead me back to it, but I hold no present expectation of that.
  

Further observations:

• Work productivity and creativity are still high. No clue why. Finding and fixing more flaws before they're about to go into production. Responding to the equivalent of chasms in front of me by simply putting a lid on them. Oh, and, yeah, seeing obstacles more as chasms (with available lids to lay down and walk over, if I just look for them) than as mountains that need climbing.
  
• Free stuff. I tend not to report on these, as I've gotten freebies and discounts long before DMSI, but I got some free food yesterday in addition to my lunch order. The rational part of me is quick to point out that people may be in a giving mood anyhow, celebrity effect or not, given the time of year.
  
• Received nude photos all week. Something else that I tend not to report on, especially since, in this case, they're not from anyone new or from multiple women. The amount and consistency are higher than usual, though, which is why I'm mentioning it. Shows increased interest on a relative scale, but it's literally n=1. Could just be coincidental/holiday timing for one specific person.
  
• Had a dream involving a (generic) nemesis. Yeah, my dreams aren't quite as blockbuster cinema as zombie attacks, wars, firefights, etc. High adrenaline's never really been a big selling point with me, so my dreams don't really have action movies, video games, real-life warfare, etc to pull from. There's not usually a lot of enemy engagement. Anyhow, the consistent theme of the dream was, more or less, that my opponent destroyed while I would rebuild.
  
  The three most obvious interpretations of the dream that I see, if any interpretation is really worth hypothesizing, are 1) sub destroys while I restore (back the way that it was), 2) sub destroys while I fortify (back as it was, but more strongly defended), and 3) sub destroys while I replace (improving on what the sub didn't like, so that it doesn't have any need to destroy the replacement). #3 is obviously the most optimistic (and least resistant) interpretation, although it could've been any, none, or a per-destruction mix of all three. I could probably come up with more interpretations (like overcoming setbacks, practicing resilience, standing my ground, doing what I think is right, making the most of disappointment, picking myself back up when something gets me down, and other nuanced variations on that theme), but those three seem like the most on-the-nose ones.
  

Sounds like something that I might've heard you suggest in another journal about another dream. Point taken, though.

I mostly included it because my dreams, even on subs, tend not to be very antagonistic. This was a first for me. Yeah, UD had me crushing bugs in my dreams that kept multiplying their way back, but they were just bugs. This was a semi-evenly-matched opponent who kept doing what it was doing. I kept doing what I was doing too, but it didn't back down easily. This dream struck me as something different enough to mention. This was definitely something new.