Stomach

The book "No Self, No Problem: How Neuropsychology Is Catching Up to Buddhism" by Chris Niebauer PhD reminded me to practice activating specific hemispheres of the brain again. Left the activation of the right hemisphere ticking in my second attention for a couple of days, then forgot about it.

For a few days before the birthday, I had some stomach troubles. I think it was triggered by an emotional moment.

The brain switches hemispheres every now and then, and sometimes while both hemispheres are active, I've started to feel really weird. Sometimes I've gotten a mild headache from it.

Apparently there are still a lot of blockages at places in the body.

At some point I was so tired that a nap of just a few minutes caused me to lose awareness of the body and drop into a deep sleep.

I watched "Yangguang puzhao" (2019) with some people on Discord last Saturday. There was a scene with firecrackers on the streets. I noticed that I could smell the burnt gunpowder. It has been a while.

Birthday wishes

There's a Lain-themed Discord server in which I haven't been very active, and I think I've only chatted a bit with two people there. On my birthday suddenly some people started posting wishes. At some point one of them asked if any of them knew anyone whose birthday it might be. It didn't seem like any of them knew.

Cool synchronicity. I thanked them for their wishes and then more wishes followed.

Realizations

About a week ago I realized that the world is probably much smaller than I've thought. Each thought and action probably has more immediate and direct consequences than I might've imagined.

Though, since the influence doesn't make that much sense to the rational mind, it just brushes it off or comes up with some alternative stories about it. Due to the mind, the path of feedback is cut, which in turn makes us feel more separate and alone than we actually are.

While taking a shower one evening, I suddenly started laughing about some of my worries. It seemed that I had taken "simple" things way too seriously. Should just go with the flow more.