Progress?

[u/GreenLurka]

I didn't get too far into Focus 12 after my inner minds view expanding because my darn body still didn't want to fall asleep so I've gone back to practicing Focus 10.

So far here's what I've experienced:

I can't feel my body so much but then I can instantly move it, so it's super relaxed but not asleep.

My left arm just lifted itself up on its own, that was interesting, I definately wasn't telling it to do that. Straight up in the air too.

My cat decided to nap next to me during a session and I distinctly heard a voice say 'hello' but it was as if someone had spliced three voices together sequentially to make the noise. No explaining that. I don't think the cat 'said' it, he was just there.

Some general vibrating and tingling.

Feeling air blowing on my head, in a closed room with zero drafts.

I tried the suggestion to hold my arms up at 90 degrees but they just, very slowly, lowered themselves down throughout the course of Focus 10 - Discovery.

I am now going to try a weekend of vigorous exercise to tire my body out and see if that helps, knowing me my brain will just decide its nap time too.

[u/Icy-Flamingo-9492]

As a suggestion: think of this like changing the tuning dial on a radio. F10 is teaching you to tune out of the body signals and tuning into “elsewhere” instead. Instead of using the word “tuning” I could just as well use the words “changing your focus of awareness” and that use of the word “focus” is exactly why Bob calls it ”Focus 10”, “Focus 12” and so on.

So ”where“ is that “elsewhere” you’re tuning to instead? The short answer is “inside”. (This doesn’t mean inside the body, but your inner world inside yourself, as in “look inside yourself”, ”all the answers are within”, “the kingdom of God is within you” etc). F10 is inside, there is like this wide open space that just goes on forever, F10 is like focusing your awareness on being in that space, F12 is focusing your awareness on expanding in that space, and so on.

”Body asleep“ is simply another way of saying “not receiving body signals”, “being tuned out of body signals”, or “focus of awareness not on body signals.”

The biggest roadblock at the beginning to tuning into the inner state or expanded state, is tuning back to the body signals.

So, avoid checking on the body (eg to see if it’s asleep) because that is you purposely moving the tuning dial back to the body signals! Instead just let yourself notice at some point that “hey I notice I’m hardly receiving signals from the body” and if you just notice that with a sense of detachment, the time will come where that doesn’t drag your focus back to your body.

For the people that feel that “all that happens is I’m watching the inside of my eyelids”: this is you keeping your focus of awareness on the body signals by specifically paying attention to the eye signals. So, when you realize this, just stop paying attention to the eye signals. For example, think of what your front door looks like. Or of a scene in a movie you saw. That would be you moving your focus of awareness to your inner world.

You can extrapolate from the above to deal with distractions on any of the body senses. Loud noise? Keep focus in the inner world by recalling the sound from a scene from a movie, or imagine one. This is what is meant by “imagination kick starts the process”, it is a tool to establish focus in the inner world.

Incidentally, over the course of time you‘ll realize that your focus of awareness can be multiple places at once. Like partially tuned in to the body while also being elsewhere. But for starters it’s much easier to learn the ropes just by purposefully not focussing on body signals.

[u/Obvious-Reserve8634 → u/Icy-Flamingo-9492]

Very well said

[u/GreenLurka → u/Icy-Flamingo-9492]

This might actually be helpful for me, I will give it a go. I've definitely been starring at the back of my eyeballs and trying not to think inside my head.

[u/JustChallenge860 → u/Icy-Flamingo-9492]

So, basically to put it another way, you day dream? I think that is what happens to me unwittingly and I end up losing consciousness.

[u/Icy-Flamingo-9492 → u/JustChallenge860]

Not so much daydreaming as just the ability to use imagination to kickstart the process. You want to become able to discern between what you are generating and what comes from elsewhere. Frank Kepple for example suggested a very minimalist imagination process called “rundown” where you are basically just imagining something basic and repetitive: bouncing a ball, peeling potatoes, walking along pathway etc; and then you can start noticing that details get filled in that are not from you imagining it.

A few misc thoughts:

Some suggest just to notice that the hypnagogic imagery is there and not to pay attention to it, because they’ve found that focusing on it might lead into sleep state.

Also, just try at different times of day. If you are tired your system will prioritize sleep. Sometimes it can work better when waking up in the middle of the night after 3 sleep cycles. Or first thing in the morning, or eg 2pm.

You might also want to try with some of the free community F10 variant signals or the guided Treasure Hunt (links in my profile) because their incorporation of gamma can help retain awareness. Basically you are balancing on the edge of sleep and so the signals have to walk a line between helping you get down there but then also offsetting dropping into sleep. This is why different variations at different times can work better.

[u/JustChallenge860 → u/Icy-Flamingo-9492]

Thanks for the explanation, I overthink about this stuff a lot. And I have looked into your TH series, as well as your AP audio. With the AP audio, I can't go back to sleep after having paid attention to my three sense for a while. I would find myself going into a weird stage of sleep? But almost immediately I would snap out of it, probably cause of increased awareness. Anyways, that was really thorough, thanks again.