Happy?

Happy?

It's complicated.

Doesn't mean I can't find out for you. Let's have a look at the feeling factory. I've got the key, just stay behind and keep your safety belt near. What's that? Oh, just the usual - flashlight if things get dark, some cortisol and sugar if you get somewhere dangerous and want to go old-school on the monsters' ass. Couple of reminders of visualizations there for you too, but to be honest, they're a little like books in that if you get into a situation where you need them, if they're not already tucked away in your noggin then you probably won't have a chance to fully engage them.

Anyways, just stay close. It's my factory and the reporting lines are mostly respected.

Ok then, where's the light - oh there. Shit! Bulb's burned out. Pragma - you busy? You're never THAT busy, I know, cause if you were sector 7 - relationships and homebuilding - would be a lot less choppy than what it is. Listen - can you get a new bulb in there - thanks mate.

Ok. Let's see - where too first? Autonomic? That's a good place to start, get a real time view of what's going on. They're up the stairs here, follow me.

Phew, little out of breath - Hi Otto. Otto's world here is all about self-regulation, he monitors without getting involved too much. See that guage over there - vitals. It spiked as I came up the stairs there, settling back down now. That vat over there is fight or flight - always kept at a simmer, you never know. Not a lot happening here right now. Otto, can you let us in the lift there - thanks partner.

Ok, we're going downtown, mate. This is where the bad boys hang out. Id runs in and out of here like it's a public library; trying to get him secured better but its all about time isn't it.

Here, best idea is to look through the viewing window. WHOA big fella. Now here is a good example. Dread and fear. The big grey blob - that's dread; the blanket - well, it looks like a blanket anyways - that's fear. Real bedfellows those two.

What's that? Well, we're getting to your answer, but answers without context are like swallowed sneeze - tight, constrained, and pretty unfufilling. You really NEED the environment before you can paint the picture. We're almost done.

Look down - see all the gasses - well -that's the easiest way to picture them. Plexi floors give a pretty good show yah? The gasses are the good guys, delight, grace, freedom, and mixed together into a pastel powder blue - happiness. They're constantly mixed at a fundamental level, then they settle into the predominant shade. Hmmm? Yes, those are two way pipes between Otto, the Badboys, and the flooring. Happiness piped in calms and diffuses, Otto and the Badboys get aggressive, they can feed into the gasses and create a real shitstorm.

So. To answer your question. Yes, I'm happy. I'm also enraged and ecstatic. Manic and depressed. Grace filled and contracted. All depends on the timing mate.

Heraculitis.

Would you like cream or sugar with your dialectic tension?

...which would infer coffee.

....which is a flacid but adequate segue to bring us to today's subject matter: the dialectic springboard that time and somnolence can offer me. Huge, actually. You see:

I understand the dialectic tension as a force that can refine. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. uh-huh. I have an idea or a proposition. I challenge it, let's say through dialogue, inner or outer, and if succesfull, like the oyster taking in an irritant and spitting out beauty, I come out with something new. Refined. I have moved forward.

The words, like many that present themselves to me, are tied to diaphanous images. I see an engine, a progressive machine that takes thoughts in, and through the tension of progress, produces something new but related at the other end.

Time and sleepiness both offer this for me, although right now their tension feels like it's just pushing my face up against a window; pressure steady, with no give yet. This would be the input of the dialectic engine.

I have seen into the kernel of time and sleepiness, but only in a limited fashion ~ usually the painful half of the whole. Which is ok, the pain is one of the drivers of dialectic tension. Time Shadechaser? How can Time be painful?

The clearest picture I have is of being on a ladder, painting. Summer job, look at my watch, 9:05 am. And the feeling associated with it is just...helpless, trapped, time. oh my god i don't like painting how long will this go on I've got to work for the whole day and oh FUCK it's only been 2 minutes how am I going to get through the next eight hours I'm bored what should I do...

And so on. Trapped in a miserable situation, not wanting to be there, wanting so much to be somewhere anywhere else but trapped TRAPPED as the clock marches interminably forward. Sleepiness hovers around - sometimes as a precursor to the trapped clock checking, sometimes as an escape route from the unpleasant feeling.

And of the two somnolence is, well, maybe not worse, but more dreadful. I contract, there is a heaviness around the eyes...I need escape...I need, I HAVE to have a nap.

Now I have progressed enough o'er the years to have a bit of insight and space around time and sleepiness, but my face is still up against the window. Maybe being rolled down a bit with non-dual inquiry with hsfh, but still a low dead pressure system hanging over my head.

When I am sleepy now, where does the Witness go? It is clearly there but clouded. But how can awareness be occluded?

When I am locked in and dreading time, I can have enough insight to step back as awareness and just watch the different sensations, but this process itself is timebound, and experience, and as such ultimately doomed to be sucked down into the Time hole itself.

So how do I deal with somnolenc-occluded awareness? And how do I remain aware outside of experience so that timelessness does not collapse into Time?