Not Just a Deep Dive and Move On.
Field Notes 20260605 - Friday
Morning
Meditation
- 90 Minutes.
- The Gateway Experience, “Intro to Focus 21”.
Back to my ol’ pal “Intro to Focus 21”. I won’t lie, this has been one of those focus states that I’m not quite sure I’ve got a handle on. In fact, if I’m being cautious about it to begin with, then I’m definitely not where I think I should be with F21, unlike F10, F12, F15, and F18. At first I was comparing my own experiences with others, big mistake. After a bit of that and recognizing the error of my ways, I began to rely on my own subjective experience a lot more.
Much like the other focus states, the sense, feeling, intuition that I’m “there” is there. Unlike with the others, however, I still don’t have the full picture (figuratively speaking) and functionality of there.
Doing the marathon of focus states to refresh and reinforce the entraining I’ve done over the years has been a valuable exercise. I ran it all the way from bedrock and foundational layers to my old and familiar wall “blocking” progress, F21. It’s not really blocking anything, just my trajectory within The Gateway Program, but I do recognize that there’s something that still needs to be addressed here for the program and the overall progress.
Before today, I paused with “knocking on the F21” door for a few months. I focused mostly on other areas I knew needed the attention, such as presence. Overall, this has been one of the best decisions I’ve made in my practice, but it also just highlighted that I should be practicing presence, focused on “the now”, throughout all of my waking life and as much as possible… not just a simple deep dive and move on.
Having said that, my next course of action regarding F21 is… long, deep, unguided sessions. Not sessions that are just about inundating myself with F21 tracks to get more and more used to them, but actual and structural sessions with at least two complementing halves. This is exactly where my Gospel of Thomas logion study comes in, the Presence Companion. My plan has been to spend a considerable amount of time meditating on select logion, and now I have an environment to do that in, where I can shift focus to accessing the F21 state with more efficiency.
