Making quite a lot of progress.... found a vein.

I might have found the fast leg of the journey.  But who knows. It was a leg that I had hoped in the back of my mind that I wouldn't have to take, because it's apparently tedious.

It's stretching open the portal, as mentioned in the previous entries.  I have noticed a lot of progress in the past few weeks by implementing this technique.  Really hammering on the fixation cards exercise, and then casually doing Brock String (mainly for gauging progress),  and then doing Vivid Vision.  That's my approach at 80/20 (giving primary focus on things which give the best results).

Shit, I have learned so much.  Right now what's on my mind is the pliability of the mind.  And the idea that there are little things--little elements in the mind, which you can reach out, and sort of touch.  And if you give those elements enough focus, they can grow, and you can begin to do interesting things with them.  If you're Wim Hof, that means that you can consciously control your immune system.  If you're me, it means you can be significantly more thoughtful and effective about your approach toward vision therapy.   The mind is powerful.  We're beginning to understand how powerful it is and the weird things that can be achieved via focus.  I'm really beginning to believe that normal people can do amazing things with the right training and meditative practice.

Yeah... yesterday I saw the smallest distance ever between the double beads.  Pretty excited.  As the beads get closer, I'm going to have to train more and increase my sensitivity to the decreasing change between the feeling of switching from each eye.  I will commensurately build on that sensitivity until the switching is entirely squashed and both eyes are fully on all the time.

Stretching open the portal is working

For now.  For now, stretching open the port is working.

By that, I'm talking about the fixation cards exercise wherein I slowly and deliberately try to stretch fixation across both eyes.  Inevitably when I stretch over to the other side, while slowly moving the card closer and farther away, I will switch fixation to the other eye.  However, I pay very close to the feeling of the stretching, and I don't sweat it when I switch over.  Not switching eyes isn't my goal at the moment.  Stretching my fixation ability across both eyes simultaneously is.

It's a hard, tricky, and subtle technique, and one that I'm convinced I never would have discovered had I not learned how to slow down, relax, and hyperfocus my mind via meditation.  Your brain and mind are doing a lot of things that you'll never get to see and appreciate without the crazy levels of focus and introspection you can attain with a rigorous meditation practice.

Stretching open the portal appears to be the exercise that is doing the most lifting at the moment.  I actually don't think it's Vivid Vision.  I think in my case with vision therapy--the process requires raw, deliberate, conscious effort, and there's no way of getting around that.  I don't think a guy like me will ever break the lifelong habit of using my eyes incorrectly by playing a game.  That's not knock on Vivid Vision--I think they are amazing, and what they are doing is amazing and admirable--that's just my impression at the moment.

It goes back a little to a previous entry in which I reflect about why I think vision therapy is so much easier for children than for adults.  And my thesis is that vision therapy is easier for children not so much because of their high neuroplasticity as much as it is that they don't have a strong preference for doing anything in any particular way--simply because they lack experience.

Well, I have a ton of experience.  I have a ton of experience in using my eyes incorrectly.  33 years in fact.  And that, I feel, has a lot to do with the apparent requirement for me having to learn how to meditate and devise ways of trenching new neural pathways, manually and consciously trying to convince each neuron in the chain, that yes, this will eventually be worthwhile.