writing applications for Buddhist courses and retreats that say "you have to have gone on this many residential retreats to ride this ride -- but email us if you don't meet these explicit requirements but think you are qualified"
@enantiomer Thanks for sharing this. I'm in a similar place with my practice. I have found over the years that my dedication waxes and wanes. Lately I've been trying to use objects in my environment at those times of day to trigger me to think of the Sun. E.g. when I see an analog clock, I should imagine the Sun symbol over it, which would remind me to think of Resh or even just to spend a moment envisioning myself on the barque and Thoth destroying whatever obstacle I have at the moment.
once you develop a consistent practice, you get used to an elevated level of functioning and when practice is interrupted, it can be scary -- like -- what if you lose your normal baseline
@enantiomer yeah, this is fascinating to me. Their ideas of "normal" or whatever are always based on values or morals or stereotypes that seem weird and foreign to ME, so I have no frame of reference to anything. Ha!