a gentle onramp:

Mark 8:55 AM

• 5-30 minutes of a prelim exercise, followed by 2-15 minutes of the meta protocol (retrospectively on those 5-30 minutes), 1-2 times per day, would be a gentle, powerful onramp.
• I would use the meta protocol to semi-retrospectively determine which prelim exercises, how to personally enact them, for what duration, for how often, would be good.
• It would be fine to go down them in order, or to make index cards, or to paste them into a spreadsheet and keep track of frequency or duration in some way.
• Main practice p2 is sort of the heart of the main protocol, so eventually one would want to start puzzling it out and easing into that, too, interleaving with prelim/aux practices and the meta protocol. Eventually one will start acquiring better and better intuitions about what to do when, as well as facility with navigating the document and dipping into it for ideas and refreshing on the text, to aid practice.

More questions welcome and please poke for different kinds/styles of answers if there’s something better

Mark 9:03 AM

It’s not universally true, but, generally, "forcing," "powering through," or "needle-threading in order to keep going and going" should be avoided because these can create puzzles that need to be laboriously undone later to make further progress.

If something seems like it’s "jamming" or "grinding," I would halt that prelim/aux exercise and engage the meta protocol to see if that illuminates a better thing to do. The meta protocol itself can jam, in which case one can do lighter and lighter versions of the meta protocol (as described in the meta protocol section), or do the "meta meta protocol" (apply the meta protocol to itself), or browse through the document and choose something else to do, as per intuition (such as other prelim/aux practices or one of the main practices), or take a break and do something different and/or fun. (edited)

Mark 9:12 AM

For intuitions, to my mind, meditation is less like strength training and more like a single [many-typed, many-peg] Tower of Hanoi-type puzzle, if that makes sense. Long-range, global [maximum] wayfinding through a multidimensional, nonmonotonic space. (edited)

And the [open set of] prelim/aux practices reveal new dimensions of movement and new feedback loops, to be fed into the global wayfinding engine [automatically and by application of the meta protocol]. (edited)

And then p2 is the enactment of global wayfinding which includes upgrading itself en route, interleaving handoffs to other practices for indirect upgrades, and finally undoing and self-transcending itself.

Mark 9:33 AM

Not universally, but generally, increases in muscle tension (including subtle, slow-growing) and contortions of face and posture mean it’s important to cut over to or at least interleave the meta protocol. An "uncoiled" posture such as sitting without back support, or standing, can make it easier to detect increases in muscle tension (though reclining and supported postures should be used, too, for decreasing incidental factors).

Shaking, twitching, emoting, vocalizations, and large movements are sometimes necessary and sometimes "self-distraction" (and sometimes a mixture). The meta protocol can be engaged to sort though and piece apart what should be allowed and encouraged and what should gently be disengaged or blocked.