introduction:

Unlike the preliminary/auxiliary practices, which are ad hoc and open-ended, the main practices are designed to be a seamless unity, a seamless, closed set. As with the meta protocol, the verbal rendering of the "main practices," in this document, could be considered one possible schematization out of many. That is, there are multiple ways that the main practices could be validly rendered into words, using maybe completely different (or overlapping) words, for each rendering. As always, it’s important to keep in mind that this entire document is a telephone game, pointing at bodymind practices, progressions, and ways of being that are "beneath" words. That being said, one hopes that this rendering (eventually), and other renderings, are in some sense "relatively losslessly complete." That is, this rendering and other renderings will hopefully retain (point to) the same amount of "essential complexity," without loss of important and unifying detail and sense. Ideally, each rendering of the main practices would be, in some sense, a "complete, seamless, closed set."

"Complete" (successfully rendered so, or not), conceptually or otherwise, note, though, that different people will use different main practices in greatly different proportions, time-wise, e.g. many people may spend much more time with p2 than the others. And, something like the meta protocol, or the "real thing behind it," your intuition, should be the final arbiter of what one could/"should" be doing at any given time, as per usual. No magical button pushing, here, or anywhere. By exploring each of the main practices, and engaging the meta protocol with respect to them, you must come to implicitly, and sometimes explicitly, understand their interrelationship and appropriate usage, for yourself, on your terms, in your own concepts and words. You must find the "real" practice(s), the correct thing(s), behind the words below.

All that being said, some people have taken a preliminary stab at pithy glosses for each of the current main practices, as a way to remember what they are and as a way to bootstrap an understanding of how they might fit together and support each other. At a later time, I will work out how to explicate more of the principles behind their design.

Example glosses by a collaborator (br):

• p1 - conceptual clarity
• p2 - do and will good things if you can
• p3 - become aware of everything without changing it
• p4 - temporarily emptiness/nothingness
• p5 - also become aware of everything without changing it?
• p6 - temporarily make everything better
• p7 - temporarily release everything
• p8 - 243 questions
• p9 - visualize the perfect day
• p10 - [not submitted]

Another collaborator (d) offers these relationships:

I think of p3 as more inviting, each point modifying or coming after the first; and p5 as keeping things that are already there still. p3 to me is more about turning up new things and p5 is about stilling turbulence

For p3, parts or feels can be threatened by knowing they will immediately become subject to p2 immediately upon being grasped

For p5, you can turn up things and create turbulence so that everything is moving so fast it becomes so slippery that you can't do anything about them.

My response to the above collaborators:

p3 is yeah sort of maybe (very) slow, soaking concentration-flavored noting practice, that self-generates new noting labels over time

p1 is more conceptual grain and fluidity than anything else

p5, very loosely, yeah could be considered a "continuous"/"indiscrete" [sic] version of p3, but it teaches a bunch of different things than p3, too, around stability, change, "grasping" (maybe in non traditional sense) and control

p3 is also a different take on "learning how to not change things" (as well as the limits of that) versus p2 which is more change oriented (though right thing right time)

p6 is sort of a "continuous"/"indiscrete" [sic] version of p2

p7 also has a bunch of relations to different "halves" of p2

Another collaborator (h/H) notes:

[p3 is] like an antidote to (what seems to me to be) the strong doingness/acting-upon-ness of p2

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In general, as mentioned in other places, if things feel stuck or "jammy," or things become "forcy"/"force-y", it can be good to change which main practice you’re doing, to switch to a preliminary/auxiliary practice, to engage the meta protocol or meta meta protocol, to change postures, to take a walk, to take a break, to do the most minimal, personal thing in the (meta) spirit of the meta protocol, etc.

Finally, H notes:

>>>
i’ve recommended the prot to several people now, and i notice that each time i do i include some kind of disclaimer/warning about the language of especially the main practices. like "don’t think too hard, don’t spin your wheels trying to understand every caveat & get it all in your head at once." i’m not sure it’s best to do that, but i want to sort of encourage people to sit with it even if it is overwhelming or doesn’t make any sense in the beginning. "just let it wash over your subconscious" <-- problematic phrase maybe & i haven’t actually said that to anyone, but it’s kind of what i’m thinking
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The current renderings of the main practices are below.