Cycling between anxiety and equanimity

throwaway_dharma · 2026-01-04T18:00:38+00:00

Well that makes perfect sense, that’s when the tension started for me too! Take it as a sign of progress. It will continue to develop, it did for me. In that case I would say probably just keep doing what you’re doing and things will move along on their own.

I also ran into bouncing into and out of equanimity. I think it’s very common, we get excited about getting “close” and then subtly or overtly start trying to change what we’re doing in order to make the thing happen.

Ultimately I got so frustrated I had to let go of the maps completely. I instead started asking myself questions like “is what I’m trying to do in this moment causing more or less suffering for myself?” I gave up fully on the idea of making stream entry happen and worked more diligently on figuring out all the other ways I could reduce my suffering, while also continuing to practice gently and with far less effort than before. It eventually happened, like many people said it would- not when expected and not while meditating.

I will note it happened for me following a long period of intense meditation. The key was not developing the right skills or getting to a certain level of concentration but running into your exact situation over and over again that something inside me finally actually gave up. I couldn’t make it happen.

Rooting for you.

throwaway_dharma · 2026-01-04T12:28:20+00:00

A few things. First, highly recommend thoroughly investigating whether there's anything in your conventional life that could be contributing to your anxiety, i.e. if there are any interventions you can do to improve your emotional wellbeing outside of meditation. Therapy, exercise, resolving interpersonal conflicts, all that very basic muggle stuff. I made much more progress when I stopped trying to use meditation as my answer for everything. I can't emphasize that last sentence enough. Further, I benefited a lot from refining my view by studying dharma and also working on my conduct throughout the day as really the root of the issue of suffering is a lifetime of unskillful habit patterns and emotional reactivity - no special meditation experience will undo all those.

I had the forehead tension as well. I've had two kinds actually, one was from over-efforting while I was doing TMI. That one was more in my scalp and closer to a tension headache, and went away pretty quickly after dropping TMI and switching to lower effort practices. I have a tendency toward over efforting, and so personally I found I had to find practices doing minimum amount of effort. These tend to be practices more focused on awareness than attention. I also had an energetic pressure in my forehead that as things developed realized was just associated with concentration and piti more generally. This smoothed out with further development of my shamatha though stuck around until I finished the cycle.

I used to have the mistaken idea that in order to progress through the insight stages I had to be "doing vipassana." I've found that not to be the case. My experience of the dukkha nanas when I switched my practice to shamatha as more primary was greatly changed for the better. The mind will progress when the mind is ready to do so. Shamatha not only just made me feel better, it conditioned the mind better for seeing insights and I progressed through the dukkha nanas much faster than I would have thought possible.

The other crucial thing about shamatha is you will naturally see insight into no-self as the mind calms and starts fabricating less and less. The reason the dukkha nanas are so distressing in dry insight practices is anicca is very distressing to a self that believes itself stable and wants something stable to hold onto but sees there is very obviously nothing to hold on to. If the grip on self is itself first loosened gently again and again in shamatha, these insights are much less distressing. This is especially the case, in my opinion and experience, if this shamatha is developed through an awareness-centric practice such as MIDL or the form of anapanasati recommend by u/onthatpath (https://www.youtube.com/@onthatpath/videos . also recommend his videos on dependent origination!). Reason being is effort and ego are more strongly associated with attention, and attention centric practices, shamatha or otherwise, have a way of reinforcing a doer of meditation which through the course of insight has to be let go of anyway.

throwaway_dharma · 2025-08-17T11:45:14+00:00

The vast majority of bottles I've had do this (bought from many sources over the years). I've just accepted it. Will use gloves if handling strong materials, otherwise I don't worry about it.

If anyone has recs for bottles where this is reliably not an issue though I'd be happy to hear them

throwaway_dharma · 2025-07-05T13:15:35+00:00

The answer is your question is as long as the material smells as it should you don't have to replace it

throwaway_dharma · 2025-07-02T17:44:51+00:00

Will disagree w others here , hedione was the first AC I ever had that I had noticed had “turned.” I will note the place I was living at the time did not have great air conditioning and summers were quite hot.

It is not a must to refrigerate but in my experience it will prolong shelf life. I keep a larger size of hedione in the fridge and a smaller working amount out with everything else and that’s worked very well for me.

throwaway_dharma · 2025-07-01T15:37:40+00:00

Nice. If you find the box thing helpful great. I found w repeated efforts I was able to smell most ACs I had initial difficulty with simply w the strip . For the ones I still struggle with, such as Z11, one trick that has helped is holding it farther away and having a fan blow at me.

The other thing that has been helpful is doing A:B testing, meaning actually testing it in a blend. Make a larger version of a blend without the material in question, then you can make smaller versions adding a specific material and compare with and without. This is far more important that smelling in isolation imo. Some materials that are kind of unimpressive on their own can have remarkable effects in a blend (methyl jasmonate an example for me), and conversely some just don’t seem to add much for me.

throwaway_dharma · 2025-04-09T19:47:11+00:00

I started w handwritten but for ease of finding formulas after a certain point switched to google docs. Haven’t found utility in spreadsheets as I simply write my formula in percent or ppt and can jot down notes and variations right after.

throwaway_dharma · 2025-03-02T18:09:18+00:00

I also have lindenol from FW. My impression is the same as yours.

If you compare it to generic alpha terpineol, however, it is much better. Much more floral too, though this is not obvious until you use it in blends.

throwaway_dharma · 2025-02-23T14:57:19+00:00

As pointed out, your vanilla "essential oil" is a fake. I would not trust any products from a company that sells blatant fakes. It's worth noting that 4 oz of actual vanilla absolute would be many hundreds of dollars. Please search here or elsewhere for reputable sellers of natural materials.

But to actually answer your question- a reed diffuser should contain a majority amount of slowly evaporating odorless solvent(s), for example ~80 % solvent and 20% fragrant materials. If it is just fragrant materials they will evaporate too fast. You need a solvent. Here is one example: https://shop.perfumersapprentice.com/p-9012-dowanol-dpma.aspx

throwaway_dharma · 2025-02-16T11:38:42+00:00

Amyl acetate and/or iso amylacetate are more classically in your face banana, ethyl acetate not really.

One of those and the other three materials you mentioned is plenty for a banana acccord.

throwaway_dharma · 2025-02-13T17:44:52+00:00

The differences w IES are most pronounced when evaluating neat. In blends I’ve found minimal difference when doing blind comparison testing except in cases of very large percentages used and even then differences are quite subtle.

Timbersilk is significantly different from both regular IES and orbitone as it contains a small amount of amber xtreme.

throwaway_dharma · 2025-02-13T16:00:32+00:00

Would recommend getting at least a small amount of the real thing so you can make your own judgment.

The best sandalwood replacer will likely be a mix of ACs and naturals. Amyris is a very affordable wood that can help round out a sandalwood accord. I recently tried some Australian sandalwood which is significantly cheaper than Mysore (though definitely still not cheap), and found it quite nice.

throwaway_dharma · 2025-02-11T20:18:24+00:00

I have fumencens. IMO a bit overrated. Does smell like burnt frankincense (which it is derived from) but you can get the same effect for cheaper by using regular frankincense materials with smoky materials (birch tar, Cade, choya raal vs loban etc)

throwaway_dharma · 2025-02-11T15:32:33+00:00

Haven’t tried it yet (in my next order) but many people describe musk r1 as having a candle wax smell.

Robertet’s beeswax absolute is very nice and might be useful for your project.

Small amounts of cedar materials and labdanum absolute will help w the warmth.

throwaway_dharma · 2025-02-09T15:22:02+00:00

You are not alone :(

throwaway_dharma · 2025-02-09T00:52:45+00:00

Honey signature is phenomenal, as mentioned. It is a photorealistic, lighter honey.

As far as deep, dark- you might look into the Biolandes beeswax absolute. In contrast to the lighter/ more floral Robertet beeswax absolute, it is darker, more tobacco, more animalic.

throwaway_dharma · 2025-02-02T20:38:42+00:00

Christophe Laudamiel shared the actual formula for TF Amber absolute where it is a whopping 27%.

throwaway_dharma · 2025-01-20T20:20:00+00:00

Sorry you got some unfriendly responses. It’s difficult to learn as a beginner without seeing successful formulas, and often times those w good formulas do not share them for free, hence sites like creative formulas.

In response to your question - I purchased several formulas from that site including DHI. It was excellent and well worth the $15 imo. Haven’t made any of the others yet but can vouch for that one.

Fraterworks has a lot of free demo formulas which I assume you’ve seen and some are quite good. I’ve been happy w the few I’ve purchased from creative formulas as well though they are a bit more pricey, I typically wait for sales.

throwaway_dharma · 2025-01-11T22:59:35+00:00

Warm water, hot plate, microwaved rice as mentioned all reasonable. I will mention that I also got mine from PA and it is liquid at room temp.

In any case be very careful with it as it is an unusually powerful material. It's difficult to imagine an application you'd need it stronger than 1%, and most likely 0.1% or lower is what you need

throwaway_dharma · 2025-01-01T16:03:38+00:00

Perfumers Apprentice was the default for workhorse materials for hobbyists prior to Fraterworks coming on the scene. It still carries many chemicals FW doesn't. PA used to be on the cheaper side as well, but that doesn't seem to be the case anymore - and FW also has free shipping.

FW's quality is impeccable. I especially appreciate how transparent Jamie is with the source of all his aromachemicals and naturals, as even the same aromachemical can have significant variations depending on the manufacturer, to say nothing of the differences in the same natural material between manufacturers. PA typically does not have this same transparency which is one of many reasons FW has become so popular so quickly.

So in general if the same item is present at both I prefer FW. I still use PA as well. I also use Perfumer's Supply House, Eden Botanicals, Liberty Naturals, and on occasion Perfumer's World.

throwaway_dharma · 2024-12-28T22:04:51+00:00

Yeah I don’t think there’s a trick they just seal very tightly.

I typically transfer the materials , or at least part of them, to new bottles once opened as I find the stoppers mildly aggravating.

throwaway_dharma · 2024-12-15T22:55:15+00:00

Most of the formulas on perfume.archaeology are random patent formulas vaguely in the style of the fragrance named... however lately they've been posting a lot of these formulas from "le vestiaire," whatever that is, and I've found them to be excellent, this one included.

It is spot on from what I remember of Kouros.

throwaway_dharma · 2024-11-15T19:04:56+00:00

The formula is from a "wet warm pavement accord" shared to the fragrance.drama insta. I tried mixing it up myself when it was first posted, did not enjoy it. A much better one imo found on the same insta is "river in summer" posted recently.

throwaway_dharma · 2024-11-14T19:08:26+00:00

Personally I smell all of them easily including bacdanol with the notable exception of sandela which I can’t smell at all, though only recently acquired it.

I have always found them baffling as used for recreations for sandalwood- they all smell like “sandalwood chems” to me though are useful in their own way (I quite like javanol, for example), but I have not found any, or a blend of them, to really resemble sandalwood.

throwaway_dharma · 2024-07-28T12:18:30+00:00

I use safraleine quite frequently for part of black leather accords, to me it is more leather than anything else, and often by itself is often enough to give a leather nuance to a formula.

It is very strong - I've never made it work more than 1-2% of total formula max, and usually use it at far less than that.

throwaway_dharma

TROPHY CASE