On the matter of Sovereignty
I too once singed “I am the captain of my own ship” and I thought that I was… I had “just a few addictions”… lol. Okay, let’s not get too hard on myself. I was part of the general norm after all.
People claim to be sovereign beings while having no idea what that means.
Keeping my attention on my nose for 3 days straight has given me a type of self-control I haven’t experienced in my life before…
Now it seems hilarious that the only thing we can truly have control over is ourselves (attention, mind, body) and most people can’t do it. I’ll do it from now on and I hope you, the reader, will consider joining me too.
It seems impossible to explain how significant my experience has been, but I assure you, what most people call “I” are just a collection of unconscious habit patterns.
That one chariot analogy is now crystal clear.
Yea, i used to “understand” it too, but NO, that was just a shallow theoretical knowing. Now, I know it.
Bhagavad Gita verses about sense gratification and mind restraint are now crystal clear too.
Allow me to be honest, verses such as the following one used to annoy me a little…
A person who has given up all desires for sense gratification, who lives free from desires, who has given up all sense of proprietorship and is devoid of false ego – he alone can attain real peace.
I didn’t like the idea of giving up pleasures of life… It just didn’t make sense… UNTIL IT DID!
I really can’t explain how. you just have to witness it for yourself.
Going inward
I heard that term many times. I just didn’t think it would be this literal. lol.
VoT cleared away my focus and energy sensitivity 
- but I reestablished it.
Well, after the 5th day, I thought I could destroy/dissolve more garbage I’ve been carrying around, so I meditated to VoT.
And it felt great, and It probably cleared away some garbage too, but it also messed up my accumulated/compounded experience of 5 days of meditation.
I did it right before bed and the next day, today, I had difficulty focusing and sensing my body/energy… It bothered me for the first half of the day although I kept my cool and accepted it, which is one of the primary instructions of vipassana too.
I kept meditating ~4h with the capability I had, and then decided to use the Energy Sensitivity field from the course. It solved the body/energy awareness problem right away! So I continued to do a deeper body scan.
They actually warn against mixing other techniques into vipassana, so that’s totally my bad. The moral of the story: listen to the teacher and surrender to the method.