The recent “Kill The Noise” post has, naturally, prompted people’s existing or residual ties to divergent (from this path's) intents to float to the surface, because of the way it’s worded by that user.
Nobody comes to this specific endeavor without baggage.
But there is an important point that should be made more visible, and that is that since the Mastery of Intent is the core of sorcery, one must utilize Intent in one’s silence efforts as the first step towards that mastery.
And the most dependable way to do that is by following the methods laid out in the writings of Castaneda, Florinda Donner, and Taisha Abelar. Whether it's their books, or workshop notes and interviews etc. that people who, in good standing, have put into the public domain.
If you don’t do so, you’re off-axis from the Intent of the Sorcerer's of Ancient Mexico, what ACTUALLY makes all this even possible for us outcasts, right from the start. Since Carlos, and those who are "officially bona fide" (haven't broken their link to that intent), are the only one's who can pass that Intent on, by association.
And an additional point is that Intent does not involve >!thinking !<about acting, or on philosophical concepts like the self or nothingness.
INTENT isn't a mind-reader!, has been a residual takeaway from the books and what we've learned in here. But don't ask me to explain that cosmic paradox!
Intent?
What IS clear, is that it is greatly tied to our current and past actions, no matter how slight.
-------------------------
TLDR, from the Fire From Within:
"I told him (don Juan) I was very conscious of the fact that in general I had stopped talking to myself, but did not know how I had done it. If asked to explain the procedure I would not know what to say.
"The explanation is simplicity itself," he said. "You willed it, and thus you set a new intent, a new command. Then your command became the Eagle's command.
"This is one of the most extraordinary things that the new seers found out: Our command can become the Eagle's command. The internal dialogue stops in the same way it begins; by an act of will. After all, we are forced to start talking to ourselves by those who teach us. As they teach us, they engage their will and we engage ours- both without knowing it. As we learn to talk to ourselves, we learn to handle will. We will ourselves to talk to ourselves. The way to stop talking to ourselves is to use exactly the same method; we must will it; we must intend it."
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Should have titled this post "The Method(s) One Uses...," as working on silence is a multi-disciplinary endeavor.
4th or 5th time we've quoted this passage in 2 days! Hopefully people start paying attention!
🫡
TLDR, other than the passage at the end, could be:
If your methods are scattered and incoherent, then any results will also be scattered and incoherent.
you said you had great success in darkroom and were able to expand your closet space on the farm into a bathroom-- what direction was that success? is your bathroom east of your closet? se? nw?
a simple map of your farm would help others here. also, if there is a direction you face during practice that works-- please tell. this is a team effort as well.
Don't think I ever said I'd had "great" success in DR...but I have definitely had some success.
I was sort of taken aback by your question bc I had recently been interested in determining my direction as a witch but when I asked about how, I was told not to worry about it bc it's not necessary for us. Also that you essentially need someone else who can see you, to tell you your direction.
Aside from direction in that sense I hadn't really thought about it in practical terms. As I ruminated onyour comment I recalled DJ and Carlos did often mention which direction they were facing when performing various shifts of their AP.
So your question created a curiosity and I drew the maps...as best I could lol.
I'm no cartographer.
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The writing on my house map is sort of upside down from the actual orientation, so I marked where the front door is and where the creek is on both.
Turns out I face mostly southeast!
I was thinking of doing some experiments with facing different directions and see if I can produce varying results.
this is amazing. my practice space definitely relates to this but I'm not sure how so I'm going to try drawing it out.
you are definitely seen.
remember, dan typically faces south with Cholita on his right (west)
I am practicing and just experimenting with different directions as well.
Just to clarify, I started in my closet...the tiny pink circle. We recently removed a garden tub from my bathroom so there's a lot more room there now. I also made little covers for any small lights on outlets or light switches in my bathroom so it's pitch black in there now.
My living room is a big space but I have a lot of little lights in there I can't get covered all the way. The loving room and kitchen are essentially one big room and I have plant tables in both so I don't have curtains...I just can't get it dark enough in there.
I made a post a while ago in here and our women sub. I went back and looked at those last night and was reminded we had talked before!
The bird I described seeing in those posts is still the coolest thing I've seen so far. But what's really cool about it is that I see it every time now!
Last night I practiced facing northeast. I saw the bird but it was much smaller and not nearly as bright.
At one point I did see...sort of like distant blinking stars above me.
Of course lots of non directional puffs.
But also a lot of indescribable fluctuating variations in the texture of the darkness.
Typically I just go through all the magical passes I know, doing each one a couple times. Starting with lifesaver, the the 12 basic for gathering energy, the first 5 of volume 2 (I'm still learning the rest of those), then the passes for the womb that I've learned from the book, zeluicas pass, and fairys pass.
Last night I focused on the ball of energy, adding it in between each of the other movements.
Once I start being able to see better and hopefully gain a really visible ally, I'm sure I'll trim the movements down.
For now I'm just learning as many as I can and doing them all for 2 reasons.
1, if I only do a couple of them they become repetitive and tedious. Doing so many of them keeps me going, and helps me force silence.
2, it's an experiment to see which moves produce the coolest results.
We have many examples from Dan about how certain movements do certain things (once you can see). I'm hoping doing as many as possible will help me move my AP more quickly so I can see what they do myself.
Because I believe all of this is true. And bc I wasted so much time and polluted myself with so much counter intent before I found the truth. (I guess that's 3 reasons)
I get my sunlight glitter every day the sun shines.
Yesterday I did daylight gazing for the first time.
I had read somewhere (I think Taisha) saying sky gazing was advanced so I hadn't tried it.
But curiosity got the better of me after reading some posts on it.
I saw the floaters almost instantly.
Then I saw something else.
These tiny dots of light that were zooming around, there were so many of them against the blue sky and they seemed to be moving in circular patters. Each one independent of the others.
I wasn't doing anything other that getting glitter through my lashes, then shifting my gaze horizontally to the right so the sun wasn't in my direct field of vision.
Very cool.
Where are the 12 passes for gathering energy?
That is very cool about the bird. Even more amazing that you are able to achieve some consistency with the vision.
https://youtu.be/IyQNFwwYwqI
It's the tensegrity volume 1 video.
Last night, I found a place in the wiki that gave some updated instructions on the breaths for some of these, and when I applied it in practice, it made sense. (I'll copy that in a reply to this).
I faced Northwest during practice last night. I also did gazing every chance I got yesterday throughout the day (nothing major just a few minutes wherever I could focus my attention on the surface in front of me).
I had interesting results, I could see a vague purple distortion at any time just stopped and really looked for something unusual on the wall or floor both inside and outside of the house.
In the DR I started seeing lights in my periphery almost immediately after turning off the lights.
I also noticed what seemed like I was seeing details of the room, like where my bathroom rug ended and my floor began, as if it wasn't completely dark. But when I touched the floor to see if I could feel what I was seeing I discovered that it was actually pure darkness and I couldn't see my hand touching the floor, and the rug actually extended out much farther than what it had seemed. Several of those instances where I thought there was light seeping in and I could see boundaries of different parts of the bathroom (countertops, doors, etc) but reaching out to check proved I wasn't even close to those boundaries and would re-solidify the dark.
After completing the ball of energy pass (with updated instructions), when I looked up, I got a fright bc it looked as if a dark semi-human figure rose up from the ground in front of me.
This definitely would've caused me to flip on lights before, but I was recently encouraged about how to deal with fear like this.
First, remember my double is there with me (even if I can't see her yet), so I'm not alone. Second, fear is the result of a shift of the AP, and I should basically embrace the fear without succumbing to it.
So that's what I did, I felt that fear and looked straight on at this figure with Kylie fierceness and moved on to the next MP.
Quickly, both my fear and the figure dissipated.
This was both comforting and frustrating. I wanted to maintain the fear in hopes of a deeper shift, and I hoped the figure would continue to materialize. No dice.
There were several instances like this.
https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/comments/jfm021/gift_to_maui/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
In the wiki it's titled "gift to maui" but it's mainly just instructions for tweaking moves from the first and 2nd videos.
The part to do with the first video is at the end and the paragraph begins by saying "in this workshop we were taught that movements from the first video should be practiced daily".
thanks. I am practicing.
at one point in the video, Kylie says that when she breathes in, she projects a beam out... does this happen for you?
I am lost when it comes to breathing. if anyone has a good description of sphinx breath, please share.
https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/wiki/tensegrity/mapping/right_to_left_lung/ - second one down. It is brief, but all that can be dug up. 😕
And it's referenced in this article:
https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/comments/qvqvwl/yoga_journal_december_1995/
ok sure. this looks like it has to be performed with the double, so maybe a little advanced for me right now.
what is the easiest breathing technique that is useful?
The Right Way to Breathe - https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/comments/onfa7t/the_right_way_to_breathe/
ok. I'm willing to just try but I heard Kylie say that when she inhaled, energy shot out of her...?
so how do you project an energy ball away from you and how do you make it stay hooked in one place?
if I hold my breath forever, will time stop?
results have been mixed thus far.
I don't have any experience with what you're referencing about Kylies breath.
But, in my experience the "shield breath" as taught to Taisha by Clara in Sorcerers Crossing, is the most effective (and relatively simple) breath work to try.
Bc the closet I started out practice in was so small and full of clothes, I would pretty much only do this breath during DR and it was this that allowed me to see my bird for the first time🖤
For others, The Shield Breath is the third pass down on this page (filed in the Stalking Series):
https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/wiki/tensegrity/stalking_tensegrity/sorcercers_crossing_passes
how do males perform the shield breath?
Replace every vagina reference in the description with testicles, I would assume.
Haven’t gotten around to that particular pass myself, yet. Too many!
But I wouldn’t go as far as to say we could also redefine womb dreaming as testicle dreaming for men! 😆
would you grant women the privilege of erection, ejaculation, grand scale dominance and significant worldly power including (but not limited to) real historical significance and book deal powers?
no?
last time I checked, the answer was no, so until all that happens in my dream able reality-- womb dreaming is OFF limits for you, techno.
Wow...what a response. It seems like Techno was already admitting that womb dreaming is and should be only for women.
Given the very little I know of him, I will say that if he had the power to grant things such as election, ejaculated, etc, to a woman who was requesting it, my guess is that he absolutely would!
However, I can't imagine why any woman (who fully embraces her femininity (sp?) and exists in the fullness of the absolute universe that she is) would covet such things...IMHO and more simply put, EEEEWWWWWWWW.
The shield breath is performed beginning at the "pelvic floor" (regardless of gender/sex/whatever). It is used to protect ourselves against any entity outside of ourselves from influencing us (my understanding). In light of our battle against the fliers perpetuating the book deal mind and constantly seeking to destroy any energy we build that would allow us to enhance our awareness, I think it's a very pertinent tool indeed.
Of course given my experience I'm bound to be a little biased.
Perhaps one of the biggest problems of modern times is this inconceivable consumer mentality. It's impossible that throughout the ages people always have been as stupid as they are today. The resulting dependencies of any nature may be the biggest ballast one can carry around. And because it can't be seen, no one notices.
Hell. No one would buy a computer system these days that didn't have a firewall. The company would immediately lose any good reputation. In this sub, it works the other way around. The better we are at sorting out the crud, the more we get scolded. Is that believable?
And the consequences of consumerism, across the board, are intentionally veiled. To our further detriment.
One more telling bit on Intent is when Castaneda mentioned that the dinosaurs Intended to fly (but not to necessarily develop into birds).
And they certainly didn't do it by thinking about wanting to fly!
Their forceful-enough signaling got picked up by INTENT, which then utilized the manifold tools of evolution to make that come to pass over time, in a form that held to the physics of this world.
We live in a participatory universe, after-all, which is paradoxically both personal and impersonal at the same time...something confusing to both religious and atheistic persons alike!
Which is one of the prime reasons why sorcery is better.
That has to have been the worst crowd we've seen in months. That post.
Very tedious.
But anyone who stands up to make believe magic and feels bad afterwards, should know that's precisely why petty tyrants are mandatory for sorcerers.
And battling them comes with HUGE rewards, if you just make yourself available to the spirit.
Let me try to explain those points quickly. It's too advanced for beginners, but at least they might follow along.
There's no fixed reality for humans. The position of our assemblage point is basically random.
But over time everyone got stuck in the same position, which we call the river of shit.
There's endless con artists up there, claiming to be wise or enlightened or inspirational.
But it's all just shit.
When you practice darkroom you free your assemblage point from this reality, and it moves down.
But it's a long path. Perhaps 6 feet. And it's hard to move even a little bit.
Over time, you "clear out" a path down the middle.
Any moodiness or pain pushes you to the side, and the part you "cleared out" in the middle isn't available. So it's very slow to move the assemblage point, when in pain.
Imagine a 1 foot wide sidewalk, covered in thumbtacks.
We clear out a few inches in the middle, so we can tip-toe along.
And if there's no conflicts, we can slip through that path fairly easily each night. To get the reward of super cool magic.
A petty tyrant, which includes invaders to this subreddit trying to promote their own delusions, stirs up those tacks in the path.
So that we have to clear them out again as we move down.
Just a few get stirred into the middle, but they do in fact somewhat block the path that night.
When you clear out those few the path down the center, overall, becomes a tiny bit wider.
And to reward you for progress made, the spirit gives you super cool magic demonstrations each time you brush another little patch of tacks off the center. I suppose they're "magic tacks" in some way. Brushing them aside produces visible magic.
Probably so that you don't get discouraged for your "extra" efforts to try to guide others?
Teachers in a lineage partly do what they did because you get mega support from intent, when helping others learn.
Don Juan called that a period of unparalleled power and clarity. When you end up teaching the next generation.
But really, it's help from the spirit.
Last night I got up to practice, surrounded by magic from the start.
I didn't even have to work for it.
My Ally Fancy even came to wake me up and show me what was happening in the room already. I was in a shallow pool of pink, blue, purple, and mild black, swirling gently every where.
It's likely from dealing with that awful post.
Doesn't matter if you did a good job. Only that you tried to.
After a while I was doing my tensegrity routine on a "flat surface", somewhat like a sheet. Fancy was telling me to watch the smooth surface, rather than the intense magical sights.
"You'll use up less dreaming energy if you keep focused on that abstract surface. And the sights will only get stronger, trying to 'lure' you to stare at them like you used to do."
I wrote about it in the advanced subreddit but have forgotten most by now. You can't easily retain memories associated with the end of the J curve. The purple region.
But I asked Fancy how to make a cartoon from it, because I didn't want to forget any of it.
And she projected a finished cartoon on my south wall.
I was watching a 180" monitor on my south wall, showing Westerly Witch shopping in Los Angeles.
She acted out the things I'd learned.
Carlos used to copy his newest book out of the air. He'd copy whole pages.
Art of Dreaming was written that way.
It seems, you can do that with cartoons too. Just watch them in Silent Knowledge, and duplicate it.
That might be how we got most of what Carlos gave us. He just pulled it down from the air, and pretended he'd made it.
i like the tack analogy you used. i was thinking about this last night.
i had my first day of work with a guy yesterday, i didnt plan it, it was one of those things that just happen. without any effort on my part
but the guy was the most self important man ive ever met in my life, i feel like being with him yesterday dregded up a bunch of shit that got in the way of me seeing puffs so i had to recap it for 2 hours
but then afterwards it gave my intent a much needed boost
So he's valuable if you can keep him around.
It's also helpful to post experiences that are inspiring to others in this subreddit.
As best I can figure, infinity is helping us out.
It wouldn't be so surprising.
Don Juan may be behind all of this!
If not, Carlos is surely capable of stirring intent, to give us a chance to succeed.
So if you post and inspire others, "the spirit" puts you on a list of those it can "gift", which will also result in gifting others.
Sometimes I get a "weird" intent gift, and wonder what that was all about.
Then the next day someone asks me, "I have this weird problem..."
And I already know the answer, because I got to see it myself the night before.
Don Juan explained the life cycle of the "Men of Knowledge".
It's a series of stages, the second to last of which is "a period of unparalleled power and clarity".
Or something like that.
Followed by old age defeating the Man of Knowledge.
That period of power, is almost surely because they're teaching apprentices.
So when they try to "intend" something on behalf of an apprentice, there's enough reason that ought to work, to get the support of infinity.
If it's just for your own sake, it's more difficult to "qualify".
all i want is a chance, just to know its possible. But at this point even if its not, i can think of no other purpose besides silencing my mind, im sure if i gave up now though it wouldnt take long for normality to sweep me away
ive been getting settled the past few weeks in my new living space, tomorrow i finish painting and the day after im setting up my official darkroom
hopefully ill have some stuff to report soon
If you google around, you'll find "western" Buddhist masters who readily admit, if you can just shut off your internal dialogue you are indeed "enlightened".
They'll just claim it's too difficult so it's not used as a real technique.
I won't comment on their lack of knowledge to make such a statement.
But if it worries you that you'll waste your time learning, don't.
You'll be an "enlightened master".
Officially!
Just don't go looking for a little throne, or start making "Ask the Master anything you like" youtube videos.
Besides, no one from any "magic" system ever recognizes anyone from outside it, even if it's the same overall group.
So "real" Zen masters from Japan, often despise the Dali Lama.
Of course, they also say horrible things like, "Don't expect to fly to the sun!" trying to motivate their Zen monks.
What???????
Translation: "All that Buddha magic is obviously not real, so don't get bent out of shape looking to have 4 hookers in blue dresses show up during meditation, and offer to give you free blow jobs for life."
I believe, that's one of the most "sacred texts" in all of Buddhism. The "Fire Kasina" text(s).
It shows how wise the Buddha was because he turned them down.
And establishes franchising rights at the same time!