Prompted by a recent explanation of what happened to La Gorda in 1985....
Apparently, due to her unremedied ego fixation she had a melt-down, insisting she would "leave" that very moment and take Carlos with her...instead, witness account suggest in the midst of the meltdown she went through something comparable to the Tragedy of Dorian Grey....whatever magic that had kept her "youthful and energetic" drained immediately causing an actual physical deterioration just before she died.
In Power of Silence Carlos details the radical transformation of Don Juan as an irascible old man.....
One might easily dismiss these accounts as a shared hallucination or a subjective bias of the witnesses ..... I would advise against that.
If you have spent any time with the material you have no doubt gone through the ups(inflationary) and downs(deflating) moments inextricable from discovering how much is expected compared to what you believe you can actually do...what you can actually accomplish, how far you can go on this path...
(even though no beginner is actually in any position to determine that)
Case in point-
Right about the time word of workshops started spreading via internet back in 1996-97 ....I took it as a call.
Had read the books...thought it was an incredible story but mostly inaccessible to the rest of us, but had been practicing whatever not-doings i could get my head around up to that point...
When he resurfaced in these workshops I realized a burning desire...
If Chang San-Feng could practice his chi kung on a mountainous precipice amidst a blizzard then why the hell couldn't I....right?
I was on fire. Shortly after that discovery a boss man of mine warned me (my then girlfriend was giving ultimatum- stay in home town or follow to new horizons in Southwest)
He said, "If you don't leave the webs of your home town before a certain age, you never will..."
It was the most important advice i could have received...
my life a quicksand of inertia up to that point
(I was 27 and too reclusive to even apply for my drivers license up to that point)
Needless to say ....it all started then.
Whatever slow pesado characterizing events before would definitely be turned on its head.
Going back to ups and downs....
the (inflationary) sense of power which came from earning $1500 for a workshop as a roofers helper in a southwest state i was unfamiliar with and going on to successfully attend in Phoenix(8/97)... changed how i viewed myself.
Cut to 98-
Attended Pomona 2/98 connecting with others and being quite the socialite after such isolation in the past.
Then came Ontario 7/98 and everyone was so excited.
It was rumored Castaneda himself would appear at this next workshop.
I was fucking ecstatic.
I had just gotten my long lost wings dug up out of the attic enough to attend what i had up to then and already i would be meeting the Master.
But it was not to come to pass.
We all know why.
That was the Deflation.
And i wasn't the only one.
I remember talk of suicide among participants.
I wouldn't ever go that far but it did take the wind out of my sails
And the entire Ontario workshop was laden with the heaviness of our collective realization.
I even stopped practicing shortly thereafter.
Things spiralled for me in the years that followed and i actually hit an all time low due to substance abuse.
Some good came from this.
My first legitimate warriors test after the departure of the Master.
I pulled up. And the practices definitely showed me something.
Which is the actual purpose of this long-winded explanation.
After a stint in a rehab i was back to morning practice with the sunrise...and with it, all that "power" (for lack of a better word)
That built up for a while, but years later another inflationary experience of power left me feeling like a burnt out husk...
Empty and aimless...after feeling SO strong.
I was bewildered by it all.
Was it me.?
Maybe I'm just fucking crazy....?
Mom died shortly thereafter and i was thrust into a very reactionary place.
After she left i got into a rebound relationship...lmfao
Take that shit seriously and avoid it at all costs.
It duped me for twelve years...chasing her like a fool.
And then she castrated me. Not literally, but you know what i mean.
Ahh....another downhill ride....wheeeeee!!
Its been 3 years since that and in the healing process i have had time to take stock of the influence the teachings had on this process.
Because, currently i am still technically an "old man" by all intents and appearances....
But its not True
I've indulged my sadness and self-pity long enough to realize how radically i shifted my perception all those times before...
And here i dare suggest I'm stuck...?
Not yet I'm not.
I've seen myself on fire and I've seen myself a nearly disabled 54 year Old Man....
But i already proved the secret to myself...several times.
What do they say about taking something from a man (alimony) that he built up himself in the first place..?
Its the same with energy my friends.
I prove to myself every time that I can restore the memory anchor of being youthful and "on fire" simply by committing to these practices.
And because of this I see such rich nuance behind these Dorian Gray stories coming from the Nagual.
Amnesia is the mother fucker.
You can really forget who you are.
Don't get trapped in the dream of "being you"
Keep practicing.
32 Comments
Can you add some paragraph breaks to that fifth paragraph down?
Hope that helped
Lurking for awhile
New to posting for the most part
👍
Ok, this post wouldn't have survived if you didn't mention the Workshops.
The post has terrible interpretations of sorcery knowledge mixed with your own life.
Wich is one of the biggest red flags of bad players.
But we might want to keep you around if you are willing to tell us some details, and help others remember what was going on back then.
As far as I know, Dan went to all the workshops, so if you really were there he will know about you. He also has some evil lists to check...
Please read the Wiki to understand why we are so hard with Bad Players.
The FAQ page contains those links:
https://reddit.com/r/castaneda/w/faq
Been here a long time bro
Dan knows me...he knows i deeply respect him.
But I AM questionable material for your forum.
Perhaps not for the reasons you imagine.
Precisely because i doubt my gains and forget my(not)self so often...
He knows I'm struggling with the Path.
And he's careful, as usual, not to deter, but not to indulge either.
I understand the syruppy ego running through that historical account .
But I also have experienced my place of No Pity.
And only the practices could have accomplished that.
Not any amount of fantasy or wishful thinking.
I had to grind it out.
But apparently you didn't catch that part in my explanation.
Any time you are recounting the past you risk that defense of self in some form or another.
But that was not why I shared.
I shared in order to encourage those struggling with life while making sense of this Discipline .
I could have phrased entirely in terms of an inventory warrior...
But instead, i made it a vulnerable confession...
Precisely, to honestly, encourage those others struggling with the expectations of this Path.
And it IS a severe Discipline.
Don't try to sugar coat it now.
Don't know shit about someone else's list.
But i do know
I fought for what i now understand.
And i will continue to pursue this path with or without anyone else's approval .
...terrible "interpretation"...lmfao
..keep him around if....lmfao
But I will and can help others to remember, my friend
As i said, its all about amnesia
The whole fucking Path IS an-amnesia
You are making me regret.
But don't blame me.
Ask anyone from the Practitioner group.
Or wait for Dan's response.
You are a serial mental masturbator.
Look at the J Curve diagram. That's how you need to start judging your experiences.
Otherwise it's all pretending and interpretations.
Don't make me ban you before we get the details...
Serial implies a repeated pattern here
Although there's no denying being overly analytical
Practically my first post besides an earlier one defending Dan
If Dan wants to tell me to fuck off I accept it
He knows I'm serious
But stuck in my head too much
I sometimes think u/Juann2323 is repeating the pattern of Eligio in the books. An individual of exceptional talent, who can’t fathom the difficulty those around him (like Carlos who in the books) have in reaching the second attention.
It’s very advantageous for the group when things repeat like that!
Come on Techno...
Forget that idea.
You'll get disappointed, and I'll get a ton of groupies in my private message box.
But as all the practitioners in the group, we learned to stick to real magic.
We are careful about our interactions here, because some people honestly interested in learning could get affected.
Not like the asshole of this post.
Who claims that being emotionally unstable is an excuse to write whatever interpretation of sorcery he wants.
CONCIOUSLY! Because he admitted being around here for a while!
And I must confess that I still haven't read the post.
Most of the time, I tend to rely on other people doing that now, and then just respond to their reaction with any needed moderator action.
If one of the other moderators hasn't already done so.
I've got way too much sorcery (and sorcery adjacent) activities to do, personally, and also side projects to enhance and preserve the subreddit going.
I learned to delegate.
Note: this only applies to the longer posts, that you actually have to read to figure out what the person is on about. 90% of the stuff that gets removed is low-effort fluff they can be weeded out in a few seconds, by whichever moderator happens to be awake and holding their device at the time.
Of course, and you are right by delegating.
Now we have a strong team of moderation and you can focus in the aspects you want.
Like managing the documents, putting in order the Wiki, reading interviews and texts.
That's such a valuable contribution, and we will let you know when your intervention is needed.
I speed read it, until I saw that huge blob of a paragraph.
Then I took a 2-hour (5 Mile) "right way of walking..." to see what resolved itself later on.
In all sincerity, what progress are you reporting? What is supposed to be encouraging about your post? I seem to be missing the gems of wisdom, would you elucidate?
Dorian Grey?
Cycles of disillusionment.
Have you experienced being an Old Man.
I did.
Then i went back to being On Fire.
With Power of Silence I finally got the de-emphasis upon self-importance only after first rejecting the premise for years...and this was even before the workshops.
After testing, like a prodigal son (excuse the blasphemous correlation) i came back home...
I gave up
And came back
And all because i forgot the original gains of practice.
That was really all i was trying to say.
I remember now.
And that remembering IS the difference between being an Old Man OR being Focused and on fire...
It really is what you focus on and i took too long working that out.
But i am a mental masturbator
So my emotions fucked up what i was trying to get across.
Don't give up.
Maybe you're already past that.
Great.
I was talking to someone else.
Can you talk to me too? I'm curious to know how you are on fire at the moment? Where are you with your practice? I'm about the same age as you are, and have been through some similar issues, so what's changed now that you have returned to practicing?
Annealment
A metallurgical term
Which, in a psychological perspective means
controlling what you congeal back into after being made diffuse...
Soft body to Hard
What are you becoming...?
That's what this taught me...and that I am in control of that if I could just Remember.
I know why you asked me that.
Because its obvious I've been neglecting Recapitulation
I'm practically radioactive
And you can tell just reading my vibes here.
Dan would call me on it too.
But the Tensegrity
the Passes, sometimes they are the only thing that brings it back.
I'm too emotional. Always have been.
Really could use some help with that but I'm on my own.
So for now, just getting the passes in is healing my "identity crisis"
LOL
Like I said, were all at different stages. Techno said it well.
We are not all Eligio.
Passes are good. If you do end up getting banned, well there's always the discord! :D
LOL
Yeah
I even shared that image with Dan recently-
a guy hanging himself with his own tongue
Ha ha
Note To Self:
(lol)
Shut the fuck up until you have something obviously practical to share.
Don't make it to nuanced...then they're asking you to take it to the Psychology 101 department
Got It
Sorry
More mental masturbation
But this Will help you decide if I'm full of shit...lmfao
fasting...deprivation...deflation....
interruption of continuity....
They are all Annealment
that metallurgical process
by which the soft inner body is made to be "heated/aggravated"
The importance being how you control what it is to be te-congealed into...
to congeal as the hard identity Body.
Each of these "shrink the Tonal"
and thereby remove your "craving animal self"
just enough to see another "You"...
That's the cyclic disillusionment.
It repeatedly "shrinks" you.
It makes you nebulous.
But you have to decide
what you congeal back into or it could be worse.
What we are talking about here IS the assemblage point.
There
Now if I'm banned
At least I gave it my all
I already decided you're full of shit, but so what. It's not that big a deal to be full of shit. What I really want to know is why you refer to Carlos as the Master. You might be aware that he hated that guru stuff, or maybe you're not?
I called him that out of love asshole
You could call him the Nagual. Might go over better.
I actually did refer to him as the Nagual
I haven't been trying to prove you wrong about anything.
May I be of service to you, my worthy opponent..?
Do you think that fasting removes your "craving animal self"? Every single animal on the planet except man fasts, not by choice. It sounds like some buddhist stuff that you are saying.
"It is," he assured me. "This is another of the sorcerers' contradictions: it's very difficult and yet it's the simplest thing in the world. I've told you already that a high fever could move the assemblage point. Hunger or fear or love or hate could do it; mysticism too, and also unbending intent, which is the preferred method of sorcerers."
What method are you using to move your assemblage point?
Being emotionally unstable is not an excuse for pretending magic.
In that case you should better not post.
Stick to the path or go elsewhere.
You were not alone in the throes of despair after CC's passing! I must say it was gut wrenching to read the negative content about Carlos in the stained reaction forum. The multitude of bad players who emerged afterwards attacking Carlos' reputation.
Others under different circumstances fared worse off compared to the experiences you described in your post.
I personally knew someone who never got over the despair; who let themselves go, and ended up dying broken hearted over the loss.
The take away is that everyone experiences drama in one way or another in the course of their lives.
This path demands sobriety, too! Your mood swings can only dissipate through the cultivation of sobriety.
You need to stop pretending and get to work.
You're harmful to others.
Hopefully you go away and find another chat group on this topic, where no one is actually learning anything.
So that you can't harm beginners with your pretending and imagining.
Try discord. Some of our own help in there, and they don't police it much. On purpose. They felt this place was a bit harsh, so they made that one.
The problem here is, we get such a VERY LOW rate of visitors who decide to actually do some work.
And your post will lower that rate for all who read it.
Just slightly.
But if there were 10 like you in here, we'd have to reconsider if this place could actually be helpful anymore.
We almost lost all this magic, so we're pretty much in involved in a war here.
Against pretending.
The original text of this mod-deleted post:
https://archive.ph/Wk742
https://web.archive.org/web/20240217081808/https://old.reddit.com/r/castaneda/comments/1asnqoi/trapped_dreaming_you/