Hello everyone, I apologize in advance if the text is not clear, as English is not my native language and I had to use a translator.
About two months ago, during an outing with two dear friends who practice darkroom, I discovered this channel. At their suggestion, I started reading Castaneda's books, which fascinated me to the point of becoming almost obsessed with them and having read almost all of them in a short time.
I started practicing sessions of contemplative silence and later darkroom sessions lasting 45 minutes a day.
From these sessions, I have benefited in terms of serenity and mood. I have also started having lucid dreams (3/4 times a week) during which I was able to find my hands and had an OBE experience.
These results should encourage me to continue on this path but however, I noticed that all this was negatively affecting other aspects of my life, especially my work ambitions. I felt like the drive that motivated me to strive for my work goals was starting to fade.
I believe this is because in my head I do not find compatibility between the two things, as if during the silence sessions I try to deconstruct a world that I then struggle to reconstruct during the rest of the day when I try to achieve my professional goals.
Even though I did not do it consciously, I realized that this has pushed me away from this path, almost leading me to give up on the darkroom. Has anyone else experienced the same problem? Do you think there is a way to reconcile the two things or do you think one must necessarily choose one of the paths?
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Assuming that it's the translator you're using, you should educate yourself on a baggage that comes with the terms: contemplative, lucid, and OBE.
Use the terminology section of our Wiki, and the Dreaming section to make it clear all the differences between lucid dreaming and 4 Gates dreaming
Anything contemplative is almost certain to stem directly from the internal dialogue.
And that's death to sorcery.
Also, OBE is in the same wheelhouse as astral projection. And thus is victim to the same intellectual fallacies.
(Links pending)
I don't even know if it depends on the translator, but by contemplative silence I mean what is read in the book, that is the silence made by observing an object. I seem to remember that in a passage of the book it is done through the observation of leaves. However, in summary, I didn't mean the contemplation of an object, but the observation of a fixed point while silence is kept instead of the silence made in the darkroom. As for the rest, I will definitely delve into the terminology indicated in the wiki.
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So gazing, then 👍
Because your account is too new, everything that you post or comment is going to get automatically removed by the auto-moderator.
Study more, to gain more "Sobriety".
It's key to moving the assemblage point.
And would stop you from worrying about compatibility with your job.
Also, you need "Discipline".
Carlos and group even proposes that "discipline" was all you needed on the path of sorcery.
I used to argue against that, because of the obvious total failure of our entire community for the first 54 years after the books of Carlos came out.
Not a single person learned, and Carlos himself even told me so in person.
And he said something similar to others.
But what went wrong?
It was in fact, lack of "discipline".
So it's easy to pretend to have discipline, pretend that you got rid of your internal dialogue (All Buddhist "Masters" pretend that), pretend you are behaving as a "warrior", and pretend you are 'impeccable.
But without dazzling magic filling the air around you daily, none of those are true.
It's just your self-soothing by filling your internal dialogue with thoughts that you are making progress.
Even if you are not.
But "Discipline" is something you get to visible "see" in Silent Knowledge.
I was shocked the first time.
I realized, it's actually a "thing". A secret power we have.
It's visible in "Kylie fierceness" when watching her Tensegrity videos.
And absent in the ones made recently by Cleargreen.
It's very visible, in the mashing energy pass where you thrust the hands down as knife edges besides your leg, while you raise the knee up high, and then stomp down while you pull the hands back up.
It's visible there.
And you'll get a hint why "Discipline" is supposed to drive the spirits which consume our energy, away.
The claim being they don't like the taste.
But when you see it first hand, as a "thing", Discipline seems to be more what makes the energy rise up, than what allows it not to be eaten, and thus is rising up which is what drives the "fliers" away.
Not the actual discipline.
But who knows.
The point is, you haven't seen anything yet, and until you see more distant magical sights, your normal "blue line reality" will try to suck you back with doubts and worries.
And imaginary problems.
Okay, then I will try to work on this aspect even though at the moment it seems like a big obstacle, as if I were trying to go in two opposite directions at the same time. I will try to be more disciplined and consistent in practice. Thank you for the reply.
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I work the equivalent of a full time job and a half, with extremely difficult computer engineering (few can do it), and also marketing and communication overseas.
While doing animations on the side for this subreddit.
However, if Cholita started being friendlier to me I might end up with a shortage of time for all of that, and have to give something up.
I just didn't want anyone thinking I'm retired, or have plenty of time on my hands.
I don't.
But it comes down to, suffer endlessly for the rest of your life until you realize it was all meaningless and you were deceived, or work to gain magical abilities over the decades, so that you rival Dr. Strange himself. And only look forward to the passage of time, which increases your magical power.
You'll no longer fear time the way people who have no magic do.
It also increases your lifespan 8 fold, according to Carlos.
It feels like you lived 800 years by the time you are nearing death.
Because you end up visiting realms where time there is only a fraction of here.
And you end up being in 2 places at once, as your double becomes visible to you.
And you pass in and out of cyclic being copies of yourself, picking up their entire life history when you're there, some of which is retained back here.
However, it's not "cozy" and you'll never have anyone to share it with.
People only become angry on hearing that real magic exists.
It invalidates their beliefs.
And some badly need those.
How can you reconcile the desire to achieve success in society, and therefore within the blue zone, with the awareness that this is only a superficial part of reality? How do you not lose motivation in dedicating time and energy to reaching a prominent position only in the blue zone?
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In the time of the old seers, 8000 years ago if we judge by the age of one who is still with us, "younglings" were given to the old seers to be their apprentices (servants).
So those didn't have to deal with what you are asking about. They learned the way all very young children learned. Just by copying their mentor.
There was no money and no writing systems back then, rent was free, there were no taxes, and if you needed food you could just look around for some.
You couldn't become famous as there were no printed materials, and if you became famous with their king, you'd likely be beheaded eventually anyway.
So what your asking never came up!
Keep in mind, sorcery MUST be learned by what was done in the past.
No one can forget a new path which works.
Those might evolve over hundreds of years, but not in a single lifetime.
Then, back in the time of the old seers, along came money. Agriculture rose and overpopulation took place, cities formed, and the world of the Olmec "old seers" was wiped out perhaps 3 times.
By the third destruction, when the remaining old seers were mostly among the Toltec empire, they decide enough is enough and formed lineages in which to hide from their attackers. And from the coming Spanish inquisitors.
Secret lineages were created. Perhaps no more than 20, now down to around 5 to 10 by my estimates.
We come from a 408 year old one, which because it kept passing its wealth on to the next generation of sorcerers, was presumably VERY wealthy.
In fact, my witch enemy Cholita was imported from Mexico to help deal with their collection of antiques.
I'm pretty sure there was a bunch of other wealth in there. If you buy and hold stocks and real estate for hundreds of years, you tend to become rich.
So the "new seers" never faced what you ask.
We're what comes after the "new seers". It's never been done before.
And we have no gurus. So no one has the answer to your question.
If you find yourself interested in a magical system which can answer questions like that, you're involved with con artists.
In order to get your money, they'll tell you "Twenty minutes twice a day is all you need!"
For several lifetimes.
As don Juan said, you almost have to be a broken person to succeed at learning sorcery.
You are better off to be one of the Mexican orphan children licking the plates at an outdoor restaurant don Juan and Carlos dined at, than to be the businessmen from who's plates they got something to eat. After the businessmen discarded what remained and left.
Of course you could join "The Church of Cleargreen", the organization Carlos left us with, which would tell you to just do your tensegrity a little daily, pretend to be doing recapitulation, and eventually you'll go to Carlos heaven.
With him waiting at the pearly bridge, when you die.
You get zero magic with them, but they'll argue that real magic is unseemly, and only feeds your ego.
They're redefined our sorcery to be a crummy form of Yoga where you pretend to be "egoless", while sitting on a throne lording it over others.
I have no idea where they got that from, because it's completely the opposite of what you need to be doing.
Myself, I'd rather see ahead of time what's going on. By following the instructions Carlos left us, which work extremely well to produce magic the likes of which our world hasn't seen in the open, for thousand of years.
But doing that requires more work than most can afford to do.
On a side note, Carlos himself was hopeful that if he got enough real sorcerers in his followers, magic could become easy enough for anyone to do, and use up a lot less of their time.
We just haven't gotten there yet.
So you could "keep tabs" and see what's happening, if you find it hard to make the time.
Fortunately no one in here has any monetary interest at all, there's no "group", no meetings, no books, classes or video interviews that are monitized.
So no one will lie to you and tell you, everything is going to be fine.
We just don't know.
But...
Holy Shit what some of us get to do daily!!!
It is precisely because of the absence of the economic factor that I listen with pleasure and genuine curiosity to your views and appreciate the fact that you take the time to respond to my doubts. I suppose you are right and that the only way is through dedication and experimentation to find a balance compatible with my life and my needs. It seems like a complex task, but I had not imagined an easy path... I will try to resume the practice and see what happens.
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If you figure out a balance where you make even a tiny bit of progress each day, let us know! We can always use that type of discovery.
Mostly it's all about removing that internal dialogue in the end. These days I have to be careful not to be tempted to skip the tensegrity, because the instant my lights are off, I can move my hand in the air and generate amazing sights.
It's because of silence.
But I do the tensegrity anyway, and have discovered that it's a lot more fun to generate those amazing magical objects in the air, by using the tensegrity movements.
Once in a while I get to see something Carlos obviously knew we'd discover.
Movements hidden in the movements.
It's easy to see why our lineage thought martial arts could be a path too.
And it's very sad that they actually aren't... I wish someone would fix one of them some day.
"The sorcerers' revolution," he continued, "is that they refuse to honor agreements in which they did not participate".
This is part of the balance. Every single stupid shitty thing that we do is tied into that. When someone goes on Youtube to pick fights over anything, they ARE honoring an agreement. If you read the comments on a Youtube video, you HAVE consented to participate in it. The same applies to Reddit.
The instant you look at the comments people are making online, you are CONSENTING to take part in an energetic exchange.
I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we have much more to us than we know, because I did things that I thought were impossible from a blue-line perspective for me thanks to sorcery.
My work goals are 100% non-existant since I started this and I've never been happier. Fuck work yo. I'm jussayin. Maybe you were lying to yourself about what you wanted? I saw Dan mentioned more clear sobriety. That would help with any uncertainty you are facing.
To me it sounds like you are maybe lucky actually. Like your spirit prefers magic over work and daily life. And this is a gift that you cannot cause on your own. And you are wondering whether to throw it away!?
Btw darkroom gives me a lot of ideas how to do my job better and how to approach situations in daily life. Sometimes the ideas are so good it is hard not to start to delve on them right into the darkroom which of course breaks the silence, but sometimes I cannot stop it.
u/richardslang_MD u/dorbim Thank you both for your responses, I understand what you are saying and I partly agree and envy your ability to give the right weight to what should be a secondary aspect of our lives. Unfortunately, due to how society is structured today, these aspects become of fundamental importance because everything has a cost, even the freedom to decide how to use one's own time. Abandoning my career goals would mean resigning myself to a life of unsatisfactory and in some ways humiliating work. While I understand that part of the journey should involve overcoming these feelings because they all stem from the importance placed on oneself and one's ego, I still cannot help but hold on to them, perhaps because I am still at the beginning of the journey or for some other reason that I have not yet rationalized. Furthermore, I have been working towards my goals for several years now, and even just the thought of abandoning my ambitions at this point is truly a difficult thing.
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If you see your hands 3/4 times per 7 days it means every other night which a very very big thing!