Written record of a short conversation between Dan and Carlos on Silence

In fact, only two reference to 'forcing' and 'silence' can be found in the books. Took an hour to search through all 20 books in the PDF (A LOT of force references!). From the Silent Knowledge (1996) publication:

Inner silence, in the understanding of the sorcerers of don Juan's lineage, is the matrix for a gigantic step of evolution; the sorcerers of ancient Mexico called this gigantic step of evolution silent knowledge. Silent knowledge is a state of human awareness where knowing is automatic and instantaneous. Knowledge in this state is not the product of cerebral cogitations or logical inductions and deductions, or of generalizations based on similarities and dissimilarities. In silent knowledge, there is nothing a priori, nothing that could constitute a body of knowledge. For silent knowledge, everything is imminently now. Complex pieces of information can be grasped without any preliminaries.

Don Juan believed that silent knowledge was insinuated to early man, but that early man was not really the possessor of silent knowledge. He said that such an insinuation was infinitely stronger than what man experiences nowadays, where the bulk of knowledge, is the product of rote learning. He believed that although we have lost the insinuation, the avenue that leads to silent knowledge will always be open to man, and that it stems from the matrix of inner silence.

The attainment of inner silence is the prerequisite for all of the things that we have delineated in this elucidation. Don Juan taught that inner silence must be gained by a consistent pressure of discipline. He said that it has to be accrued, or that it has to be stored, bit by bit, second by second. In other words, one has to force oneself to be silent, if it is only for a few seconds. Don Juan claimed that if one is persistent, persistence overcomes habit, and thus, one arrives at a threshold of accrued seconds or minutes, a threshold which varies from person to per-son. If, for instance, the threshold of inner silence is for any given individual, ten minutes, once this mark is reached, inner silence happens by itself, by it's own accord, so to speak...

...I had been seeing energy as it flows in the universe all my life, but I had not been conscious of it. To get energy as it flows in the universe was not the novelty. The novelty was the query that arose with such fury that it made me surface back into the world of everyday life. "What has been keeping me from realizing that I have seen energy as it flows in the universe all my life?" I asked myself.

Don Juan explained it to me, making a distinction between general awareness and being deliberately conscious of something. He said that our human condition is to have this deep awareness, but that all the instances of this deep awareness are not at the level of being deliberately conscious of them. He said that inner silence had bridged the gap, as was it's function, and had allowed me to become conscious of things I had only been aware of in a general sense.

~~~

And from the book The Fire From Within (1984):

I told him 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."

We were silent for a few minutes. I asked him to whom he was referring when he said that we had teachers who taught us to talk to ourselves.

"I was talking about what happens to human beings when they are infants," he replied, "a time when they are taught by everyone around them to repeat an endless dialogue about themselves. The dialogue becomes internalized, and that force alone keeps the assemblage point fixed....

"...The fact of the matter is that many children see," he went on. "Most of those who see are considered to be oddballs and every effort is made to correct them, to make them solidify the position of their assemblage points."

"But would it be possible to encourage children to keep their assemblage points more fluid?" I asked.

"Only if they live among the new seers," he said. "Otherwise they would get entrapped, as the old seers did, in the intricacies of the silent side of man. And, believe me, that's worse than being caught in the clutches of rationality."

Not to mention, women have flexible assemblage points, and probably don't need to be forcing anything, if that's too unpleasant for them.

From The Eagle's Gift:

"I answered her with a long explanation of what don Juan had told me about the encumbering force of personal history, and the need that a warrior has to erase it. I wrapped it up by telling her that he had prohibited me from ever talking about my life.

She laughed in a high falsetto voice. She seemed to be delighted.

"That applies only to men," she said. "The not-doing of your personal life is to tell endless stories, but not a single one about your real self. You see, being a man means that you have a solid history behind you. You have family, friends, and acquaintances; and every one of them has a definite idea of you. Being a man means that you're accountable. You cannot disappear that easily. In order to erase yourself, you needed a lot of work.

"My case is different. I'm a woman and that gives me a splendid advantage. I'm not accountable. Don't you know that women are not accountable?"

"I don't know what you mean by accountable," I said.

"I mean that a woman can easily disappear," she replied. "A woman can, if nothing else, get married. A woman belongs to the husband. In a family with lots of children, the daughters are discarded very early. No one counts on them and chances are that some will vanish without leaving a trace. Their disappearance is easily accepted.

"A son, on the other hand, is something one banks on. It's not that easy for a son to slip off and vanish. And even if he does, he will leave traces behind him. A son feels guilty for disappearing. A daughter does not.

"When the Nagual trained you to keep your mouth shut about your personal life, he intended to help you to overcome your feeling of having done wrong to your family and friends who were counting on you one way or another.

"After a lifetime struggle, the male warrior ends up, of course, erasing himself, but that struggle takes it's toll on the man. He becomes secretive; forever on guard against himself. A woman doesn't have to contend with that hardship. A woman is already prepared to disintegrate into thin air. In fact, it's expected of her.

"Being a woman, I'm not compelled to secrecy. I don't give a fig about it. Secrecy is the price you men have to pay for being important to society. That struggle is only for the men because they resent erasing themselves, and they would find curious ways to pop up somewhere; somehow. Take yourself for instance: You go around giving lectures.""

I don't think you can take the advice Carlos gave to a specific audience and try to universally apply it. Even don Juan's advice varied greatly between the apprentices.

Speaking as someone with serious anxiety issues and hyperactive/ADHD tendencies, it is not only nearly-useless advice to tell someone so afflicted, and who knows they NEED to silence their inner monologue, to "just force it off!"

Especially in a darkroom situation in the absence of most external stimuli.

Your thoughts start to pile-upon each other in an ever-increasing crescendo, with mere microseconds between them, until you feel like you need to smash rocks into your skull to relieve the pressure.

Or jump out of your own skin 😬.

Some people simply have to much going on up there! And need to drain the swamp BEFORE they can make substantive progress.

For example, I'm of the daydreamer/artistic type that can (endemically) sit in a chair for literally hours, and think about stuff non-stop. Don't even need TV when the fantasies flow that freely.

But however you learn to be silent, and however you recapitulate, you ought to insist on results as amazing as in the books. Or we all know what will happen. Nothing.

And, in the 1990's things were globally speaking, and on the whole, far more prosaic than they are now. So it was not as warranted, to take such a hardline approach to instructing when Castaneda and the witches were giving workshops and classes.

That didn't work out all that well. And those days are gone.

Things are worse enough, that we're even passing laws because people are demanding access to more legal substances in order to self-medicate.

So Cleargreen's entirely roundabout approach needs to go the way of the Dodo.

Or a pain issue

And, in the 1990's things were globally speaking, and on the whole, far more prosaic than they are now. So it was not as warranted, to take such a hardline approach to instructing when Castaneda and the witches were giving workshops and classes.

That didn't work out all that well. And those days are gone. So Cleargreen's entirely roundabout approach needs to go the way of the Dodo.

You described my experience of trying to force it, when it comes from ID. Sometimes I can force it, through an act of will. But that’s different. That feels more like just making a decision and it happening… and I can’t do that if I am identified with the ID… so in an effect, the effect happens before the cause haha. Cus being identified with the ID is the main problem.