Hello, does anyone have any advice for this? I have extreme intrusive thoughts and have struggled to recenter after recapitulating heavily mid 2023 (on the advice of my father, who was way into Castaneda at the time) since then I have unwittingly imagined myself recapitulation almost everything that has happened to me as its occurred... this practice has almost destroyed my life and left me with deep wounds, fears and doubts about the strength of my own intention.
If you follow human design, I am a projector with an open head center, which leads to me being naturally very vulnerable to this sort of thing anyway and being unable to control my thoughts and attention easily when working with energy.
Does anyone have any advice for me going forward?
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Looks like you’re Japanese? Or a westerner living in Japan.
And male?
Culture and gender are factors that can’t just be glossed over, as they directly affect strategy with all this.
Yes--non Japanese living in Japan, male
It takes years of pragmatic effort to de-center the self.
At any point in that process it can seem like we’re floundering.
Drifting in circles; forlorn and in a worse-off position than you were before.
But as long as we hold true to the core intent of the recapitulation, and resist any pressures to make it easier (pretend), we will unavoidably rise again….because that’s the direction in which it’s engineered trajectory leads.
The restoration of the connection with our double.
As a Westerner, whom I assume was not raised in Japan, you shouldn’t be as tied to the more oppressive elements of the Asian social order.
You should, thus, have fewer allegiances. Which is a plus.
And as a male, there are no cheat codes and no one (human or IOB) is going to go easy on you.
Them’s the breaks 😕
What is your internal silence like? You mention "thoughts" a few times here.
nonexistent, I barely had any introduction into this work at all. I've always felt like I "see" (imagine) energy forms/strands and unintentionally manipulate them with my mind, which sometimes seems to influence the outside world.
But I also can't say how much of this is just a manifestation of my own fears and anxieties going way back and how much is a reflection of the actual practice itself
Throw away all of your other practices, no meditation, no tai chi, and definitely no "human design". Focus on silencing your internal dialogue.
Read through this and get started:
https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/comments/aki0db/how_to_see_energy_in_3_weeks/
Can you be more precise about exactly what's bothering you? Also since your new here you should defiantly read the wiki and go through it, this unlike any other is a true magical practice and the one and only goal for a beginner should be to see real magic with your real eyes, fully awake and sober, otherwise you have gone nowhere and as far as we know no one with just the books alone has succeeded in gaining real magic.
"no one with just the books alone has succeeded in gaining real magic."
Absolutely not. My lead-up to finding this subreddit (i.e. before darkroom) was seeing real magic.
I saw dozens of sparkles floating in the air in my apartment during daylight hours with the lights on. They were directional, but when I tried to touch them, my hand passed through them.
I meant enough to continue on the path, maybe I'm wrong but we see no evidence of anyone who's not here making it to silent knowledge or even the red zone consistently.
Yeah, that's fine. When I saw those sparkles Intent told me I had to look for more, and I listened.
I feel like as I breathe I imagine take energy away from things/people/situations unintentionally as they happen, sort of uncreating my reality at the same time as it occurs.
I realize that some of this is tied up with my own fears and anxieties and has little to do with the actual process as described by Castaneda. but i can't stop imagining it happening unintentionally as I breathe and go about my daily life, and oftentimes my worst fears are confirmed (things break off, difficulties with others, scenarios not going my way)
My question is if it is possible to unintentionally engage in a practice like this simply through being haunted by physiological thoughts and sensations about it all day long, without ever really carrying the intention to.
It's not possible to engage in this practice without the intention and effort applied, if I had to guess I would say your internal dialogue is trying to get you to stop practicing and fear it in some way, it will actively resist this practice as much as it can.
Ain’t that the truth! Recently my internal dialogue has become extremely resistant to my practice, when I finally over come it and get silent, I nod out and I’m asleep, dreaming crazy nonsense that’s useless and contrary to my efforts.
I’ll tell you, from a layman perspective - you are imagining it- just say it aloud and hear it- and let it go as you should- I reckon with self- or ‘ego’ everyday, sometimes twice- lol
But- it’s an organic understanding - for me- that Carlos exhibited extremes- yet there was a practical application for all his terms. If we shed the past alongside with one sided perspectives, we are free to allow reality to shift, as well.
I appreciate this perspective, right now if's hard to entirely let it go since the feeling is physiological related to breathing anxieties
Would you mind sharing how you did the recapitulation? What I want to know is whether you did the technique as explained in the books or something else.
u/Valuable-Mango2815 Jadey raises a very important point as well.
I'll say the obvious which everyone else is likely thinking, but afraid to say.
Keep in mind, we only care that people actually learn sorcery. No one makes money in here in any way, there's no books, no meetings, no interviews, workshops or monetized channels on youtube or anywhere else connected to this subreddit
This is a technology, not a belief system.
And we've been here battling for close to 5 years, trying to help people learn for real, and to stop the endless pretending which nearly destroyed all this knowledge forever.
So the straight truth?
And she's too schizophrenic to even hold a job. But she does magic beyond what anyone would believe. I get to witness it myself, and even I don't believe it after a few days.
You're trying to get back at your father over some childhood conflicts by claiming he "broke" you.
You're a classic bad player visiting the subreddit using the excuse of having an "important" problem for us to solve, but in fact you're just here to suck up attention.
We get one of those on average, once a month I'd guess.
This mental illness business has always been interesting to me, since I don't believe in deontological ethics.
Are there even any consequentialist psychologists?
LOL—because it WAS the original psychology.
The DSM—outside of the influencing biological factors—is just a list of behaviors; why they go in the complete opposite direction is beyond me.
Someone should write a PHD thesis on this now.
They can name it something snarky like, "Keep your sanity; I don't care if I am crazy as long as I am better than you."
Cholita would love it.
So how do I fix those 'wrong connections' in my mind?
I promise I'm not a troll, or on some kind of vengeance spree against a family member or something
They're genetic. Most likely wrong connections horizontally in the brain, so that in the case of Cholita I might be drinking a red Gatorade drink while we're driving, and she thinks I'm mocking her. Taunting her that I'll drink her blood someday.
She might even get so confused that she believes I just said that to her. And that then triggers an association with some dark magical entity, because of the "creepy feeling" in her brain. Caused by the schizophrenia.
Often she thinks of the Freemasons, and her delusions build even more. Until the entire world is conspiring against her, as the center of all things important.
I don't think there's any cure for this illness so far, since that might require rewiring vast portions of the brain.
They just drug this illness as far as I know.
Just be aware of it, if it turns out you do have it. And don't accuse people of things until you're certain.
The way you did this subreddit...
Upsetting a few, which got you a few more post replies than normal.
Which might have been what you were after anyway.
That's a common trick on reddit. This very day, there's a post by someone trying to get attention in the shamanism subreddit over a pretend demonic possession.
I suspect priests who run public churches have to be taught way to do about those seeking "help" over a supernatural complaint.
So if you have it, just be aware of it. And if you turn out to be wrong due to some schizophrenic association which isn't true, apologize once in a while if you actually passed on the accusation to someone else.
In 5 years, I suspect Cholita has only apologized to me once.
But that was good enough.
As a witch however she's at a huge advantage, because in fact most of reality is phantom.
And only based on interpretations held in place by other people.
Cholita is capable of making "wrong associations" off in the second attention, and those can lead to "assembling" very cool worlds to play around in.
With less rationality to hold them back, in the sorcery lineages there might always have been a few schizophrenics.
Zuleica, Zoila, and Josefina in don Juan's lineage.
It was not my intention to accuse anyone. I apologize if that was the case
We're only here hoping to encourage people to learn sorcery, and to stop pretending they're doing that when they aren't.
I don't see much chance you'll actually learn. Perhaps you might alert your father that he doesn't have to keep pretending anymore, and maybe he'll become serious?
As I understand your question you have an obsession to ”recapitulate” events while they happen and you can’t stop? And it gives you experiences that sometimes confirms or sometimes rejects that you control your reality, and you have a belief that you are naturally open and vulnerable to energy? I understand Techno’s question about your gender! And Dan’s suggestion that you may be schizophrenic. Recapitulation as a technique does NOT make you obsessive. Nor traumatized. You do that to yourself with the energy that recapitulation frees up. If you don’t put the energy to good use it will go to feeding your obsessions and perversions. For ”us” good use is moving the assemblage point.
Sure, maybe those are fair assumptions but what am I supposed to do about such a niche anxiety in a world that doesn't even believe in Shamanism? That's the real point of me posting this in the first place, it's not to claim inherently that the technique itself is bad ...
Just really struggling here and trying to find a solution
Thinking of struggles as being a problem that needs a solution is often not the most optimal mindset.
Commit to simply persevere, and accept uncertainty and that things won't always or immediately feel comfortable....and that being uncomfortable can lead to better outcomes down the line.
Learn mindfulness/ meditation . This is one of the exact problems they cover.
Castaneda, I think, was bad news. Look into the books on Toltec techniques and the stilted worldview by Sergio Magaña. I’ve had amazing results with them, and they also tie into human design in a way, because there are prophecies concerning 2027 (if you’re familiar with the HD prophecy). He is very straightforward and not obtuse and culty at all. Magaña is connected to a real lineage in Mexico, RIGHT NOW, whereas Castaneda was shrouded in mystery and bad vibes. Also, Magaña is not like that Don Miguel pop spiritually new agey Toltec b.s. either. Experiment with the Magaña wisdom and if you’re still having problems, it could potentially be mental illness I guess - I don’t know much about that, though. (I’m a projector with an open head as well). Magaña teaches lucid dreaming techniques that have blown my mind. That actually work and what he teaches rings very true for me and I don’t distrust it or feel skeptical or leery at all.