I have been reading the posts here and practicing recapitulation, chair silence, and tensegrity for some time. During the day, I have also been making an effort to force silence.
I have a couple of questions:
- Due to a health condition that prevents deep breathing, I perform the head sweep technique with normal breath—without deep inhalation and exhalation. I only use it when experiencing strong emotions, pressure in the chest center, or when encountering a negative event during recapitulation. Without deep breaths, will recapitulation still be effective?
- In The Power of Silence, Carlos Castaneda mentioned that when Don Juan and his family were contemplating ending their lives, he was able to recapitulate his entire life along with his family’s within a few weeks or months—despite not yet being an advanced sorcerer. When I attempt recapitulation, such as reviewing an entire day in reverse order, it takes me hours just to recap a few memories in detail. How was Don Juan able to recapitulate his entire life so quickly, without missing any images or experiences?
- When I try to force silence during the day, my head starts to feel heavy, and I sometimes experience pain. Is this a normal part of the practice?
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I'm not aware of what you said in #2. Can you give me some passages so I can read it?
The breathing is more about intending than any actual physical phenomena which brings back lost energy.
Don't fall prey to Wim Hof delusions about breathing exercises. You DO NOT want to be like this man. I almost wonder if anyone practicing his techniques, ever saw a picture of him showing off his knowledge???
So yes, you can breathe however you like, as long as your attention focuses on the intent to recover your energy, or expel foreign energy.
Remember: We don't actually have physical bodies. Those are a construct of the consistency of the interactions between the emanations at this assemblage point position, where we've tied ourselves so heavily, we likely can't fully escape them until we die.
Although some seem to have accomplished that! Such as the old seers who stretched themselves into infinite lines.
As for #3, you're "Mr. DoubleTake" superimposed chaperone will come up with all sorts of excuses for you not to learn to get rid of your internal dialogue.
You just have to remember that not having one is the natural state of human beings.
For our first 250,000 years of existence, we didn't even have spoken language.
Language is only 50,000 years old.
And babies have none.
So the idea that it's harmful to remove it, makes no sense.
You might just be noticing what holds it in place. What fears from our childhood caused it to come into being.
Mostly keeping up and self-protection brought it into being.
Stop trying to "keep up" and don't ruminate about things that didn't happen yet.
The passages do not specify exactly how many months or years Don Juan and his family spent recapitulating, but it could not have been more than a few months or, at most, a year or two. What stands out is that his entire family participated in the process. For Don Juan and his wife, this would have meant recapitulating 20–30 years of life within a relatively short period. Since his wife and children also engaged in recapitulation, they must have used an ordinary method rather than an advanced sorcerer’s technique.
If one were to recapitulate 20 years of life in detail—reliving every moment with full sensations and awareness of the senses—shouldn't it take the same amount of time as actually living those experiences? After all, if one is essentially "rewatching" every second and minute of their past, how could they condense so much time into a shorter period?
Additionally, while recapitulating events in reverse order, I have noticed that unfamiliar images sometimes appear—images that were never part of my actual memory. These can be vulgar, violent, or even clear depictions of known people behaving aggressively. Is this kind of random imagery part of a mechanical process, similar to the way the internal dialogue functions?
"He told me that sorcerers counted their lives in hours, and that in one hour it was possible for a sorcerer to live the equivalent in intensity of a normal life", he being Don Juan, It's also stated else where that he could recap his life with the sweep of his hand.
In order to do a truly complete recap you need to be able to move your assemblage point, then you are no longer bound by our normal limits, that's why you have to do longer sessions, so your assemblage point has a chance to move.
Again, can you point to these verses?
It seems as if you might be reading stuff written by outsiders selling fake sorcery books and workshops.
Like Armando or Miguel.
There's a whole wiki list of bad men writing fake books in our community.
Why did you avoid telling me the passages?
The quote is definitely real.
From the power of silence, "The Ticket to Impeccability",
"His superior strength and a new and unaccountable cunning enabled him to find jobs even where there were none to be had as he steadily worked his way north to the state of Sinaloa. And there his journey ended. He met a young widow who like himself was a Yaqui Indian; and who had been the wife of a man to whom don Juan was indebted.
He attempted to repay his indebtedness by helping the widow and her children, and without being aware of it, he fell into the role of husband and father.
His new responsibilities put a great burden on him. He lost his freedom of movement, and even his urge to journey farther north. He felt compensated for that loss, however, by the profound affection he felt for the woman and her children.
"I experienced moments of sublime happiness as a husband and father," don Juan said. "But it was at those moments when I first noticed that something was terribly wrong. I realized that I was losing the feeling of detachment- the aloofness I had acquired during my time in the nagual Julian's house. Now I found myself identifying with the people who surrounded me."
Don Juan said that it took about a year of unrelenting abrasion to make him lose every vestige of the new personality he had acquired at the nagual's house. He had begun with a profound yet aloof affection for the woman and her children. This detached affection allowed him to play the role of husband and father with abandon and gusto. As time went by, his detached affection turned into a desperate passion that made him lose his effectiveness.
Gone was his feeling of detachment, which was what had given him the power to love.
Without that detachment, he had only mundane needs, desperation, and hopelessness; the distinctive features of the world of everyday life. Gone as well was his enterprise. During his years at the nagual's house, he had acquired a dynamism that had served him well when he set out on his own.
But the most draining pain was knowing that his physical energy had waned. Without actually being in ill health, one day he became totally paralyzed. He did not feel pain. He did not panic. It was as if his body had understood that he would get the peace and quiet he so desperately needed only if it ceased to move.
As he lay helpless in bed, he did nothing but think. And he came to realize that he had failed because he did not have an abstract purpose. He knew that the people in the nagual's house were extraordinary because they pursued freedom as their abstract purpose. He did not understand what freedom was, but he knew that it was the opposite of his own concrete needs.
His lack of an abstract purpose had made him so weak and ineffective that he was incapable of rescuing his adopted family from their abysmal poverty. Instead, they had pulled him back to the very misery, sadness, and despair which he himself had known prior to encountering the nagual.
As he reviewed his life, he became aware that the only time he had not been poor and had not had concrete needs was during his years with the nagual. Poverty was the state of being that had reclaimed him when his concrete needs overpowered him.
For the first time since he had been shot and wounded so many years before, don Juan fully understood that the nagual Julian was indeed the nagual, the leader, and his benefactor. He understood what it was his benefactor had meant when he said to him that there was no freedom without the nagual's intervention. There was now no doubt in don Juan's mind that his benefactor and all the members of his benefactor's household were sorcerers. But what don Juan understood with the most painful clarity was that he had thrown away his chance to be with them.
When the pressure of his physical helplessness seemed unendurable, his paralysis ended as mysteriously as it had begun. One day he simply got out of bed and went to work. But his luck did not get any better. He could hardly make ends meet.
Another year passed. He did not prosper, but there was one thing in which he succeeded beyond his expectations: he made a total recapitulation of his life. He understood then why he loved and could not leave those children, and why he could not stay with them; and he also understood why he could neither act one way nor the other.
Don Juan knew that he had reached a complete impasse, and that to die like a warrior was the only action congruous with what he had learned at his benefactor's house. So every night, after a frustrating day of hardship and meaningless toil, he patiently waited for his death to come.
He was so utterly convinced of his end that his wife and her children waited with him- in a gesture of solidarity, they too wanted to die. All four sat in perfect immobility, night after night, without fail, and recapitulated their lives while they waited for death.
Don Juan had admonished them with the same words his benefactor had used to admonish him.
"Don't wish for it," his benefactor had said. "Just wait until it comes. Don't try to imagine what death is like. Just be there to be caught in its flow."
That's a surprise!
The reason you can recap in a year is that you really didn't.
But it's enough to change things if you do it daily.
And according to the books, later you can recapitulate your entire life in a single head sweep.
It's hard to understand that kind of thing, until you can stare at the nagual daily, and realize we aren't at all what we believe ourselves to be.
I was literally watching cartoons from infinity last night.
I'll see if I can fake up what I saw using animation, since I'll be needing it in my Alternate timelines animation.
I kept waiting for something to happen, but apparently in that cartoon, no one lived there anymore.
The remarkable thing however was, it was 100% stable. I could have watched it for 10 minutes, if it didn't make me so sleepy watching nothing happen.
>The reason you can recap in a year is that you really didn't.
"in which he succeeded beyond his expectations"
Don Juan did recap in a year, and it is a surprise, both are true.
I don't think that's really true, this is after Don Juan had spent years with Julian's party, these two years are just when he completed his recap, not when he necessarily started it.
That's true enough, it doesn't say when he started recapitulation, but it is still true that he succeeded beyond his expectations.
What I want to know now is, did don Juan really have any children of his own?
Someone said so a while back and I just took it for granted, but here we see that the family in this story wasn't actually his.
Carlos told us to stop reading his books, Just after this one came out.
So I only read it once, which isn't enough times to retain it for 30 years.
It's said shortly before that passage that Don Juan had not yet been with a woman, so he almost certainly only had these adopted children.
And even if he had them once, he definitely doesn't when he left for the other world.
"The Nagual said that to enter into the other world one has to be complete. To be a sorcerer one has to have all of one's luminosity: no holes, no patches and all the edge of the spirit. So a sorcerer who is empty has to regain completeness. Man or woman, they must be complete to enter into that world out there, that eternity where the Nagual and Genaro are now waiting for us."
I don't think he had any other children than his adopted children plus his six sorcery children, four daughters and two men, one of which was Carlos himself.
That has the ring of a La Gorda quote, and you have to keep in mind that don Juan taught her differently.
He was a bit more authoritarian, and a little less precise.
So for example, when Carlos stopped the world after the talking coyote, he found himself floating in the air with time suspended.
When la Gorda stopped the world, she merely saw a puff or some other second attention sight.
So technically by her reasoning, we've all "stopped the world".
The truth is likely somewhere in the middle, since you can't really say that someone who gets up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, and sees the puffs, has stopped the world.
I believe Don Juan also agrees.
Here is Don Juan saying that when we stop our internal dialogue, we stop the world.
"Don Juan had asserted time and time again that the essential feature of his sorcery was shutting off the internal dialogue. In terms of the explanation la Gorda had given me about the two realms of attention, stopping the internal dialogue was an operational way of describing the act of disengaging the attention of the tonal.
Don Juan had also said that once we stop our internal dialogue we also stop the world. That was an operational description of the inconceivable process of focusing our second attention. He had said that some part of us is always kept under lock and key because we are afraid of it, and that to our reason, that part of us was like an insane relative that we keep locked in a dungeon."
Here is Don Juan saying that the precondition for stopping the world is "that one had to be convinced". Since Carlos could only be convinced via massive doses of power plants, that's what it took for him. La Gorda didn't take much to be convinced by comparison.
"Don Juan stated that in order to arrive at seeing one first had to stop the world. Stopping the world was indeed an appropriate rendition of certain states of awareness in which the reality of everyday life is altered because the flow of interpretation, which ordinarily runs uninterruptedly, has been stopped by a set of circumstances alien to that flow. In my case the set of circumstances alien to my normal flow of interpretations was the sorcery description of the world. Don Juan's precondition for stopping the world was that one had to be convinced; in other words, one had to learn the new description in a total sense, for the purpose of pitting it against the old one, and in that way break the dogmatic certainty, which we all share, that the validity of our perceptions, or our reality of the world, is not to be questioned."
Maybe that explains why the first 3 books were so misleading. Causing people to believe we want to be "Men of Knowledge".
It's because that was the whole point of them! Don Juan even said he was giving Carlos an alternate point of view, to pit against his normal view of the world.
That was the point of view of the "Men of Knowledge".
So readers of the first 3 books were saturated with that delusional outlook.
And we ended up with a lot of pretenders, since the men of knowledge were basically skilled druggies who inherited some rituals and Allies from past men of knowledge.
None of which we have any more (not the rituals, and for those who don't have Fairy or Minx, not the allies either).
Except don Juan actually said, using the two views of reality, Carlos was supposed to slip through the middle and become a seer.
Something the men of knowledge never learned to do. See.
So the first 3 books were actually INTENDED to delude readers, by convincing them there was a super fun alternative to the stifling reality we were all born into.
Without pointing out, the Men of knowledge were attention seeking profiteers.
The very thing which now plagues our community.
..still, the books aren't linear. DJ is like a "father" ..but then without the mask of socialization. Consider " our father", how that could expose " our" link with intent to contamination, especially after thousands of years as an accepted norm. Then again, perhaps " my" father wouldn't have been much better off without " him".
In a seperate reality he has a grandson who Carlos meats a few times, and at some point he talks about seeing the death of his son in a mining accident if i remember correct.
Yes and in Active Side of Infinity, there is also Ignacio Flores, who is his "son".
That doesn't mean that these references aren't to an adopted family.
The problem with stories in the first books is, it's all largely a trick.
Like Pablito being Soledad's son, in a war with her for her edge. That's from later books, but it's even more applicable to the first 3.
Don't fully believe anything you see in those!
Carlos himself also made up "histories" for his inner circle.
It drove people nuts, but that's because they didn't remember what they'd read in all 17 (or 20?) books, and didn't take into account that Carlos followed as much of how the lineages worked, as he could.
He tried to duplicate as much as possible to intend us to succeed too.
And even more, at some point you become capable of perceiving alternate timelines, and realize that making up a new history for yourself, is actually an attempt to intend that to be true.
You can actually change all aspects of reality.
I can't imagine someone with that much power, but once you see where reality comes from, how that could work becomes somewhat obvious.
But even Carlos wasn't able to change reality so that he didn't have fatal liver cancer.
He tried, and told us so at least 3 times, but he didn't have enough energy left after helping us with workshops and private classes.
It makes sense i guess. I like to look at the books as dealing with different themes like "seeing" being a theme in a separate reality. Tonal and Nagual in Tales of power and so on.
The later books being more to the actual point with the assemblage point being introduced and the link with intent.
I do enjoy the books older books anyway maybe because i like the way Carlos wrote. Or as they say for the hell of it
If don Juan had real children or they were adopted is of no importance to me since they were not presented as being part of don Juan s lineage anyway so i can only speculate.
Sure a lot of the old stuff can very well be a trick to hook the reader and Carlos even wrote in the later works that he was tasked to write the books as a warrior not a writer.
So be it fiction or fact is also of no importance of me. As you say we intend reality.
No, Athina found it, Don Juan was balanced because he was incomplete, he had 3 sons and 1 daughter.
Where did she find that? Just curious
https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/comments/1iwa0lk/comment/meiah8v/?context=3
thank you
Witches can be frustrating beings for male sorcerers. Always pointing out that you don't quite know what's going on as much as you believe.
We see that in the books, but also Cholita taught me that.
I almost got her to come visit in her double last night!
By coaxing her while in "Super Silent Knowledge", in a phantom copy of my room, where "space" no longer matters.
I figured she didn't need to go anywhere in her double to be in my room, because that made no difference anymore.
I was trying to make a deal with her to start showing up again.
Later I got what seemed to be a visit from Minx, saying I was too slow and he might need to take over.
That was definitely odd...
I'll see if the AI can draw what I saw before MInx put in his 2 bits worth.
Nope.
Had to do it myself.
Yes the quote Athina pointed out is very clear, that Don Juan had four children and energetic holes from having those four children.
But at the same time. . .
All of this is from a chapter called "The Ticket to Impeccability" in the power of silence.
"Although I was only twenty-three years old at the time," don Juan said, "I felt I had lived a full life. The only thing I had not experienced was sex. The nagual Julian had told me that it was the fact I had not been with a woman that gave me my strength and endurance, and that he had little time left to set things up before the world would catch up with me."
one page later. . .
"Don Juan said that when he arrived in Mazatlan he was practically a seasoned muleteer, and was offered a permanent job running a mule train. He was very satisfied with the arrangements. The idea that he would be making the trip between Durango and Mazatlan pleased him no end.
There were two things, however, that bothered him: first, that he had not yet been with a woman;"
And then he spent two years with his adopted family, I suppose he could have had kids with his wife here, but not 4 in two years
And that section ends with
""No. Sorcerers never look for anyone," he replied. "And I was a sorcerer. I had paid with my life for the mistake of not knowing I was a sorcerer, and that sorcerers never approach anyone.
"From that day on, I have only accepted the company or the care of people or warriors who are dead, as I am.""
So something weird is happening here, maybe Don Juan had kids after he was a proper sorcerer? That doesn't sound right at all from what's in the books but Carlos did say that they he anything related sex.
Well, he was incomplete, so that's that.
u/cuyler72 and u/Emergency-Total-4851
As it seems he did have biological children and grandchildren and the witnessed the death of 2 of them....
"Take your grandson Lucio," I said. "Would your acts be controlled folly at the time of his death?"
"Take my son Eulalio, that's a better example," don Juan replied calmly. "He was crushed by rocks while
working in the construction of the Pan-American Highway. My acts toward him at the moment of his death were controlled folly. When I came down to the blasting area he was almost dead, but his body was so strong that it kept on moving and kicking. I stood in front of him and told the boys in the road crew not to move him any more; they obeyed me and stood there surrounding my son, looking at his mangled body. I stood there too, but I did not look.
I shifted my eyes so I would see his personal life disintegrating, expanding uncontrollably beyond its limits, like a fog of crystals, because that is the way life and death mix and expand. That is what I did at the time of my son's death. That's all one could ever do, and that is controlled folly. Had I looked at him I would have watched him becoming immobile and I would have felt a cry inside of me, because never again would I look at his fine figure pacing the earth. I saw his death instead, and there was no sadness, no feeling. His death was equal to everything else." Don Juan was quiet for a moment. He seemed to be sad, but then he smiled and tapped my
head."
Gordia from Second Ring of Power
"My emptiness, which was my disadvantage, is now my advantage. Once a sorcerer regains his completeness he's balanced, while a sorcerer who was always complete is a bit off. Like Genaro was a bit off.
But the Nagual was balanced because he had been incomplete, like you and me, even more so than you and me. He had three sons and one daughter."
I suppose that settles it.
Don Juan was just given to helping others, like they were part of his real family, even if they were just a friend's family.
Also notice that he's quite advanced in this story, but still gets word of his actual son's accident, and rushes to see if he can help.
Thus "leave all your friends and family" seems a bit less strict in actual practice.
Thank you that does settle it! He did have biological children! Thanks Athina :)
Soo, if he had been incomplete, that would mean that his children weren't adopted.
Fyi, there’s a nugget about Recapitulation hidden in the later books, take this one for example:
From the Art of Dreaming, chapter 8, The 3rd Gate of Dreaming,
“He replied that there are two basic rounds to the recapitulation, that the first is called formality and rigidity, and the second fluidity.”
This explanation came up when DJ pushed Carlos to perform the second round where the events to be recapitulated would come in a random fashion. This primed the reader to hear about the usher…
Ah... That explains how you can do it "completely", but not be traveling back in time.
that's why I said don Juan didn't really do a complete recap.
There's no way, if you put in the time required, that you aren't literally SWIMMING in magic.
And we read that in the books, so it's not just my observation.
La Gorda seemed to have that going on also.
But it makes total sense. Your assemblage point moves!
It's just that the destination is selected by the recap.
It's a pity Cleargreen teaches recap so badly.
And has created the idea that Reni is practically a saint, from "all the recap she's done".
They turned everything into pretending.
And for no reason! It always works if you just do it regularly and follow the instructions.
reliving every moment with full sensations and awareness of the senses—shouldn't it take the same amount of time as actually living those experiences? After all, if one is essentially "rewatching" every second and minute of their past, how could they condense so much time into a shorter period?
-Sorcerers can live the equivalent of many lifetimes( - hundreds of years) within a few hours by recapitulating. They condense time.- I can't find the quote for that right now but ..from the power of silence- ( the descent of the Spirit)...
" Recollecting is not the same as remembering. Remembering is dictated by day-to-day type experience, while recollecting is dictated by the movement of the assemblage point. A recapitulation of their lives, which sorcerers do, is the very key to moving their assemblage points. Sorcerers start their recapitulation by thinking, by remembering the most important acts of their lives. From merely thinking about them they then move on to actually being at the site of the event. When they can do that- be at the site of the event- they have successfully succeeded in moving their assemblage point to the precise spot it was when the event took place. Bringing back the total event by means of shifting the assemblage point is known as the sorcerers recollection".
What you're saying is that both language and thinking— which operates through language—are useless and valueless in a sorcerer's world. You also seem to suggest that these are artificial constructs created to suppress human magical abilities. Considering how mechanical, repetitive, and dull thinking can be, and how limited language is compared to the vastness of the unknown, it would make sense if someone had intentionally created them to suppress man's magical abilities.
Would you advise continuing to force silence despite the pain? I'm asking because I’m unsure if feeling pain is part of this process, or if perhaps I’m approaching it the wrong way.
I didn't say useless and valueless, you did.
As for "intentionally created to suppress man's magical abilities", yes.
That did happen.
Carlos claimed it was a special form of inorganic being from the Pleiades star cluster, which likes us to feel sorry for ourselves all the time because it's able to consume that type of awareness.
Keep in mind, YOU can literally swipe away the ceiling, fully awake, totally sober, eyes wide open, and leap to the Pleiades star cluster to see for yourself.
None of what we have in our system is a "belief".
Unfortunately, Mad Prophet (a subreddit member) lent me her ally "Lily" who taught me how to zip through space to land on planets even outside our galaxy, and when I got the bright idea to go verify that the fliers are real and come from Pleiades, she stopped me.
Saying, if I went there, they'd put me into a cage.
She even dropped the cage right in front of me, so I could see it with my own eyes.
She was perhaps the most fun Ally I ever had. The others are all nice, but she was very "flashy".
So the "unfortunate" part is that she went back to Mad Prophet, when she finished teaching me what she had promised.
"How to leave my darkroom without opening the door or going out a window."
Or something like that. That happened years ago.
Here's a very accurate cartoon of how Lily liked to show up for teaching:
>Would you advise continuing to force silence despite the pain?
We don't have any teachers in here, we're all just students.
And with only 5 years of experiences of new people to learn from.
You'll have to figure that out yourself, but there are other techniques to produce silence.
And of course there's the recapitulation.
You mentioned in your other posts that recapitulation itself can be a path to sorcery, magic, and second attention. Would two hours of daily recapitulation—one hour during the day and one hour at night—be enough to reach the second attention, if done consistently?" I have been practicing chair silence for some time but haven't made much progress, except for two occasions where I reached sleep paralysis. During those experiences, I saw objects such as the top of my study table and people walking in a busy street. These visions abruptly ended with a jolt that seemed to travel from my brain to my chest center and then down to my groin, which was uncomfortable.
That sounds like huge progress to me. I personally recap like that on top of my Darkroom Practice and can see and feel the effects of it.
Focus less on the results and more on the practice and things will happen on their own.
I remember having jolts like that as well. Also when I started out, during Recap I saw a white body leaving my groin area and I was scared to death. I was told to just keep practicing.
And it worked. Now I wish it would happen again haha
Absolutely! But you have to try to remove your internal dialogue as much as possible, and learn to remember things without using the internal dialogue too much.
Otherwise you'll end up like Cleargreeners, insisting you're going to heaven due to recap, despite nothing magical ever happening.
Bizarre...
I just started animating DVD4 and it looks to me like it's the origin of fake Tensegrity. They gave it a little test by making long forms from old moves, and got away with it. So they went on to make up bizarre new forms based on what would tickle the fancy of people who have money.
I could be wrong though. I just don't remember those long forms and I learned everything Carlos taught except for a few taught only to a few women.
As far as making progress during chair silence goes, if there's not as much as you want, it just means you aren't silent enough.
It always works!
Later you'll truly get to see that if you stop your internal dialogue, the world stops too.
It's only held in place by our internal dialogue.
Of course, we have a lot of energy stuck in the solid matter of this particular view of reality, which recap attempts to free. But we never get it all, so sorcerers can never quite ignore this one.
But they come very close! Such as stretching themselves into infinite lines. Or burying themselves under rocks, or turning into trees. So they can live on hundreds or thousands of years.
Which for some odd reason, upset our new Ukrainian guy enough that Techno had to give him a 30 day timeout. The tree thing.
Of all the things to get bent out of shape over! The magical fruit trees in the books of Carlos, were in fact old seers who had done that!
And Manfred was an old seer, although I think that was more of a case of body snatching.
The new guy claimed we must be posting Russian make believe.
Might be the whole "we're going to take over your country" thing making Ukrainians a bit touchy about Russians.
I never understood the reason for the rivalry. Ukrainians were indistinguishable from Russians the last time I visited Moscow.
Except they have better deals on dentistry. And like to make cake out of blood...
The last sentence is interesting.
He had asserted that the physical body and the energy body were the only counterbalanced energy configurations in our realm as human beings. He accepted, therefore, no other dualism than the one between these two. The dualism between body and mind, spirit and flesh, he considered to be a mere concatenation of the mind, emanating from it without any energetic foundation. Don Juan had said that by means of discipline it is possible for anyone to bring the energy body closer to the physical body. Normally, the distance between the two is enormous. Once the energy body is within a certain range, which varies for each of us individually, anyone, through discipline, can forge it into the exact replica of their physical body-that is to say, a three- dimensional, solid being. Hence the sorcerers' idea of the other or the double. By the same token, through the same processes of discipline, anyone can forge their three-dimensional, solid physical body to be a perfect replica of their energy body-that is to say, an ethereal charge of energy invisible to the human eye, as all energy is.
I actually experienced the tonal body taking the double into it's arms yesterday, in Silent Knowledge.
I try to watch 10 "videos in the air" at the end of each Tensegrity sessions, although last night I realized this was a waste of valuable time, and one should shoot for viewing those DURING the tensegrity.
In fact, a "perfect" Tensegrity long form is one done entirely in SK, with SK actively producing sights the entire time. But that takes the ability to focus your awareness 90% on the Tensegrity form only, so it's very difficult to do.
Viewing "videos in the air" is not. You just have to work harder to remove all final traces of the internal dialogue. Which isn't so hard to do, after you do your series of Tensegrity forms, viewing magic from all of the J curve zones along the way.
In that state two days ago, I actually picked up my double the way the jade figurines portray it.
Awake, eyes wide open, completely sober. I have to say that, so beginners don't fall back into meditation delusions. Those are equally as bad as lucid dreamers trying to make their sleeping dreamings seem to be the same as real magic.
So fully awake, I literally did this:
I was more thinking that it is amazing that one can turn their physical body into energy.
If someone has an issue with becoming trees, I can't imagine why, particularly.
They likely thought it was made up. That someone had invented the "turn yourself into a tree" trick, as part of their own book deal.
Probably a "first 3 book" person whose convinced themself that they're an "impeccable warrior", and that real magic has nothing to do with sorcery.
Since it's Ukraine, might be a Reni follower.
I suppose we'll find out.
They attacked 2 or 3 comments before Techno told them to go stand in the corner.
Yes, turning one's physical body into energy must be KEY to actually waking up at the other location, when you dream yourself thousands of miles away.
Such as when Carlos teleported to Arizona from Mexico, and had to be dumped into a cold bath to overcome the shock.
Or when he jumped off a cliff near Mexico City in the mountains, and woke up in his apartment in Los Angeles.
This is one of the beefs Minx has with me. And why he claimed he's taking over our group.
I'm too slow? At least that's what Minx claims.
Of course, Minx hangs out with Cholita a lot.
In the books Don Jaun explained to Carlos how to do that before he jumped off that cliff, he had to assemble a world in another great band of emanations, suggesting that you could return from that world to anywhere in our reality.
From "The Fire From Within", Chapter 18, "Breaking the Barrier of Perception":
""It's the easiest world to assemble," he said. "And of all you've experienced, only the black world is worth considering. It is the only true alignment of another great band you have ever made. Everything else has been a lateral shift along man's band, but still within the same great band. The wall of fog, the plain with yellow dunes, the world of the apparitions- all are lateral alignments that our assemblage points make as they approach a crucial position."
He explained as we walked back to the square that one of the strange qualities of the black world is that it does not have the same emanations that account for time in our world. They are different emanations that produce a different result. Seers that journey into the black world feel that they have been in it for an eternity, but in our world that turns out to be an instant.
"The black world is a dreadful world because it ages the body," he said emphatically.
I asked him to clarify his statements. He slowed down his pace and looked at me. He reminded me that Genaro, in his direct way, had tried to point that out to me once, when he told me that we had plodded in hell for an eternity while not even a minute had passed in the world we know.
Don Juan remarked that in his youth he had become obsessed with the black world. He had wondered, in front of his benefactor, about what would happen to him if he went into it and stayed there for a while. But as his benefactor was not given to explanations, he had simply plunged don Juan into the black world to let him find out for himself.
"The nagual Julian's power was so extraordinary," don Juan continued, "that it took me days to come back from that black world."
"You mean it took you days to return your assemblage point to its normal position, don't you?" I asked.
"Yes. I mean that," he said.
He explained that in the few days that he was lost in the black world he aged at least ten years, if not more. The emanations inside his cocoon felt the strain of years of solitary struggle.
Silvio Manuel was a totally different case. The nagual Julian also plunged him into the unknown, but Silvio Manuel assembled another world with another set of bands, a world also without the emanations of time but one which has the opposite effect on seers. He disappeared for seven years and yet he felt he had been gone only a moment.
"To assemble other worlds is not only a matter of practice, but a matter of intent," he continued. "And it isn't merely an exercise of bouncing out of those worlds, like being pulled by a rubber band. You see, a seer has to be daring. Once you break the barrier of perception, you don't have to come back to the same place in the world. See what I mean?"
It slowly dawned on me what he was saying. I had an almost invincible desire to laugh at such a preposterous idea, but before the idea coalesced into a certainty, don Juan spoke to me and disrupted what I was about to remember.
He said that for warriors the danger of assembling other worlds is that those worlds are as possessive as our world. The force of alignment is such that once the assemblage point breaks away from its normal position, it becomes fixed at other positions, by other alignments. And warriors run the risk of getting stranded in inconceivable aloneness.
The inquisitive, rational part of me commented that I had seen him in the black world as a ball of luminosity. It was possible, therefore, to be in that world with people.
"Only if people follow you around by moving their own assemblage points when you move yours," he replied. "I shifted mine in order to be with you. Otherwise you would have been there alone with the allies."
We stopped walking, and don Juan said that it was time for me to go.
"I want you to bypass all lateral shifts," he said, "and go directly to the next total world; the black world. In a couple of days you'll have to do the same thing by yourself. You won't have time to piddle around. You'll have to do it in order to escape death."
He said that breaking the barrier of perception is the culmination of everything seers do. From the moment that barrier is broken, man and his fate take on a different meaning for warriors. Because of the transcendental importance of breaking that barrier, the new seers use the act of breaking it as a final test. The test consists of jumping from a mountaintop into an abyss while in a state of normal awareness. If the warrior jumping into the abyss does not erase the daily world and assemble another one before he reaches bottom, he dies."
Tonight, I practiced recapitulation and chair silence past 3 AM. I noticed that a part of me resists recapitulating, especially negative experiences, and I have to force myself to do it. The recapitulation session was not very effective, as I could only recall fragmented images of the experiences related to the people I was focusing on.
After recapitulating, I practiced chair silence. My mind was filled with nonstop chatter for about an hour, but eventually, it began to relax. However, I did not experience anything significant, so I decided to lie down on my bed. As I entered sleep paralysis—or the state where one is somewhat awake yet also asleep—I suddenly felt something violently grab my blanket and pull it down. Immediately after, I distinctly felt a force grabbing my genitals and pulling downward. Despite this, I managed to regain control, forcefully break free from the grip, and exit that state.
This is not the first time I have experienced something like this. Even before starting these practices, when I used to train for astral projection, I would often encounter similar sensations while transitioning from wakefulness to dreaming.
Can you provide any insight into this experience?
Can't you get an armchair?
Then you don't have to go to bed if you get tired, and you'll encounter sleep paralysis often until you overcome it.
The Allies LOVE sleep paralysis, and it's likely they always attack when that occurs.
Mostly you get vague beliefs that "Pure Evil" is hovering over you. Causing the paralysis, which is silly because we're always paralyzed during sleep, to prevent thrashing about on the bed and hurting ourselves.
It's the same thing that happens to possums, except while awake.
The younger ones can remain paralyzed for hours!
So never get into thinking that's magic. That's a trick the fake magical systems use. Anything to find some meager experiences to justify taking your money.
Shirley MacLaine had sleep paralysis once and fantasized that Carlos Castaneda (she was obsessed with pretending her magic) raped her while she was paralyzed.
Even accused him of it at a party. Pointing out, it was up her butt... I suppose if it wasn't, that would have been ok?!?
Carlos was a big hollywood party goer it seems, because I've heard at least 3 stories about different parties from him, told at the beginning of class lectures.
There's Shirley... Kind of Chacmoolish, if you ignore the lipstick.
I have a plastic armchair, but it provides poor back support.
By the way, when I experienced sleep paralysis—though I’m not sure if there’s a better term for that state—my eyes were open, and I saw my blanket being violently pulled. However, I am certain it was not happening in the physical world. The entire experience lasted only 10 to 15 seconds.
Women practicing womb dreaming are commonly plagued by that.
I used to get trapped in sleep paralysis while doing chair silence, and had to figure out that your ability to rock back and forth is NOT paralyzed. Maybe so that sleeping babies can roll over enough not to smoother.
You can rock your way out of it. But it's not an easy cure.
So true about entities attacking during sleep paralysis, this has been one of my main problems that I haven't properly solved and get scared. I'm beginning to accept it only gets worse before it gets better with any sorcery practice instead of allowing that to discourage me; on the question about Tensegrity, I'm wondering if the long forms were ever shown originally by CC and his group? Or is that a more recent thing that need to be questioned on its validity? The long forms do contain single passes from the book Magical Passes, but in there nothing is mentioned about long forms.
Sure! Carlos started out with single movement. I kept a list of all of them, and Techno has it in the wiki. But very soon he realized it wasn't working, so he created the "long forms". Saying, if we had to focus on muscle memory, we might be able to remove our internal dialogue.
And there's so many of them... I've animated only a fraction of the long forms, and already I have 13 folders of them, with multiple long forms in half the folders.
And many more to go.
But yes, I never noticed before. There's no long forms in the Tensegrity book!
Could be, that book only has old seer forms.
The old seers didn't do long forms, just individual movements.
However, you can't really say that for sure. I'd be surprised if an old seer or two didn't make long forms at some point.
They just didn't think of them like a martial arts "kata" the way Carlos did, due to liking martial arts and seeing that martial arts schools managed to pass down techniques that way.
And "Brazilian" JJ 😂. Very good points, thank you! Will keep practicing the long forms for their mnemonic benefits as the individual passes are a bit too cumbersome, although sometimes spontaneously my body wants to do them.
Just as south america produced one of the first modifications of an Asian martial art that made it actually work so well it dominated, the same is true of magic.
If you want real magic, you have to go to south america.
If you want ludicrous, greedy make believe, go to Asia.
Not that there aren't exceptions, but I certainly never found any. And I studied with 15 schools, for decades and decades.
I had high hopes for "fixing" Asian martial arts, but found it's impossible.
People there won't look at anything new. And it's shameful to even propose it to an Asian "master".
Naturally, they're no better or skilled than anyone else. Don't even stack up to their best young student.
They're merely in control of their "system", and receiving all the money.
A real pity!
If you like martial arts, you should know that we have the "lightbody techniques" for real.
I've chased Cholita for tens of miles, leaping across the power poles like a cheesy kungfu movie.
On my own I don't have the energy for that, but once Cholita starts running, I can do it.
All awake in case there's any confusion.
You can also switch to your double, and be "invulnerable" for real.
Cholita can be in both at the same time.
There are some Rosicrucian groups that do not charge money but instead offer their teachings freely. These groups emphasize praying to a Divine Father and Mother to assist in awakening within the astral or dream world. Upon achieving lucidity, practitioners are encouraged to pray again so that these divine beings may appear, guide them to a sacred temple, and allow them to learn from the teachers there.
Additionally, these groups stress the importance of transmuting sexual energy, believing it to be directly tied to awareness and dreaming. They also emphasize ethical living, practicing awareness throughout the day, eliminating the ego, and engaging in recapitulation. However, their form of recapitulation is more focused on memory and reviewing the events of the day.
What I would like to know is whether the so-called Rosicrucian masters in the astral or dream world, along with the entities referred to as the Divine Father and Mother, are actually inorganic beings who manifest as divine figures and exchange teachings for energy.
Kindly note that I am not a fanatic of Rosicrucianism or any other tradition. This thought recently crossed my mind, so I wanted to ask for your insight, as you seem experienced in this area. These groups appear to be gaining significant popularity lately, and I was hoping you could shed some light on them.
Now that you are no longer talking about recapitulation (the topic of this post), why don't you go search Rosicrucian instead and read through past posts or comments or join the chat?
Link for the chat:
https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/channel/1rg/castaneda-students-chat?r=%21tKQ1Tkh_QPODHU2ij5Kddg%3Areddit.com&share_id=-o6DKXUD-BS5kTpPuGUBb&utm_medium=web&utm_source=share
It seems that you have nothing better to do in life than spend your time posting, commenting, and reading here 24/7. I also noticed that in some posts, you were complaining about your parents being highly religious and not allowing you to practice. Others pointed out that you were making excuses and seeking attention.
Now, it seems like you're trying to seek attention from me. Here's some good advice: instead of wasting countless hours posting, commenting, and reading here, use that time to practice or find a way to become independent, get your own home, and pursue your practice freely.
I won’t entertain you any further—this is all the attention you will ever get from me.
All wrong I’m afraid! I practiced for 4 years entirely solo without even this subreddit for company so you must be thinking of someone entirely else.
I think I'll stay out of this one. It's pretty hopeless when someone believes the Rosicrucians have real magic.
That's a greedy religion. Not magic.
Point out where I said it's real or possesses magic. Some people I know are part of such groups, and out of curiosity, I asked—nothing more. I do not believe in any system; robots and computers need systems to operate.
Before I started practicing the methods taught, I read in a post that Castaneda mentioned one doesn't need to believe in his sorcery but can experiment and confirm for themselves. That piqued my curiosity, so I started practicing with little to no hope. To my surprise, I had a few experiences, which I have already described to you in an earlier post.
This is the most basic stuff imaginable.
Don Juan said "stopping the world" requires being convinced. If your experiences don't convince you to practice... What will?
In Juann's latest post, let's cut it down to truly necessary questions and focus on making the techniques work.
Is your question truly necessary?
Trying to stay relevant? Haha, did I hurt your self-importance? Imagine practicing for four years just for a fleeting experience. I've practiced for only three to four days, and I'm already having experiences almost every other day.
Also, I made my comment to Dan just an hour ago, and you immediately saw and responded to it—further proving my point that you're a useless attention seeker, scrolling through this sub 24/7, merely quoting words from the book.
Here, let me do you a favor—for the sake of both justice and your mental health, I'll block you so you can finally take a break from your phone.
It's fairly basic. Is your question truly necessary?
I doubt it is, because you asked it out of curiosity and "nothing more".
Then, let's focus on making the techniques work, please, and move on.
Go back and read past posts and learn about the invasions we put up with constantly. Then you'll start to understand.
But you'll also need to understand that there's actually no reality the way you understand it, and that the tiniest change in where your attention is focused can cause an entirely different reality to assemble around you.
So "bad intent" in here is policed carefully.
Sorcery always comes under attack. That's been true since the Olmecs were wiped out thousands of years ago, and true of when the Toltecs were also destroyed in the 1200s.
Our magic hid out in lineages after that, but even while hiding in lineages, outside inquisitors and such put our people to death.
So they became very careful about outsiders.
The same invasion by outsiders bent on stopping real magic happened to Carlos, who on trying to teach for free in 1980 had so many hecklers show up that he could not. He even had concrete death threats from specific groups which required him to hire an armed bodyguard, and scientologists attacked him twice.
If you read that Carlos was debunked, it's primarily from scientologists. And a few jealous anthropologists.
To protect us from outsiders Carlos created workshops, had to charge to pay for locked door convention centers, and we ended up with people taking money to help others.
A bad thing.
Now we're back to trying to help others for free in public, but we have to be extremely vigilant or this place will be destroyed by angry invaders.
There's no way you can understand this until you literally hold a dream bubble in the air, looking to see if you'd like to zip into that dream.
Fully awake, eyes wide open, completely sober.
You zip in, by picking something familiar in the dream bubble, and focusing your attention on it.
Wow, that's just shocking. I personally hold the person you have attacked in high regard and I' m sure many others do here too. No one here is trying to seek attention from you, why on earth would we. There's so much more to See ..than ..that
Is it normal to experience negativity while recapitulation on some difficult moments of your life? I get that most times ideally you feel a surge of energy and freedom from those past hang ups, but I hope progress doesn't depend on always feeling bliss after a recap session; or maybe I'm doing it wrong since I had revived those heavy emotions instead of getting that detachment you would think. Last time I realized how really self destructive, selfish and indulgent I had been, and even became upset at how those events marked the beginning of a very low down spiral, all based on idiotic attachments and vanity. Maybe this realization is the healing part, which as any healing can be painful at times? I just hope I'm not wasting my time if instead my recap should give me some kind of happy mood every time
Sure. It's so bad, some women who were abused give up recapping.
Bliss after recap?
I never felt it!
I once teleported from inside my recap crate to the other side of my apartment, and then later I was quite pleased with myself.
But bliss?
Nope. More like dizzy. Or submerged.
Bliss is identified with moving your assemblage point at least to the green zone on the J curve, but no further than the early red zone.
And then to the left. Bliss = left shift in a region where you still have a "self", which has such a limited point of view that bliss can even make sense.
Bliss might even be an "insect buzz".
Recap on the other hand moves it everywhere you had it, during your entire life!
Remember, "bliss" is a con game used by fake magical systems, to give you permission and an easy method for pretending to have results.
You might as well call it "superiority" instead of bliss. Because that's how it gets used by followers.
Even Jesus freaks claim to be in "the bliss of the holy spirit"!
It's similar to Reni's claim that her most advanced (expensive) course will get you "power".
Then you can run around pretending that when the light turns green on the road, as soon as you get to the intersection, it's your "power".
The entire Buddhist system is based on the bliss scam.
Look at the grinning, lazy buddha statues.
It there is actually any meaningful sensation of bliss, it might be "seeing". But that's filled with thousands of unexplainable sensations, and no one would focus on something as simplistic as "bliss".
Just for fun, I'll even dare to say that "bliss" is a test of who's faking their magic.
If that's all they have to talk about, don't listen to a thing they say.
They're like some stoner going on about physical effects from doing heroin, as if those could ever get you anywhere.
Now Donuts on the other hand...
Those are legit.
Haha nice last remark 😂 So this is very good! A sign to keep working on that direction on not to let the secondary effects of practice deter me. I was a bit doubtful if the rekindling of those negative emotions were a bad sign. This information is very helpful.
Well... Keep in mind that Taisha and Florinda got asked about this all the time, and once in a while they'd recommend avoiding things that produce bad moods, since there's so many other things to recap.
If you do those "easy things" first, I suspect they were implying, then you can go back to the difficult stuff later.
And also don't forget that along the path of sorcery, all sorts of things try to stop you. And they "feel" like something meaningful.
But it's just that foreign installation trying to protect itself.
I've been suffering from the "why isn't there even more like there was last week" problem the last couple of days.
Likely I have a minor cold, but my expectations are to make significant progress each day, with some new amazing discovery.
And if those are tiny, I get the feeling "maybe this isn't worth all the work!"
It's like a starving Chimp walking towards the shore of the ocean to get some muscles, which gets discouraged by the difficulty of getting down the rocky cliff, and begins to think it's better to go hungry for a while, to go look for a fruiting tree.
(I've been watching too many Youtube anthropology videos).
Speaking of which, did everyone know that humans are not the first to make boats, and cross ocean patches between land masses?
Which means, pre-humans or Neanderthals beat us to boat making.
In the case I saw, it wasn't even a neanderthal yet. Just some pre-human creature.
They chopped down logs with their stone tools, and put hot coals from their fires in the middle, to hollow out the log slowly, over a few days.
An easy way to make a canoe!
Yeah I had to pause for the day and continue the recap the next day as it was getting intense. But as I go I see it gets manageable. It's like cleaning under the carpet, easier to ignore the build up but you know you'll pay later. Or suck it up and start doing it one step at a time. I think as long as you realize you do what you can now, patience and action. It happened once when I begun work at a can center long time ago, I felt it was impossible. The coach told me "just do it". Take the next call, you will get the call done within the timeframe.
1) it's good.
2)we don't know, it's one of the things we can't explain.
3) Are you tensing your body when doing it? Imo it's not supposed to be painful, when it is there's something going on physicaly.
Regarding 2.
"Another year passed. He did not prosper, but there was one thing in which he succeeded beyond his expectations: he made a total recapitulation of his life. He understood then why he loved and could not leave those children, and why he could not stay with them, and he also understood why he could neither act one way nor the other."
Another year passed, beyond his expectations. That does not read as a few weeks or months, and it reads as an incredible thing.
"He was so utterly convinced of his end that his wife and her children waited with him - in a gesture of solidarity, they too wanted to die. All four sat in perfect immobility, night after night, without fail, and recapitulated their lives while they waited for death."
Only after finishing a total recapitulation of his life, Don Juan recapitulated every single night, without fail.
Keep in mind, that Don Juan had been shown "countless sorcerers' options" by his benefactor, and you have not been shown "countless sorcerers' options".
I have been experiencing the pressure on the head upon practicing inner silence; I don't want to spook you but my guess it's inorganic beings, maybe flyers or another kind, I'm not sure, a reaction against the silence. If you keep going harder it will start to detach from your head, it's like a very stubborn leech. Years ago when I was more committed I got to a point where it detached partially and it was like an octopus or a spider desperately using all it's tentacles to try to reattach, that can be scary and painful but it won't kill you. It ended up reattached, as this is not a one time practice, it's a life long struggle.
When you force silence, do you put pressure around your forehead? I do that.
What do you mean? How do you put pressure? With your hand? And for what reason? No, I feel the pressure coming from outside when I'm trying to quiet the mind intensely. Then when I stop trying it gets worse for a moment until the regular inner dialogue returns and distracts me from my purpose, then that pressure is gone. I believe it's some predatory energy that's attached like a leech and the silence bothers it a lot but takes a long time and perseverance to get any progress against it.
It's not the hand; it's difficult to describe. It's as if I try to tense the area inside my forehead when the mental chatter begins.
I don't think that's a good thing. If anything, your silence should relieve tension. Focus on other parts of the body so the energy doesn't get blocked there. Intend to relax that area and disperse the tension downwards. In Taisha Abelar's book she was taught to do that using breath, chewing your saliva and breathing deeply with the lower abdomen slowly in longer. Her mentor learned in China also according to the book.
I myself find that it works when I just keep intending silence but it takes longer and you must not obsesses or rush. That might be the source of tension. Just focus on the silence, not on results. Just in the moment. And when you feel the tension on the head, just remove your attention from the spot and stop tensing it, hard to explain but you get it when you become aware you're tensing, then you relax by letting go and removing focus. It can help to notice with a light attention to feel the tension around your forehead, and relax it, and do the same for the rest of the face, ears, neck, then you can go down to your feet. Do a few abdominal breaths. If you put your fingers below the naval that helps.
Note, I'm not an expert or teacher. Just few things I have read and experimented with, and still have a lot of practice to do myself.
Another thing, instead of tensing when chatter comes, just observe it. You can lower the volume too until it fades. Then repeat and repeat. I guess I understand you're attempting to actually force the silence. Nothing wrong with that, but you can alternate between forcing it, and then letting go and observing. Tension and relaxing, like Tensegrity? 😁
All right, thanks. I'll experiment with your suggestion. However, I can't practice breathing methods as they are not suitable for my health.
During your practices, especially in the half-awake, half-asleep state, have you ever experienced something violently grabbing you around the groin area and pulling you downward?
I have experienced that in sleep paralysis, laying down not as part of a practice but waking up from a dream into that limbo state, since I was a little child. Probably since before I know how to speak. It was some shadow and would grab my from the sides and lower back, take me under the bed. It would cause immense pain like electrical shocks, I could see sparks. In that state I couldn't move. Until later on I let it grab me and roll me over. I don't want to get too deep into that but you shouldn't worry or focus on this. That alone attracts those energies in my experience. Learn to accept the universe is mysterious. But be practical. Fear feeds such forces that drain us. It's hard to get away from those situations if they happen to you unless you gently tell yourself not to mind or bother about it at all and just don't give it any importance. I think death itself is a more concerning problem and it will happen some day. So your best bet is to continue practice. Inner silence will only give you more energy and eventually will create a shield. I write this after many years of indulgence and lack of practice, and resuming the practice again.
One more thing about those experiences, focusing on them can lead to obsession, I talk from experience. And then might dissuade you from this path altogether. It took me 20 years avoiding until recently I realized death is a worse uncertainty that whatever those things can do and we don't have time to hide from the challenge. And finally, just by intending not to have them in your awareness, I mean, to do over silence about those forces, will deter them.
I think your way of attempting silence is trying to attack the thoughts as they come, forcing them off. It's worth experimenting but that might create more thoughts and tension. I suggest to try different things, and one of them is something in which you're not confronting your thoughts directly, but by directing your attention away from them; one such way is described by Carlos Castaneda, "listening to the sounds of the world". It's a very gentle, yet relentless practice. Just listen to the sounds that are happening right now. Your mind will wonder, even get distracted in associations a sounds might bring, a memory, etc. You just go back to the sound that is sounding. Over and over. Without feeling upset, you just realize your chatting, go back to sounds. Could be a distant plane, the sink dripping water, birds, the AC, everything, even inner sounds (I hear a couple high pitch and when I'm deep I hear a low note rumble).
Are there any practices you could recommend apart from recapitulation and chair silence? A dark room is not an option for me at the moment, as I don’t have the necessary materials to create complete darkness.