La Gorda's Anger

This is a question about quieting the mind when it's feeding negative emotions, which are the most draining; in one of Castaneda's books, he relates how one time he was with Don Juan and La Gorda was jealous and thinking they must be gossiping about her, which led her to slap Carlos very hard. He was at first surprised, then became upset, and then finally he realized he was reacting emotionally, that is, with the same anger that fueled La Gorda's aggression; with tears, elated about his realization, he told Don Juan what he had last uncovered, only to have the latter tell him this was an emotional realization and didn't have much weight, it wouldn't really effect a permanent change, and that what he needed was some sort of cold assessment.

I always took this for granted as of I really understood, but now I'm trying to figure this out. If your immediate, after the fact self observation isn't enough, what exactly is Don Juan asking Carlos to do in order to accomplish a true change towards defeating the angry mind? What else could make you eventually not react emotionally?

Is he asking to meditate on the issue at a different time, in general? I'm sure you can also recapitulate a related incident, is this all?

23 Comments

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u/danl999 15 points 2025-02-26 20:46

You're looking at this from the point of view of someone living a haphazard life based on the false promises of a bad social structure, trying to figure out how to accomplish that kind of self-control without any resources. Without having done any work at all to learn.

I live with Cholita, given to me by Carlos the way La Gorda was given to Carlos, for a petty tyrant. Carlos imported Cholita from Mexico, likely to help with selling off the lineages' art collection, completely took over her life, and then realizing she'd eventually go stark raving mad after he was no longer around to protect her, he put me in charge of protecting her. Knowing it would make a good magical match.

Cholita tries to murder me from time to time. And daily she's likely to do something else, far worse than a simple slap in the face.

She once took a razor blade and let the air out of my car tire.

And used to regularly egg it, or scratch it with a key.

But I don't take it personally, because I know full well why I have Cholita around.

She does magic!

And normally, I have to work like a dog to see real magic.

But Cholita provides it for free, even lifting me into the air with one finger, or walking through my locked bedroom door (I have to lock it because of her), in her double.

She once got annoyed with me for mentioning that Carlos wrote you could move objects merely by looking at them, so she made the little dim sum plate on our table, in a Chinese restaurant, move for me.

Three times!

So you're thinking about this from a point of view of pretending, not of actually having magic as the #1 driving force in your life.

That's the "path with heart".

Not workshop hugs, or reading the books over and over.

The path with heart is having your own magical skills grow daily, for the rest of your life, so that you no longer dread the future.

You're in the right place.

Get to work, and this will seem easy to you.

What you need, is to move your assemblage point to the orange zone... Carlos described it for us in private classes, and also in his last publication.

Over there, there's no "self" to be offended.

This picture shows the fun you can have if you move your assemblage point there, relative to how far into that zone you get.

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u/residentatzero 2 points 2025-02-26 20:56

Thank you Dan. So to accomplish this (to the Orange Zone), I'm not fully understanding the process in the diagram, but I'm assuming it involves basically Dark Room practice (which I have to confess have yet to start, I do Tensegrity in normal light), and recapitulation and inner silence? Or do you have a more direct explanation of this process? I'm truly interested.

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u/danl999 11 points 2025-02-26 21:23

All of the techniques Carlos gave us in the books move your assemblage point, but ALL of them require removal of the internal dialogue.

Darkroom was designed by his primary Ally which is almost certainly "Little Smoke", who got frustrated that 20 years after his death not a single person had learned any sorcery.

I'm sure it's little smoke because she used to follow Cholita around, as a little white puff of smoke the size of a golf ball.

Little Smoke concluded everyone was doing nothing but pretending, and so she devised a path to learn where you can't fool yourself.

That's darkroom.

However, if you actually follow the instructions for recapitulation, it also moves your assemblage point to the orange zone.

Which is where the scenes you are trying to remember, become fully visible like a video in the air.

To zip into them, you have to keep moving the assemblage point, to the purple zone.

Then finally Tensegrity in light ought to work also, but no one has made it do that reliably, so far. I think they just keep thinking to themselves, and never learn to remove their internal dialogue.

So darkroom is the fastest, since there's pressure on you to see those purple puffs, and you know the only way that will happen, is if you can remove your internal dialogue for a full 2 minutes.

You can't tell yourself you did, the way bad members of our community do. No puffs, no silence!

If there's a faster method than darkroom, we haven't discovered it yet.

Although Jadey's Tensegrity classes might be where it would come from eventually.

If you move to the orange zone, you REALLY do have no "self" anymore.

That's why it's called the "place of no pity".

That doesn't mean you're ruthless towards other people.

It's about removing the self-pity which holds our assemblage point up at the blue line. Directly over our shoulder blades, projected back behind you at a slight upwards angle.

So it's YOU who now has no pity, for yourself. And thus, a slap from La Gorda would only be a curious thing, not something to get angry about.

Carlos showed us stuff like where the assemblage point is currently located in private classes, using people to demonstrate on, putting his right palm where their assemblage point was located.

You by the way, can learn to see those assemblage points.

Stellar Hatch was partly given to us for that purpose.

Because it lures the assemblage point down below our feet, and then up into space.

It's pretty easy to see when it's directly below or above us!

If you can remove the internal dialogue.

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u/residentatzero 1 points 2025-02-26 22:03

Thanks so much Dan, this is very helpful, very detailed and direct.

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u/danl999 7 points 2025-02-26 22:31

You REALLY get to stretch into an infinite line, and touch stars!

A foot at a time, unfortunately...

So never miss a practice.

All of the techniques in the books work exactly as written.

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u/residentatzero 2 points 2025-02-26 22:36

It's so easy to slack and miss practice, to postpone it for tomorrow, which never comes, so many excuses and honestly this maybe become weeks, months, years. For some of us who "want" to practice but are lazy and will do it "tomorrow" isn't that our way of "pretending" as you mention it? I guess there's only one way and it's now or never. And if we do now, to keep doing every day

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u/danl999 7 points 2025-02-27 12:43

That's why people forced to learn to play in the band in elementary school, have the advantage over talented people.

But it's possible you could overcome your laziness using stalking.

But not pretending. Find what you're easily going to do each day, such as go for a walk at lunch, and incorporate your practices into the walk.

Tensegrity can be done while walking, and there's some arguments that it's easier to learn ro remove your internal dialogue, while walking. Because you can focus on your peripheral vision which helps keep the mind from focusing on specific objects which stir the internal dialogue

Use of peripheral vision can be your "dark".

Will that work?

I once walked into another world. Literally.

So did Ralph who made the cheesy video after Carlos died.

Of course, it's going to be easier to duplicate what others are doing successfully.

Regardless of what that his.

But you could be a trailblazer and be the one who comes up with the "too lazy to practice" method.

Being a trailblazer would imply finding signs the assemblage point is moving while doing that technique, and figuring out which tensegrity moves can be incorporated into walking.

Just one is enough, but better if you can incorporate 5, even if they're just single movements.

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u/proninyaroslav 1 points 2025-02-27 14:29

Could you suggest which movements (or which series) would be best suited for Tensegrity while walking, so as not to attract unnecessary attention from other people? Yes, I understand that this is a personal matter for everyone, but it would be easier for shy beginners like me to navigate this diversity of Tensengrity.

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u/danl999 5 points 2025-02-27 15:42

"Preparing for intent" has some which are mostly just foot or leg movements.

Just because those repeat back and forth, doesn't mean you can't use part of those, with a pause, and then the next part on the next step.

It's a pity Cleargreen didn't continue trying to use the original movements, to make new applications for them without adding any fake passes.

Fake passes are HORRIBLE! Once you can "see" what the passes are for.

Their purpose is to disturb the bundling of emanations. Which is the purpose of any not-doing.

To add a discordant element to the current bundling of our daily prison world, so as to let infinity break through the cracks.

A fake magical pass only reinforces our blue line river of shit reality.

But you can certainly apply the old ones, to make it easier on those who can't find the time to do them "officially".

Such as "Magical passes you can incorporate into walking".

I tried to get Cholita to do that with dancing, but she said, "I'm not going to DATE you!!!!"

Still, you can absolutely integrate magical passes into all of your daily activities which involve movement.

Who could object to Cleargreen doing that kind of work, rather than inventing ludicrous fake tensegrity passes such as "how to call the allies when drunk", or "the attention seeking phases of the moon"?

Greed buried real magic starting around 6000 years ago when money was invented.

I believe DVD4 was Cleargreen's first attempt to make new movements, but they were "purists" mostly.

So it's not too horrific for me to want to pay my animators to convert it.

But watching it, I surely don't recall that being taught anywhere in private classes, and all of the tensegrity forms were first taught in private classes, before a workshop.

With me attending all sunday classes and all workshops but Barcelona.

So if I don't remember it, it seems likely to be made up by Cleargreen.

And DVD #4? It came out after Carlos was dead...

If anyone knows for sure where DVD 4 came from, I'd sure like to know.

But, it seems to be just connected previous single passes.

And it's not a bad place for you to look for stuff to use in walking.

Find DVD 4 on the web, or look for "unbending intent, long form".

And select pieces!

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u/proninyaroslav 1 points 2025-02-27 15:59

Thank you!

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u/residentatzero 1 points 2025-02-28 07:10

Dan the DVD#4 is mainly the passes from the book, the series for intent are the first chapter. At the end they briefly show the Saber tooth tiger which that might be questionable, the only reference to this is from his dreaming encounter in which the tiger taught him how to breath that way. I don't know if Carlos ever taught it though.

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u/danl999 7 points 2025-02-28 12:07

I sure don't recall those. That's an awful lot to memorize.

I'd expect I could remember that one!

There were a couple of forms done by two women only. A knife or short sword form, and possibly the saber toothed tiger.

"Affection for the Energy Body" was a women only form too, by my recollecitons which aren't perfect so far.

Once I can time travel to Dance Home regularly, maybe I can straighten that one out.

But it seemed to be an emerging form which never made it into workshops because Carlos got too ill. I only heard of it at the time, and maybe saw the two women working on it. Giggling about the exclusivity.

However, if women made it up (the idea of hugging???), at least it starts with a legal move, and at least the idea of coaxing the energy body to take on a human form, is a real thing from the books.

And it will!

So I officially endorse that one, even if the origin is dubious.

I have some enhancements to make it take you to real looking phantom worlds at the end, but I'll leave those for a cartoon someday when I can put it into context, so it doesn't become an official part of it.

Carlos made a push to get women to succeed towards the end, having given up entirely on men.

He realized that all the men were absolutely hopeless, each with their own bid for power and money, and none with any serious goal to actually learn magic.

But women tend to follow the leader, so perhaps he thought he could get the women to at least understand what we were doing, before he died.

Or maybe the witches put him up to it.

So he ended up with "naked not-doings", which also contributed to people slandering him after he was gone, as if at 72 years old all he really wanted was to see naked women.

Oddly the only country I know of with a severe shortage of sex, is the USA.

Anywhere else, it's not difficult to get as many young women as you like.

And it's not even shameful.

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u/Top_Royal_2197 1 points 2025-03-01 16:29

I'm reading through Florinda's books now and she discussed a concept of shadows. If you stay too long with someone, especially if they die, your life becomes like theirs was. From The Witches Dream:

> "It looks like Candelaria thinks very little of your questions," dona Mercedes said. "I personally think that Octavio Cantu couldn't avoid stepping into Victor Julio's shoes. He had very little strength: That's why he was caught by that mysterious something I talked to you about; that something more mysterious than fate. Witches call it a witch's shadow."

>"Octavio Cantu was very young and strong," Candelaria said all of a sudden, "but he sat too long under Victor Julio's shadow."

> "What is she talking about?" I asked dona Mercedes.

> "When people are fading away, especially at the moment they die, they create with that mysterious something a link with other persons, a sort of continuity," dona Mercedes explained. "That's why children turn out just like their parents. Or those who take care of old people follow into the steps of their wards."

> Candelaria spoke again. "Octavio Cantu sat too long in Victor Julio's shadow. And the shadow sapped him. Victor Julio was weak, but upon dying the way he did, his shadow became very strong."

A few years ago, long before I knew anything about sorcery, I quit my job and moved to LATAM. This is because I saw the life of my coworkers at my 9-5. They had worked there for 5 or even 10 years and I knew this wasn't what I wanted to end up like. After quitting I received what I can only describe in retrospect as an intense intent gift, like the things I would see as a child before falling asleep. At the time I was scared and made it stop though.

> Oddly the only country I know of with a severe shortage of sex, is the USA.

Can confirm. The latinas don't have a stick up their ass. And if they do, it's because they want it there.

> Anywhere else, it's not difficult to get as many young women as you like.

I'm about to quit my job again and this time move to Thailand. I'm hoping for another intent gift and this time I won't stop it even if I'm scared. The legendary dating scene in Bangkok won't hurt either

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u/danl999 5 points 2025-03-01 16:53

I've explored those around the world, while being celibate.

Kind of a bummer, but I did learn to hang out with beautiful women, without thinking that has to lead to sex.

In fact they have dark energy.

And gift it to men, if the men please them.

Completely removed from sex itself, although the two things get confused by everyone.

I suspect that the Naguals in lineages exploited this. But some of them couldn't resist the sex part, or didn't think it was morally wrong, so you had men like Julian.

Contrasted to don Juan.

Ellias however, took 5 lineage women as his wives.

Cholita likes to torture me once in a while, by walking around in a see through shirt, wearing only panties under it.

Just not often enough for my taste!

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u/Top_Royal_2197 1 points 2025-03-01 19:08

Completely removed from sex itself, although the two things get confused by everyone.

Well I'm one of those confused people. Is this a general pleasure related to anything the woman likes like shopping? I believe you mentioned a few times Choilta likes that. Or do we do something pleasing to their double?

Regardless, I like making beautiful women happy, if there's a sorcerers option to this I'm all ears.

Ellias however, took 5 lineage women as his wives.

#goals

Cholita likes to torture me once in a while, by walking around in a see through shirt, wearing only panties under it.

Just not often enough for my taste!

A teasing sorceress... I wish the books spoke more on them

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u/danl999 4 points 2025-03-01 19:38

Women give you dark energy in exchange for things you do for them.

Shopping being one of them.

But even doing chores in the yard gets me rewarded by Cholita, and it's nothing to sneeze at.

You can't fake what happens during darkroom when you get loaded up with energy from a witch.

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u/residentatzero 1 points 2025-05-03 02:40

Interesting. Can this be explored (getting females dark energy) in a celibate friendship? Nowadays sex is such an expectation (even if as you say not fulfilled that often) that only time you see this is with male gay friends of women, they have strong bonds without the troublesome romantic stuff. I also wonder if the woman needs to be celibate or she having sex when someone else, would that impede that beneficial dark energy sharing with you?

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u/danl999 2 points 2025-05-03 12:24

Sure!

But you have to have real sorcery skills first, or else you'll focus on that only, and it'll become an excuse for never doing any real work.

Stray women often fall for the "I'm a male Nagual gathering my 4 winds" trick.

Once in a while they end up commenting in here, where we discover they've pretty much been abused for years, unwilling to realize their "Nagual" is just a sociopath pretending to be a sorcerer.

Our entire community of millions did that same pretending, for the first 50 years after the books of Carlos came out.

Mostly they pretended to be "impeccable warriors", but they also engaged in pretend "erasing personal history", and they pranked their friends and called it "stalking".

You need to be able to gaze directly into the Nagual itself, fully awake and eyes wide open, before you could honestly appraise the results of dark energy.

You have to SEE IT, with your own eyes.

And until the last 5 years or so, we had none who could do that.

Because none got serious and followed the instructions from Carlos and the books.

Female "dark energy" is kind of a side topic that's rather thin in the books, but present. And combined with lecture notes, you can learn that women store it in their womb.

So womb dreaming not only tries to activate that "second brain", but it also causes the stored dark energy to merge more with the awareness of women.

Speaking of women and dark energy, last night around midnight Cholita decided to move heavy furniture into the bathroom.

It's not possible, but that's what I heard as clear as anything, from the other side of a single wall.

I suppose she could have been moving it elsewhere in the house, but it sure sounded like it was into the bathroom, and she kept slamming the door there.

It went on for at least 10 minutes.

I never go check, because if she thinks I'm checking up on her activities, she stops doing them when I'm around.

Earlier she was having a heated argument with a person I couldn't see when I got home. She stopped the instant I came in the door, but I was lingering by the mailbox outside and heard quite a bit of it.

Normally she knows instantly when I arrive in my car outside, but this time she must have been too involved in the discussion to notice I was home.

Before moving all the heavy furniture into the bathroom, she got into another disagreement with the being she was talking to.

When I left for work at 4AM, there was no sign anything at all had happened.

But there was a lovely floral fragrance, unmistakably from real flowers.

Which weren't anywhere to be found.

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u/residentatzero 2 points 2025-05-03 13:01

Sure the last thing I want to is use sorcery as an excuse to manipulate or use others, I want to stalk myself and use personal interactions seldom, only to aid me become self aware (as they can bring up stuff). Your Cholita stories are hilarious, this one reminds me of the only time I remember having magic in my life, I was about 5 years old, my sister 4 and my brother 2; we were living in an apartment with my parents in the other room, we had been awake all night playing with our toys and stuffed animals and it was dawn, I vividly remember the toys were talking, moving, jumping, floating around in a crazy circus, these were not motorized or anything, it was magic but not in our imagination at all, and it was a shared experience I have asked them over the years and surprisingly they have slowly forgotten. I haven't. So, when my dad came into our room to turn off the lights, the toys immediately fell dead to the ground (like pretending, playing dead) so my dad couldn't see them. Now I guess it was his first attention affected our second attention.

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u/danl999 2 points 2025-05-03 13:15

That likely had help from your childhood Ally, which is almost surely still around.

I never thought of it before, but the same way inorganic beings play with children in dreams, and even teach them to do more, they likely do while they're awake if they can get the children into a receptive state.

Unfortunately, children have the same problem adults do when it comes to magic.

A desire to gain something else from it, not related to the actual magic.

Ulterior motives. Social status.

So for example if you ever watch children planning a game they want to play, they spend 90% of the time planning the game, deciding who gets to be what and what the rules are, and only 10% actually playing it before they get bored and move on.

Perhaps the only cure for that is siblings who have gotten used to the power struggle, or with clear age differences that make power struggles irrelevant, and so might end up playing without ulterior motives for a while.

That's when an IOB could help them out.

But not while they're deciding "who gets to be the kitten"?

If I get around to making cartoons about the family from the bookstore down the sidewalk from Dance HOme, I'll have to do one about how the IOBs can play with children, but once the power struggles start, they can't get through.

It's a good analogy for our own situation.

There's the book store, down the sidewalk from Dance HOme. They had a good section with the books of Carlos back then, in the 90s.

But as Techno pointed out, most bookstores only have the books of evil men like Miguel or Armando, and don't carry Carlos' books anymore.

Thus I plan to remain in the revenge business for a long time to come. On behalf of Carlos.

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u/residentatzero 1 points 2025-05-03 13:22

Yeah I cringe when I see parents cheering their kids thinking them so adorable when they engage in attitudes that start their miserable patterns they become prisoners of for the rest of their lives. When the kids throw a tantrum, fight or express horribly egotistical emotions. The other kind of parents don't help either by getting mad at them and punishing forcing them to hide and connive their selfishness. To truly help them they would have to forget about parenting and "lead by example", so it's the blind leading the blind to the edge of the cliff

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u/residentatzero 1 points 2025-02-26 22:39

One more thing, besides allocated practice time, say, during work, or while on errands, even maybe when watching TV or listening to music, it's best to still intend inner silence? I feel like this is a rhetorical question and it would be very advantageous to do so

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u/danl999 9 points 2025-02-27 12:52

Yes. When people insist forcing silence makes them ill or gives them pain, one possible path they can take is to try to shut it off all the time, to get their body used to it.

It's unpleasant at first, but when you get good at it, it's wonderful!

Magic starts to be visible in the world.

This morning for example, a black blob moved under my car as I was leaving for work.

I thought it was Cholita's weird stray black cat, but it wouldn't leave from under the car, so I pulled out very slowly and stopped.

And went back to look around, but there was no cat.

I have to allow that maybe it wasn't a cat at all. Especially since it was sitting in the middle of our lawn (which Cholita waters constantly), while light rain was dropping everywhere.

It was soaking up rain.

Not very cat like.

On the other hand, Cholita has weird effects on animals.