Struggling with shutting off internal dialogue

Don’t stop practicing, practice more, try turning off internal dialogue while driving, walking, working, every chance you get. Silencing the internal dialogue is a forever struggle for everyone. You’ll get there.

I read somewhere in the sub that relaxing your tongue helps, it helped me.

Jadey’s series for Inner Silence:

Mimic the internal dialogue. Doing so shows you the spaces between thought and releases the identification between them all

There are different techniques. You can try them but it's better not to mix them at the same session. One mentioned in the Castaneda books is to listen to the external sounds. And from there, the book The Power of Now mentions to listen to the silence. Also when it's quiet, you may hear internal sounds, like a high pitched one.

Another method I read is to sense the body. Another to follow your breathing, and in Taisha Abelar book, her teacher tells her to breath with the lower abdomen, not moving the chest, to focus the energy away from the mind.

Lastly, as a temporary last resource for difficult moments when the mind goes wild, you could just let it run for a while but distance yourself from it gently by observing it; you just watch it and listen to its sound.

I wonder if someone here can add to this and has experimented with a technique I've read about: to just ignore the inner dialogue. And how it contrasts with the opposite technique of watching the thoughts. This seems contradictory but may induce silence at times, I'm just not sure if they're equally useful, just wondering if more experienced people know anything about this

Here something that I put together a few days ago for the Overview of the Practices page from various sections of Castaneda’s Silent Knowledge publication. With some very slight paraphrasing and editing:

"Don Juan further explained that the sorcerers who lived in Mexico in ancient times, and who established his lineage, were capable of reaching silent knowledge after entering its matrix: inner silence. He said that inner silence was an accomplishment of such tremendous importance for them that they set it up as the essential condition of sorcery.

Don Juan put such emphasis on silent knowledge that I coveted it. I wanted to get right away to inner silence. I felt that I didn't have a moment to lose. When I asked don Juan to give me a succinct explanation of the procedures involved, he laughed at me.

"To venture into the world of sorcerers," he said, "is not like learning to drive a car. To drive a car, you need manuals and instructions. To enter into inner silence, you need to intend it.

"But how can I intend it?" I insisted.

"The only way you could intend it is by intending it," he declared.

One of the most difficult things for a man of our day to accept is the lack of procedure. Modern man seems to be in the throes of manuals, praxes, methods, steps leading to. Modern man is ceaselessly taking notes, making diagrams, deeply involved in the "know-how." But in the world of sorcerers, don Juan said, procedures and rituals are mere designs to attract and focus attention. They are devices used to force a focusing of interest and determination. They have no other value.

"To accomplish any feat in sorcery, there cannot be procedures, or steps to be followed, but one single abstract act that defines it all: the act, of pragmatically reinforcing our link with the force that permeates the universe, a force which sorcerers call intent. Since we are alive and conscious, we are already intimately related to intent. What we need, sorcerers say, is to make that link the realm of our conscious acts, and that act of becoming conscious of our link with intent is another way of defining silent knowledge."

Don Juan taught that inner silence must be gained by a consistent pressure of discipline. He said that it has to be accrued, or that it has to be stored, bit by bit, second by second. In other words, one has to force oneself to be silent, if it is only for a few seconds. Don Juan stated that if one is persistent, persistence overcomes habit, and thus, one arrives at a threshold of accrued seconds or minutes, a threshold which varies from person to person. If, for instance, the threshold of inner silence is for any given individual, ten minutes, once this mark is reached, inner silence happens by itself, by its own accord, so to speak."

And something new for the main Silence Wiki Page, also from Castaneda's Silent Knowledge publication (a sorcery primer), slightly paraphrased and edited:

"I can tell you that it is true that every time we execute a magical pass, we are, indeed, altering the basic structures of our beings. We are putting a dam on a flow that we were taught to take as an inalterable string of things."

In a faltering voice that didn't seem to be mine, I asked don Juan to give me an example of blocking off the flow he was talking about. I told him that I wanted to visualize it in my mind.

"In your mind? You had better learn to call things by their name. What you call your mind is not your mind. Sorcerers are convinced that our minds are extraneous things that have been put on each one of us. Accept it, without any further explanation at this moment about who or what put it on us, or how it was put there."

I had another wave of the same threatening sensation as before. I felt it this time more clearly. The wave didn't stem from me, yet it was attached to me. Don Juan was doing something, to me mysteriously positive and terribly threatening at the same time. I sensed it as an attempt to cut a thin film that seemed to be glued to me. His eyes were fixed on mine with an unblinking stare.

He moved his eyes away and began to talk without looking at me anymore. "I'll give you an example," he said. "For instance, I should be prey to the conditions common to old age. If I went to see a doctor, upon seeing me, he would assume that I must be an old Indian, plagued with uncertainties, frustrations and bad diet, all of this, naturally, resulting in the expected and predictable ailments of senility."

"I don't have any such problems not because I am stronger than the average man or because of my genetic frame, but because my magical passes have made my body break through any patterns of reaction and thoughts that result in those ailments. I can truthfully say that every time I crack my joints, following the execution of a magical pass, I am blocking off the flow of expectations and behavior that ordinarily cause such conditions..."

...It was annoying to have to admit that even though don Juan was old enough to be my grandfather, in comparison, I was stiff, opinionated, and repetitious.

Senile.

He, on the other hand, was fresh, inventive, agile, resourceful; in short, he possessed something which, although I was young, I did not: youth. He delighted in telling me repeatedly that being young was not in any way a deterrent to senility.

Following a burst of energy that seemed to explode inside me, I openly admitted my chagrin. "How is it possible, don Juan," I said, "that you could be more youthful than I?”

"I have vanquished my mind." he said, opening his eyes wide to denote bewilderment. "I don't have a mind to tell me that it is time to be old. I don't honor agreements in which I didn't participate. Remember this: it is not merely a slogan for sorcerers to say that they do not honor agreements in which they did not participate; and that to be plagued by old age is but one such agreement.”

Perform Tensgrity during a dark room, not before. It is also worth trying the stones of silence, they help well.

I am pretty ignorant and new to this work. Something that has helped me silence the inner dialogue is meditation — to focus on my breath and then when I notice that I am distracted by my mind, to label it all “thinking” — a nice, generic, neutral label—no matter the tone or texture of the dialogue, and to come back to the breath, over and over…disrupting the thought cycles without judgment.

Also I have seen this idea of ‘intending’ come up in The Art of Dreaming, can anyone help me understand the deeper meaning of it? I was thinking maybe it has something to do with dropping the limitations of language?

https://youtube.com/@thenagualzone?si=kYnuUdM_DReqc03e
Anam has this in his early videos. Awareness and the hunt for a sense of self-importance! this leads to a stop in dialogue! if you really do it every day!! then the term is from three years and up! (Castaneda 4 years. me too)

There is a simple exercise I do. I watch a 30 second countdown on my phone. I count along with the voice in my head but I only voice the even numbers. So you only have to hold your mind silent for one second at a time. You get many moments of experiencing what it feels like to successfully restrain yourself from using the voice in your head. 

It is a simple task but I find it engaging enough and short enough for my mind not to get distracted too much. My hope is that it is exercising the same muscles required to hold the mind quiet. I haven't been doing it long enough to say it is definitely beneficial though. I set a reminder to do it once every hour and try to silence my mind between sessions also. I do feel that I am improving at quieting my mind but still have a long way to go.

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