Hello everybody! Beginner here. I’ve been trying out darkroom for the past few weeks and I have steadily increased the duration and consistency of my practice. I had a bit of luck the first time and within ten minutes I saw some white curly lines and some silhouettes. I haven’t been able to replicate my experience since then. I start out with a purple/green static. After a while I notice some dark purple puffs, but I can sustain that view for up to a minute, after which they dissapear. I also caught a dark vortex sucking out the usual purple/green static a few times.
The biggest obstacle to my practice so far has been a feeling of anxiety when I enter the darkroom. I begin anticipating jumpscares like in the horror movies from some unknown malevolent entity. I can see that I purposely stop myself from surrendering to the second attention, since I have no idea what that would do to me. I know I can reach it, if I overcome myself. For example - last night I had a dream where I was in the bunker where Hitler supposedly offed himself, observing the event. The handmaiden saw me and tried to point out a corner of the room for me. This alerted Hitler and the guards who lost their shit. I got so terrified that I achieved lucidity and then immediately woke up. I was in the perfect state to begin a session, but I was too scared and decided to walk it off.
I would like to deepen my practice, but I haven't found a solution yet. Doing the darkroom in a dimly lit room helps a bit, but the lack of complete darkness probably yields worse results. Pushing through the feeling has had some benefits for my day-to-day life - any stress or negative interactions feel slightly muted and this allows me to exercise some detachment and increases my effectiveness during the day. I intend to continue doing that, with the hope that the issue resolves itself in due time.
Have any of you experienced such a barrier? Any perspective would be greatly appreciated!
26 Comments
Beginner here. I think it could be useful to recapitulate all the experiences of fear in your life. And recap new fear as it comes up. This helps you see that it's really just energy and perception.
Beginner here. I think it could be useful to recapitulate all of your experiences of fear. Both old and new. This helps you realize that it's all perception and energy.
You have to be ready to die each time you attempt to stop the internal dialogue. The intent behind this practice is not just to quiet the mind a bit - it’s to truly stop it, to stop the world if you manage to go deep enough. Cause thats the point of tall this first steps.
The fears you describe are actually mild compared to what it really means to let go of your ego completely. It’s something that will change you forever, and going through it is overwhelmingly hard. This is basically why most people can’t go deep enough - the tonal (our everyday self) keeps trying to control everything, and when it can’t, it panics, like it’s trying to destroy itself. You are literally preparing to die, because nothing of “you” as you know it will remain - we are only our inventory, our ego, and everything that defines it. Without it, there’s just awareness.
If you’re lucky, you’ll be thrown out immediately and have to try again, going deeper and deeper each time, building courage through repetition(easy way).
If you’re not so lucky, you might actually manage to stop the world once - and then the allies will come. There’s a big chance some are already around and “smell” you every time you take a look into the other side while trying to stop the dialogue. In my case, I went all the way in, and the allies played a big role in keeping me in second attention with my physical body right here and now (not in a dream) while the world was stopped for weeks.
During that time, I had access to things I never thought possible - complete silence inside, yet an immense amount of energy and perception. I could see the energetic structure of the world, the intent flowing through everything. I could move or change objects just by aligning with that intent. People’s thoughts became visible even before they were about to think them; communication didn’t require words. The boundary between inner and outer dissolved completely - everything was one field of perception that could be molded through pure will. Answer anything, I even searched for a super hard IQ test and did it fully in second to just confirm adn many other things or asked other people if the changed object are really like that... It’s like living in the world, but seeing its true, fluid form underneath.
But this “gift” has its price. The silence inside lasted long after, and I couldn’t bring back my internal dialogue at will for a long time. And once you realize the allies are real, and how alien they look - it’s no longer “cool.” It’s awe mixed with terror of realising that the "reality" starts to loose the taste since you have no other challenges left really - in a "game" where you know everything and can change it as you wish.
And honestly, from what I’ve seen on this forum so far, hardly anyone has actually been there. Most people talk about it from a distance, or they have only brushed against the edges of the second attention and describe it vaguely or symbolically. That’s understandable - it’s not easy to get there, and it’s even harder to come back balanced. But it means a lot of the discussion here stays on the surface. Same as for the other things that can help along which are strongly denied here, perhaps is why the CC lineage(only his btw) got into a dead-end.
So you have to find a way to control fear. Repetition is the mother of knowledge. Do whatever helps you face it - like walking alone in the dark forest - but nothing from this world will fully prepare you, because on the other side, everything is infinitely more intense and frightening.
What helped me, once I had no choice, was my experience of controlled folly with everything in my daily life - especially with myself. I constantly stalked my ego, getting rid of the idea that anything could be “important.” I acted as if no act was more important than another - even my ego itself. You have to let it go. And when you’re on the other side, you keep acting normal until the dialogue returns again. Otherwise, I’m sure I would have ended up very badly.
So do the work - recapitulation, controlled folly, dropping self-importance, and loosening everything that hooks you to your “person.” That’s what gives you the strength, fluidity and balance needed to face what’s truly beyond.
hello also a beginner here i stumbled on this page about week ago and thats after a few month of looking into castaneda's work i too am trying to tap into the second attention and im facing the same issue as u are, i think my friend the problem is from the inner dialogue its really hard to keep focus on the colors without sparking some sort of thought process i spent 2 hours today trying to reach something, i can see lights, colors, faces( although their appearence is very brief), and sometimes as i focus on a certain puff it starts moving and i feel like following it and forcing focus on it makes it fade away. i think the best we can do is keep at it, even tho im new here all the posts i read here give me motivation and hope to achieve silent knowledge
Your comment has been automatically removed because your account does not meet our account-age requirement of 10 days.
I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.
You're seeing cool stuff, quickly - sounds amazing!
FYI the consensus here is to not think too much about your dreams, especially in relation to progress. Recapping your dreams might be beneficial for you - are you doing recapitulation?
I challenge the idea about "perfect state to begin a session". Maybe being afraid or slightly sleepy is better for practicing, but if you wait for the "perfect state" I think it's easy to put it off, as opposed to disciplinedly pursuing it.
I'm about to go do more passes and some recap, out of curiosity. More terrifying than any nightmare I've ever had is the idea that other worlds are close by, and that I would miss them.
Thanks for the reply!
I would say that I've had more dreams recently than usual which I take as a good sign. I don't pay much attention to them, but I do enjoy having them around. I am not able to do recapitualtion at the moment, but it is on my "to-do list". I note my dreams down mentally every morning when I wake up.
I agree, waiting for the right time is the good way to fool yourself into procastinating. But I didn't mean it in that way. I was just noting a missed opportunity.
Nice framing of the narrative too! FOMO is a good motivator haha.
"I am not able to do recapitulation at the moment"
?? You're already doing darkroom gazing.
I simply decided to start somewhere and darkroom is what I chose. I will get to the other exercises here in due time. Is there any particular order I should follow?
Darkroom is to do tensegrity in a dark room (or with a blackout mask on). It is advisable to practice each path at least one month per the statement:
https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/wiki/index/statement/
But do keep in mind, that Darkroom is meant to be tensegrity in darkness.
Scooping puffs is good, though, so at least that is something, but do make sure to do tensegrity!
Thank you! Will learn the movements in the coming days. I have had some mild inexplicable aversion towards Tensegrity, but I will just have to get over myself and do the work.
It’s the fliers mind, the foreign installation. I have the same thing
It’s good to know that in the search bar above we can always look for any topic that interests us.
There are dozens of posts about fear: https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/search/?q=fear&cId=40a881fa-004b-438d-b60d-e57d943c610f&iId=2c6a6349-e2e0-4a53-b970-b2cb9fb76aff
The most recent one is from 28 days ago — the comments are very useful: https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/comments/1nbdb2j/how_to_manage_fear_in_darkroom/
Sorry, my bad. It did come up with a lot of similar topics. I am not very reddit savvy, I've tried to avoid social media in general, since it can be such a distraction. Thanks for the tip!
I have some issues with shadows blobs in Darkroom. Try a sleep mask. Lots of practitioners here use them..
Not sure about “surrendering to the second attention.” Never surrender to anything or anyone.
It doesn't sound like you're following instructions.
What exactly is your "practice"? All of it.
Our path has been carefully selected and designed by Carlos himself, and how it works isn't obvious to beginners.
Later you realize the genius of it.
My suspicion is that you're merely "looking for your greatness" in darkness, skipping the actual practice rules.
We get that a lot. Likely 1/3rd who "give it a try" don't actually practice what's described in here.
Many times, people can't actually practice because they don't live alone, and some just lay on their side in bed and pretend to be practicing darkroom.
We're lucky if they even keep their eyes open.
Well spotted. I have been steadily and incrementally improving. I try not to rush into things, because It’s my proclivity to go overboard and then quit.
I have a large house where I have a whole room without windows I can use to my hearts content. I usually wait until the people I live with go to bed and I go there, sit on the floor and stare into the darkness, eyes open. I shut off my internal dialogue as best I can. I actually try and do that throughout the day. As I said, I get the creeps and I don’t last long (no more than 10 minutes). When I go to bed I lie motionless and stare at the ceiling to try and cause sleep paralysis. I haven’t exactly seen this prescribed by Carlos Castaneda. I only intuit that it is a way to loosen the assemblage point.
You are correct, I haven’t done recapitulation seriously and I do not do Magical Passes (I am about to start learning). I try and scoop puffs - I feel like an idiot doing it, but I don’t let that bother me. First and foremost I try to make the experience enjoyable and not to force things.
Other than that I try and apply the principles of stalking to my daily life, mostly for the non-magical benefits (I guess it can’t hurt.)
Thanks for the reply!
The puffs turn into a BRILLIANT BLUE BALL of energy around you, into which you can "shrink the tonal", and take off like a jet plane.
But even before that, they'll visible form around you if you follow instructions and practice darkroom while doing tensegrity.
The tensegrity is designed to get them to form that ball.
It also has a "flow" that's very important for guiding which direction your assemblage moves.
That blue ball formed from the puffs, will even follow you around in daylight.
And you can shape it into fully visible phantoms, using some of the tensegrity moves.
You need to get past the pretending and visualizing and hoping stage, and into the actually capable of causing real magic to happen.
Such as shapeshifting.
You can't shapeshift until your energy body is at least partially formed.
Here's a suggestion: You've been brainwashed by fake magic, and need to clearly realize this type is NOT fake magic.
But you have to follow the instructions carefully, or it's not going to work enough for you to realize that.
Carlos taught us that there's a conspiracy by beings that have taken over our planet, and turned us into food.
And they boost up fake magic, and attack the real thing.
The attack part seems absolutely true. We have to fight off attacks on a continuous basis!
Alright. I will spend more time learning the exact procedures and movements taught here before returning to practice. Thanks for the guidance.
You have to learn and do the tensegrity practices. May not seem like it at first, but the passes help you shut off your internal dialogue. The more odd and strange the pass the better it works, IMO…sitting in the dark gazing at darkness learning to turn off your internal dialogue will work better after you’ve done darkroom tensegrity.
I don't think you need to obsess over the details of your hitler dream. To do so only reinforces the shadow mind. Just know that it's a good sign that the shadow mind is freaking out because it knows it is losing its grip on you. You may have more dreams of influential figures trying to control you. That's just the shadow mind trying to re-establish a foothold
- The Art of Dreaming (1993), don Juan Matus instructs Carlos that obsessing over the details of dreams—treating them like ordinary memories or analyzing them—is a hindrance to actual "dreaming."
Using AI to summarize the books isn't a good idea, because I don't think it helps your connecting link to Intent (which is very important). Better to know what you are searching for.
"Ordinary dreams get very vivid as soon as you begin to set up dreaming," he said. "That vividness and clarity is a formidable barrier and you are worse off than anyone I have ever met in my life. You have the worst mania. You write down everything you can."
In all fairness, I believed what I was doing was appropriate. Keeping a meticulous record of my dreams was giving me a degree of clarity about the nature of the visions I had while sleeping.
"Drop it!" he said imperatively. "It's not helping anything. All you're doing is distracting yourself from the purpose of dreaming, which is control and power."
OK captain
Could performing Tensegrity while lying in a darkroom be acceptable in such situations?
There's "running man". that's done on the back.
You can do one of Taisha's not-doings, where you reach out to the side and grab energy, and try to feel what it contains.
And believe one version of the claw-hand door knob technique is done laying on the back.
So yes!
Just be creative.
There’s also “The Code” and “The Legs Rule Vitality” both listed on this index page:
https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/wiki/tensegrity/not_doing/