This post format is the best option, according to the consensus of Reddit users, to replace the chat channels functionality that was removed from the platform in November 2025. It is auto-sorted to display newest comments first, and is a space to ask generalized questions, and share other misc. content, not suited to a dedicated separate/full post format.
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The topic is sorcery (the mastery of intent).
I had to reorder the posts in the highlighted space, and change the label of the "Free Tensegrity Classes" post to event; so disregard that it says "happening now."
This is one of the most active posts where this change/removal is being replaced:
https://www.reddit.com/r/redditchat/s/tnrdwNGldN
Note that creating a replacement chat by adding users manually one at a time (which sucks for the mods, anyway) is not workable for a public sub, due to the 100 member limit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/redditchat/s/0fE7TAM7bR
Hi everyone, maybe an idea is to make multiple 6/7 or 10 channel with the same subject and only the administrator ( or few more) can be in all channel.
Huh? That sounds unnecessarily complicated.
I have a question, does it make any sense to recapitulate the feelings of self importance? I can literally feel the feelings of pride, self pity, indignation at my life situation etc. I cant really sit there and try to think of more memories because all that seems to do is activate my internal dialogue. I could just brute force it and keep gazing but the feelings are annoying. Its like my pride and self pity is demanding all of my attention.
Death as an Advisor
I was already conditioned to expect death as a gory affair when my father was hospitalised in the terminal stages of alcoholism and nearly choked on his own blood while I was visiting. So I believed viscerally that his death was imminent.
The first incident occurred when I was about 12, coming home on the school bus. We were passing a busy junction when the bus slowed to a crawl. As I gazed out the window we passed a young boy lying on the road in a thick pool of dark red blood. A policeman was down on one knee, drawing his coat over the body in a grave and sober gesture. The heavy truck which had evidently run over the boy was parked at an awkward angle across the road. I took all of this in without reaction. It was just something that had happened.
A few years later I was visiting my friend whose family were farmers. My friend’s father and uncle had hold of a sheep and were inspecting its diseased hooves. I realised with mounting panic that they were going to kill it when one of them said damn I forgot my knife. The other took out a starting pistol, placed it on the sheep’s brow and pulled the trigger. There was a sharp crack and as I looked on aghast they released the sheep and it came kicking down the slope with frothy blood and brains pouring from its mouth.
The third incident occurred during a quest to find peyote, following don Juan’s assertion that mescalito teaches a man the way to live. I had identified an area where it grows in the northern desert of Mexico, and arrived in the small city on the edge of the desert the day before the weekly bus left for the interior. I dreamt that night of lying on my back in a sleeping bag on the desert floor. The bag was too short and tight, forcing me to spread my legs at the knees, while my arms were pinned to my sides. A few yards away before me stood a young man holding a big revolver. He had on a light coloured felt cowboy hat, and he raised his forearm to shield his moustache and nose from my body fluids as he fired the gun. I struggled trapped in the sleeping bag as the first shot hit me in the perineum, the second went thru the right side of my abdomen, the third thru the left side, and the fourth went thru my heart. My vision collapsed from the periphery to a single point of light in the center like an old TV screen, and I died. I awoke utterly terrified in the darkness of the hotel room, and promised myself that if the next wasn’t sunny I would take it as an unfavourable omen, give up the whole idea of having an encounter with mescalito and return home to a conventional life. But there was not a cloud in the morning sky, and I proceeded to my mark.
Periodically over the years I returned to Mexico, hiking the backwoods in search of a location where I could have a traditional peyote ceremony over the course of several nights. Since I would need a bonfire each night, the spot would have to be far from dwellings. But I would also need a source of potable water. That is a tall order in most of Mexico, where water is at a premium for human habitation.
The year prior to my father’s haemorrhage I found such a spot.
Last week was gazing at the jar with a small pothos
plant and I started getting my gaze on specific spot with a spark. With time i felt my left eye doing a thing
It made the view of it double, i have all my attention to it i was zoomed in, and they started separating opening a dark space between them. All whish grey and in shades of grey.
From the dark fog space a thing like the head of David Jones from pirates of Caribbean started emerging. It
Was moving in it's own in slow motion. All 3D and realistically moving. Took a goldish spark and integrated it. It slowly took a human body form with the david Jones head.
I told it, i don't like the David jones look take a better one. It did take the form of a man with a long beard then not facial hair. He started showing me something on a wall but i forgot it and didn't write about it.
Now that you did write it down, you're certain to get more...and remember!
BTW, the public chat channel has been closed by Reddit, as the earlier announcement stated.
Messages no longer go through, though it's still listed and the log is still visible.
So maybe it will stay like that. Inactive, but technically accessible...?
The MEGATHREAD probably won't push through notifications, though. So people will have to check/refresh it manually to see if there's anything new at the top.
Why dont you guys write a book of the practices? It would be easier to understand than all this. Youd have an index, table of conents, detailed explanation per topic, glossary, organization, etc.
Here is an index and an introduction for you, you can find it on your phone by clicking "wiki" at the top:
https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/wiki/introduction/
https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/wiki/index/
The subreddit statement is the closest we’ve written to that:
https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/wiki/index/statement
What do practitioners do to regain focus and consistency? That's my question. All tips/tricks welcome, thank you.
One of the ones I like the best is to install a dawn alarm on your phone, and set an alarm that goes off at dusk, "the darkness of the day". By dusk I usually have all lights off in the house, or the minimum necessary.
He asked me what I did at home when it was dark. I said that invariably I would turn on the lights or I would go out into the lighted streets until it was time to go to sleep.
"Oh!" he said incredulously. "I thought you had learned to use the darkness."
"What can you use it for?" I asked.
He said the darkness—and he called it "The darkness of the day"—was the best time to "see." He stressed the word "see" with a peculiar inflection. I wanted to know what he meant by that, but he said it was too late to go into it then.
How many hours should be spent in darkroom (eye mask method) before energy puffs become visible?
No one can say that. Or how long it should, or could, take to silence enough of your internal dialogue to see bonafide puffs.
Just have to be persistent, and trust that over time that will overcome any resistance.
Do tensegrity in the Darkroom, Don't only sit and gaze. Your silence levels determine how long it will take you to see the puffs.
Family Members in Dreams can be IOBs from very far away? Should one interact with them or not?
What matters with respect to dreaming is to follow the instructions:
"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."
If you can't tell right away whether you should avoid them, then it's just a dream.
"A rule of thumb for dreamers is to assume that the third type of scout is present whenever they feel perturbed by their parents or friends in a dream. Sound advice is to avoid those dream images. They are sheer poison."
Would a post regarding a “scientific perspective/explanation” on Tensegrity be welcome here? It would dwell a lot on reasoning and possibilities rather than direct knowledge from seeing, but would be in the same tone as the post on the “advantages of Schizophrenics”. It would risk being self-important for some specific factors. Somehow I have a memory of it already being posted here before but don’t think it actually has been.
Without knowing the content of it, I can’t say.
But any “scientific” analysis would be best to primarily focus on the muscle tension (contraction and relaxation) as it is described in the book Magical Passes.
And maybe how that ties into the nervous system, and thus allowing the more primal areas of the brain to temporarily supersede the frontal lobe, when saturated by somatic activity.
It’s along the lines you mentioned. But it ties in with magical terminology to explain concepts that are privy to sorcerers/witches/practitioners. It’s hard for me to describe without any of it written down.
Something weird happened, I've been subbed here for a couple years now but fell out of practice for various reasons. Yesterday I realized I hadn't seen this sub in my feed for a long time. I thought it had been closed or I had unsubbed somehow.
I checked and sure enough it's here, I'm still subbed. The posts just stopped appearing in my feed for some reason. I know that Reddit's algorithm prioritizes content even in your home feed, but it's not like the content was deprioritized. It was completely hidden for at least a year I think. I also regularly check "rising", "new" and "controversial" and it never appeared there either.
It's now showing up again like normal.
It's difficult to know what's up with the algorithms these platforms employ. Could just be as simple as you hadn't accessed this subreddit for a while and that was why you weren't seeing the posts from it?
I don't think so, as I said I also check New and Controversial sorting regularly and it never appeared there either. My understanding is these feeds are not algorithmized like the home feed.
Also, "deprioritization does not mean content is removed from the platform entirely, only that it is less likely to be proactively surfaced by the primary personalization algorithms"-- it wasn't like I saw r/Casteneda in Home "Best/Hot" less frequently, it was completely hidden.
I guess we're not the cool kids 😐
i came across this blog by thomas ropp. there are 3 articles about castaneda on the website. the author met carlos in article 2 and his former wife in article 3:
When Ravens Come Calling: The Passageway to Carlos Castaneda
The Booming caws of two desert ravens awakens a sleeping journalist and leads him to the world’s most famous literary sorcerer — Carlos Castaneda, author of “A Yaqui Way of Knowledge” and “A Separate Reality.”
Luminous Beings: My Lunch With Carlos Castaneda (and Kylie)
The writings of Carlos Castaneda were both brilliant and controversial. Was he really an apprentice to Yaqui sorcerer Don Juan, or was he a fake? After a personal encounter with Castaneda and non-ordinary events before and after the meeting, one journalist has no doubt that Castaneda was the real deal.
Margaret and Adrian: Carlos Castaneda's Real Family.
A journalist with a non-ordinary connection to Carlos Castaneda sees the world's most famous literary sorcerer through the eyes of Castaneda's real family.
i briefly read one of these articles (the one about carlos' family) and found it interesting and i thought you might be interested too. it was not written by an opponent, but also not by a believer. the author described an experience that i would describe as an omen (visit by raven in the desert).
from 3. article:
".. Carlos called C.J. Cho-cho. C.J. called Carlos Kiki. They were inseparable. Carlos took C.J. to the movies, the beach, the mountains, even to his classes at UCLA. Carlos frequently carried the little blond boy on his shoulder and walked him hand in hand to school. Castaneda even mentions C.J. in “Tales of Power” as the little boy with the blond head. .."
see https://strangedaystheblog.com/carlos-castaneda-trilogy/
The articles we have linked in the Wiki written by Thomas Ropp are as follows:
Catching Up With Castaneda - Arizona Republic - August 1 ,1997
Luminous Encounter - Arizona Republic - August 3, 1997
These blog posts might either be rearrangements of those articles, or possible expanding versions. Along with an additional piece.
Will have to go through and compare...
Mod note, in case anyone was wondering:
Was listening to a an older episode of Pete Holmes' "You Made It Weird" podcast with Jason Sudeikis where he said a quote that stuck with him:
"The harder you work, the luckier you get "
It's a great way to frame the concept of an intent gift, on a behavioral level. You get more of what your focusing on, with your actions.
Recapitulation is mentioned in books (especially in Taisha's books) as the main method of preparation for a dreaming, for energy return. If you think in terms of a dark room, how necessary is it? The transition in a dream requires a lot of energy, but in the case of a dark room, we lure a double into the real world, and not vice versa. Ultimately, is it also energy-consuming and requires recap?
Remaining in silence is what’s difficult. Recap makes it less taxing.
Darkroom is kind of a cheat in that if you’re able to place enough of your attention onto what can shift your assemblage point in the dark, you can move to where you forget what kicks you out of silence at the blue line.
But then when you’re back in general awareness the next day, you’re almost at square one again, without having a regular recapitulation practice.
And that sucks!
So be grateful that the recap process works on what it does!
Often in a dark room the events of the past day and memories climb into my head. Probably worth starting a recap with these thoughts and events of the past day?
Question. When you get to the point of being able to pilot the double body, are you able to interact with another practitioner who's also piloting their double body in a shared space? Would you be able to relay information to each other as accurately as typing a message, or would there be too many distortions to get anything intelligible across.
Absolutely yes to the first part. And as to accuracy/distortions, the prime problem is remembering! And then, context. Meaning, why would people's doubles be concerned with the details of this "meat reality?"
In darkroom we practice bringing the double into this world, as that is the requisite beginning to what you're suggesting. The best real world example being the Nagual Elias living in one part of Mexico, while his double was a practicing Curandero hundreds of miles away, directly interacting with people.
Facinating. So it is possible if one has a way to deal with the memory problem and able to coral the double to care enough about the task without losing interest.
The memory problem is a problem of energy. If you happen to recall Carlos was plagued by memory problems. Recapitulation lets you recall when you place your assemblage point at the exact position it was when it happened.
Hmm is there a way to get there without recapitulating the whole day? It feels like re-watching a whole movie just to find that one part you were actually interested in. Is there a way to bookmark the memory for quicker access?
Everything is bookmarked. The books are clear on it.
Looks like our Iranian practitioners have a REAL problem on the horizon:
https://www.techradar.com/vpn/vpn-privacy-security/not-just-censorship-its-digital-isolation-iran-plans-to-cut-ties-with-the-global-internet-and-vpns-may-not-help-this-time
😢
After some empirical testing, I was able to determine that backups can still be made to archive.org for posts made in November 2025 (exact cutoff date unknown, as **batch submission no longer works** and individual posts from November-December SOMETIMES go through) and earlier, but if the post was made in December 2025 and later NO BACKUPS CAN BE MADE on archive.org :(
This is, no doubt, due to the deal Reddit made with Google which allows them to use their data to train AI models, and the shady scraping practice that competing AI training companies were employing, using archive.org as a workaround to direct scraping.
We can only hope that they do not request removal of the backup-data for the November 2025 and earlier posts. Something they can absolutely do, as other sites have done so in the past...resulting in them no longer being represented in the WayBackMachine; even if they have been defunct for years.
Meaning that they are now **lost**. A failure of the entire mission statement of the Internet Archive!*!#!!
But, legally, they have little recourse. And not enough resources to fight Google.
My hope is that Reddit acknowledges that those November 2025 and earlier posts have already been scraped and used in training (old data), with very few newer comments being made in them, and that they are prioritizing newer data for relevancy to current AI training for Google's own model(s).
We'll have to see if the same new rule holds true for Reddit Wiki pages. Maybe newly create ones will also refuse to backup on archive.org...
So, archive.today, which is independently funded (via an endowment?) and located outside of the United States, and does not comply with requests for data removal, is the de facto choice for new backup efforts. Unfortunately, batch submission does not work on the site, necessitating manual submission of posts one-at-a-time. So backups, listed here, will take longer...
User-posted playlist of vintage interviews on ritualistic postures:
How should i use the internal dialogue in recaptulation practice? I tend to drift off my main line of thinking or the topic of my recap if i speak too much to myself.
Should i be forcing silence while doing it? And if so, how do i aproach the topic of the recaptulation?