Haven’t posted for awhile. Thought it might be time for an update, if anyone is interested. I’ve been practicing Darkroom Tensegrity for well over a year now. 1-2x/day 6 days a week. A couple months ago I started gazing at trees, water and shadows.
My darkroom practice is evolving, or maybe slowly advancing, as I get more familiar with controlling internal dialogue. Puffs are rarely purple/magenta, but a weird matte or transparent baby blue. (I’m colour blind so I don’t always comprehend colour). I’ve been hunting passes that interest me. Without tensegrity I’d be gazing haphazardly at pitch black nothing, while the internal dialogue takes me to the circus of pretending and day dreaming. Or maybe when I think about it, tensegrity distributes energy, for the shift to second attention?
We’ve mentioned Tonal Holes in the Sub. Most days I’m seeing holes, rips, blobs and blurs. If I’m not stroking out, my AP is loosening and unintentionally shifting, when I’m focused or zoned out in daily awareness.
I’ve been gazing at: trees, shadows, water, as part of weekly practice. Trees are my favourite. If they’re old, big diameter trees. Make nice, notice them and then gaze at them. CC mentions trees in a lot of the books. My job affords me the opportunity to practice gazing at large old growth trees at night with no interruptions. The shift from daily awareness to second attention, has a feel (for me). It’s hard to replicate while gazing, but when I do, gazing gets wow!
I can get Gazing cross over with Darkroom and the Elm I gaze at; has pulled me visually and bodily to it. There’s a noticeable visual difference from viewing vs being physically present in the second attention. Maybe that’s a small discovery for me?
The pic is how I was seeing my shadow while gazing from inner silence. Kinda interesting…
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Cool, thanks for posting. I started gazing a couple of weeks ago. It’s not yet part of my regular practice, just do it here and there. I’m not sure if I’m doing it correctly, though.
When I try to gaze, I relax my vision so I’m not focusing on any particular detail and I quiet my internal dialogue as much as I can. Shortly afterwards I’ll see sort of a static-y lighter overlay on top of what I’m gazing. Am I on the right track?
I cant say if you’re doing it right or wrong.
If you read or re-read the books, details mattered. It’s not a zoned out fugue state.
What I've heard from this sub is don't get too caught up in "is this symptom the right one?". Instead you can try to just notice whatever you notice and if it's "weird" or unexpected, focus on that. Weather that's static-y or something else entirely.
You’re absolutely right and I should know better. Thanks for the advice.
I'm trying to learn, too. If you get results, please post about whatever you're doing
I’ve been thinking about your question.
Try fast flowing water. It’s mesmerizing in daily awareness. You might find it’s helpful with forcing silence. Remember CC gazed at pebbles and leaves. Watch the details.
Silent Knowledge is kind of like falling asleep in that you stop "looking at things", and then with your internal dialogue also dead stopped, you aren't focusing your attention on anything at all.
Something a normal person absolutely never experiences unless they pass out.
So a "stream" automatically begins to play.
It's almost as if infinity doesn't like awareness to go to waste, so if you can't chose something to watch, it'll do that for you.
You aren't focusing on purpose, but ALSO your internal dialogue isn't constantly making normal emanations glow.
There's nothing strongly lit up by your awareness.
So at some point a stream from infinity starts to play. Or better said, you can now notice it.
Those are always playing. Like a TV showroom. But we just can't see them because we're distracted.
If that's confusing, there's 2 problems preventing you from perceiving silent knowledge.
One is that you're focused on specific emanations that are only meaningful in this reality. Your car, your chair, your dog, your shoes, the TV, your friend.
Anything you can name, belongs to this realm. So it pulls the glow of your awareness back up to the blue line on that J curve diagram.
And even if you aren't focused on anything for an instant or two, you focused on some of those recently.
So those emanations are still glowing.
Both have to be stopped. Your deliberate focus on anything, but also the pull remaining from a previous focus on stuff.
If either of those is still active, you can't perceive those faint SK signals.
It almost feels as if you have to somehow "tilt" after falling asleep awake, in order to align with the particular stream of "seeing".
Normally if you are in full lighting you don't even notice that you're seeing, until you are startled out of it because your rationality notices that what are viewing is "not possible".
A fear we picked up as babies, being repeatedly punished for looking at stuff that our family considers "can't possibly be there".
Nobody wants a baby that stares off into space instead of looking lovingly at its parents.
So we don't allow babies to do that.
That's damage to the psyche, even stronger than the topics we put on our recapitulation list!
In a fully dark room, that fear of seeing something you've been taught not to see doesn't really happen because you're already looking for impossible things. It's an unusual situation, so it overrides your trained filters.
I suspect that someone who practices outdoor gazing like you do, has already overcome the "it's not possible!" reaction.
So you're digging the tunnel into the second attention from both sides!
I used to catch Carlos falling asleep while interacting with us, and I saw the slight head tilt that indicated he was viewing a silent knowledge stream.
He didn't have the "surprise" reaction the way someone who went from darkroom, to seeing in normal lighting might have.
So darkroom has some slightly negative side effects. Doesn't easily translate to full lighting.
Until Silent Knowledge.
Well you nailed it again….and then some…
I still lack control. When I have managed to move my AP, infinity is often choosing for me and then I’m correcting that; thinking it’s me day dreaming again. Thats why it’s so fucking weird. Control in second attention doesn’t come easy cause control in every other aspect of life comes with internal dialogue.
“Digging the tunnel from both sides” I never thought of it like that. I actually thought of gazing as a separate practice. One that we could transfer silent knowledge and explore with.
Ive found that gazing can push me deeper into inner silence with less resistance from internal dialogue. Gives you something to be pulled to. I don’t wanna blab a bunch on gazing and confuse or mislead other ppl cause I’m for sure not 100% on any of it myself. I def wouldn’t be able to gaze without Darkroom. Yet, both have very similar feeling.
I’ll be re-reading this reply for months now as things come up - thank you
>When CC was viewing SK with other ppl around, he was in two awarenesses at once?
Some of the time.
SK is like that.
Sometimes it floats in the air, like an MTV popup fact.
Other times you get sucked into it.
The situation with Carlos is even crazier than we can imagine, but so far no one's recalled the impossible stuff.
He was not only capable of interacting with us at the same time he was seeing, but he was also capable of interacting with us in 2 places at the same time.
The way don Juan used to do with him.
Maybe Cholita will be the first to remember that?
She was one of those people whose double "simply comes around".
Cholita still gone?
Yep. She said she was returning last sunday. and then in a second email changed it to today, but there's been no word on what airline she's going to arrive on, so likely she's put it off again.
I suggested she go over and stay in Vicam a while.
It would be interesting to see what's left there from don Juan.
I ever get a chance to road trip that way, I’m checking out those Yaqui towns. No mention of CC, I think they’ve had their fill of gringos on that front. I just wanna quietly cruise through and see it.
Ask the AI first if there are any people left at the level of Pachita. She made a living giving demonstrations. Her son might still be around.
Carlos spoke about her once in private classes, and Bruce Wagner made a TV miniseries around her psychic surgery.
In my opinion, she's also part of why Carlos hoped Howard Lee might heal his cancer.
Pachita was a classic faker type healer, except her fakery did in fact cause clients to heal. She put on such a good show, that it moved the wheel of time for some people.
As harsh as calling her a faker might sound, that's pretty much all primitive medicine, especially in the world of shamanism.
But Chinese medicine is also fakery.
And our own modern medicine is predominantly a scam to sell you stuff on a regular basis, to fund the doctors large overhead. Stuff which typically makes you sicker and sicker, with all the conditions they claim you need to medicate.
But you posted a picture of María Sabina, whose only mistake was making mushroom ceremonies available to the wrong people, such as Gordon Wasson.
She is Pachita:
Jacobo wrote a book about her.
Jodorowsky also wrote about her in three of his books...
Don Juan Matus even explained "the Pachita effect" in El conocimiento Silencioso (p31-32)
There is also that documentary about Pachita, her sons, and "El Hermanito":
All of it in spanish...
According to ChatGPT, they're 2 different women:
ChatGPT:
María Sabina and Pachita were different Mexican curanderas.
María Sabina was a Mazatec sabia/curandera from Huautla de Jiménez, Oaxaca, known for veladas using psilocybin mushrooms. She lived 1894–1985.
Pachita was Bárbara Guerrero, usually associated with Mexico City and “psychic surgery” using a knife. Sources give her life roughly as c.1900–1979.
I see what you did there.
Pachita…..has been a topic I’ve been reading up on, but never mentioned it here. I had a discussion earlier today with ChatGPT about the healer in Power of Silence possibly being Pachita.
The way you’re describing Silent Knowledge really resonates. Specifically the idea that your awareness should be focused on _something_, so if you tune out the emanations for the typical assemblage point position, you’ll be aware of Silent Knowledge.
When you switch to SK streaming, does it “snap”? As in, your awareness tunes to the SK stream until the signal is strong? I don’t know if that makes sense.
No. Unfortunately at first you don't remember it until 10 seconds or more, after it happened.
But on a "good day" it does snap into place, and on a very good day, it does that over and over all around the room.
Which makes you realize, it's always playing everywhere.
Hi, sorry to bother you.
You seem to be a very active user in this community, so I was hoping I could ask you something. Is Tensegrity still an active organization nowadays? Are there any public publications, downloadable materials, or important websites that you would recommend?
I've been finding quite a bit of scattered information on Reddit, and I've come across many of your comments, so I thought you might be able to help clear up some of my doubts.
I first discovered this organization after reading all of Carlos Castaneda's books about 25 years ago, as they were gradually being digitized and freely shared with the Spanish-speaking community. At the time, however, I didn't feel particularly drawn to investigate further beyond Magical Passes.
In the future, I'd like to write a book that helps people walk the path of knowledge through practical exercises and guidance—essentially bringing together the key concepts that appear repeatedly throughout most of the books. I'm sure you're already very familiar with all of this.
Today I came across the term "darkroom" twice, and it caught my attention. I was also genuinely happy to discover that there are still so many people interested in and knowledgeable about these subjects.
I suppose that's the real reason for my message. I could simply search for the information myself and remain just another anonymous shadow passing through time, but I felt like reaching out instead.
My username (nagual2012) is actually very old—one of the last nicknames I used on the internet many years ago.. about Year 2000—but I'm a new user here, so please don't read too much into it!
Greetings, and my sincere respect to you.