The Three Enemies of Seeing

Good question!

I'll try to take a look tonight.

With Cholita gone, dark energy is in very short supply.

But one possible clue here is that someone posted a quote from Carlos saying that inorganic beings can be cyclic to us.

From The Art of Dreaming-

“
"The energy necessary to move the assemblage points of sorcerers comes from the realm of inorganic beings," he said, as if he were hurrying to get it over with.

…

I understood don Juan better than I could have thought. Journeying to that world had always meant to me, at an energetic level, a boost of dark energy. I had even thought of it in those terms, long before don Juan voiced his statement.
“

No one knows the answer to that!

It's never been done before. Even the lineages didn't do what we're doing.

But you can't "focus on not focusing", so it's likely useless unless you are presented with that situation, while gazing at darkness.

I would suggest that surely there's a vast improvement to "darkroom" which might involve deliberate focusing of your attention, rather than just impassively looking for puffs.

My ally Fancy taught me to rub puffs on my arms until they caught on fire with purple flames.

Definitely different from standard darkroom.

But if you can't visually see that, it's useless.

It's kind of like blowing on a spark to make it turn into a flame.

You have to see the spark or it's not going to work.

Here's an AI history of those monkeys.

Reading that, it should become obvious why Eastern philosophy is a total dead end if you actually want to learn sorcery. In fact, it's harmful to your practice if you really fall for it.

But those 3 monkeys are also a symbol to businessmen who have to deal with the Chinese, of how difficult they can be to work with. They never seem to directly face what's really going on, because they have so many rules to prevent it.

I'd quote Carlos on this topic, but the last time I did it was removed by reddit's AI, claiming it was "hate speech".

***

The “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” monkeys are Japanese, not Chinese in origin.

The classic image is the Three Wise Monkeys at Tōshō-gū Shrine in Nikkō, Japan, a 17th-century carving. Their Japanese names are usually given as Mizaru covering his eyes, Kikazaru covering his ears, and Iwazaru covering his mouth. The wordplay matters: in Japanese, -zaru can mean “not,” and saru/zaru also puns with “monkey.”

The deeper background is mixed East Asian religion: Japanese Kōshin folk practice, Tendai Buddhism, Shinto context, and probably Chinese Confucian moral language behind it. A similar Confucian formula in the Analects says not to look, listen, speak, or act contrary to propriety. That ethical idea likely traveled into Japan and then got turned into the monkey pun/image.

Originally, the meaning was closer to moral discipline:

Do not look at corrupt things. Do not listen to corrupt things. Do not speak corrupt things.

In some Buddhist-style readings, it means guarding the mind from evil influences. In the Nikkō shrine setting, the monkeys are part of a larger set of panels showing stages of life, not just a cynical joke about ignorance.

The modern Western/business meaning often flips it into something negative:

Pretend not to see problems. Pretend not to hear objections. Refuse to speak uncomfortable truths.

That negative use is common, but applying it specifically to “the Chinese” is sloppy and unfair. It takes a Japanese religious/folk symbol, passes it through a Western cynical interpretation, then uses it as a stereotype about Chinese business culture. That is three layers of distortion.

There is a real business issue people may be gesturing at: in high-context business cultures, people may avoid direct confrontation, preserve face, avoid saying “no” bluntly, or route conflict through indirect signals. That can frustrate Americans or Europeans who expect explicit yes/no answers. But that is not “Chinese people are three monkeys.” It is a communication-style mismatch plus incentives around face, hierarchy, and relationship management.

The clean way to say it in business terms is:

The three monkeys are now often used as a symbol of willful blindness or avoidance. Some Western businesspeople project that onto Chinese negotiation style, but historically the symbol is Japanese and originally moral/religious, not an anti-Chinese business symbol.

Oh no... It's not an on/off switch.

It's quite analog, and the dial is huge, containing too many tiny increments to count. Each one producing a new effect.

Fortunately you can CERTAINLY control it.

That's the danger of the "red zone" on the J curve.

It's magic supreme!

And you use darkroom rule #2 to manipulate how it moves.

You play with the magic you can see, as if it's real.

So the assemblage point slides horizontally to make it so.

But you can end up in situations as bizarre as sleeping dreams, while you are fully awake and walking around your practice room.

To move it in depth (which is what gets you started), you use darkroom rule #1.

Where if you gaze at anything that "can't possibly be there", and do that with your internal dialogue greatly reduced, your assemblage point begins to move down your back.

What happens is on this map:

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Feven-better-j-curve-diagram-v0-9zmf1q8wiyt61.jpg%3Fwidth%3D3592%26format%3Dpjpg%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3D81ad592f1b97f4de6a7a284beaf70e0d26774e55

Best method for learning to stop the internal dialogue, in my opinion, is to face the issue head on, and develop "silence muscles".

It totally sucks, but eventually it becomes easy.

You simple force all words from your mind, with no exceptions, until your nose bleeds from the effort.

So you work like a dog, and then the next time you work even harder.

What's happening in that case, is that your ability to work hard improves.

And you "notice" real magic.

So that one day you realize looking at the magic, also helps.

Unfortunately, stopping the internal dialogue for real is so difficult that no Yogi, Buddhist Master, Daoist or Kabbalist has ever even gotten close.

They just pretend they did, but are too lazy to actually learn to do it.

And are even known to tell followers that "no man can do that".

So they use a substitute like a Koan or Mantra or contemplation.

Which alters it, produces meditative effects, but never gets you far enough to even qualify as a beginner in this subreddit.

On that huge dial, meditation gets you to 0.05 on the scale of super amazing magic.

Barely noticeable.

You need to get to 1.1 on that scale, to see stuff no one will believe.

Nope. Zen is harmful to people who want to learn sorcery.

It's a complete misunderstanding of reality.

But it's difficult to know what people are talking about, when they say "Zen".

The real thing?

Or the fake westernized version?

Either way, Zen turns you into a powerless Zombie who believes they're better than everyone else.

While claiming you are "empty" and "ego-less".

But their costumes are the best in the fake magic business!

Ahhh yesss Athina!!! Well said, and what an experience!!! 🔥🙌🩷

>Your chances of having a better practice increase when you're in a good mood. 

Perhaps that's an indication of having "power".

If you don't pursue visible magical effects, but still try to heed the "Men of Knowledge", you might tend to view power, as things going well for you.

But if you immerse yourself into visible magic, that's not something you normally pay attention to.

Although Cholita emphasizes it.

> I was seeing amber puffs 

Maybe those are actually the shiny outer coating Carlos wanted us to rise up.

I get golden sparkle clouds, that might easily be viewed as yellow puffs.

And "beings" definitely show up in those. But they clearly aren't inorganic beings.

I also have "black rectangle" visitors when that golden sparkle light is active. They just press against me and then move away.

The "emanations" can show up in several forms. I suppose that makes sense, because they can't actually be viewed like a physical object.

Wow! Awesome!