**Without power, there's no practice. Period.**
My question about the dark room went unanswered, so I'll raise it here.
Let's be honest, everyone. Do you really think you'll walk into a dark room, visualize for five hours — and something real will happen? This isn't a party trick or a weekend meditation session. It's a war with yourself that's either waged every day, or not waged at all.
Don Juan didn't keep Carlos away from serious techniques for years for no reason — because without accumulated power, it either doesn't work, or it works against you. Power doesn't come from technique. It comes from what you do (or don't do) with yourself every single day.
Here's what it's actually made of:
**1. Erasing personal history**
Refusing to stay attached to the image of yourself that others know. As long as people think they know who you are, they hold you in a rigid shape through their expectations. Erasing your history frees up the energy that was going toward maintaining that image.
**2. Impeccability**
Not morality in the ordinary sense, but doing every action with full commitment, as if it were the last action of your life — without self-pity, without asking "is it even worth it." This is a daily discipline, not a one-time act.
**3. Erasing self-importance**
Don Juan called this the number one devourer of power. Resentment, pride, the need to be right, to justify yourself, to feel sorry for yourself — all of it is an energy leak. Until self-importance is weakened, there's no "extra" power available — it's all going toward maintaining the ego.
**4. Not-doing**
Breaking down habitual, automatic patterns of perception and behavior — how you sit, how you look at things, how you think on autopilot. This builds power by freeing perception from the rigid frames of the tonal.
**5. Stalking**
Not just "tracking yourself," but controlling your own behavior, the ability to be inaccessible (not to be confused with secrecy — it's about not wasting yourself needlessly), the ability to change strategies. This is something you do every day — tracking yourself: your reactions, your words, your automatic patterns.
**6. Death as an advisor**
Constantly keeping death in mind, as something standing over your left shoulder — not a depressing idea, but a tool that sharpens presence and strips away pettiness.
**7. Personal power through small victories, not through techniques**
Don Juan emphasized: power doesn't come from learning a spell or a technique, but from accumulated acts of impeccability in ordinary life.
All of this is years of work. Not hours. Not a weekend. Years.
So before asking "how do I shift the assemblage point faster" — ask yourself: are you actually waging this war with yourself every single day, or are you waiting for a technique to do it for you?
66 Comments
Personal power is also leaked by posting Chatgpt as your own words
I'm sharing my personal experience and how I understand Carlos Castaneda's teachings after years of reading and practice. This is my own understanding, my position, what I believe and what matters to me.
If someone has specific objections to the content — what exactly do you disagree with? Happy to discuss it on the merits.
And honestly, I have no idea what ChatGPT even is.
👏🏼 💯
What has prompted you to ask this loaded question?
Seems a bit like odd timing to be bringing this up!
Especially to use other techniques as examples to say, you can't just rely on a technique to learn.
Did you use an LLM to translate into English? Your premise is just a little confusing, the way you are presenting your argument, especially this part:
"Don Juan didn't keep Carlos away from **serious techniques** for years for no reason — because without accumulated power, it either doesn't work, or it works against you. Power doesn't come from technique."
That's not the point at all, actually. I originally raised the topic of why in a group dedicated to Carlos Castaneda, the foundational practices (stalking, impeccability, erasing self-importance) get pushed aside, while things like the dark room get pushed forward as a way to "achieve something" quickly. Here's the link to that discussion:
https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/comments/1f257n7/comment/ozailnx/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb3x&utm_name=mweb3xcss&utm_term=2&utm_content=share_button
And the main point is — without preparation, this isn't just something that "won't work," it can actually cause real harm. Don Juan didn't keep Carlos away from serious techniques for years for no reason — because without accumulated power, a person isn't protected from what they encounter.
Also, I don't speak English well at all, I'm using a translator and just trying to get my thoughts across to you.
“Let's be honest, everyone. Do you really think you'll walk into a dark room, visualize for five hours — and something real will happen? This isn't a party trick or a weekend meditation session. It's a war with yourself that's either waged every day, or not waged at all.”
Why did you ask if we thought something real would happen, if you were worried about the harm it could do?
Good question, let me clarify. It's not a contradiction, it's two different things.
When I say "nothing real will happen," I mean that what people are actually going there for won't happen — a genuine shift in perception, a real result in the sense Castaneda wrote about. Without power, the technique doesn't produce the effect people are seeking.
But "won't work the way you want" doesn't mean "nothing will happen at all." The body and mind still react to something — sensory deprivation and prolonged visualization without preparation can trigger disorientation, anxiety, dissociation, or other unpredictable states. So the person doesn't get what they were looking for, but they can end up with something they weren't looking for and aren't prepared to handle.
I know this not from theory, but from personal experience — an unprepared person can seriously harm themselves, up to and including losing their mind or dying. And it genuinely surprises me that here, in this community, that doesn't seem to concern anyone.
Thank you for clarifying! Separating "won't produce the effect people are after" from "nothing at all will happen" is a fair distinction, and I'd agree with the first half of it.
But your claim moved from "this won't work" to "this can cause real harm, up to and including losing your mind or dying." That's a much bigger claim, and it deserves more than a general warning.
I just have a few questions from what I’m noticing you’ve shared:
What does the harm actually look like in practice? You mention disorientation, anxiety, dissociation, which could well be genuine concerns, but they're a long way from death or permanent damage. What fills the gap between them?
You said you know this from personal experience rather than theory. If you are comfortable sharing, I’d rather hear that than the argument around it. What happened, and at what point did it become clear it had gone wrong?
What separates the dark room from the other practices the tradition already prescribes? Recapitulation in an enclosed space, extended dreaming attention, and long stretches of inner silence, are also low-stimulus and self-directed, and nobody seems to treat them as dangerous. If darkness and stillness are the risk factor, those should carry it too.
What counts as sufficient preparation, and how would a person know they had it? If the answer is only visible after the fact, then the warning can't actually be acted on by anyone.
One more thing I noticed: the mechanism you described is a psychological one, sensory deprivation plus prolonged visualization producing unpredictable states. I don't disagree that this happens. But that's a different explanation than the one don Juan gives for why certain things require power first, and it's worth being clear about which of the two you're actually arguing.
I’m sorry for so many questions and points being brought up, but if the danger is real I'd rather have clarification than dismiss it.
Let me tell my story — why I'm writing this at all.
Seven years ago I was living in Vietnam, and I started practicing qigong. I didn't know much about Castaneda yet. I just saw everyone around me doing it, and I thought — maybe this could help me too, the way it seems to help so many people. I had no idea what I was walking into.
At some point during meditation, I heard a voice. And I remember the exact feeling — a cold, disorienting certainty that this voice wasn't mine. It would tell me small, ordinary things — go do this, go get that. I started asking myself, terrified: why doesn't my own mind listen to me when I sit down to meditate? Why does it keep pulling me toward the bathroom, toward food, toward anything but stillness? I began to suspect, with real fear, that it might not even be my mind anymore.
By then I had already read Castaneda maybe five times. And it was only when I came across his description of the black shadows that something in me went cold with recognition — that's what this is. But knowing didn't protect me. It got worse. The more I practiced — standing in qigong postures for 30 minutes at a stretch — the more these things pushed into my life.
Eventually they were telling me to kill myself. I want you to understand what that's actually like — three days of fighting, minute by minute, not to hurt myself, while loving my life, while never once wanting to die. I remember walking to the river with homeless people just to have someone near me, telling them, without explaining why, please don't let me hurt myself.
Later I was in Cambodia. COVID hit. I wanted to go on a vipassana retreat — desperately, because I thought maybe there, finally, someone would understand what was happening to me. They turned me away. Foreigner, COVID. I remember that rejection landing like the floor dropping out from under me.
So I said, to hell with it, and sat in silence alone. 28 days. During that time, these beings told me, over and over, that they would kill me, kill my family. And near the end, they told me I was losing my mind.
And here's the part I need you to really hear: in that moment, I was ready to give anything — anything — for that to be true. Because if I really were insane, it would mean none of it was real. It would mean the horror I was living through didn't actually exist in this world. That's how badly I wanted an escape. But I knew, underneath the exhaustion and the fear, that I wasn't losing my mind. It was real. That certainty was almost worse than the alternative.
After that, nothing could stop me. I've spent seven years now in recapitulation, dreaming, stalking. I carry all of this with me, every day.
I'm telling you this because I lived it, not because I read about it somewhere. Only a truly tempered spirit can survive this path without breaking. This is not a game. It is not a weekend technique you try because it sounds interesting.
If you don't have that inner strength yet, please, build it first. Don't walk into what I walked into unprepared.
I hope that those of you who've actually been through something like this will recognize what I'm describing — and know that you're not alone in it.
That really sounds awful, I’m really sorry for everything you’ve been through to cause you such pain and turmoil.
Do you think it was inorganic beings you encountered in your qigong practice? That that is what is most dangerous about darkroom?
Thank you, that means a lot.
Yes, I do believe it was inorganic beings — what Castaneda describes as the black shadows. And honestly, I think that's exactly the main danger of the dark room: it opens a door for that kind of interference before you have any real protection or preparation to deal with what comes through it.
That makes sense. But if qigong is what introduced you to inorganic beings, what singles out darkroom specifically as being what will open a door to them?
Don’t you think recapitulation tensegrity might do that too?
In my experience, predatory forces are always around, that's the nature of the universe, but the strength of our shields depend on our energy levels. Practicing while not being impeccable, is opening yourself to outside influences you don't have the strength to face. Practicing while indulging, that is, depleting your energy in useless habits, makes you a prey. Sexual energy is one of those most important sources of vitality. Vices are another way to spend it. When saving energy I have been able to fend off hostile beings, organic and inorganic, almost effortlessly. But impeccability, not indulging, is the most difficult thing to follow, at least for me.
Boom. Busted.
So it wasn't inorganic beings when causing the issues when you replied to my comment about the electrical energy, but now it is?
Awfully convenient is it not? To just change narratives to suit whatever argument you're making in the moment.
I'm not laying any traps or shifting my story to fit an argument — I'm simply sharing personal experience, the same as everyone else in this group devoted to Castaneda's work. The flyers are exactly what we've been dealing with from the very beginning — that's not some new detail I'm introducing now, it's foundational to this whole topic.
The electricity incident and the dark room experience are two separate episodes, not the same event described differently. I'm not conflating them.
And that's actually part of why stopping the internal dialogue matters — if that dialogue belongs to them rather than originating from your own intent, silencing it is one way to close the door they'd otherwise use. That's tied to why preparation matters before working with the dark room, not after something has already come through.
I'm fine, by the way — this was a while ago, no need to worry on my account.
It says your comment no longer exists 🤔
I'm not laying any traps or shifting my story to fit an argument — I'm simply sharing personal experience, the same as everyone else in this group devoted to Castaneda's work. The flyers are exactly what we've been dealing with from the very beginning — that's not some new detail I'm introducing now, it's foundational to this whole topic. The electricity incident and the dark room experience are two separate episodes, not the same event described differently. I'm not conflating them. And that's actually part of why stopping the internal dialogue matters — if that dialogue belongs to them rather than originating from your own intent, silencing it is one way to close the door they'd otherwise use. That's tied to why preparation matters before working with the dark room, not after something has already come through. I'm fine, by the way — this was a while ago, no need to worry on my account.
The fact that you're dismissing my personal experience only shows that you haven't stopped your own internal dialogue yet. Otherwise you wouldn't be arguing like this. And if your actual goal were to help people, you'd be trying to pull them out of this trap... instead of attacking the people sharing it. The fact that this touched such a nerve in you says more than anything I could argue back.
I'm doing okay actually lol
I think darkroom is fine for beginners. Everyone already shifts their assemblage point every night anyway. They're just unaware of it.
You should definitely practice if you don't have power. Do you think I should just wait until I feel ready to practice? That would sink me more and more into self importance and self pity. Practice is what gives us power.
You didn't mention tensegrity and Recapitulation. Those are some of the most important things to start with. Practice is what makes it work. Even DJ said that you don't have to believe, you just have to do.
Also, while we need to listen to how their training worked, we do not have a Nagual to teach us. We must do this on our own. So why would I follow each step of someone who did have a Nagual?
Waiting isn't a trap — it's one of the main qualities of a warrior. Patience isn't passivity or self-pity, it's discipline: not grabbing at something you're not ready for yet. The difference between a warrior's patience and self-pity is that the warrior isn't sitting idle in the meantime — they're working on themselves (recapitulation, erasing self-importance), just not rushing toward a result.
It's not about not practicing — it's about WHAT actually counts as practice that builds power. Tensegrity and recapitulation are exactly what I'm talking about, I just didn't name them directly. Recapitulation is literally the work of erasing personal history and self-importance through reviewing the past. Tensegrity is a form of not-doing and stalking through the body. This is daily, boring, invisible work — which is exactly what I'm talking about.
My issue isn't with practice in general, it's with specific things like the dark room, which get presented as a way to get a quick effect without that basic daily groundwork. These are different things: recapitulation and tensegrity build power, the dark room is (in theory) the application of power you already have.
As for the nagual — I agree we don't have one as an actual person, but the nagual is everywhere. It's not a personality as such that has to physically be there with you — it's the spirit itself.
This might be the Tata Kachora follower who attacked on instagram. His head exploded this morning and he kept commenting over and over again.
He's repeating early book nonsense. With it being obvious he's clueless about actually making sorcery work.
Here's that guy's instagram, and a bunch of pics of Kachora. Or at least, the first time I clicked on his instagram I got pics of Kachora. This time I got pics of women. But if you scroll down, Kachora shows up.
https://www.instagram.com/edwardsmarkcrowe/
Here's one, in case you've never heard of this guy.
He came to LA with two men back when Carlos was around, wanting to star as don Juan in a movie they were discussing being made. Taisha and Florinda even met with Sony pictures over it. Carlos joked, he'd like to have Robert Redford play him, as long as Anthony Quinn didn't play don Juan.
There's a discussion on the Joni Mitchell site about Kachora, and I believe we sent some spies to look into this guy, which was common back then due to so many "me-too" copycats. For example, it's said that Taisha and Florinda went to spy on Ken Eaglefeather, who even invaded our workshops to try to steal new customers, where they found Kylie teaching Ken's fake sorcery, and rescued her.
Kylie was so grateful she became the best student in private classes and the inner circle, and Taisha and Florinda took her along, when they ditched Cleargreen. I was given an invite to go with them, but didn't understand that's what I was offered so I turned it down.
When that didn't work out for him, he was suddenly elevated to actually BEING don Juan.
His teachings are all childish stuff that has nothing to do with learning sorcery. His workshops have people marching around in circles wearing rambo headbands, like a cheesy Mexican Shamanism festival in a parking lot.
Everything they believe about sorcery is entirely from the "Man of Knowledge" lesson Carlos got in the first 3 books. And totally superficial with no actual magic happening.
We've been attacked in here by Kachora zombies in the past, and they're always 100% clueless.
Kachora will soon be dead, and then those 2 original thugs who came to LA with him are likely to try to take over so they can steal money from our community.
I sure hope as many as possible are lured away by Kachora, to make our job of actually helping people learn, easier.
We aren't after people who like to pretend.
Assuming this is the Kachora attacker from instagram. There's around 30!
Who goes crazy and posts 30 comments on instagram, trying to lure people to their stuff???
Schizophrenia is my guess.
Here's some of his comments. He likes to name drop,. but none of it makes any sense if you've been around the whole time:
*** Ive been doing Toltec work since 1987. Lived in Mexico for years , lived with Toltec decedent's in the mountains of Mexico. Everything Don Juan and Carlos taught has its core in moving into deep inner silence, beyond the Matrix of thinking. Castaneda told me once at a conference that " if a practicioner cannot hold inner silence for two hours straight, with absolutely no thoughts , than his world of Sorcery is simply conjecturing, books, concepts and Tales of Power in his head... " thats word for word what Carlos told our group in front of Florinda Donner. 🧘♂️ 🧘♂️ Focus on internal silence and daily meditation for at least two years, then the states of inner silence begin spontaneously to you throughout the day. 🌙
***I was in Carlos group with Kylie lindeau,,Victor Sanchez,Felux Wolf and Ramirez. Our names are on the program bills as we set up the halls for the talks in California I dont ever remember hearing your name. Funny how those who know the least bark the loudest
***Tell me Don Juans actual name? You should kniw this. If you tell me his real name ill know you are very experienced in this work. Everyone in Carlos world knows who the real Don Juan is. ⏰️
***Btw y'all theres a documentary coming in Fall about Ta Ta Kachora being Don juan. All the evidence gathered is in this documentary which already has a trailer. Even Castanedas ex wife and children are in the documentary as well as the Anthropologists who helped carlos and knew Don Juan ( Ta Ta Kachora ) ❤️ 💙 💜 💖
***TIP EVERYONE; Being online Toltec Sorcery disciples is not whst Grandfather Kachora taught us. Go rustic Backpacking for 2 or three weeks straight. Then the silence starts to set in , then youre in a space to See and kniw. 🌎 trust her 💯 ❤️
***Part #2 Grandmother earth can teach you things no human teacher or book can. After the 2nd attention, nothing you experience or encounter can ever be explained in language, so forget turning sll this into a philosophy, it wont work. Go deep into intetnal silence and learn directly at the level of energy. As don juan Kachora said " all the rest is frills just to support inner silence..." Thats all that matters here. Good luck and love you. Stay out of the Matrix 😉 ❤️ 💙
***
There's a lot more.
This sort of attack is why Carlos couldn't teach for free in parks and had to go to locked rooms.
So the attackers are basically claiming Carlos wasn't the best source, and you should go learn where they learn.
Except, they can't do anything at all.
It's just talk and pretending.
This has nothing to do with me. I haven't left thirty comments on Instagram, I'm not promoting any products, and I'm not claiming to have personally known Carlos or his inner circle. I only shared my personal experience here and the obstacles I ran into in my practice.
If someone has an issue with a specific person from Instagram, that's a separate story, and mixing it with my post to dismiss my experience isn't exactly fair.
Those it was meant for have heard it. So I've said everything my spirit wanted to say in this chat. I don't see the point in continuing a conversation with someone who, instead of actually refuting my post or, say, sharing their own experience, just dismisses everything.
I wrote that for the guy on instagram, just after I pointed him to the subreddit.
So there had to be some Kachora bashing here for him to see.
We used to be attacked by organized Tata Kachora zombies, and on "Native American Day" to boot!
Kachora is mexican of course, and has nothing to do with native americans beyond most mexicans having some native blood.
We fought off the Kachora deluded by a mixture of things until they gave up.
One was posting negative things about him, so that they couldn't brag to their friends about their attack on this place.
There’s a lot of 2 month old accounts posting recently. They post and reply “knowledgeably” and yet they’re not.
Any knowledge comes from DR practice and then you can relate to the books, or make connections when senior/advance practitioners post……unless of course you’re a “professional psychic and Toltec practitioner.”
It doesn't matter how old my account is — I asked specific questions in my post, based on substance. If you have objections to the content, respond to the content, not to whatever persona you'd like to imagine is behind it.
Looks like someone else doesn't think this is the instagram person. Thinks it's a woman who got kicked off discord.
That's always the risk of calling people out. That you'll call out the wrong person.
If it's not the instagram man, this is a classic example of the "attack of 3s" that Carlos warned us about.
That if you make progress as a group, 3 people will come to attack you and try to stop the progress.
Carlos demonstrated it in classes over and over again, pointing it out because he knew we'd be attacked too.
It doesn't have to be 3, that's just the most common number who attack all at once.
But usually it's true. Sometimes it even seems like there were 4 of them all at once.
A few years ago, we went 3 weeks without any at all. Thought we'd gotten over that, but then it resumed.
So somewhere we're going to get a 3rd today or tomorrow?
Most likely...
I have no connection to either the Instagram account or the Discord server you're referring to — you can speculate all you want, but it has nothing to do with the content of my post. If you want to discuss the "attack of the threes," that's a separate topic, unrelated to the question I actually raised: why foundational practices (stalking, recapitulation, impeccability) get pushed aside in this community in favor of techniques like the dark room, which get presented as a shortcut to results.
I haven't said anything wrong here. I don't know who any of you are, and honestly, it doesn't matter to me. I just want people to know what's waiting for them if they keep going down this path.
Happy to discuss the substance if anyone actually has real objections to that.
I remember Florinda saying something at Omega in 95, that if you accomplish a lot of energy redeployment, but don't do the recapitulation, you'll just redeploy all that energy into your old patterns. So, if you were an asshole to start with (and we all are!) you would become a super asshole with all your new energy!
(I think it was Florinda who said this. There were lots of people on the stage at the time, but it could have been someone else talking while I watched Florinda like a hawk.)
I can't argue about what Florinda said — I have no way to verify that. I can only speak from my own experience.
After the practice of recapitulation, there's no going back. If you've worked through a reaction — for example, to something that used to set you off and make you angry — you simply can't react to that same situation the same way anymore. Because those strings that used to pull you like a puppet are no longer in your body. You've removed them, cut them off.
So if a similar situation comes up again, at first you don't even know how to behave — some kind of pressure shows up in the body, sometimes it comes out as trembling. And then, if the same story repeats again, you don't react at all anymore.
I think you just have to try it for yourself. Yes, it takes more than a day, more than a year.
Because none of those worked for the last 30 years, no one learned any sorcery at all, and our community nearly lost this precious technology, forever.
Carlos himself said this would happen, and admitted he'd failed to teach even a single person.
Telling me, after setting it up so we could be alone, "I'm dying, and no one believes me."
Took me 20 years to realize, he didn't mean no one believed he was dying. He meant, not a single person had seen real magic and so no one believed his books.
He was hoping I'd do something about that.
The witches of course, ditched Cleargreen as soon as he died.
Carol stuck around, since "the rule" kind of has someone stick around.
But she gave up much faster than Reni admitted, so people kept believing Carol was around when in fact she went elsewhere to try on her own. We have a picture of her elsewhere.
Weren't you paying attention?
It turned into another pretend system like all the others. And our leaders started making up fake tensegrity, and incorporating useless junk like Yoga religious philosophy. They even made a video claiming Carlos met Yogananda and said it was the same thing.
When in fact, Yogananda died a year before Carlos came to Los Angeles, and long before Carlos was famous enough to meet a fraudulent Guru in person.
But you're very confused. Making up stuff in your mind perhaps.
There's nothing in here telling you not to do those. Sounds to me more like you don't like the fact that you can't pretend in here because you can see that others are actually following the instructions Carlos gave us, and it's working to produce crazy levels of magic not seen anywhere else.
As far as your question:
Stalking isn't what you think it is at all. It's moving your assemblage point, or holding it at a new position, using your actions in the world.
It's not pranking your friends so that you can feel superior.
It won't work until you can stop your internal dialogue, and even then it's highly unlikely you can pull it off. Best is to learn to move your assemblage point where Carlos himself told us to move it, just before he died, and then stalking becomes obvious. As you stand now, there's no chance at all you can do any real stalking.
Recapitulation is great, but everyone just sits there thinking and so it doesn't produce the amazing time travel effects that are in the books. So are you going to do it and have it not work, and let all this amazing knowledge be lost to pretending? Didn't you ever ask yourself why it isn't working the way it did in the books?
It even allowed shared time travel!
Here's a video showing what ought to be happening during recap. I pointed to that section so it should come right up. If not, it's more in the middle of the video.
Also, "Impeccability" is just pretending until you have real magic DAILY, and get the frustration of it not being very vivid on some days. You're forced to learn how to curb your bad habits, or else you can't move on.
No magic daily, and learning to be impeccable is impossible. You'll just fake it.
Seems like you're just wanting to pretend, and pretend, and pretend.
And angry that this place doesn't let you do that.
So go elsewhere! This place is only for saving this knowledge from extinction, and pretending you are an impeccable stalker who sits and thinks to themselves once in a while, pretending that's recapitulation, isn't going to help anyone.
Seriously...
What on earth are you doing in here?
Go to a pretend site like Cleargreen's discussion group.
I guess you could assume that Cleargreen and "Armando" didn't make it up, and if you do a feeble job of recap, Carlos will come save you when you die.
But he never said he'd do that. Cleargreen just made that up.
All he said was, to a SPECIFIC group of people, is come find him when you die and he'll show you which way to go. I was there when he said that.
But that assumes you already "darted past the Eagle" and just don't know how to get to that giant dome.
Which is NO LONGER the goal. Carlos found a path to true immortality, instead of just a place to hide out until the sun goes red giant and burns up earth.
He didn't tell us how, so you have to discover that yourself through following his instructions.
This cartoon summarizes his instructions and even shows the cool magic you can expect from doing that.
I will never believe that after so many years of practice, Carlos Castaneda could simply die. Even now, based on my own level of energy, I know I can't get sick with anything. So everything written here — in this group and in other similar sources — feels to me like the flyers speaking through you. So that people never get the chance to find freedom.
Everything you've described — the stories about Cleargreen, Carol, "fake tensegrity," the arguments about who's a "real" follower and who's just pretending — that's noise. And that's exactly what it's meant to be: a distraction, so people spend their energy figuring out who's right in these internal squabbles instead of doing the real work on themselves.
You ask what I'm even doing here. I'm here to say what I know from my own experience — not because I need anyone's approval or a place in this hierarchy of "real" versus "fake" stalkers.
And since you're claiming that all of this leads nowhere — then why the hell are you offering people your own made-up practices? Where exactly do those lead?
You claim that 30 years led to nothing, and that Carlos himself supposedly didn't believe he could teach even one person. That's not true. I practiced from his books and from Taisha Abelar's books on my own — I never discussed this with anyone. I came to this forum hoping to meet people who had gone through the same thing. And it was precisely through these books — without a teacher, without a community, without secondhand stories about "personal encounters" — that I achieved real results, and I can say with full confidence: what's written there actually works. You just have to do it.
Carlos's intent to pass on the teachings worked. Intent finds its own warriors — not through hearsay and not through "insiders," but directly, through practice and through the books themselves.
I started this whole conversation precisely so that people like you wouldn't be allowed to cast doubt on the very core of his practices — with retellings of other people's words instead of your own experience.
So stop telling stories about what someone supposedly said to someone else thirty years ago. Your entire argument is made of secondhand accounts, not practice. After thirty years, you still haven't achieved anything — and I honestly can't understand how that's even possible.
Wow... Ok.
I suppose this whole subreddit and efforts to make people take this seriously and expect results, was unnecessary because there's some out there who made it work?
But if you read the posts in here, that's never turned out to be true.
Besides, what makes you believe that Carlos didn't manage to teach 3 of his private students what matters most?
Kind of an odd assumption to make.
And what he emphasized for years in private classes, is precisely what you see in this subreddit.
Stopping the internal dialogue while doing tensegrity accurately.
That's all darkroom is. Odd that you're so hostile towards it.
I'll answer your questions.
1.This one is hard for me to answer with anything definite.
As for Carlos supposedly failing to teach his three private students — I can't confirm or deny that, since I never personally knew him, you, or his private class. I have no access to that experience, and I won't presume to judge something I wasn't a witness to.
As for whether I believe he left two allies to his private class, and that there's a "rule" about passing allies down the lineage — same here: I can't believe or disbelieve something I wasn't a witness to. That's your personal experience and your group's experience, and I'm not going to dispute or confirm it.
I need to ask you to clarify this one. Which allies do you actually mean — you, as people, or inorganic beings? With the latter, I'm certainly not looking to deal with them — I stand on my own there. If you mean yourselves, I have no objection to talking — that's actually why I came here. I just don't fully understand your level of personal power and understanding, or what exactly we're dealing with. Could we actually be of any use to each other?
I also want to add something on my own, so we can finally understand each other.
I had no idea living students of Carlos even existed. I practiced alone, from the books. Even when it was hard, I never went looking for anyone — let alone online. But at some point, after years of practice, I hit a wall and didn't know what to do next: for the last year, my body had been going through trembling and strange states, as if it were "about to burst." There was a separate — almost impossible to put into words — "pain" in my stomach: not quite pain, more like something pulling, cutting, hitting like electricity and pulling all at once, and there was no way to stop it or wait it out by ordinary means. Separately from that, there was also a dull pain in my right side. I was searching for information — whether this meant the loss of the human form. I understand now what it was, but at the time, that's what drove me to start searching online in the first place.
And that's how I stumbled onto your forum, without even being registered there. I got curious, kept reading — and saw that Carlos's practices were being pushed to the background here. That's when I decided to ask why, since it was exactly those practices that brought me to where I am now — and I'm very far past the point of just starting to stop the internal dialogue.
I simply wanted to stand up for Carlos's knowledge — the same way you say you stand up for it too.
I hope we can finally understand each other. I didn't come here to argue or prove anything.
>Which allies do you actually mean — you, as people, or inorganic beings?
the two allies that "went with him" in what was likely Eagle's Gift.
Which were likely don Juan's 2 allies, which would make them "Little Smoke" and the Devil's weed entity.
I have very good reason to believe it was those 2, but I suppose that doesn't do you any good.
So meet them!
>I simply wanted to stand up for Carlos's knowledge — the same way you say you stand up for it too.
Athina feels that way too. Go chat her up on Discord?
I my case, I do what I must.
Not what I want.
Based on actual observations and an understanding of how taking stuff literally, from the books, leads to turning it into a pointless religion.
Carlos told me to stop reading his books, for just that reason. He got tired of people correcting him from his own books.
And Cholita says there were 50 private students, not 3.
I'd say more like 100 if you count occasional visitors who could attend anytime they were in town, but couldn't stay here in the USA for other reasons.
All of whom gave up, except for 3.
Unless you could the few still in "Cleargreen".
But they also gave up. They just didn't stop stealing money from our community.
Even making up fake Tensegrity forms to keep sales up.
I'll respond only to the part about the allies, since you clarified it.
You confirmed yourself that you mean inorganic beings — and you're presenting "getting to know them" as part of the practice. But that's exactly what don Juan warned Carlos against, repeatedly and firmly, throughout the books: don't make contact, don't "trade" with them, don't let them get close, because they hunt for human awareness and can trap a person in their world. That's not a minor detail — it's one of the most serious warnings in the entire series.
So here's where I see a real contradiction: you say you're defending Carlos's teachings exactly as they are, but what you're describing as practice — direct contact with these beings — is precisely what don Juan warned against most strongly. That's not the same as disagreeing on details — it's the opposite of what the source material says.
Thank you for the conversation. I'll stick with the line of the new seers.
So you are afraid of the inorganic beings and your fear has become fixed:
"had to" "became fixed"
"They have never been my cup of tea," he said. "Of course, the main reason was my fear of them. I was unable to get over it when I had to, and then it became fixed."
Carlos liked their world, so it's not that you are sticking with the line of the new seers:
https://web.archive.org/web/20191127155055/http://insensciety.com/notes/1995_culvercity1.html
Don Juan knew all this, but he was afraid of the inorganic beings, and dismissed wholesale all of the old sorcerers' knowledge as leading inevitably to entrapment in that world. He chose instead, as was the new seers' bent, to Burn With The Fire from Within, and go to the 360 degree world. Ironically, now he is trapped there.
Carlos, on the other hand, liked the world of the inorganic beings, and he liked the Death Defier. Carlos reiterated how the Death Defier had fooled the inorganic beings by becoming female. He said also that since he is the last Nagual of don Juan's lineage, the Death Defier will no longer be able to remain here on Earth, and has therefore attached his destiny to that of Carlos' party. When they leave this world, he will go with them. And Carlos intimated that it is largely at the Death defier's behest that the magical passes are being shown. He knows he will never return to this world, and that unless his vast knowledge is shared now, it will be lost. As payment for the extraordinary life he has led, he wishes to divest himself of that knowledge. (I thought of the Biblical proverb about the camel and the eye of the needle.) The "opening" of sorcery is a result of the Death Defier's intent. What Carlos and company have learned is that the inorganic beings' world is the gateway to infinity, and that Death can be successfully kept at bay indefinitely there. It will (has?) become for them a home base for their navigations in infinity.
P.S. Let's not also pretend that Don Juan is the only other perspective on inorganic beings from a nagual, there is also the nagual Julian too.
P.P.S The "opening" of sorcery is a result of the Death Defier's intent.
I will be considering this deeply now that I have found this, nothing to do with you.
Let's start with where you're getting these lectures and whether they can even be trusted. A link to an archived site with someone's seminar notes isn't a primary source — it's someone's secondhand account of spoken words, decades later, with no way to verify accuracy. I can't treat that as an equal counterweight to what's laid out systematically in the books themselves.
I trust my own spirit, and after that, the books — which went through editing, publication, and decades of scrutiny — not random notes from someone's lecture.
In "The Fire from Within," don Juan tells Carlos in detail the story of the old seers. They achieved extraordinary power and mastery of seeing earlier than anyone else in their line, but they used that power for control, domination, and indulging their own self-importance. It was precisely that indulging that made them vulnerable: they got pulled into dealings with inorganic beings and the forces of the second attention, who took advantage of their hunger for power. In the end, many of them never achieved freedom — they stayed trapped, either in the world of the inorganic beings or caught between worlds. Don Juan states this outright as a cautionary example: the path of the new seers, including himself, was developed specifically as a response to the old seers' mistakes — a path through impeccability and freedom, not through accumulating power and allies. "The Eagle's Gift" and "The Second Ring of Power" contain similar episodes about old sorcerers seeking immortality through manipulating forces and ending up bound instead of free.
Don Juan spoke of the lineage of new seers stretching from Sebastian — the nagual who started this shift back in 1725 — through Lujan, Rosendo, Elias, Julian Osorio, don Juan Matus himself, and finally Carlos. Seven generations of people who deliberately chose the path of freedom through impeccability, rather than the old seers' path of power and alliance with inorganic beings.
Since we're on the subject of specific episodes — here's one from "The Art of Dreaming," about Elias and Amalia. The nagual Rosendo didn't save them from the inorganic beings — he handed them over to the scout as a gift. He didn't expect them to be taken along with their physical bodies. They were searched for and found in that world, but never fully brought back. Don Juan tells this story precisely as a warning — a vivid example of what contact with these beings leads to, not as a story with a happy ending.
You're claiming the opposite — that Carlos himself ultimately abandoned these words and this teaching. To me, that sounds like he simply didn't make it — that he turned out weaker than his own predecessors, and ended up going exactly where the old seers went, the very thing he was warned against all the way down the line, seven generations running.
And one last thing — don Juan explains his own position directly: "The best reason in the world is that we represent complete opposites. They love to dominate — I love freedom. They seek to buy, I do not sell." That's not about fear — it's a principled refusal of the entire arrangement, where power is handed out in exchange for dependency. That's exactly why the inorganic beings in Castaneda's work are almost always portrayed as predators or power-traders: they offer knowledge, seeing, energy — but always in exchange for something, usually a person's freedom and autonomy. And the whole path of the new seer is about breaking free from any form of that dependency.
So honestly, I don't even understand what you're talking about anymore. It's starting to look to me like you're the one serving these inorganic beings, handing over your own power to them. You could be putting that effort into real practice instead — yes, the kind that takes years. But instead, you sold out. Sigh...
And yet... Don Juan used and carried inorganic beings with him (in a gourd).
Your foibles are your own, if you've let fear sink in, that is your failing.
"I was unable to get over it when I had to"
thanks for the info about the death defier. i always thought because carlos was a three-pronged-nagual it was made public and i just read this post about the rule ( https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/comments/g4zx4a/the_rule/ ) and the rule also seems to play a role here:
would carlos's books have been published even without death defier, because of the rule for the three pronged nagual? i wonder that.
It doesn't feel like you actually read all of the books.
There's 20 books and publications. Each one is precious once you run into a situation where you needed a detail contained in only that one.
One detail you seemed not to have read is that you can't learn sorcery without the Allies.
Women can get away with not having to deal with them directly, but I can't fathom why you'd want to do that.
Taisha has Phoebus, and cuddles with it every night. Like it was a cat in her bed.
Anyway, over on discord there's a few women who feel as you do.
También en Discord tenemos que lidiar con personas que se dedican a tratar de ocultar con mierda de IA cada que hay un avance significativo de las brujas, y a quienes los IOB supuestamente ya les han mostrado "el inicio y el fin".
Obviamente no saben de lo que hablan, pero aún así tratan de llenar de mierda el brillo de Athina y la congruencia de Jade.
¿Eso entendieron por "trabajar como perros"? ¿Eso es lo que entendieron por "buscar a Julián"? Yo pensé que íbamos a... Pero.. Y si mejor... Bueno, no me importan las mentiras, ni me sorprenden las motivaciones. ¡Pero me importa la intención!
¿Cuál es la intención de tratar de evitar los avances de las brujas? Podría ser: ¿El ataque múltiple y permanente de la contra intención?
Como si no hubiéramos podido mantenernos en los peores momentos solamente por la Tensegridad guardada en nuestra memoria corporal.
Así que nada de esto es sostenible si no practicamos los pases. Evitan que nos volvamos predadores de nosotros mismos. ¡Y no es algo "moral"! No es "cosas estilo la gorda". ¡La mierda machista también nos pudre, Dan!
Las animaciones tal vez preservan los pases, sí, gracias por pagar para que algún desafortunado las anime con IA.
Pero las caricaturas no los ejecutan como lo haría una persona lúcida. Además, resulta degradante la posibilidad de que los ejecute Mickey Mouse en paños menores para la continuidad masturbatoria.
Llegando a la masa crítica de masturbadores, las brujas se retiran de cualquier lugar.
Y dices "sólo somos tres aquí".
En realidad, sólo eres uno.
Las cifras no sirven, las brujas tienen otros datos y no piensan como nosotros, no dicen que seamos un "22% tan apestosos como Dan", aunque lo dan a entender.
Son diferentes a nosotros, están dispuestas a arrojarte una manta si ven que estás muriendo de frío, pero van a patearte si ven que es berrinche, entonces definitivamente no son máquinas que eructan discursos a demanda.
Somos nómadas. Lo mejor es que sigamos vagando por el bosque.
Los ataques intencionales sí son de tres cuando no te estás contando a ti mismo y al tipo del espejo.
El miedo que nos provocan las brujas es porque saben 'limpiar' o cuando menos "mover el caldero", en el sentido de "dar movimiento a la vida". ¡O acompañar hasta el final a la gente que estuvo cerca de Carlos!
No te ocupes en contestar, generaré mi propia respuesta con IA y luego la ilustraré.
Anyone understand all this?
It makes no sense to me.
There is a witch on Discord who has been taking advantage of long-standing feelings and concerns that practitioners and community members there have had, in order to sow discord in that space and on the subreddit, because she really doesn’t like you.
Yea, I got filled in on it in private chat. Though not as succinctly.
It's no mystery why the lineages didn't take volunteers.
translation by google:
>Your entire argument is made of secondhand accounts, not practice.
I'm not clear on what you think is "secondhand".
You do realize the three of us are private students of Carlos, and not just readers of his books?
For years!
And none of the pictures of results you can get, made by me, aren't something I didn't do myself. Usually the night before I posted about it.
Also, I ran into Carlos, Taisha, and Florinda, way back in the early 1970s, and perhaps once in 1968. Easy to prove that too.
When Taisha was photographed in her GI, I was there in the room, or just outside it.
When she rung the gong at the Budokan in Japan, I was there too and even rode over on the same airplane.
Carlos tried to sell his house on Pandora to me, and Florinda invited me to be her lover and mostly likely go off with her and Kylie as more protection for the witches after Carlos was gone.
Anyway, if all of this is crap, why then don't you just make posts that really teach this sorcery, according to you, and help people?
Or make friends with some of the women in here, and go hang out where they hang out.
One of them was concerned about you when you first posted.
Someone suggested this post is motivated by fear.
Here's a picture I made, to straighten things out on this topic of what makes inorganic beings visible.
It is NOT from doing tensegrity, o r even darkroom.
It's from doing what Carlso told us to do: Restore your energy body and move your assemblage point closer to being in alignment with that of your energy body.
If this sounds like the same thing, it's not.
It's those purple puffs. Those are "dream pieces".
So the inorganic beings can play on those, the same way they ALREADY
The fact that you're dismissing my personal experience only shows that you haven't stopped your own internal dialogue yet. Otherwise you wouldn't be arguing like this. And if your actual goal were to help people, you'd be trying to pull them out of this trap... instead of attacking the people sharing it. The fact that this touched such a nerve in you says more than anything I could argue back.
Yea, I never seem to please the women.
Ask Cholita.
But if you're willing to stand up for yourself, that'll serve your well for learning.
But why on earth are you afraid of inorganic beings (spirits)?
They're your best friends until you can make it to the orange zone all by yourself.
And LOTS of fun in the red zone.
maybe you should read your 3rd point from your post above again and take it more seriously
The way I see it: if a technique is effective enough to give results even for those who lack personal power and impeccability, then all the more reason for an impeccable warrior to do it.
Also, sitting in darkness and forcing inner silence generates power on it's own for sure. It's a complete lack of distraction or stimulus. It's basically facing the human predicament: alone, and surrounded by darkness.
I think it's a great addition to the other practices.
Anyone "chasing the high" of seeing colors or dream impressions only to use it as justification for treating others poorly and neglecting the other core tenets of sorcery are of no concern to me whatsoever. Though I do understand your annoyance. I know for a fact I am more powerful than some of the resident petty tyrants. So why would I be bothered by their antics?
"Let's be honest, everyone"
What an obvious giveaway haha.
"Come on now everybody let's all use our logic here, us who know nothing about this new thing and let's all be judges now"
Now thanks, i don't think o will.
"Flyers are talking through you btw!!!!"
Lol i actually had a laugh. Focus on your work everyone. Less reading and more practicing.
See ya!
Taisha Abelar's Lecture at the Omega Institute May 1995https://sorcerypasses.com/post/taisha-abelar-s-lecture-at-the-omega-institute-may-1995
Just in case your not familiar with this lecture I made a link.
I feel it is more in line with what was been taught at the time.
Just a heads up here. I've been reading the comments and there's the old gang bullying behaviour going on. People who are clueless as to what is actually in the books or worse- people trying to " own" what's in them by rebranding whatever they have read- in the meantime creating a huge mess and confusion for potential beginners.
These are the best teachings and this being the internet also attracts the worst kind of people. There’s nothing we can do about it apparantly, except clean our own link with intent, which you already seem to know.
Check out the sorcery passes channel on youtube if you haven't already, that's guaranteed the real thing... instead of all.. this puke which you have been bombarded with here.
I'm not even going to respond to others reading this- it's meant for you and not for " the crowd". Better off there being no " us", asides from the " energetic mass".. which seems most promising by the practice of the magical passes. As far as having personal power before or after them.. idk, perhaps they go hand- in - hand, like you can't have one without the other..like a Romance With Knowledge.
Good luck!
Thank you for the link, I'll definitely watch it. And thank you for sharing this comment here — I completely understand what you mean, because I've experienced all of this firsthand.
I thought that since students of the CC tradition had gathered here, it meant we could share and help each other. Instead, I ran into people who have no idea what a warrior actually is or how one is supposed to go through all of this alone, yet who stubbornly push and fiercely defend practices that supposedly lead somewhere — without ever once explaining where exactly, or what it actually leads a person to.
Good luck to you on this path too! I'm glad there's at least someone who actually understands something.
As a reminder, according to the OP you can toss this lecture out too
If your question is, "Do you really think you'll walk into a dark room, visualize for five hours—and something real will happen?" then my answer would be: yes!
Because it happens to me within just a few seconds of relaxing, and I don't even need the room to be completely dark.
On the other hand, I really like your contribution. I consider these points to be far, far more important:
And, above all, acting without expecting results—doing without doing, and being without being.
Lately I've been spending a lot of time rereading Castaneda's books and taking notes on all these things that seem so important to me. It's funny because I always laughed a little—just like the old sorcerers did—at the way Castaneda was constantly taking notes like a madman. And now I'm the one doing exactly the same thing! 😂
Great contribution, by the way, even though it took me a while to figure out what the question actually was! 🙂
[removed]
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.
It' s kind of strange that OP has been banned and censored. I wonder if the mods here will ban me and censor this too? I got a request from OP to put her final message here, which was apparantly deleted by " those in charge". I'll give this a go though. I would like to add - would " the community" like to have a compromised sub?
Disgraceful. Anyways- here goes nothing, delete it if you will, we do our own bookkeeping.
Here's the text:
I'll answer one last time — not to argue, but for those who'll read this later.
I came here not to argue, but to share my own experience and find people who've been through the same struggles of this practice. I didn't understand right away what I was dealing with — I thought I was just talking to people who hadn't yet dealt with their own self-importance. But it gradually became clear, and you confirmed it yourselves, directly: you've gone down the path of the old seers, not the path Carlos himself chose.
Throughout the books, don Juan warned about the same thing, again and again — don't make contact with inorganic beings, don't "trade" with them, don't let them get close. This isn't a minor detail, it's one of the central lessons of the whole series, and it's exactly why the path of the new seers was chosen — freedom instead of power and alliances.
As for "you can't master sorcery without allies" — the books do say that the world of inorganic beings is a source of power to draw from. But that's not the same as direct contact or "friendship" with a specific entity. Don Juan talks about visiting their world for power, while at the same time, repeatedly, warning against forming a bond, "trading," or letting them get close. Those are two different things: drawing power from that world, and making a deal with its inhabitants.
As for the examples about Taisha and others — that's again someone's personal, secondhand story, not a quote from the books. I'm responding to what's written in the texts, not to what someone claims happened in private.
What's being offered to newcomers here as a practice — "getting acquainted" with an entity through a specific exercise — is exactly what they were warned against.
The flyers are inorganic beings too, and this world is a trap as well, in case you've forgotten — consider this a reminder. I fought them and came out victorious. You don't have to sell yourself to other beings in exchange for "knowledge" or "power" — you can fight and win.
The intent of seven generations is stronger than a group of three living students. It will find its way to its own warriors. As for the rest — let their own spirit protect them.
I'm not asking anyone to take my word for it. Read the chapter "Black Shadows" from The Active Side of Infinity, and the story of Elias and Amalia from The Art of Dreaming — and draw your own conclusions.
I hope you'll warn your students before dragging them into another trap.
And I hope you have the conscience — or the courage — not to delete these messages, and instead let people decide for themselves what to believe.
I'm done with this conversation now. Take care of yourselves.
Zero messages of theirs have been censored except by Reddit itself, probably for using AI.
As to what they say, regarding second-hand stories, well, if we are tossing out the “second-hand stories” that are quotes of the sorcerers, I guess we can toss out all the rest. The lecture notes and workshop notes were collected when Carlos was around.
Respectfully, what is a compromised sub as you ask?
Continuing to platform someone whose words and stories seem to shift and change in meaning and intention, quite plainly before our very eyes over a short amount of days, and for all the world appear to be at the very least sort of disingenuous, seems more compromising to me than putting a stop to that sort of behavior.
I need to point out this omen.
The person that was asked to post on your behalf, was the one disproving you.
What you do with that, is up to the spirit.
https://sorcerypasses.com/post/taisha-abelar-s-lecture-at-the-omega-institute-may-1995
Taisha continued, "The sorcerers of ancient times became very disillusioned with the inorganics, because they didn't get the concrete rewards they expected from the power that they felt the inorganics could help them command" (e.g., like defeating the Spanish invaders). "What our group has realized is the capacity of the inorganic beings to feel affection. The inorganics have a capacity for genuine, deep affection that is soothing like nothing else. And they do things for sorcerers out of this affection, freely and without expectation. They are motivated, in wanting to help us, out of a sense of seeing how brief our lives are compared to theirs. When one makes contact with them, through profound affection, they can enable you also to prolong your attention. Does this sound like Faust? The inorganics may seem like devils from the standpoint of reason, since they are interested in extending our awareness to a point that is almost eternal. The Old Nagual said they are like our cousins, existing on a line parallel to ours. The only way to expand our potentiality is by entering their world. They don't do this for us for gain. Don Juan said that the universe is permeated by a wave of deep affection, which the inorganics are tapped into." (This assertedly also includes affection we feel for trees, other people and the inorganics.) "When the wave of affection hits you, let it take over, because it enables spirit to take off and fly into infinity. You then soar with total fearlessness and total abandon. When 'talking' [i.e., internal dialogue] comes in, you say, 'Who cares?'"