I've noticed an interesting distinction during darkroom practice and I'm wondering if anyone here has experienced something similar.
Normally when I get some silence going, I see the usual dim puffs. They're usually weak dark purple or dark green, diffuse and relatively faint, and kind of float around. They seem to move with my gaze, and if I shift my attention or look somewhere else they move or disappear. They're not really "solid" in any sense, more like vague visual formations appearing in the darkness.
I've also had occasions where something quite different happens.
Today was one of those times. I saw a bright green puff that looked like solid green fire, almost like the fire from Maleficent. The interesting thing about the green one was that it had a strange sense of someone being in it, almost as though there was a presence within the fiery form.
Later I saw a similar pink fiery puff, but this one behaved differently. I was actually able to reach out with my hand and move the pink puff, almost as if I could physically manipulate its position.
These weren't simply brighter versions of the normal puffs. They looked like actual chunks of fire sitting in the darkness, with a much more concrete spatial presence. When I moved my head or eyes, they didn't move with my gaze like the normal dim puffs do. I could keep them in the same place and hold them in perception.
What interests me is what is actually different here. Is this simply what happens when you get further into silence and the puffs become more concrete, or is there a fundamentally different shift in the internal state that allows these bright, spatially stable forms to appear?
The distinction feels pretty significant because the normal dim puffs and these bright fiery ones don't just differ in intensity. They behave differently. The normal ones feel like transient visual phenomena that float around with attention and gaze, while these feel much more like something occupying a stable location in the darkness that can potentially be interacted with.
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It’s interesting that you see green. I’ve seen orange and red. No green yet. Awesome that you could manipulate the blob. Cheers
I see green and pink together sometimes Usually it's like a "spread" of colour, above my head and my hands would be flat like trying to do stuff with it (that's the best i can describe ir) lmao.
There's a Dreaming pass, I think it's called hurling the assemblage point like a knife over the shoulder and your hand kinda smacks forward like a knife. I saw green electricity around my hands on New Year's Eve 2025. I dunno if it's like Maleficent lol, but my eyes was "fully sober wide open" like's mentioned in here often. I've been driven insane by that damn thing. Hoping to repeat it, but my eyes is usually closed or half opened.
I think your meant to stuff those puffs into the pouches (or smear it across them, like the "building the energy body faster" tensegrity moves). Least that seems to happen to me with my hands during tensegrity. Like today for instance, my hands were kinda claw shaped but they were kinda pushing something into my forehead. I could see the vague outline of a purply mist. My whole head felt heavy after I got stopped. Usually I get stopped with a "that's enough for today" or "here ends the lesson for today" in my head. I dunno who's saying that. lmao.
You might not like this potential answer, since you're advanced enough to get to this point.
But fortunately it will go over the heads of beginners.
They don't care what caused the very real magic, as long as it happens!
Meanwhile more advanced people start to judge the "quality" of their magic.
A big mistake... But unavoidable.
We have a bit of that going on, overall in this subreddit. I suppose it's a new "stage" that even Carlos never reached.
Where real results, aren't good enough anymore?
Beats me... But it happens.
Once you get used to real magic daily, you start to incorporate it into your normal view of reality, and doing that begins to harm your progress.
You come up with even more reasons to ignore what's right in your face!
But it's hard to ignore, when it begins to become "real" like this.
Most likely, that's from a horizontal shift! Not a shift to a new depth, but rather a shift horizontally, at the same depth you usually reach.
You can even shift horizontally in the orange zone! That "phantom zone" where you can be in 2 places at once, while sitting on your bed gazing into the room.
When you see that a bamboo forest has formed on the wall to your left, that's a shift in the center of man's band, into the deep orange zone.
But if you turn your head that view of the bamboo forest will form again in the new direction you are looking. It won't stay stuck to the wall where you saw it last.
So it feels "unreal" even though it's an astonishing sight to be looking at with your eyes open, and completely sober.
If on the other hand the view of the bamboo forest becomes so real that you get a little shiver up your spine, and maybe even a touch of fear, you might think to get off the bed to go see if you can walk off into the forest.
Only to notice, also with a touch of fear, that the bamboo is sending up shoots through your floor, and there's no way you can get off the bed without piercing your foot.
Real or not, it hurts like hell!
That's a horizontal shift taking place.
Because you began to treat the impossible sights, as if they were real.
This sort of explains how practical magic works when it involves doing a ritual or simple rhythmic movement, over and over again.
You're trying to get your assemblage point to shift far to the side.
Time is an important factor in darkroom, as long as you are capable of holding your assemblage point at distant locations.
**Here's what Gemini NoteBook found on this topic, amidst the 19 books of Carlos and the witches***
Question: Can you find all instances of "horizontal shifts" of the assemblage point? Sometimes also called a "lateral" shift.
Gemini AI:
A "horizontal shift" of the assemblage point is most commonly referred to by don Juan as a "lateral shift". This occurs when the assemblage point moves from one side to the other along the width of man's band of emanations, rather than moving in depth into the center of the luminous cocoon.
Based on your sources, here are the key definitions, consequences, and specific instances of lateral (horizontal) shifts of the assemblage point:
What a Lateral/Horizontal Shift Is (and How it Differs from Shifts in Depth)
The Cheese Analogy: Don Juan explains that the human band of emanations inside our luminous egg is like a thick disk of darker cheddar cheese injected into a ball of white jack cheese. While ordinary seers historically coined the phrase "shift to the left," don Juan notes this is technically an error of perception—any true, powerful shift of awareness actually moves in depth, sliding into the interior thickness of this cheddar cheese disk.
The Side-to-Side Deviation: In contrast, a lateral shift is a movement of the point from one side to the other along the width of the band, rather than moving deep into its center.
The Sinister Refuse of the Left and Right Edges
The Human Junk Yard: Don Juan warns that on both outer edges of man's band of emanations, there is a "strange storage of refuse, an incalculable pile of human junk". He calls it a very morbid, sinister area that is extremely easy to fall into.
No Value for Freedom: Don Juan tells Carlos that because these lateral shifts are produced from "man's inventory" (our pre-existing social programming), the visions they generate are of no value for warriors in search of total freedom and are automatically rejected by sober seers.
Lateral Shifts and the "Mold of Man"
Desire for the Familiar: What makes the assemblage point move laterally is our nearly unavoidable desire to translate the incomprehensible into terms of what is most familiar to us.
The Mold as a Man: Because Carlos’s assemblage point shifted laterally when facing a massive cluster of organic energy, his mind compiled it as a human figure—the "mold of man". Don Juan explains that if the shift is lateral, the mold is perceived as a human being. However, if the shift had occurred in the midsection of man's band, the mold would have been seen as a pure light.
Transition Worlds Assembled by Lateral Shifts
Don Juan explains to Carlos that many of the bizarre landscapes he assembled during his training were actually nothing more than lateral alignments of the assemblage point as it approached a crucial threshold along the edges of the human band:
Don Juan points out that of all the separate realms Carlos experienced, only the "black world" was a true alignment of another great band of emanations—all the rest were merely lateral detours within man's narrow band.
Dan, could you tell me what it means to sometimes see bright neon blue shards? Like broken glass, they are inside dim purple puffs.
That's perhaps a "crystalline puff".
There's some posts about it.
What specifically is inside them is impossible to predict, and likely either not meaningful, or not useful unless you want to spend a lot of time trying to turn that into "practical magic".
While practical magic was indeed pursued by some in the lineages, and I certainly endorse Cholita's practical magic, it doesn't seem to have worked out well for some who overdid it.
Julian and La Catalina for example couldn't follow past lineage leaders and got stuck in the inorganic being's world.
La Catalina is said to have found a way to freedom, but Julian is still waiting around in there for one of us to rescue him.
In some ways, westernized Buddhists are "practical magic" obsessed. They call it "enlightenment" and some make a living off of practical magic they describe for the green zone. Ingram and Shinzen do that.
But we consider green zone effects to be pretty much worthless, and know that anyone emphasizing those has never learned to stop their internal dialogue. They just changed it to something else, to move their assemblage point a few inches down their back.
Crystalline puffs on the other hand, likely require at least a 3 foot movement down the back, which is far outside meditation territory.
If you can reliably see stuff inside puffs, you can learn to materialize entire dreams in them, and then leap inside. Fully awake, eyes wide open!
You do that by gazing at the details and perfecting your silence, which moves your assemblage point further down into "the shift below".
Whether you can leap inside a puff as if it were a window to another world, without an ally or a witch around, I don't know.
I never managed to do it without help from an inorganic being.
But you can accomplish that other ways once your assemblage point switches sides on the body.
I couldn't find the "crystalline puff" post Juann made, but here's one on how music can be found inside puffs.
Here we go! I found Juann's post. At least, I assume it's Juann's.
Juann was a daylight darkroomer due to having time to practice outdoors at his university. He found some places where he could be mostly alone.
Notice that this seems to bolster my claim that mixing the tonal into the puffs is what makes things appear in them.
We get to do such cool magic!!!
It's very puzzling that almost no one is interested.
You'd think that the people who practice fake systems would give it a try, on hearing about it.
But instead, they get angry and try to come up with reasons no one should be doing that.
If someone came along with better real magic than we have, pretty much all of us would jump ship!
Carlos even went looking once don Juan had left.
Never found any.
Just crummy green zone meditative effects you can better get by buying an alarm clock with a snooze button.
Or by praying the rosary.
Thanks Dan! always very helpfull!
I will study more of the posts and continue my practice.
Very cool to know that I can do daylight darkroom too!
Darkroom proper was invented by one of the two Allies of Carlos.
She taught it to me, and explained that it keeps people from pretending their results.
Which had caused a near total failure in the first 20 years after Carlos died.
Ultimately it's just what Carlos was teaching in private classes, but with the lights off to make it easier to perceive the results of the energy body forming from the Tensegrity.
So don't forget that the Tensegrity is what causes the energy body to form, and stopping the internal dialogue is what makes it visible.
Making the best effort you can, is what causes the conscious universe itself, to gift you with success once in a while.
I painted this image to show what I saw every time I do darkroom
The details can turn into something else, if you can stop your internal dialogue longer. Except that once you are expecting that, you'll interfere with it.
That’s one of Bilissss’s posts.
That's why it didn't seem "Juann like" to me.
Here's my rendition of what the energy body produces when it swarms around you, but hasn't solidified into the "blue ball of energy", which becomes nearly invisible unless you look for it.
This is just swarming puffs. But looking around in it, you get the "crystalline dreaming fog".
Which can animate, and is essentially your puffs helping you to reach silent knowledge before you are able.
The very same way the Allies did for the men of knowledge! Except back then, using drugs to move the assemblage point.