Hi so one thing I’m wondering is what exactly is meant by inner dialogue and stopping it. Like I feel like you need it to think, read, do math, reason logically and plan ahead in any form. Is there something being lost in translation or what because I’d imagine one becomes almost vegetative with absolutely zero internal monologue so I could be misunderstanding.
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You cant hear your neighbors talking about you if you dont turn the tv down...
Someone more advanced will explain it better but yes your entire rational world is only held in place by the rationality implied in language, so when you stop that language the entire “real world” stops existing. Or at least in the way you normally interpret it. That is why you dream with your eyes open when your dialogue stops, the rational world is like one of those dreams but is held in a specific place by language.
So would someone who was raised with absolutely zero education and language be very advanced? Also how do you manage to continue to exist and not starve to death or stop breathing in this sustained state?
They would just be insane. Unsocialized feral children exist, they are nuts and unfixable. I asked Dan if non verbal automatics were sorcerers and he said no because this path is a specific path that goes beyond simply having no dialogue. Sorcerers still interact with this world which means they still use dialogue, because this world is only here because of dialogue. If they didn’t use language they would be totally gone. Dead or just gone missing mysteriously I guess.
I would start by differentiating between petty dialogue concerning self pity and what others owe you; dialogue and thoughts of planning practical issues, science, etc, are entirely different and the key distinction lies in the negative emotions that go with the former. People with no education still have very petty feelings like anyone else, animalistic emotions. Observe animals why supposedly didn't have a dialogue, yet they must have some type of thought, or emotions.
Its all the same, this is a false distinction.
Also, there are no "negative" emotions, there is only your resistance to them.
It's just semantics. What I mean by that is the dialogue that tells you that someone is mean to you, and you should be angry, etc. That is not the "same" as planning tomorrow's trip to the beach, or how to build a house. Is an entirely different process and the "negative" inner dialogue that has no practical purposes, it drains your energy. And leads to "negative" actions and reactions (actions from fear, anger, lust). Remember in the Active side of Infinity Don Juan slowed Carlos Castaneda the Flyers and told him about these specific thoughts
This is a great question and I’m looking forward to the replies.
I agree, however I would strongly advise you to abandon all hope, as questions like this one hardly ever get answered in here. The usual suspects jump straight to it and evade it by scolding you for “pretending” and nOt pRaCtiCinG.
At best, you may get an actual answer in the form of a quote from the book. However, the books are sometimes contradictory and confusing as they solemnly advise on a certain topic in a specific way, only to be completely “misleading” on another instance (if we were to stick to the original guidance, advice or warnings)…
Although, I hope someone is advance enough in here and can answer this rather important question with sovereignty.
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When you are in a flow state, you don’t talk to yourself. It’s a misconception that you need to talk to yourself to reason.
Most of people used to narrating their actions and thoughts so much that believe it’s the thinking itself.
Instead, when you talk to yourself, you lock your AP in the social construct.
My epiphany when I was mushrooms: the inner monologue is the voice of our parents or parent figure. As a child you are being told how to behave, then we replicate this talking to support the illusion / behavior calibration.
“Oh man I am not good enough” or “Hell yeah I am the best” is the same bullshit. There is no good or bad, just energy and consciousness/self awareness.
This is not even some spirituality thing. Science got there already. Nothing is solid, everything is a vibration and a probability field.
We are complex wrinkles in probability fields that talk to itself to maintain the social vision of the world.
How does one reliably reach this state. Meditation and trying to focus on breath seems decent but it takes so long and meditation also seems to get berated here but I have yet to find something practical to reliably reach such a state. It’s like trying to bulk up with 5 pound weights as your equipment
The flow state is easiest to reach for me through movement.
The reason why still sitting meditation is touted as a possible solution in consensus circles, is that it doesn't work.
If you do hyperventilation to change state you can also reach flow, if you do not attach to thinking right away when your normal state weakens.
When I was gradually becoming aware of thoughts, I started hearing my mother's voice. I mean literally. When I was realizing that it was making me feel sick as I was so opposed to what was playing in 'my head'. I felt like a slave and I didn't know who I was anymore. I'm glad you mentioned that. It made me contemplate on my journey and how I got HERE :)
Might help
https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/comments/1q0mm34/two_types_of_intending/?share_id=1JYP7jTOkGNKnXIbYoC3r&utm_content=1&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1
There is the voice in your head that never stops commenting on everything around you, the is YOUR voice in your head that is you talking to yourself, and then there is silence.
Silence is when you are able to suspend your whole system of interpretation, that means stopping the voice in your head that was conditioned and thaught by every experience in your life to interpret sensorial data.
If you take a unsocialized feral kid and put them in the middle of times square, they would just be confused and scared, probably because of the amount of sensory data input that they cannot comprehend.
The position of the AP, wich is also a result of your socialization, defines which energy bands you are in contact with. Then your system of interpretation comes in and transforms all of that "chaotic" energy into cohesive data.
When you stop your interpretation system you can be able to perceive energy in it's pure form, you don't turn vegetative without your interpretation system your double will love it!
Someone gave an example of the flow state, and it is a great analogy, you just don't think, you act. It has more to do with intuition.
You made a good question, it is difficult to understand what being in silence is.
When I was first trying to do it, I discovered that if I start to talk to myself in my head and in the middle of a sentence i cut a word in the middle and at the same time held my breath I could have one second or even less of silence, but I was able to understand what it felt like.
Try, if you feel like it.
A quick practical way into silence, if you're new to this: start with gazing .....1st let your eyes go unfocused, relax them, and just take in the whole field around you instead of looking at anything. Notice your body is part of that perception too, the temperature, the sounds, the weight of yourself sitting there.
There's no real "outside" and "inside" here, it's one field, let's call it, attention yes let's say attention is a field always available. Now notice the inner voice... it's been running the whole time, it didn't stop when you opened your eyes, it's just another spot inside that same field, same as the traffic noise or the light on your skin. But you have made it your master, yes it controls your attention or influence it a whole lot. In some people is so loud it hurts them when it's not running.
Once you can feel that, you'll notice attention isn't a switch, it's more like a muscle, or a beam.
it has direction, it has tension, you can perceive where it's pointing. You can also narrow it and point it straight at the inner voice and just watch.... where does it feel like it's coming from? what's it doing?
Notice it in the field of attention as a whole.
That's the anchor point. Once you can actually feel the beam, not just think about it, you can start telling the difference between the noise and the open field in real time, catch it as it happens instead of after.
That's not fighting the voice, it's just knowing exactly where your attention is at any given moment and that's where real silence starts to build.
Fascinating
From a sorcery point of view, the internal dialogue is what fixes the assemblage point into its ordinary position: how we normally perceive the world.
It's a common position modern men hold, which involves a consensus about a shared reality.
By constantly talking to yourself and repeating over and over a description of the world, it seems like it's solid, unique, and almost imperturbable.
But you would have to be an idiot not to notice the sloppy details...
It wasn't always this way. As children, we didn't have a consolidated internal dialogue until we were 11–15 years old.
When we were babies, we could see other worlds, and as children we had visible magic going on, even if we forgot most of it.
So what sorcerers do is stop the internal dialogue to break the fixation of the assemblage point and shift it elsewhere.
You have to keep in mind, nothing of this will make any sense until that happens. And you can't force yourself to understand it because it doesn't work that way.
Sorcery knowledge and understanding come directly from perceiving magic: isolating the "Silent Knowledge" part of perception.
That's what gives clarity, makes all doubts disappear, and even makes you feel like an idiot for ignoring such things.
And don't pay attention to lazy bad players like that guy who complains we don't give explanations.
That kind of user doesn't like sorcery; they just like to talk about it. And they usually end up banned from here.
So, getting back to what happens when the assemblage point moves, other views of reality become available.
At first, it could look like the same world you see every day has changed. You can't explain what, but it's different. You yourself aren't even the same.
But then visible magic becomes available. Puffs, inorganic beings, other worlds. All visible, eyes open, both in daylight and in darkness if done right.
And you get to realize that what sorcerers do is such an specific path that nobody else in the whole world gets to experience the things we do, or that would be really obvious.
You need to push very hard in one direction to get that kind of thing to happen.
And yet, when you do, it seems like the most natural thing, even the most honest view one can have of the world.
Because you no longer perceive it through the normal filters through which you usually perceive it, which are defined by past traumas and experiences.
It's even sad to realize that we normally perceive the world to a higher percentage as "ideas" than as what it actually is.
Our world is energy... just like hundreds of other worlds with energy available to perceive.
So at some point, sorcerers get to have that type of freedom of perception, which puts things into perspective and gives them some superpowers.
Which aren't really usable in the everyday world as we would fantasize.
But it ends up being the most honest search a human being can undertake. It brings back what we lost as modern men: the natural wellbeing and lack of suffering that exploring other realities involves.
Carlos Castaneda gave us an ideal path through which we could move our assemblage point toward a decent destiny, in which we could learn on our own. "The Silent Knowledge Position," or the Purple Zone as we named it here, on that J Curve.
I must repeat that all this I've just written is completely useless to you and even to myself if I don't get silent again and do the work.
In fact, you end up forgetting and dismissing this stuff pretty quickly, so it's nothing definitive and more something you make grow each time.
But it's still mega cool and unique. You won't find this anywhere else in the world, I dare to say.
What’s the most effective way to do this and reach this point? I’ve heard some say brute forcing it but it feels like the effort itself becomes mental noise. Would just focusing on breath for a prolonged period of time work as well or is that a distraction?
Dakroom practice is designed to do that.
This is very helpful. Thank you for the explanation.
Language is a reality processor. The metaphors, ideas , concepts etc that one uses to think is the filter or the lens that shapes and makes your reality. The practioners of this path gradually aquires the ability to turn off the internal dialogue at will. It does not mean they are going on with their daily life without inner dialogue . They know the important role and function of the dialogue, and use it with understanding and sobriety. I mean, they use it when necessary and minimally. Or they use it when necessary and then discard it. They are not bound by the inner dialogue.
I used to feel the same way. The truth is (I'm not a practicing sorcerer, but I do heart meditations.) your internal dialogue is unnecessary and actually just slows you down A LOT. You won't realize how much until you can go longer and longer without relying on your internal dialogue.
You enter a flow state where it's easier to navigate situations, you become more aware of your surroundings and "what's happening."
Your intuition and reflexes become faster. Think about it, if you have to say to yourself, "I logically should kick that ball over there, and I'm going to kick it to the left." You've wasted 1.5 seconds that could have been spent kicking the ball.
It seems to me that people tend to be silent even without magic. I was playing a cooperative video game recently, and one girl said that thinking about the future made her want to commit suicide, so she'd better not think. Alcohol, smoking, drugs, and sex also stop internal dialogue and can lead to a green zone, and sometimes further. In fact, Don Juan taught Castaneda to enter these states without stimulants and to study them, not just to get high.
You'll be able to answer this by yourself if you just give it a serious try.
Some people just can't see what their internal dialogue is, despite that being very obvious to others.
We have no idea why.
And after 7 years in this subreddit, most who are advanced will write off a person who can't figure out what their internal dialogue is. They won't put in any effort to help them.
Because those people inevitably don't stick around long or ever put in a serious effort to learn. Mostly they seem to be trying to convince themselves some fake magic system or religion they favor, is a better choice for them. Despite knowing themselves that the other magical system (cough... Buddhism?), doesn't actually have any magic beyond simple meditative effects anyone can get by praying, or even by locking themselves in a sensory deprivation tank.
On the extreme, there are even a few people who claim NOT to have an internal dialogue, which is perplexing because reality is indeed only held in place by your internal dialogue.
It's an absolute fact you can see with your own eyes, over and over again.
If you stop it fully, the world vanishes and you end up in the spaces between realities, looking at several possible paths you can walk down to enter another.
I feel AI research coming on... I'll tack it to a reply to this comment.
And NO. Your internal dialogue DOES NOT help you do anything, other than keep track of a list for a while.
It's more like an annoying commentator repeating stuff you already know. It doesn't even come up with anything new! And it's so grief stricken and full of strife, that it drives your energy body away.
And according to don Juan, it shortens your life.
The "energy body" is something you'll get to see with your own eyes, fully awake. It's not a chinese myth. It's a real thing that becomes your friend, once you get rid of your internal dialogue.
The "list remembering" ability isn't even a good reason to keep the internal dialogue around.
You could easily keep track of your list by viewing it as glowing text floating in the air, if you got rid of the internal dialogue.
I get to read text most nights now. It's just floating in the air.
Carlos used to read it on his palm, to find answers to questions people in class had.
But usually he read it above our heads. Just a bit higher than the horizon to the south.
I do the most difficult computer programming around. HDL.
Internal dialogue isn't any help at all for that. But silence is.
AI summary of the "space between worlds". Keep in mind, the spaces that seem concrete are just phantom realms that the lineage evolved. It's unlikely we'll end up using that more than as an occasional curiosity.
*** AI ***
In the sorcery teachings of don Juan Matus, the transition between our everyday reality and the second attention is not a seamless mental shift. It is a physical crossing of an actual, energetic boundary—a transition zone that seers experience through two primary manifestations: the Wall of Fog and the Space Between Worlds.
The "wall of fog" is the visual interpretation of what don Juan calls the barrier of perception.
The Boundary: This wall of fog divides the world in two. Everything on one side is the world we know; everything on the other is veiled. When a warrior physically crosses this line, they experience a violent physical sensation—either their body feels intensely squeezed, or they feel a sharp shaking in the cavity of their body, usually from right to left across the stomach.
The Space Between Worlds (The Sand Dunes of Limbo)
Once a practitioner penetrates the wall of fog, they do not immediately enter the second attention. Instead, they enter a real, objective, yet desolate buffer zone that seers call limbo or the world between the parallel lines.
The Portal of Allies: Despite its desolation, this plain is not empty. It is a "no-man's land" where the inorganic beings and allies roam and lurk.
Silvio Manuel’s Relentless Training
To prepare the apprentices for the immense physical shock of crossing this boundary, Silvio Manuel—the master of intent and will—orchestrated a series of bizarre and grueling "not-doing" exercises designed to align their energetic bodies.
The Leather Harnesses: In his house, Silvio Manuel kept leather harnesses strapped to the ceiling beams of every room. He would strap the apprentices into these harnesses and hoist them into the air, keeping them suspended off the ground for nearly the entire day. He also did this in the wilderness, hoisting Carlos and la Gorda high into the branches of tall trees in pitch-black darkness. The goal of this "dangling" not-doing was to jolt their perception, forcing their eyes to become subsidiary to their ears and allowing them to detect the vibrations of other realities.
Silvio Manuel Dragging Apprentices Into Limbo
Once Carlos and la Gorda had accumulated enough energy from these vigils, Silvio Manuel initiated the next phase: forcing them to detect the wall of fog, stop its rotation, and step through.
Because Carlos and la Gorda initially lacked the power to stop the rotation of the wall of fog on their own, don Juan and Silvio Manuel had to step in and physically force them through. Carlos describes Silvio Manuel's terrifying, non-verbal methodology:
Hi,
Take a look at this post. I think it sheds a lot of light on the subject:
Forcing Silence - "Rumination isn’t something that happens to you; it’s something you do."
But the whole collection is worth going through, because several of the posts contain ideas that can help you get a better understanding of the internal dialogue and silence.
For example, check this one out:
The Internal Dialogue Is Not Your Thoughts!
Or this one:
It's really more about where you focus your attention, than merely words in the brain.
I’m a beginner practitioner too. I basically try not to do anything at all. Like a sloth. 🙂
Usually, I have some kind of internal activity going on almost constantly. I just "let it go" whenever I notice that WWE has started up in my head again. All I’m trying to do with these little acts of letting go is create at least a few brief gaps in the otherwise constant internal activity.
Again and again, I notice it; again and again, I let it go.
I guess this is probably the only way to do it — forcing silence, as Dan often puts it.
The practice has also given me some firsthand experience of just how annoying the internal dialogue is. 🙂 It really is a construct that has been foisted upon us from the outside.