The Abstract Cores

u/suicidsally 2019-02-05 15:24 UTC 5 points

  1. Manifestations of Spirit

  2. Knock of the Spirit

  3. Trickery of the Spirit

  4. Descent of the Spirit

  5. Requirements of Intent

  6. Handling of Intent

18 Comments

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u/dreamerandstalker 4 points 2019-02-05 18:02

The only way to grasp any of this information is to live an impeccable life or at the very least save enough energy through internal silence or some other means to catch it.
Spirit pretty much follows me around and tosses openings at my feet daily but I’m perpetually stupid, fat and slow.
I however do notice and am sometimes able to follow through on the odd unexpected direction where even if no one sees me coming I’ll try my luck at stalking the situation.
Other times I fall flat and the world runs me over while my ego cries poor me, poor me!
Well that’s like 98% of the time...

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u/danl999 3 points 2019-02-05 20:09

When I reached 52, I got the odd idea in my head to just do whatever the hell I wanted. It's hard to explain what that means, but it was associated with my sense of what's real, what's ok, and what's a waste of time. My mom's thinking, in other words. I decided to do whatever struck me, even if it didn't make sense, or would have been criticized by her.

It began to pay off in very impossible ways to explain. It was sort of like being on the lookout for intent, but knowing intent can be shaped by your own actions.

I ran into my first double woman this way. But I wasn't prepared for that and she got away.

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u/physique 1 points 2019-02-12 10:51

This post inspired me to re-read The Power of Silence again, so thank you. It's been many years since I last read it and I appreciated it more than ever. I first read it when it was first published, in 1988. I had already read Carlos' first seven books and didn't know if or when there would be another. I loved it and still do; I regard it as a masterpiece which can stand by itself.

During the three decades since that first reading, I've studied many other teachings in depth. At the bottom of all of those teachings is the idea that there is one source of existence. The One has many other names but they all are singular, such as intent, infinity, the spirit or the abstract. All spiritual paths I've studied are about clearing the connecting link to intent as Carlos writes or finding the gateway or opening the door to intelligent infinity as Ra says (in The Law of One). I wonder if the the true meaning of the word sorce-ry is reconnecting to Source.

Intelligent infinity conceived of finity and hence many-ness. Manifold creation consists of pairs of opposites or dualities as a necessary condition for freedom. So if a finite being seeks connection with the infinite, it must bring its manifold being into a state resembling the singular Source. The only way to do this is to achieve balance. When all imbalances are balanced, an equilibrium is achieved which is the finite state most resembling the One.

As Ra says:

The prerequisite of mental work is the ability to retain silence of self at a steady state when required by the self. The mind must be opened like a door. The key is silence. Within the door lies an hierarchical construction you may liken unto geography and in some ways geometry, for the hierarchy is quite regular, bearing inner relationships.

The disciplines of the mind involve, first of all, identifying both those things of which you approve and those things of which you disapprove within yourself, and then balancing each and every positive and negative charge with its equal. The mind contains all things. Therefore, you must discover this completeness within yourself. The second mental discipline is acceptance of the completeness within your consciousness.

Therefore, inner silence is only the first step. It is a position of consciousness that some teachers describe as "the witness platform". From there, the self can be examined impartially and brought into balance. This might be what don Juan refers to as stalking the self. I think this is why don Juan needed a lifetime of impeccability after attaining inner silence in order to achieve balance.

"Balance is the cardinal rule of magic." -- Right Use of Will

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u/danl999 2 points 2019-02-20 18:02

"Therefore, inner silence is only the first step."

I've been looking around at other techniques also. I just can't believe that there's no other teaching out there which simply tells you, "Shut the heck up in your head, what are you nuts jabbering on like that???"

I can see now that a very small few nearly do that. But they come to different conclusions. And sometimes they seek the result, instead of the cause.

In that area, maybe you (physique) have an opinion on "emptiness"? I'm curious about it.

Clearly Buddhism would lead to the same place as Carlos' teachings, if everyone had the same "intent". By "intent", I sort of mean explanations. I'm not implying Carlos "ultimate truth" is better than anyone else's, just that perhaps the truth you find is tainted by the stories you were told.

But the similarities in techniques have to be there, because we're all using the same physical bodies. The Buddhists also have meditation techniques to modify their internal dialogue. They don't directly go for that, but rather they alter it (possibly by repeating a mantra or sutra), and then some look to see the "emptiness" in everything.

If you're looking for emptiness, like it was a beacon of some sort, I suspect you'd also be looking for internal silence. Or surely you'd notice it's outrageous effects.

The problem I have with that is, Buddhists end up saying that nothing has actual existence. Everything, even God, is empty in the long run.

I haven't heard of them coming to a more basic view of reality similar to the one Carlos taught. Perhaps I simply haven't seen what happens after you realize everything is empty.

But having personally seen Carlos' emanations, bundles of emanations, and great bands of emanations, on multiple occasions, and knowing you don't see those things from expectations, but from absolutely innocent silence, is there a corollary in the Buddhist community?

I've heard the Hindus have a corollary in some very obscure teachings. You're seeing past God into the machinery of existence.

But if you go seeking "emptiness" as some Buddhists do, have you altered the intent so that you won't see what Castaneda described?

Rather than empty, it seems impossibly complex and unfathomable to me. Each fiber is aware. Every bundle represents a world you can live in.

That's hardly empty.

Here's an idea: The Buddha was trying to understand suffering. His quest was to solve the problem of his own guilt over being so privileged that he didn't realize there were poor people in the world.

So he concluded everything was empty, people get multiple lives, they deserve what they get each life, so everything is fine.

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u/[deleted] 1 points 2019-02-20 18:02 deleted

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u/[deleted] 1 points 2019-02-20 18:03 deleted

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u/BooBCMB 1 points 2019-02-20 18:03

Hey BooCMB, just a quick heads up:
I learnt quite a lot from the bot. Though it's mnemonics are useless,
and 'one lot' is it's most useful one, it's just here to help. This is like screaming at
someone for trying to rescue kittens, because they annoyed you while doing that. (But really CMB get some quiality mnemonics)

I do agree with your idea of holding reddit for hostage by spambots though, while it might be a bit ineffective.

Have a nice day!

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u/danl999 1 points 2019-02-20 18:11

delete

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u/physique 1 points 2019-02-24 12:09

The idea of emptiness is something I've pondered too. More so in recent years.

I only explored Buddhism and Hinduism, not in great depth. So, I don't have any insight to add in that direction. However, I did study Yoga in depth. I made many visits to an ashram near Montreal and even a related one in India, and took a teacher training course. That was decades ago though. All that comes to mind from that era relevant to the issue of silence/emptiness are the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. The first two sutras are interpretively translated as:

1.1 Now, after having done prior preparation through life and other practices, the study and practice of Yoga begins. (atha yoga anushasanam)

1.2 Yoga is the control (nirodhah, regulation, channeling, mastery, integration, coordination, stilling, quieting, setting aside) of the modifications (gross and subtle thought patterns) of the mind field. (yogash chitta vritti nirodhah)

So, the starting point is, as I first learned it, "still the modifications of the mind". I equate this to inner silence. There are 194 subsequent aphorisms, but inner stillness is the starting point.

The problem I had with the Sutras is that they seemed obscure to me. At first I thought it was because they were too concise. They are all very brief in the original Sanskrit. All together, they take up only a few pages so that they could be memorized and passed on orally from guru to disciple. But I later learned that they are also intentionally obscure, so as not to reveal the full truth to the uninitiated. This fits with what Carlos wrote about the harsh criticism he got from other teachers about releasing occult knowledge to the public. Whether this is true or not, the Sutras weren't my cup of tea. As Don Juan said,

Only then will you know that any path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you to do.

So, I looked elsewhere for knowledge. Besides Carlos' books, I tended to gravitate toward channeled teachings and I studied many of them in depth over decades. And I studied physics in great depth, earning a doctorate. These together were a path with heart for me.

Getting back to the question of silence/emptiness, my starting point is the basic belief of physics, that there is no emptiness anywhere in the physical universe. Even apparently empty space, the interstellar vacuum itself, is virtually alive with constant vacuum quantum fluctuations. Thus darkness and emptiness are only apparent, an illusion of our limited physical senses. Somehow I'm aware of the vitality that surrounds me, even though I don't yet see as you do, perhaps because my belief in this has reached the level of knowing.

If there is no emptiness, in the inner as well as the outer world, then what is inner silence? I think it is only silence of the internal dialog as Carlos taught, not the silence of everything. What remains when the dialog is silenced? I found some answers from The Pathwork, a channeled body of material: (continued below)

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u/physique 1 points 2019-02-24 12:10

(continued from above)

Unfocused emptiness is a lessening of consciousness. Focused emptiness is a heightening of consciousness. The former is a tuning out, a vague wandering of the mind that may lead to mindless emptiness. Sleep, or other states of unconsciousness are the final stages. Focused emptiness is extremely concentrated, aware, and fully there.

Focused emptiness grows, both deliberately and spontaneously, as you remove inner obstacles.  At the early stages, you experience just that:  emptiness, nothingness.  If your mind can quiet down, you encounter the void:  this is what makes the attempt so frightening.  It seems to confirm the suspicion that there is nothing within you, that you are indeed only your outer, mortal self.  This is why the mind makes itself so busy and noisy—in order to blot out the quietness that appears to herald nothingness.

Once again you need the courage to go through a tunnel of uncertainty.  You need to take the risk to allow the great quietude that is, at first, empty of meaning, devoid of anything that spells life or consciousness.

Focused emptiness brings you eventually to the light of the eternal...

1)  You experience the noise and the busyness of the mind.

2)  As you succeed in quieting the noise, you encounter emptiness, nothingness.

3)  Recognitions about the self, connections between some aspects of the self and outer experiences become clear.  ...  Recognition of the lower self is always a manifestation of higher-self guidance.

4)  Direct manifestation of higher-self messages, or what you call the opening of your channel.  You receive advice, encouragement, words intended to give you courage and faith...

5)  In this stage a direct, total, spiritual and emotional experience occurs. ... You know, not indirectly through your mind, but directly through all of your being.

...after a certain point in your development, it can be helped along by focusing on the inner emptiness until you discover that the emptiness is illusion.  It is a fullness, a rich world of glory.  You can receive all you need from this inner source and translate it into outer experience.

The time comes when, in spite of the fear, you decided calmly and quietly to go into the emptiness.  So you empty your mind in order to meet the emptiness deep within.  Lo and behold, very soon that very emptiness will feel, not full the same way you are used to, but it will contain a new aliveness that the old artificial fullness of your mind made impossible.  In fact, you will soon find out that you made yourself artificially dull by packing yourself tight:  tight in the mind because of its noise, and tight within your channel by contracting your energy into hard knots of defense.  You had killed your aliveness with this artificial fullness.  So you became needier because without your inner life you could not be fulfilled in a real sense.  A vicious circle was established as you strove to get fulfillment from outside, since you refused to go through the necessary steps to make fulfillment first manifest within.

In one sense you fear the aliveness more than the emptiness.  And perhaps you had better face that.  When you make yourself sufficiently empty, the first initial response is an inner aliveness, and you tend to immediately shut the lid tight again.  Yet by denying your fear you also deny that you are really very unhappy about your lack of aliveness.  But lack of aliveness comes from fearing it.  You can make the fear give way to aliveness by letting yourself be creatively empty.

You will experience your whole inner being, including your body and your energy, as a vibrantly alive “inner tube.”  Energy goes through it, feelings go through it, and something else is vibrantly coming to the fore that you cannot as yet name.  If you do not shy away from that unnameable something, it will sooner or later turn out to be constant inner instruction:  truth, encouragement, wisdom, guidance, specifically destined to your life right now, wherever you need it most.  That emptiness, that vibrant alive emptiness, is God talking to you.  ... but you have conditioned yourself not to hear it.  And in that conditioning you have tightened and packed up that “inner tube” that will fill you with the vibrant music of the angels.

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u/danl999 2 points 2019-02-24 19:06

"Focused emptiness grows, both deliberately and spontaneously, as you remove inner obstacles.  At the early stages, you experience just that:  emptiness, nothingness.  If your mind can quiet down, you encounter the void:  this is what makes the attempt so frightening.  It seems to confirm the suspicion that there is nothing within you, that you are indeed only your outer, mortal self.  This is why the mind makes itself so busy and noisy—in order to blot out the quietness that appears to herald nothingness."

Man, that's so wrong... The rest goes on even more wrong.

It's all internal dialogue. This sort of thing is why I'm here. I read stuff that feels like this on Cleargreen's pages, and in their social media. I couldn't quite put my finger on it, but it just felt so off course.

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u/physique 1 points 2019-02-25 11:28

Thanks for your critique. I think I understand your reaction. I was looking for channeled material to explain what I have experienced, that the apparent emptiness one experiences by being silent is just an illusion and that what's actually there is very full and alive. What I have actually felt in the "emptiness" is a presence, a presence that feels like self (rather than other) but is vastly greater and wiser than the self I am ordinarily aware of.

Many years ago, I was spending time with a man who was, like me, visiting a healing center. He had experienced some serious trauma, both physical and psychological. I found myself sitting with him for many hours, day after day, for weeks. I was profoundly quiet inside, no dialogue, no anticipation of what I would say next. I felt no pity at all for him or myself. Mostly I just listened attentively, or sat in silence with him. But occasionally I would speak, spontaneously. Just a few words in an hour. But I knew the right words to say, and when, or when to just listen. Amazingly, after many hours I was energized rather than tired. And he experienced healing.

Later, I spoke with my teacher who said that the reason the presence feels like self is because it is self. Then he said: "At the point of Source, Self and the Infinite are One."

For me, the greatest benefit of silence has been to become aware of the awesome Presence that lives within all of us. The internal dialogue with its focus on self-importance blocks awareness of that presence, leaving us diminished, needy and petty.

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u/danl999 1 points 2019-02-25 16:52

Thanks for your critique. I think I understand your reaction

I'm not sure I do. It's something left over from being in heightened awareness in the past. One time I became curious what was going on with former Carlos class members, read some of the stuff they posted on the web, and I got an instant bad reaction. I just "knew" they were still fully stuck in their own internal dialogue.

I think it's related to Carlos' "syntactic commands". You read something, and it just "feels" like someone is trying to manipulate you with ideas that are on the surface level. Not true things that sound good on paper.

But I couldn't explain what the rule is for when something feels wrong. Carlos used to react to stuff in that manner. Some people even got kicked out for talking like that (like Ra).

Carlos eventually came up with "the fliers", maybe to help explain his negative reaction to what amounts to just a collection of words. He started calling it, "The fliers mind". If you think about it, it's a lot easier to accuse someone of being dominated by the flier's mind, than it is to explain what's objectional about something they said.

As for the presence of universal self you mentioned, I spent a lot of years practicing mantric meditation. I even resort to it to this day, if I'm too tired to force silence. If you learn to become silent with a moderate amount of effort, you can do the same thing to a lesser extent while practicing mantric meditation. Force out thoughts, but let the mantra go on, to make it a little easier to sustain. So if you're too tired to sit up and force silence, you can lay there being "mostly" silent. It produces a weird composite technique.

Before you add that background silence, meditation does seem to lead to something like you've described. But once you add background silence to mantric style meditation, it seems to result in abstract dreaming. Or, maybe it's a technique for moving the assemblage point when you're relatively silent.

I guess the Buddhists would say it takes you down "side paths". I'm a big fan of side paths.

That's also around the level at which Patanjali's sutras seem to function. Some sort of feeling of oneness, combined with echos of thoughts. He has a set of 20 or 30 that produce a specific (predicted) result. I have no doubt those teach people to manipulate intent.

For instance, you get into a certain state of consciousness (a little below "bliss"), and say, "Pole Star", then be silent (instructions from some yoga schools say, "think the sutra, then return to self".

If you're lucky, you'll get a vision of stars and their relationships from that sutra. I guess it's the old "kung fu" movie gag where the master gives you the unattainable scroll, and you get super powers just from what's written on it.

Patanjali has one in there for shrinking yourself down, super strength, and my favorite, "inner lights". Carlos was sort of teaching those when he created "the wall" technique. Finding the wall uses the first 2 colors associated with Patanjali (purple and red), and then reading off the wall sort of uses the final 2 colors (white and the blue pearl), which are said to be more intense and smaller.

(Sorry for rambling on)

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u/danl999 2 points 2019-02-24 18:55

> What remains when the dialog is silenced?

An endless flood of feelings about things, absent words. But you have to stop that too, in order to see well.

It's as if we're all completely mad, fantasizing about endless nonsense, any time that we're awake. Perhaps our internal dialogue even started absent language, when we were very young. Maybe we learned to focus our imagination on how to get that baby bottle when we want it, which included some antagonistic feelings. I don't know about the rest of you, but my internal dialogue is at odds with the world nearly all the time. I suspect that's universal because of how it was formed.

That flood of images just below the internal dialogue focuses our attention, which is why it also has to stop in order to see. That is, to see pure energy. You can still accomplish basic seeing with an intact internal dialogue as long as the assemblage point shifts. Carlos could shift ours in class and no one was silent yet.

The somewhat perplexing part is, once you learn to silence the internal dialogue, and also get a good hold on the endless images in your mind, you get used to the results. And while it's nowhere near as oppressive, getting used to some level of silence holds the assemblage point in position almost as well as talking to yourself.

If you try to silence yoruself so fully that it absolutely has to move, you come to realize there's a level at which you can see anything, or everything. And so, nothing. I make it out that there's a fine layer in there that we want to find. Not so thoughtless that nothing is different from anything else, but not noisy enough to have actual concerns.

So shutting off the internal dialogue isn't enough in the long run. We still need to move the assemblage point.

Or we need help from inorganics, my favorite these days. I'll be putzing around in the dark looking at energy, and suddenly a little dream vision materializes in my path, with one of the inorganics images floating in the midst of it. They manage to do what they do in dreaming, but inside a mini-vision.

They used to be just floating hypnogogic images, but as it turns out, they're somewhat interactive. Last night, while greeting one of them (hoping it would take that as an invitation to do more than just make a guest appearance), I realized why Carlos emphasized "reading off the wall" so much in class. It's because the wall can form, but still have nothing on it. That's sort of what happens if you get used to internal silence, but still can't get the assemblage point to move on demand. A wall without activity is no wall at all.

That moving the assemblage point is almost more important than silence could be why Carlos emphasized Tensegrity so much. (Besides setting up a way for people to make a living, passing on his techniques). Even though there probably wasn't anyone silent enough to get the full benefit while he was teaching, he perhaps embedded techniques to move the assemblage point in there, which would be usable once people achieved silence.

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u/jumpinchollacactus 2 points 2023-07-29 05:50

"So shutting off the internal dialogue isnt enough in the long run. We still need to move the assemblage point"

Yikes!

> Here i have been thinking , as one gets more silence , the assemblage point moves in tandem , kinda. How did i get that wrong!

" even though there probably wasn't anyone silent enough to get the full benifit while he was teaching, he perhaps embedded tecniques to move the assemblage point in there, which would be useable once people achieved silence"

> well I lucked out, .. as i am doing Tensegrity and silence practice anyway. But I think this is going to change my focus somehow. And its getting darker earlier here in S.E Alaska, so i can do more darkroom practice, and still get up in time for work.

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u/danl999 2 points 2019-02-24 20:28

I wonder if the the true meaning of the word sorce-ry is reconnecting to Source.

I suspect it's more related to pharmacy, meaning, drugs. Daoism for instance originated with an opium poppy cult. Same kind of "vinegar" someone tried to give Christ on the cross. The Romans were horribly addicted to the stuff, which might explain working for a quarter a day.

To this day, Daoist temples in parts of asia grow opium poppies.

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u/sahivash 1 points 2022-03-29 16:40

Don juan says the sorcery has 21 abstract cores.
Who knows about the other?

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u/TechnoMagical_Intent 1 points 2022-03-29 17:01

Here’s a slightly more concise explanation of the abstract cores. Basically, it reveals there could be many more:

https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/comments/tmcnwm/comment/i1y7bhv/

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