My father was an anthropologist from the same UC system “crop” as Carlos. His studies overlapped with Carlos’ travels. I was exposed early on to power plants.
As a result, I thought I knew all the power plants growing in my area. And when I heard rumors of one I didn’t know about up in the Santa Monica mountains, just north of Carlos’ compound, I was very interested.
I went up there with a woman from his private classes, but neither of us knew the area. She’d only heard it was “somewhere over there”. “Over there” turned out to be at the end of Malibu road, quite a way from the Sorcerer’s Cave, but along the same path.
Neither of us had planned to do any hiking. We didn’t have appropriate shoes. We thought we’d just park near the right spot, and walk a short distance to the plant.
We never found it. And it was horribly frustrating because we hadn’t planned to spend that much time up there. We wandered around from plant to plant, even studying soil types because we’d been told it likes to grow in sandy soil near water.
I saw some half-spent roaches. Apparently, it’s a good spot for getting high in general. I also found a bank of promising shale-like stone, in which I suspected you could find some fern fossils.
But no power plant. We left frustrated and hungry, and drove to “Real Food Daily”, the little vegetarian restaurant next to Dance Home, where Carlos gave most of his classes. A witchcraft bookstore was located right next to it.
During the course of the meal, we kept discussing things we’d seen. Eventually we realized, if we had found the power plant we wouldn’t have learned nearly as much about those mountains. Plus, if we wanted some marijuana we knew exactly where to go to get it in pre-smoked form.
That’s the exact situation all of us are in. Wandering in the mountains, trying to track down a rumor.
We don’t have a guide to move us along quickly, in “result oriented” ways, as Carlos was taught. Our results won’t be as dramatic, because they won’t be caused by someone else.
This is also sort of why Carlos told his class to stop reading his books. They were a hook. You’re hooked. Stop reading them. My interpretation: They’ll only keep you from doing what you really need to do, which will be a lot more tedious than the stories in his books.
The books are a map, so we need them now. Carlos is gone. But it’s easy to confuse the way Carlos learned sorcery, with how we’re stuck learning it: Under our own power, stumbling around in the wilderness without knowing where to go next.
Although we might not reach the goals, or it might take a lot longer than it seemed to take in Carlos’ books, we have the potential to learn more than he did, along the way. Just not what we wanted to learn first.
We have to be process oriented, and not as much goal oriented. We have to help each other. Compare notes so to speak. If someone discovers something new, not covered in Carlos’ books, we already know one thing about it. You can do that on your own power.
Last night I got an early start on exploring. It wasn’t dark enough outside to prevent my room from being lighter than I like, when I’m practicing waking dreaming. There are cracks along the taped-up windows. I could easily see my hands, and all the details in the room. But they were a little vague.
I was wondering if I’d still be able to see colors, and whether I could get my “fairy” to appear in the middle of the bright spots of purple. Almost as soon as I wondered about it, I saw a patch of purple. I was surprised. The thought occurred to me that maybe it’s easier to see the colors in twilight.
The colors had some squiggly bright lines. A lot more than I see in darkness. If I squinted my eyes to reduce the light, I could manipulate them.
A patch of purple formed, and it was so bright that I couldn’t help myself but try to grab it with my hands.
When you try that, you might or might not feel it. Don’t expect to grab it the way you usually grab an object. You just put your hands where you would grab it if it were “real”, and simulate the process of pulling on it. I don’t want to say you can’t feel it. You certainly can. But it’s not necessary at first.
It was so bright, it looked like violet taffy. Or more like a blob of taffy that was still warm, and so it could hold a blob shape, but was also easy to pull apart and push back together. I was shocked at how bright it was, then realized my grabbing technique was very similar to what Carlos had shown us one day, in an effort to get our second attention to wake up in class. Most of the class probably thought he was losing it when he did that, because we saw nothing. But as it turns out, he likely had a lot more things going on in class than we could perceive.
In the center of the blob of purple mass, a fairy’s head appeared. She was laughing at me. Then she vanished. I asked her, “Why can’t you just stick around for a while?”
I started watching the purple blob more closely, to see if I could coax her back. I noticed, there was a reddish orange color on the edges. I thought, maybe the extra light in the room adds colors?
In the center of the purple I noticed some greenish blue color. In fact, the purple color had always had that, and yellow brown to boot. I just hadn’t thought about it much. I’d been focused on the brilliant purple, but the other colors were available too, and each seemed to be of a different intensity.
I reached behind the blob, thinking I could “stretch” the orangish red a bit, to make it predominate. I want to understand why Zuleica said it was more restful. I realized, the path was like a balloon or a membrane, and I could in fact push on part of it, stretch that out with my hand, and it would tend to remain stretched.
Soon I had a blob of mostly orangish red light, with some purple still on the edges. I also had blobs of blackness forming in the area. I’d only seen those in the middle of the purple color. Those blobs of blackness were everywhere, and the sight was quite unusual, because there was still enough light to see the room.
I have to admit, having more light is a lot more “convincing” if you manage to see colors. In the darkness, it’s still almost like a dream. Even with your eyes open, you could say all you’d accomplished was falling asleep with your eyes open, and seeing a dream vision.
These colors and blobs of black were “right there”, on top of the room's details. In particular, the bed sheets and lumped up comforter were full of them.
Continued because of word count limits...
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How to change part 2:
I remembered someone’s suggestion to try to wrap the orange around myself like a blanket. At the time I thought, I must have written the story badly because I had no idea how to do that. The assumption that if you could pull on the colors, then that also means you can stretch them to a blanket shape, and wrap your body with them, seemed very misguided.
But out of curiosity, I tried it. I concentrated on the orange patch, pulled only that part out to stretch it sideways. But instead of stopping when my hands were a foot or two apart, I kept pulling until I had produced a stretch of orangish red about 6 inches tall, and several feet wide. And it was willing to follow the contours of my body, so I was able to bring it around the back also. Not exactly a blanket, but at least a fat winter scarf.
While my hands were still holding it, the area lit up. It was covered in all colors of lines and jagged features. And they were more stable, and more willing to remain in place than what I had seen before. I’ve long had the idea that those colors and lines might be the inside of the luminous cocoon, so I looked for the next part of Zuleica’s technique; the fibers of light that connect the torso to the rest of the world.
I wanted to see if it was actually possible to distinguish a stalker from a dreamer, on the basis of the features around the stomach area. I noticed that to keep that view, I had to keep my hands where they were, when they finished pulling the orange color. It was as if they were generating the color, by my intention to hold that “thing” in place.
As soon as I started to let my hands drop a bit, the lines and jagged features started to fade away into a mild orange mist. I pulled them back up, so I could look closer.
I saw a bright orangish red filament going from my right stomach area, straight out further than I could see. I expected it to blink away as such things always do the instant I notice them. But it was absolutely stable. It was located in space, and didn’t move. It was fully directional, not moving when my head moved. And even more interesting was that I could see its relationship to my leg on the bed, because there was enough light in the room to see everything. It gave all the appearance of being a real object, stretched out about 8 inches above my leg, and moving off too far to see.
It remained for as long as I wanted to look at it. It wasn’t vague at all. Someone could have coated a real cotton thread with orange luminous paint and tied it to my shirt, stretching it out across the room. That’s how real it looked. The glowing line was vibrating, like it was made up of tiny pieces all aligned together, but they couldn’t hold the same alignment for long, so they constantly vibrated to switch it. You had to look closely into it, to see that it was doing that. The vibrations seemed to produce awareness of something, when observed. I couldn’t figure out what it was.
I have no idea how long I spent looking at that sight. Sometimes when you practice this technique, you might think you only spent 1 hour, then look at the clock and find out it’s been 5 hours. But I strongly advise others, not to get impatient. If you are looking at something “impossible”, don’t get bored too quickly and move on to the next thing. Just the act of holding your assemblage point where you can keep that view, is an important training method. Maybe that’s even off into the realm of stalking.
But I got tired of doing that anyway. I find it hard to take my own advice. I let my arms rest on the bed, and just looked at the orangish red color that was everywhere. No wonder I hadn’t noticed it before! It’s too vague to be satisfying. The purple is so harsh, and it tends to spin off details like writing and hypnogogic images. And Carlos had advised us to look for that color.
The orange is more like a pleasing smell in the room. Maybe even vague enough that you won’t realize it was there at first. I understood why Zuleica had said it was restful. In order to make it brighter, you had to be calmer.
I looked around for my hypnogogic fairy, but she was nowhere to be seen. The orange red color just wasn’t vibrant enough to generate a hypnogogic image.
It was still early in the day, and I’d planned to practice all night. I lay on my right side to rest a bit, and closed my eyes.
After a minute or two of drifting due to silence, I opened my eyes to see if the room was still filled with that orangish red color. I didn’t want to lose that.
I was shocked by the sight. There, laying in bed next to me, was the fairy. She had a beaming smile, and it looked like she’d pulled the covers up to cover herself, exposing only her head and neck. It was the exact same pose I'd seen just once before, when I couldn't get her to stand on the bed again. Except she was no longer 4 inches tall.
I commented, “There you are!”. She giggled and turned her head more to face me. At that point, I was not sure she wouldn't transform into some horrible monster, or at least her face would lose its cuteness. Maybe a Frankenstein's monster style bolt on her neck, or some jagged stiches on her cheek. And her face was only 1 foot away from mine since she was laying next to me.
But she didn’t change. She even gave me a smirk with her eyes. A rather Julia Roberts sort of smirk, the kind that crinkles the skin around the nose.
I can’t judge how tall she was, but she was pretty close to normal human size. And she was laying next to me, on the bed, exactly as if she were real. It was as if a new girlfriend had snuck into my bed, to surprise me.
Except, she was made out of transparent bluish light.
I closed my eyes, not wanting to see her fade away. Or worse, change into something horrible. I thought, there was no way she could remain much longer. Fairies are usually very fleeting when you have to manufacture them, using an inorganic being.
After a minute or two, I opened my eyes cautiously take a peek. She was still there, giggling!
I sat up on the bed to see if I could get her to walk around. So far, it's the only way I get to see her whole body. But she’d vanished. I remembered her words the last time I tried to get her to prance on the bed again. She said (without sound), “We already did that!”
Edited: three times
Note: None of this is made up, it's an exact account. Except for the search for the power plant in the mountains. That's a composite story, taken from several, to illustrate an important point.
I'm glad I could be of assistance! When you described the bright orangish red filament emerging from your lower abdomen, I remembered something I saw years ago.
I was sitting on a bench in some wetlands that are part of a public nature preserve. I was apparently silent, at least for awhile, because I saw a goose flying overhead and silently wished (intended?) that I could see what connected me to it.
Then the whole atmospheric light changed to a sort of electric amber color, like photographer's "magic hour" but much more intense and omnidirectional, and I saw this circular conduit that connected me to the goose. It was whitish, and had these deep purple-colored perpendicular segments that rotated, also perpendicularly.
The whole thing only lasted a couple of seconds in "real-time," but seemed to last for far longer. My eyes were open the whole time, and I'm not able to fall asleep when out in public in the middle of the afternoon anyway.
So my question is, without power plants?
Not that there's anything wrong with that, but in the long run it has to be done without them or you can't get very far without damaging yourself, and becoming too weird to interact with other people.
I knew a guy who tried to learn Carlos' techniques through magic mushrooms. I guess he did succeed, but he was so weird after that, he would commonly confuse 2 items in the world with a cause and effect relationship. Like, a crow was yelling at him in his own yard, so he shouldn't have gotten into the car to get beer. But he did and it crashed.
That kind of odd connection.
(I mention this because I know for a fact some of you use power plants. You don't need to, and worse they'll only keep you from putting in the work to do what needs to be done.)
No, I've never used power plants. I'm super straight-laced. Never touch alcohol or tobacco either.
I'm a glutton for alcohol and tobacco.
But you have to wait until they wear out before you can practice. Nicotine aside, that can possibly help keep you up when practicing silence. One of the witches books even has people smoking cigars while gazing into a pool of mercury.
Get silent all the time, and you will be! Except you won't look to be asleep.
I was out walking today and noticed a trail of ants, lots and lots of fairly small ones, and put my hand down in their path to let them cross over it and get that sensation you mentioned in an earlier post. When I did so, I remembered I used to do that all the time as a child, then my recall immediately jumped to the vague recollection of seeing, as a kid, a huge complex red kite-like thing (living or natural phenomenon I don't yet recall) moving amongst the tops of the trees, going from treetop to treetop like a cow grazing or a bee commiserating, and how amazed/perplexed I was by it. I also remembered that my dad couldn't see it when I pointed it out.
I had completely forgotten about that incident. How the hell did I forget about that! Also the day before I noticed faint traces of that ant-crawling sensation around my right knee, but that may have just been auto-suggestion.
Edit: I went to go sit in the dark and gaze at the ocular "fixed pattern noise" that is always there (for me anyway) and after a few minutes started to feel the ants crawling sensation on my front right knee again (no, there isn't any airflow (furnace/ac) or fans on in the room), and I was wearing shorts.
It's not surprising. My nieces don't remember what happened 4 years ago.
From a technical point of view, the context of the memory is needed to access it. It’s a neural net, you need a lookup index for the database.
Seeing something like that red kite shape doesn't fit into our normal context. Recalling it is that much more difficult, especially years later. I even have trouble remembering remarkable experiences I get while practicing. If I don't leave a "marker", I won't remember the next day. My personal choice is a thumbs up. Just giving the thumbs up reminds me the next day that I did it, and then I have a context to use to remember the event.
(You sure wouldn't want don Genaro around noticing you gave a thumbs up. He'd never let that go.)
About the ants. I never thought of that, but sticking your hand in the ants is just as good as lying naked. I suspect Carlos just wanted to get one of the new women naked to push her further towards giving up chasing men, and joining the group.
Both the men and the women in the group were inclined to chase the opposite sex (or the same in some cases). Imagine a group of horney 20-30 somethings. No way they wouldn't put 90% of their time into chasing sex. Especially the me-too nagual types in the class. They seem especially worried about controlling other people. Or getting a book deal so they could fill their bed with young women. Go check out the website for some me-to naguals, and look at them showing off their potential Harim. How happy they are! Carlos never did that. He made the women look serious, not available.
(Still trying to dissuade the me-too naguals who read this. Forget about that!)
But you couldn’t strike up a relationship with the men, and get them to commit further. So Carlos advised them to be celibate. In some cases, they’d try to get the men interested in one of the higher up women (like Flo).
About that sensation: don’t doubt it. Sure, you can second guess, but it’s less likely to go further. If you just go with it, and assume its energy you’re feeling, it’ll get stronger and stronger until there’s no doubt possible.
Another way to get that sensation, for people who don’t like ants, is a special pre-rain condition where there’s just the hint of very tiny drops of water, brushing on your arm. Not too many, it has to be rare. Just slowly sweep your hand horizontally until you pick up a tiny drop. Keep it up until you know the sensation. Then subtract the coldness of the drop.
That’s almost the exact sensation, except that the drop doesn’t slide or slink. When you detect an energy strand, it’s more persistent with its feeling of touching your skin. Eventually if you feel one with the side of your arm, you'll feel one on the side of your calf. So far the right arm and calf seem more sensitive. That might be because of their biological function for slinking through cracks in caves. Typically you'd lead with one side or the other, and those parts of the body are extra sensitive to insure you don't scrape off skin.
Note: I got the orange color again last night. I guess I just hadn’t noticed it before, and like all sorcery things, you get used to seeing it, and then you see it more. Probably building up another database in the brain, and then the brain fine tunes it to be stronger and easier to handle.
Edited
I once had an experience on lsd where I was running up a set up stairs that was making itself under me. My friends were all doing the same, we were chearing eachother on. We were made of bealtiful colors, thrown together, dripping, almost. As we ran up the stairs, a membrane was seen. We were running to it. Every layer of it was the skin of one person. I was in the lead. We were cheering eachother on. I jumped. The membrane pushed and popped. Everything was white
As Carlos said, power plants can make someone's bubble looser. Their bubble is the limits of what they're willing to perceive. Or maybe, what they're obsessed with perceiving.
The psychology people are discovering it also, recommending micro-doses of LSD for treatment of various mental issues, and maybe even a shroom trip once in a while, to shake things up.
The problem is, the drug pushes you to a new spot. It doesn't teach you how to move yourself. And where it pushes you is the result of the drug. Not something you necessarily "intended" to do.
A good example are hypnogogic images. If you consume in the range of about 100mG of THC, I guarantee you'll be seeing hypnogogic images if you lay down with closed eyes. You might puke too. But you'll see the images.
You can't learn to convert them into a solid object using the THC. It does what it does. But if you learn to see them sober, you can mold them into "solidity". And interact with them.
I have to brag a bit. I'm a good friend of Owsley Stanley's daughter. The old timers will know who that is. I wouldn't be surprised if he's responsible for Einstein having traces of LSD in his brain at death. Einstein liked to conduct what he called, "Thought experiments".
Owsley Stanley + TM + Carlos = Essence of 60s hippy movement. They were going to learn to "get high without the drugs".
They didn't do well at that. They never realized how much work that would take.
Ive been over a year sober from psychs. I experienced a whole lot, and eventually the drug "punished" me for taking too much without moving on my own. Ive been integrating the experiences since.
Recently, ive become more aware of the "structure" of existence even taking a puff of weed. It seems the spiritual side is much much more dangerous than most would guess. But the fact that its that much easier to witness what im witnessing (on a low dose of thc when it used to take a heroic dose of lsd) might mean I have moved, at least a bit.
My life still exists in the "mundane" while witnessing the shadow of the "extraordinary." I see a bit of how it moves within normally perceived reality, and I would guess this is a important part of shifting awareness even further. Meaning, noticing the desired point of awareness in the current point of awareness. Like the end of a rope poking into a room, I would think I can grab that rope and pull its destination - bringing itself to me or me to itself.
Marijuana is about like alcohol. It makes you tired and lazy, but if you wait until it wears off, you can practice sorcery. Might tint the results a little, but coffee will do that too.
In class, Carlos took us off all stimulants for 3 months. No coffee, no sugar, no fruit, no anything else you're taking that stimulates you. It was an odd experience. Like sleep walking.
I don't know about trying to intend sorcery by visualizing a rope. Can't hurt. But don't forget, you'd need silence to pull that off.
If you can't get silent, your mind is fantasizing every single instant that you're awake. That directs the assemblage point here. Unless you can focus your awareness on the second attention, and not the Tonal's self-pity fantasy thoughts, you won't be able to find that rope.
I'm afraid to say, it's easy to mistake the mind's fantasies for the real rope, which could only exist in the second attention.
I actually currently know very little about sorcery. I read his books 4 years ago, the first time reality broke - when I got to the "stopping the world" bit, the experience had parallel, but again was from lsd
The rope bit was more like an analogy, slowly shifting perception by noticing the other perceptions bleeding in, rewriting the boundaries of perception. Slowly being aware that there is a second attention
Thankfully ive spent my youth putting attention into a healthy yet mundane space. No self pity, adoption of responsibility, recognizing every bad as a good, accepting fault yet not identifying with them, etc. Yet I still see the rope. Most of my thoughts work around either recognizing reality in this mode of perception or reflecting on "fundamental" reality. None of this is forced or fought.
Very possibly I am fantasizing. It seems much of what ive learned from observing the rope has truth, but that truth may well be an illusion in itself. Yet, it is that understanding which seems to reveal even more of the rope. I dont think I have enough of it to get a good grip, so to speak, but with time I notice it more frequently and a little bit more of it, so it seems.
Alcohol is interesting too, in that in a "drunken" state, when I am at peace information begins to consolidate itself, connections are naturally made and internal understandings arise, followed by a nod.
With no teacher, guide, or community, im really just feeling my way around. Or more aptly, im currently sitting watching my self go through the world and observing that self and realities reactions to it
I was gonna say, it would be better to be more clear about what you want, before you pursue something as irreversible as sorcery. But then I realized, when you have to do it on your own (as we all do), it takes so much work, you'll only succeed if you do clarify what you want, and decide to work your butt off.
So maybe there's no issue with dedication, for us.
On the other hand, if you could slap someone on the back and push them into sorcery states, you'd better pick someone who won't hate you for it.
Losing the human form is a black hole you can't return from.
What's the risk of being semi-dedicated, and not actually putting in the work needed to get silent?
Someone else takes possession of your workshop entry fees. That's probably not as bad as buying one time use silly appliances, as all of us do in our youth.
I started the path exploring what the extent of human experience is. Not like "wow im on a mountain this is cool" but perpetually. This was when I was about 15-16, before I did any drugs. I would still say thats still the core
Then one day, with psychedelics and a lot of effort, every limit I thought existed was blasted away and I was hit with thousands (I think) of indescribible experiences, and some describible ones. Like looking out of 50 pairs of eyes, seeing versions of myself trapped in the moment before this happend, on an island in the void, watching time pass as a mountain range shifted.
That opened a door, at least a bit. I continued to experiment with psychedelics and would often flash back into a lower level of that space. Learn something about the metaphysical, have impossible things happen in my reality, with all evidence erased the next day. Have everything line up beyond perfectly. Visions of many kinds. Once conversed with an entity through complex loving emotions.
Also experienced the void. The state of consciousness and some reasoning of why reality emerged/what I am.
So the goals now are to experience, realize absolute freedom, and remember truth
I dont know what to do to work my ass off other than listen to my intuition, set-up my subconscious, shift my perspective, integrate experience into true belief, and move through life genuinely while always observing
Edit: one more thing is of dire importance to me. If my experience has validity and is more that single-person projection, I think there is a malicious force in our reality/a spiritual war, so to speak. I want to help however I can. If it is real, I think it is of dire importance. Either that or its just an illusory challenge/stepping stone
Hey, glimpee, just a quick heads-up:
happend is actually spelled happened. You can remember it by ends with -ened.
Have a nice day!
^^^^The ^^^^parent ^^^^commenter ^^^^can ^^^^reply ^^^^with ^^^^'delete' ^^^^to ^^^^delete ^^^^this ^^^^comment.
Hey /u/CommonMisspellingBot, just a quick heads up:
Your spelling hints are really shitty because they're all essentially "remember the fucking spelling of the fucking word".
And your fucking delete function doesn't work. You're useless.
Have a nice day!
^Save ^your ^breath, ^I'm ^a ^bot.
There really is no substitute for hard work and impeccabilty. Something to keep in mind is that Castaneda wrote that the assemblage point (holistic perception) doesn't move because of our own efforts alone. Our intent and our discipline, never giving up, is a message/petition for INTENT/NAGUAL that we are ready for things to change, and then it moves it for us. We have no power to do so on our own, but it's a good thing we're never really totally on our own. We essentially have to prove our worthiness (not in a moral-religious context, but constitutionally).
When you take power plants after having progressed on the path for a good long while without their assistance, the boost they give you is practically inconceivable...and if you're skilled enough, repeatable on your "own."
Edit: on your feeling that there is a spiritual war out there and wanting to "join the fight," that is very noble but not particularly helpful to those in our place/position on this path. The whole world is full of people that want to change the world for the better (mostly ego-driven), but very few that want to change themselves. Once you have truly changed yourself, or reclaimed your natural state/self, you'll be in a position to actually engage in that fight, if you so intend.
Of course, im not trying to leap into the fight, but to get to a point where I can make thay choice effectively and intelligently. Changing the self always comes first
Would LSD be considered something like a power plant? Im not taking any drugs for a while, ive already reaped what I can for this stage in my journey
Having that realization puts you ahead of most people already. I would consider LSD in the ballpark of power plants; we are biologically bags of water and chemicals after all. Don Juan talked about meeting with peyote and treating it as an ally, as establishing a relationship with an extant being, through the ingestion (or inhalation) of it's body. So in the future, when you know you're primed for the next phase, an actual plant-based entheogen would probably be more beneficial.
Yes I dont plan on going back to lsd when I go back. LSD was like an ally as well, I think, though it was sometimes very rough for sure. Taught and helped a lot, never actually hurt me, but did show me consequences and limits to my current state. So much of it was so densely packed with information and hard to explain experience that it definitely needs time to just unpack itself
The world does help as a guide though, at least the interaction between internal and external.
Im curious to see what comes next. I have some steps in reality that need to be taken now, so it'll be interesting what those steps and my way of stepping shows
Carlos created the idea of "the fliers mind". I still don't believe in fliers, but he had funny ways to combat it.
One was to strike with the fist to the right and left of the head, to deliver a blow to the fliers mind (internal dialogue). I used it last night. It's genius! Works great.
How to work your butt off? I must have done a poor job in explaining.
Shut off the internal dialogue. That's what you have to do first. Then use silence to find something cool, and follow it. Colors in the dark is one choice.
I hope you do, because it'll be interesting to see what happens to someone who's assemblage point has been so loosened by power plants.
I guess the first step then is to find silence
By silence does it mean actual silence or simply not attaching attention to thoughts/pushing thoughts forward? As in let it come, let it be, let it go?
We're not talking about silence in your room where you practice, although that makes it easier. And also, if you get mentally silent, you stop ignoring all the sounds around you, and will get super hearing. So, it's good to do it in a quiet place.
We're just trying to stop that voice in your head, which has most of us so confused, we believe it's our mind. It's not our mind!
It's just a manager. And not a very good one. If we were as originally designed, and not modified by our parents, it could be a good manager. It's the voice of seeing in the long run. But we've been hypnotized and coerced into seeking rewards as our primary function, and feeling sorry for ourselves when we don't get enough of them. That poor behavior has been trained into our internal dialogue, which has also been trained to never shut up.
What we want to do is shut that off, and become navigators again. We were born to navigate, but we got deviated in order to make us fit into the social structure better.
Let it be, let it go? That's a personal thing. I like to FORCE it off. Get some rocks, and give hell to the internal dialogue.
But mostly, that'll just give you a clear understanding of what it is. I'm always surprised to find that people don't really know the difference between internal dialogue, and the major part of the brain that provides us with sensory input processing and gives us answers to anything we think about.
We have 3 conscious areas in the brain (at least). There's the self-pity internal dialogue in the frontal lobes. There's the super intelligent and helpful main brain, which processes things and provides results. The internal dialogue examines the results, when it can.
For example, you’re an engineer inventing something new. You have no solution; the boss is angry. You've been reading and researching, but still no obvious solution comes to mind. You've had enough!
You go for coffee. The instant you step out the door, more relaxed, a wonderful solution to the problem pops into your mind.
Your petty internal dialogue had nothing to do with that, other than to produce worry and thinking which got transmitted to the better part of the brain, which had an idea just waiting for you, but you were too obsessed with the problem and your own worry about it, to perceive the answer. Fortunately, ideas are held in a special part of the brain, until the internal dialogue is ready to examine them.
You wouldn't want to invent anti-gravity while going 70 mpg on a curving offramp on the freeway! You'd skid off the road.
So the idea waits until we relax. Any engineer has experienced this. Some engineers (Edison for example) can see their ideas, if they close their eyes and relax. I once had a very profitable product ($8M per year) that was stifled because a Japanese company got a bogus patent. The patent seemed insurmountable, and my partner was ready to give up. I sat in a chair thinking about it, then decided to meditate, and suddenly the solution to the patent was right in front of me, rotating in space, with a voice explaining how it worked. It beat the patent, and the Japanese company even had to admit it in court.
The third conscious part of the brain is the one that catches a glass as it slips off the table, before you even realize it was moving. Your internal dialogue certainly can't take credit for that.
Nor does it know how to walk. That third part of our conscious mind is what knows how to walk.
Here's an analogy: You have an excellent circus team. They can do stupendous feats of acrobatics!
But you have a grumpy old guy running the circus. And the circus is crummy because he's lost in his own ugly world of self-pity.
Fire the manager. Keep the circus team!
Edited
One thing ive tried to work on that I find interesting is ive tried to train my mind to train it to work on "managing" the right things and to let things go. Got it to a place where its sought rewards (tend) to be in line with path and when those rewards arent given, it gets a different reward - the reward of experiencing failure and the chance to notice why failure occurred/what I am so that I may be better tomorrow. This system I think helps direct and quiet the mind, but I do not know how to actually silence it - though I can ignore it and dissociate from it.
I definitely am not the biggest fan of forcing, but perhaps theres a case for it. Forcing it can be messy, in the sense that it can miss bits that need to shift with the rest. I guess I would see forcing it as shifting further at once, but having less ability to stay, until forced enough times, wheras setting the direction fundamentally and letting that program work on rewriting the mind will slowly affect every layer of mind and how it works.
But regardless, if you force it, the thoughts still emerge, no? And you have to bring your attention to them to force them down, dont you?
I recognize the difference between the senses and mind, but I also use them together. I get an answer to nearly everything I think about in terms of acting in reality instantly if I ask, but it comes up as words in the mind. Perhaps im delusional and listening to an illusion, but the answers seem to be right and people tend to agree
The self-pity part of my brain has definitely been trained away, for the most part. I think ive shifted it to a healthy place.
Yeah I definitely know what you mean as the difference between thinking through a problem vs letting it arise. So basically, it doesnt even matter if I am silent so long as im listening to the super-intelligent mind? But then too if I connect them to work together, even with the self-pity part, dont I have even more of my mind to work with?
Meaning, the thought part of the mind can be a way to bounce the ideas off of reality and then also engage reality itself in the interactions of the mind, which can stimulate the subconscious to project and then absorb and find new questions to ask to bring new ideas to the surface, since anything it would project and choose to absorb would be part of the path anyways so this would bring some chaos into the thought process and utilize as much of experience as possible. I guess the point is I think the "self-pity" part of the brain can actually be extremely useful once it gets a higher calling than to self-pity.
Hell yea they do. That's the battle.
But you can win it. And the world stops. you find yourself in a corridor to other worlds.
Not at all. You've simply noticed that the internal dialogue can be a friend. It's the voice of seeing! It's just been beaten up until it's suffering from Stockholm syndrome. Get it cleared out again, and it'll be very helpful.
That's complicated. But the best answer is, you can't stop the world unless you are silent. And until you can stop the world, you can't really navigate.
The self-pity part of the brain is a foreign installation. The frontal lobes where it resides, are good. But you have to get rid of the foreign installation in order to perceive freely.
Does it have to be a battle with the mind? That seems so strange to me. I feel like there must be a way to move forward without beating the mind into submission. Positive reinforcement vs negative reinforcement - positive always leads to better results in and situation where it will be able to get adequate results.
I believe ive had the world stop, but only on psychedelics. None of that process had anything to do with forcing the mind to stop, but allowing the idea center to flourish and overflow.
I dont think my mind is beaten up or suffering, thats not how I approached my path. That didnt seem healthy to do. I dont battle my mind because there is no need to, we have realized we are on the same team
At least ive gotten self-pity deactivated then. Its honestly funny, this entire conversation ive been trying to recall times where I pity myself and the feeling itself feels foreign and unknown, unless I count getting out of a situation and thinking "damn thats unfortunate" - but I dont tend to get caught in a cycle of self-pity/wallowing
It doesn't have to be a battle, but it's harder to recognize the problem until you silence the mind.
The problem is where we choose to focus our attention.
And so stalking alters that, and is considered the main technique for half the people out there. The other half, the dreamers, are likely the ones that have to battle the internal dialogue, instead of work with it.
But I'm only speculating on that.
But be careful. People will come up with endless excuses to get out of learning to be silent. Some are as silly as, "I have to walk my dog each evening, I don't have the time for it."
Speaking of dogs, someone in Carlos inner circle wanted to get a pet. Carlos talked them out of it.
Probably because it reinforces a relationship dynamic that is too tied to the sensibilities of the foreign installation, however we got stuck with it (fliers or no fliers).
I remember when I was reading years ago I desperately wanted to be a dreamer but definitely remember feeling I was actually a stalker. I dont remember what it means, but ive embraced this path. If it is about working with the mind, then I am definitely a stalker.
I definitely notice the excuses not to be silent. I dont see them as a negative, in the sense that the more excuses I make, the more aware I become of what excuses I make, I then become aware of why I make that mistake. Then I negotiate with my mind to find a perspective that allows both the talking-mind and the smart-mind to do something that benefits both parts.
This would be using my mind as a roadmap to non-impeccable being and aligning both conscious and unconscious mind to impeccably. Its likely a slower process, but I think its a more precise one, utilizing every aspect of being twords an "aim"
Im still not sure what you really mean by silence, unless it is simply the cessation of talking from the talking-mind.
And a question about stopping the world, when that occurs, is that when "unreal" things occur? Like the rules shift a little bit and the extraordinary seeps into the mundane - but in a way that the mundane still exists and no evidence can be pulled back of the extraordinary because it does what it does while also fitting into the mundane narrative?
Fortunately, no. Otherwise learning sorcery would be too difficult. Stopping the world is mid-range achievement. There's plenty of fun stuff before that.
Thinking in those terms "unreal" vs normal, ignores how flakey our minds are. Everyone experiences unreal stuff constantly. They've just been taught to ignore it, by their parents.
I once watched an inorganic being form a very bright ball of blue light, floating along inside the cabin of a plane flying over China.
No one saw it. It even stopped at a few people.
I hadn't stopped the world to see that, I was merely in heightened awareness.
I asked if that is stopping the world because ive had experiences like that. The biggest was flashes of many experiences, and eventually a cycle of countdowns that were all tightly packed experiences, and as this happened everyone around me was part of the ride. Hard to explain
By unreal I just meant extraordinary, but thats also the wrong term, I think.
In the experiences I shared above, it was like noticing all (probably not) of the unrealness of the experience and reality and then some. Everything was hyper directed twords a goal, and no one was wearing a mask anymore. Like letting goal of the rules personally also makes it seem like everyone else has as well. That, mixed with abstract visions that mixed in with that direction.
But I think I get it, those were drug induced experiences, and inevitably I can push that too far without the skill to handle that level of awareness, distorted as it might be by drugs, so ive put them down for now - other than booze and occasional weed.
Ill have to check back in with the books for the explanation of stopping the world, I have a lot of new experience to reflect with that on
I look forward to seeing what the flexibility you've gained from LSD will do to your experiences.
I wouldn't expect it to be negative, just different. Carlos downplayed drugs, but there's rumors he tried that early on.
I have sympathy for him now. I've been trying to teach some replacements for 20 years now. No luck so far. No one will do the work needed.
What is the work? Im not sure im in a state that I could say I would do it, but I am working up to there. Currently Im working on setting up a stable net in reality, I just graduated and need to make sure im in the industry (animation) before I set out to spend time dedicated to pursuing freedom
Its interesting, in this age more people are involved with an open spirituality, but it seems not all want to dig
A good place to start would be reading Carlos' books. The first ones are a trick by don Juan. But then so are the later ones. It just gets more to the point the further you go.
The first ones cause a lot of misconceptions in readers, but I suspect they were ideal for the 1960s. The idea of Indian sorcerers hadn't become passé yet.
Sometimes I see something Carlos wrote to lure people, and think he shouldn't have done or said that. It's just too weird or childish.
But then later I hear someone say, that's what motivated them in the first place.
I've seen Cleargreen people retweet "me-too" nagual workshop advertisements. Carlos was very unhappy with those people. But I guess these days, whatever gets people interested is fine.
Yeah I read them 3 or so years ago, its getting close to the time to go back to them
That's probably not necessary. But most of us in Carlos' classes were hooked to them, like a drug. We read each one 4 or 5 times.
It was kind of like watching Kungfu movies thinking you were picking up techniques. But not actually getting good at Kungfu.
Most important thing is, you can go back to the books and try the techniques. Eagle's Gift is a good one for that.
Silvio Manuel's "not-doings" are excellent. But you have to be able to get into heightened awareness to make use of them.
I'd kind of hoped to hear about Cleargreen workshops where participants need to be able to get into heightened awareness to participate. But so far I haven't heard a peep about that.
That would be interesting, in the scope of things I dont know where my awareness lies but I dont think I can fully tap into heightened awareness sober yet
Easiest way I've found to get there, once you can get silent, is by walking in silence for 2 or 3 hours. The resulting awareness only lasts a few hours however, or until you go to sleep and wake up again.
But you can also get there with a combination of silence and stalking. Might take days, but in that case it can last for weeks.
It wouldn't be odd if they had such workshops, seeing as how it's not all that difficult to get into heightened awareness, and being in that state might allow rapid teaching. But all participants have to be in that state to interact together.
The hard part is learning to be silent. The rest is just things to explore.
Right I got it. Ill let that stew for a bit and look into it. There are definitely some communities in my area I can check out, now that I no longer have the excuse of being in school :)
I like to hear that someone fairly young might practice. Unfortunately, after you learn to get silent and stop the world, it would still take most of a normal lifetime to reach the knowledge of don Juan's party.
We don't get silent, stop the world, and then suddenly know everything. It's more like once you can get silent, you can resume the normal living and exploring process that was interrupted when that foreign installation (the internal dialogue) was imposed on us.
We return to being navigators (people who want to experience new things), and stop being reward chasers (the fliers mindset). But we still have to learn the same way a baby has to learn.
Honestly if I just knew everything when I stopped the world, I would call god a lazy creator with uninspired plans :)
I doubt don juan even knew a fraction of what is
And I dont think I really have much of a choice in whether or not I practice. The choice really is whether or not I run from it, considering what ive been shown and how ive been hooked.
Ive spent a little bit of time trying to get silent the last few days. Nothing serious, but trying it here and there. No real luck yet, in the few ways ive tried, but its a concept I will learn more about as I poke it
Actually you learned more than you know. It's an achievement just to figure out what the internal dialogue is.
Try explaining it to other people. Nearly all won't understand what you're talking about, and the ones who do are just telling you what you want to hear.
Is "not-doing what you know how to do" the kind of stalking you're specifically thinking about? And what could you do continuously for days?
I guess I need to re-read Silvio Manuel's not-doing practices! But you did say that you need to be in heightened awareness to make use of/practice them...
No, not not-doing per se. But all stalking is always a not-doing.
I’ll be specific. I went on a trip all over Asia promoting a high-tech product. I'm the engineer, and they like to see grey haired white people in Asia. They assume the engineering is better. I had 2 other people with me, both tolerant of sorcery.
We cooked up an act, based on the Japanese concept of “A Mad Man”, which is basically the Japanese version of the crazy scientist. But we modeled it after "The Three Stooges".
I was the crazy excited engineer (Curly), always waving my arms to explain a point. The boss’s son played Mo. And our Singapore rep played Larry. The act included me getting kicked or slapped on the shoulder if I went too far in a business meeting or in explaining the technology. The fun part was seeing how far we could do without them figuring it out. Fortunately, they’ve never seen the three stooges.
Asians like to see western engineers, but they want to know that an Asian is controlling him.
After a couple of weeks of that, combined with silence all the rest of the day, walking around in a place where I don’t recognize much, I fell into heightened awareness. Whenever I closed my eyes, I saw “The Wall”. Vividly. I could look right through it to “see” whatever I wanted to see.
You asked if you needed to be in heightened awareness to use Silvio Manuel’s not-doings? I don’t know, but if you can’t get into heightened awareness, I doubt you would get much out of them.
That really starts to make the complex practice of stalking your behavior clearer to me. It seems to involve, in part, becoming aware of (and interrupting/not-doing) all the ways that we operate on auto-pilot, completely oblivious to our ingrained reactions to life.
Oddly, Tensegrity, which may be better classified as part of both the dreaming and stalking side of things, is partly about the opposite; practicing physical movements to the point of somatic saturation, until they become second nature and not part of conscious thought.
The world of martial arts often calls it Mushin "no mind"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mushin_(mental_state)
Mushin (mental state)
'Mushin' in Japanese and 'Wuxin' in Chinese (無心 "no mind") is a mental state. Zen and Daoist meditators are said to reach this state, as well as artists and trained martial artists. They also practice this mental state during everyday activities.
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The whole idea of stalking is to be practicing 24 hours a day. Sorcerers try to use everything in their life. Stalking and silence all day, and dreaming all night.
I'm afraid to say, without a sorcerer to move our assemblage points, you pretty much have to be practicing all day long to get anywhere.
In 20 years, I haven't convinced anyone to try shutting off their internal dialogue all day long.