I always forget about these Castaneda offshoot songs.
There were so many in the 70s.
This one's subtle, but there are others that are blatant.
Anyone remember more?
Historical context: Sitting around on a beat-up old dirty couch, at the local drug dealer in Banning, listening to this kind of music, smoking pot, and talking about Castaneda. Little did the people there know, Morongo was nearby. Or maybe it was a good thing they didn't know.
Being a Castaneda fan was common among "druggies". And hippies too.
I was horribly autistic during that period. I couldn't even manage a college course. I got an A each time, but messed up big time socially.
So I only got "invites" to be a druggie, on a temporary basis. I took notes.
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It’s a weird thing really.
The works of Carlos exploded with the counter culture of the 70s in the sense that they inspired a whole generation to engage in the usage of illegal drugs.
While I’m sure there were a few who were inspired who actually made a real go of sorcery and didn’t just enjoy the high.
I’m sure there were many more who just used it as an excuse to get high and drop out of life’s more normal pursuits.
The works of CC inspired almost the entirety of new age movement if not adding authenticity to the movement due to the non fiction aspect of the books.
All of this counter culture in turn inspired more to read CC which probably just lead to more drug usage.
I for one was inspired by Cheech and Chong first and then I read CC, while I’m sure CC had a hand in inspiring Cheech and Chong.
So really, did the counter culture make CC more popular or did CC make counter culture more popular??
Doesn’t really matter I guess unless you look at the people who use anti drug concepts to discredit Carlos.
Don't forget about Maharashi. He was 50% of the hippy movement, and Carlos was the other 50%.
At the time I stupidly thought there was some kind of spiritual awakening going on, or at the least, the media was broadcasting this type of thing for the first time.
But it's not so. There's been a "revolution" every couple of decades, going back as far as we have records.
Yogananda was before Maharashi, and pretty much the same thing. But with better stories.
And Meher Baba was in there too, maybe slightly before Yogananda.
Maybe the power plant aspect in the 60s was new.
I'm not sure. I never paid attention to that, when studying older texts on magic.
There was mention of "flying potions" in some Irish texts. The potion used something similiar to Devil's weed, if it wasn't outright the same plant.
Depending on momentum and future administrations, and if the decriminilize nature movement can continue building on it's successes in California and Chicago...we may wind up with a pemanent 21st century analogue of the 60's & 70's drug culture.
Then I suppose teens would rebel from that and become neo-Mormons and neo-Mennonites.
Fringe - S03E12 - Concentrate and Ask Again. In an archive of a genius scientist's personal affects:
http://imgbox.com/P0iF1nMY
Watchmen (2009), A Separate Reality being passed around in prison:
http://imgbox.com/gHuJmc4L
Wow, those are hard to spot.
True detective season 2:
Man, there's more than I thought.
(The guy in the movie is actually reading one of Carlos' books, with the full cover visible.)
I wonder if they're trying to influence people by having strong characters in their movies be shown reading Carlos' books.
Like holding up a Pepsi, with the logo fully visible, hoping that makes viewers choose Pepsi next time.
That usually costs some money to the company that owns the product.
But I doubt there's anyone to arrange things like that with Carlos' books.
So it's the writers and the director?
Fringe - 1x17 - Bad Dreams, direct mention of Castaneda, 58 seconds:
https://chirb.it/gD6JF6
Fringe - 2x22 - Over There, direct "Fliers" reference, 26 seconds:
https://chirb.it/mpL2hN
Maybe there's a faction #M for media?
Could be he foresaw, to some extent, this knowledge seeping into popular culture.
Still, it's so damned much work to get there.
People now engage with media to a greater degree than any other time in recorded history. If I hadn't consumed the things I did before finding Castaneda, his message would have fallen on deaf ears. It was vital to recognizing and valuing it for what it is, and it's streamlined efficiency. Also was important to be exposed to all the other incomplete and ineffectual options, to have that full and broad comparison. I also read a shit-ton of books pre-Castaneda, and did other practices.
In short, an active seeker.
The challenge of the past years has been to shift from that mode, into being an active practitioner free from distractions. Seeking is like a drug, hard to shake.
There's also the tendency of people new to this practice, to believe they can follow the model of our educational system.
In our educational system, you only have to show up and listen. I guess there's some homework, but nothing like you'd need to learn sorcery.
Here's a tip: you can't just show up, and learn sorcery. More than 100 people tried that with Carlos himself, in his private classes.
You can't make friends with others who are like minded, and learn sorcery.
They'll only drag you down. If you made 10,000 friends, probably only one of them would ever learn to get silent. The rest would socialize you to death.
Carol Tigg's workshop prayer asking God to give her endless struggle and hardship, points the way to how to learn sorcery.
I'm not a fan of the prayer, but once in a while it seems appropriate.
A Line from an Ezra Pound poem echoes this sentiment:
" May God damn forever all who cry, "Peace!""
Cholita put that word on the door to her garage workshop. She buys stick on letters and puts messages around, along with spells I'm not allowed to touch.
Meanwhile, she's made an enemy of the toilet, and keeps ripping the guts out of it. She hears it leaking at night, no matter how many times I fix it, or replace the mechanism.
I'd like to tell her to just be silent, and listen to the toilet leaking. It's obviously from the second attention.
God only knows where that would pull your assemblage point.
Something that I feel from time to time, and was always perplexed by before now, is what may be called second attention somatic sensations.
They're so difficult to describe though. Mostly they're centered around the energy center at top of the head, but often involve more of the body. Weird bodily sensations were very present throughout the books. Just dismissed them before, rather than taking them for energetic engagement of some kind.
The closest description I can come to is convoluted fields of twisting force, pulling and twisting on the subtle body/energy body/dreaming body. It's almost solid feeling at times.
Possibly that's what Carol meant when she told people not to copy the books, and just let things happen differently for each person.
Or what Taisha meant when she told Cholita that being impeccable was all you need. Your energy rises, and all your decisions will be correct.
Trouble with that is, Carlos' reputation went to shit and no one did anything about it.
Do you mean the feeling like something is being pulled out of top of your head? I get that at times. I don't know how to describe it though. It's like I'm being stretched and twisted but at the same time it feels like it's something else that isn't a part of me.
Exactly! So I'm not alone after all!
You're not. But I have no idea what that means. I also get glimpses of things or insights but they disappear before they reach me and for a moment I feel like I was asleep for a while even though I'm very much awake and busy with something.
You're frigging RIGHT THERE!
Go find my "Simple Silence Technique", and give it a try. Emphasize getting those things you mentioned.
And keep this in mind. In private classes, Carlos produced this kind of effect in people each class.
But IT WASN'T GOOD ENOUGH FOR THE BASTARDS!
They ended up saying, he couldn't make anything happen in class.
What????? We have their notes. He DID make things happen.
Don't ask me why people ignore the obvious. For instance, people who practice meditation, and occasionally see the room with their eyes closed.
They should get up and dance! They've almost arrived!
They should spend every spare moment they have, doing that more.
But instead, they refer back to basic meditation instructions: Ignore that, and keep meditating.
Translation: Shut up trouble maker, we can't afford to give special help to people. Just send the donations, take the workshops, smile at all your new friends in the "movement", and don't make trouble.
Anyway, consider yourself a potential trouble maker, which is a very good thing.
It's all very vague at first. You have to learn to focus on those small effects, and then your assemblage point will move to a more favorable position, and they won't be vague anymore!
Think of it like a super high tech radio. It has massive parallel processing to help reconstruct bad or weak radio stations. It can produce PERFECT sound from just hints of the original. If too much info is missing, it uses the massive database it's accumulated, to extrapolate the missing parts.
But, it doesn't do that all the time. You have to tune in a station, and let it sit for a while. Then the amazing computer power analyzes what's wrong with it, and starts applying algorithms to make the signal good.
Sounds too futuristic?
Actually, I was describing how your brain works.
Edited
Let me describe how that feels. I mean, the assemblage point shifting to a more favorable position.
I have a battle going with a super powerful witch, which interrupts my normal practice time.
Last night I started practicing at 1AM, but it’s not ideal.
I fussed around with silence in the darkness, and had a hard time getting even one dream to materialize. I got perhaps 3 to float for a few seconds in front of me.
I could get very bright colors, especially giant purple clouds, which I could move around with my hands. I even got some hypnogogic images to form.
But it wasn’t what I’m used to. And my level of silence was supreme.
I'm used to "burning" through the colors, and forcing dreams to come out. But as hard as I tried to burn a hole, or pull out a person and place, nothing happened.
After an hour I gave up in frustration. I went to sleep.
I woke up at 4AM, the prime time for such activities. Everyone around you is asleep. Even the alcoholics who stay in the bar till 2AM. By 4AM they've passed out at home.
I sat up on the bed, thinking it was going to be another hard slog.
Suddenly I felt a huge tingle run up my spine, and a dreaming portal opened up in front of me. Images of people and places literally poured out of it, like it was overstuffed and had burst.
How come? Because I’d gone to sleep, and my assemblage point had loosened up a bit.
The battle with the witch had hardened the position, for my own protection. But sleeping a bit restored it to normal flexibility.
You’re currently in moderately inflexible mode.
But not as inflexible as most people. So you wouldn’t even need power plants to loosen it.
You just need to learn to gaze at your weird stuff and keep it going. Relax the mind.
I found your technique and I'm definitely going to try it. I appreciate your help. The only issue are the stones, I don't have any rivers nearby. Could I get them at some other place?
You can use crystals, or even anything at all that fits between the fingers.
The thing you use just has to be hard enough that it won't crush if you squeeze harder. Like for example, those tiny eggs they sell in the supermarket would be a very bad choice.
Or a very good one! Because, you’d have to be very careful. Who knows. Anything can work. A stack of quarters would work. How about some rolls of nickles, dimes, and pennies. You could tailor the size to which fingers.
It could even be a form of witchcraft, squeezing money between the fingers while trying to be silent.
I'd ask Cholita for what a witch might use, but it would stick in her mind and the next time she's angry, she'd tell me to go have sex with you.
She does that when angry.
Last time it was, "Go fuck your big black whores and leave me alone!"
One time I took a low-tech navigation system, licked the black suction cup it had for sticking it to the front windshield, in preparation for taking Cholita through LA.
It's hard to navigate in LA if you didn't live there a few years.
After I licked it Cholita said, "So that's what you like about black women! Those big round, dark nipples. I supposed you expect me to let you do that?”
I'm celibate so I have no idea where that comes from. But crazy dreamers get sexual, as written in Eagle's Gift. It's part of schizophrenia I suppose.
By the way, Cholita is a witch Carlos put into my path, maybe as a worthy opponent.
Don Juan did that for Carlos, in his books. La Catalina was her name.
It was a pretend enemy, the same way Cholita isn’t really my enemy, except for her mental illness.
She might murder me any day now, but she's not actually my enemy.
Sorry to all of you if she succeeds.
It's unlikely, but she does force me to work harder.
If you learn sorcery, your life won’t be boring.
Edited: twice, and the first copy was doubled up!
I remember Carlos was terrified of La Catalina.
I'm sure I'll find something that'll fit perfectly. And no worries, I'm celibate too.
I'll tell her, but she'll say, "Then you can masturbate together!!! With a thumb up your butt like this!"
And then she'll give a demonstration, even if we're in a restaurant surrounded by people.
I wish she'd just hop across a road or something, like la Catalina did. But unlike Carlos, that wouldn't scare me at all. I'd probably run towards her for a hug and a thank you, if she did that.
So, she tortures me the way that works best for me.
She's about the same age as La Catalina.
I'm just dying to sneak home and get a picture of her latest spell, taking it apart layer by layer. It was dumb luck I discovered it at all.
But we're at war now, and I can't get caught. Plus they're often booby trapped.
One marked my hand with glitter and smelly oil for days, just because I pulled up part of it. The glitter got all over my bed, which I suspect was her goal. And she's an expert on oils. God knows what that was.
Probably one that dries and hardens in air.
I was sitting in darkness trying to summon inorganic beings, looked down, and realized the bed sheets were sparkling in colors. I had to throw those away. There was no way to remove the glitter.
Edited because Cholita is kind of funny when you describe what she does, to other people. Otherwise, you just get used to it and don't realize it's nuts.
When did she start practicing? And how does her illness affect it?
Carlos imported her from Mexico City, using another woman in his group.
I guess that means, she was brought into private classes in 96 or 97. But then Carlos put her on hold, because she was so rough. She held a series of jobs, all centering around a side business deal Carlos had going. Finally, a year before he died, she was allowed back in private classes.
Her illness seems to have started in May of 2016. I went through her facebook postings. She's rational up until then, but the pressure of losing her marriage and not being able to afford to keep an apartment in LA (it's VERY expensive there), drove her off the edge.
But I suspect that was inevitable, and maybe why Carlos paired us off.
She complained once that most of the women around Carlos were given money when he died. $10K here, more there.
What she doesn't realize is, Carlos gave her me. I've spent at least $200K protecting her, over the last 22 years.
Unfortunately, she doesn't keep count.
She's lucky to have you.
To wish for peace at the beginning is to intend failure. We need to be fierce to start progress. An active peace comes later.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eKClwkbDO1o
This is not related to CC, however it does have the spirit