Hopefully an introduction to a long lasting stay

Hey there,

I can't really believe that I found a place like this. I've been eager to share knowledge about CC for literally a decade and could never find a proper space. The ones that I found (the old Sociedad Nagualista) have been shut down long ago, and even when they were active, they weren't practical at all about anything related to Carlo's work. Guys, I'll try to be as concise and not personal as possible but considering that we need context I'll allow myself to share some of my useless personal history (could be interesting to spot abstract cues) and yeah, I pretty much have this whole text on my gut for the past 10 years, so just ignore me if you aren't interested.

My father started reading CC when he was 19. When I was 12 (I'm 24 today) I read them by "accident" and was hooked ever since. When I say hooked I really mean it, you'll understand in a moment. Summarizing, it turned my life upside down. People think they get shocked when reading CC as adults, they cannot possibly imagine the impact on a childs mind. So yeah I pretty much went mad from common sense pov since I was 12. Ok before starting, I want to pre-apologise for any words that I might use that are not of common knowledge of this forum, since I read his works through Spanish and Portuguese versions.

After growing up with these ideas, as I was also raised to be highly critic of what I believe, during the around 20th times that I re-read Carlos entire work, I always start skeptical and finish it barely on my feet. Though I consider this to be a good thing. Every time I get skeptical, I learn something new, a new way to interpret the cosmological frame that he painted out there. It's very good for our 'tonal' (first attention) to structure and segment this theoretical framework into a logical way. (Even though it doesn't matter what we believe in whenever our assemblage point is positioned at what we call the first attention. Action is all that matters, and action is taken by the second attention.)
I am very glad that my skepticism brought me to philosophy of the mind and metaphysics as it makes a lot easier to see how flawed materialism is. Today I basically hold a idealist sort of view of the world and whenever I start reading the books the only thing I allow my 'mind' to believe is that 'we know nothing other than we exist in our consciousness. Science talks about behaviour of said "particles" but says nothing about what these entities are and therefore is nothing but a tool to predict behaviour. It says nothing and never will, about what these so called "particles" (or whatever name you wanna give) really are and therefore the subjective is completely out of its reach."

And Carlos works is exactly that, a subjective work that talks to and only to your subjective mind. I have written a potentially interesting article on idealism that entails "the hard problem of consciousness" and shamanism and all the cool stuff, but I might save that up for later.
Anyway, back to the personal story crap. After reading the books exhaustively and feeling completely locked out of paradise (I think many/all of you can relate to this feeling) I decided to renounce on everything that I had read, discarding it as pure cheap charlatanism and useless philosophy and tried to engage in a Theoretical Physics degree in a good university here in my country, got a cool gf and tried a 'run away' Pablito's style.
After a year I was completely ready to die. No joke. I had a depression so utterly deep and apparently for no reason that my parents had to intervene. 4 years of antidepressants later (I'm still on medication btw, trying to drop =/) I finally snapped out of it, but only after trying to conduct a "serious study" (lol) on CC works once again, but now using my new acquired knowledge of science and philosophy.
I could be biased, I probably am in fact, but fuck Carlos broke me again. There was no arguments against the words of silence speaking directly to my being. My father passed through a similiar episode in his youth, not as violent, but similiar regardless. So fine, we cannot escape whatever 'spell' his words wove into us (or into our double, or energy body) but we can't act as warriors either. I say this without a drop of self pity, but me and my father, while we hold his work very preciously in a way, in another way we feel completely 'cursed' hahaha. I know that a warrior should never face events as miracles or curses but its helpless. I mean, as I said, I'm a idealist. I know for a fact of logic that the subjective knows no bounds, BUT. BUT what Carlos said goes waaay beyond that. It depicts a life of privations in exchange for selfless power, a unknown power that simply is, and its flow turns our lives into living-myths.

Fair exchange I'd say, if we could actually reach it. Guys, we've tried it all. We've practiced stalking until we questioned our own sanity. We practiced dreaming to bed-wetting level, we've medidated and tried to move our assemblage point to interrupt our flux of reality interpretation, hours and hours a day for years. We took power plants (Mescalito, shrooms and lsd to name a few) We even met some cool guys in Mexico who actually were with Castaneda for many years. Juan Yolitzi, Franciso Plata (this one even says he met Don Juan and Zuleica once, who knows xD), Armando Torres (who apparently found his own lineage, lucky him). But even though we had pretty amazing experiences, we never crossed a determined threshold that seems to fully unleash infinity into our lives (thats how it appears to be in the books anyway). I mean, we would practice until we were exhausted of it and then we would stop for a couple of months, sometimes 1 year and then return ever stronger. But only to find ourselves locked out of the paradise that we read in the books. I am happy to have gotten to the second gate of dreaming, I can safely lucid dream almost every night, I can lock objects as I wish in sight without morphing forms, I can 'zoom-in' and out of other dreams and I feel all sorts of beautiful, weird, haunting and daunting sensations. This is all pretty cool but is nowhere near what they lived. I still lack the spirit. The spirit that pours throughout the pages of Castaneda's work is simply not here as strong as it should, as far as my ridiculous senses tell me. That is why I say that without a single drop of self pity, only pure acknowledgement, we're a fucking miserable couple of bastards haha. We read something that doesn't leave us alone no matter what. If a day passes and I'm not trying my best to reach the spirit I feel utterly sad and disgusted by my full of myself behaviour and to simply waste another day being 'normal'. So, if we attempt to act as warriors, we feel frustrated by the lack of concrete results and if we don't we feel miserable because life makes absolutely no sense anymore. It doesn't feel like it's worth it to live a life if not a warriors life. Not to us. That is why we are miserable.

So, I guess that leaves me with two options to believe. Either Carlos somehow managed to craft this out of his head (which is insane, but plausible I guess) and then we're all a bunch of crazy monkeys trying to self-induce hallucinations, which is not a bad thing in and of itself since investigating consciousness and its boundries can be really interesting. OR he is right concerning the existence of a very strange world that can interacted with more than what we are taught. I mean, everything else that he says is just myth until we experience it. Wall of mist? Inorganic beings? Lineages? Allies? The accurate description of organic and inorganic life throughout the Eagle's spectrum? Lineages past? Names? History and events? Don Juan? None of this matters. This is all confette. We shouldn't care if any of this is true. He could be stalking as far as we are concerned and we shouldn't care, because the important question that he brought is: "Is this all there is to the world? This endless, boring, hurting, cycling, senseless day-to-day enforced reality? What if there is more? And if there is, how can I explore it?" But this is all very complicated. Because as soon as we are dealing with truth's that are effectively subjective to our experience, truth becomes a very shady word. When what you experienced was actually "that"? Was that entity an inorganic? Did I really see that? Did I really hear that? Does X mean that Y and therefore Z?
We keep trying to link our experiences to what the books told us, when we shouldn't or should we? I mean, if any of it is true, they had a lineage, they had no chance to escape the spirit. They were mere pawns of intent displaying a spetacular dance and we are watching it through the lens of an old and misty and dark telescope. But what about us? We have no lineage to follow and as far as I'm concerned, the way the books were presented, points me to a new fact where warriors are now loners, possibly to expand? IDK. Going back to what I said in the beginning, all I know is that we don't know shit. None of us. Alright, we could all be crazies, but if we are, everyone is. Science, philosophy and the whole tree of basic knowledge stands over a floating rock sustained by itself. Theorems that are held true by self-evident axioms. At the end of the day, we can't be sure of anything other than that we are conscious. That is it. Having this knowledge and the knowledge of what we read in Castaneda's sources we have two options.

1-) Believe that he was a fraud and attempt to live life as broken and damaged as it is.

2-) Be a warrior.

I say number 2 is a good choice as any other, since if he was a fraud, most likely so is every religion and/or myth and we're only dust in the wind and nothing will matter at the end of the day anyway. We're all dead already, might as well try something with a heart, right? If he turns out to be right, we can *POTENTIALLY* live a life worth living, full of orgasmic experiences. And if he is wrong we just self-induce hallucinations and live frustrated and die like everyone else.

Yeah guys. I had to throw all this out there. But man, I can't help but to think that if this genious dude crafted this universe and stood by it to his last dying rattle, then he was one of the most cruel beings that ever existed. He showed us a peak of heaven through the peephole and then died and took the door, the room and the whole world with him. Yeah I'd gladly give my entire boring life for one year living as a full-blown warrior. I got to the point where I wanted to somehow meet Carol, Taisha or Florinda (since I know where they live) and spend an afternoon with them, like they used to waste on skeptical stupid journalists in the 80s. Not to ask them anything, because I have no questions for them. But simply to gaze upon their eyes and feel for myself if the myth actually lives on this Earth still. Maybe I wouldn't feel anything, but what if I did? If you read through all this you can probably tell that my 'logical' side is in constant battle with my second attention and I live my life trying to grip to my sanity so that this battle is not a fatal one. It will be one day, I just don't know when.

Have a good one guys, hopefully I can participate often on this forum. Maybe share some articles, dreams, experiences. I mean, fuck the personal side of things. We all know it doesn't matter. But if we can filter that and actually focus on the abstract cues of the experiences, we can maybe start to identify patterns and links to what we read and learned.