Journey to Ixtlan really deserves a J curving perspective!
I believe when Carlos wrote it, he was already understanding the sorcery world, unlike the first two.
While re-reading it, I noticed something that might be important, that went unnoticed.
The first thing don Juan teaches to Carlos is 'Hunting'.
It consists on tasks that have the purpouse of unraveling Carlos ordinary life.
Like deleting routines, using the death as a counselor, observing habits...
In a J curve view, Carlos needed to stop doing deep lateral shifts in the blue line, wich eat all the energy.
We all learned to do those lateral shifts in our childhood, in order to hold this reality. The deeper ones appear once you grow: stress, anxiety, paranoia, weird social interactions.
But after some months, don Juan got an omen and decided to go for the next level, even if Carlos wasn't still a "Hunter".
Now I realize don Juan was teaching so fast.
Obviously faster than Carlos could reach, but they had the nagual power for demostrations.
So again, 'Hunting' is apparently all about holding the assemblage point in the middle blue, to save energy.
The next level was learning to be a "Warrior".
In don Juan words, the difference is Warriors hunt power.
They already involve Vertical Shifts on the J curve!
For instance, the teachings started with seeing second attention shadows, while turning the eyes quickly (green station).
Then, they spent hours in a power place in complete silence, and Carlos saw a branch of a tree breathing as an animal (red station).
That's daily stuff in a life of a J Curver!
So the Warrior thing, wich went very wrong in the Castaneda community, was just misunderstood.
You can start thinking about it, once you can move your assemblage point.
I don't want to make any definitive conclusions yet.
But this is an interesting "thread" that the teachings of don Juan seemed to have.
It is something that the ones who have trouble in getting to the green station should pay attention to.
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I just started journey to ixtalan !
Reading the books after absorbing all the information about the j-curve from this sub is really interesting because I can see Carlos work through the same issues.
I wish the books aren't read as novels anymore!
The Castaneda community never bothered to learn to be silent, that's why those didn't work.
Or in the case of some, who will literally kill you if you tell them they can't get silent, they deceived themselves.
It would be wonderful if Mikhail actually learned to get to the orange zone, so the huge chip on his shoulder would go away, and we could find out why he thought he could get silent.
That would be useful information for everyone.
But the Eastern Block is pretending all this isn't happening, so they can keep their Castaneda eco system flourishing.
Mikhail probably said that only to win an argument.
He was on a ego trip.
Look his profile.
"Seeker. Methodology author."
And there is a feather in the picture!
He did seem to be willing to lie.
Angrily defending his lies too!
I was surprised.
Someone would warn me in private chat what he was up to, then he'd do something obviously along those lines, I'd call him out, and he'd insist he had "enemies", and that it wasn't true.
Insist!
Then I'd get another person in private chat, saying he was lying.
A different "witness".
But still, I was hoping he'd change his mind and want to learn for real.
He actually did a great job with that Reputation post.
In fact, it is in the Wiki!
Turns out, doing a good job doesn't matter much.
I ran into 3 "murderers" in the shamanism subreddit. People willing to kill magic for others, just for the sake of their own egos.
I thought I could debunk the debunkers with Mikhail's stuff.
But it turns out, they only read a tiny bit so they can say they read it, and then they say, "No, it doesn't debunk anything! It just tries to make Demille look like a bad guy."
I think it boils down to, people who think Carlos was debunked, have reasoning skill issues.
And are angry.
So they won't read it anyway.
Someone brought up Gordon Wasson's spiel about how you can't smoke shrooms.
What????
Who's dumb enough to believe if you took a deep puff on that pipe, you wouldn't get stoned out of your mind?
Gordon wouldn't have taken a smoke to prove his point!
But he was happy to put that out as "expert analysis".
And everyone is happy to repeat that one, usually first.
But there's something good in that.
It made me realize, while analyzing how bogus that argument is, that we might have missed something.
My theory is, Don Juan only wanted him to think he was getting very stoned.
He only needed him stoned enough to loosen his assemblage point.
He couldn't afford to have him so stoned, it was pushed far off into a ditch.
If Carlos though he was blasted, he wouldn't panic when his assemblage point moved very far and super weird stuff happened.
And that in fact, it was Devil's Weed and Little Smoke doing the moving. Not so much the power plants.
I also wondered if the Olmecs didn't design those rituals, and they actually needed some of the shroom to burn, while you inhaled the powder.
As a link to the spirit world.
It's not like the Olmecs would be worrying about how much those wasted shrooms will cost to replace, at the drug dealer.
I just realized something.
Why do some IOBs (like Fancy) wear amazing constumes?
On a regular basis.
Because those cause horizontal shifts!
A vague little face in a pink puff, like Fairy, doesn't seem very real, so it won't interfere with keeping the assemblage point in the middle.
But Fancy in her red riding hood costume, actually speaking out loud, drives the assemblage point nuts!
It goes sideways quickly.
Fairy did that once. Wore a see through sexy Sailor Suit.
But it was after I was trying to form those red lines, by flicking liquid into the air, so I could try the flying technique.
I caused the horizontal shift myself.
Fairy just passed out on the floor, and ended up looking 100% real, because I'd moved my own assemblage point horizontally.
So, what if...
What if they're dazzling when they want to move your assemblage point to the side, and vague when they want to keep you in the middle, so they can take you down faster?
One thing about IOBs is, you'll never believe it.
Even with them right there, you figure it's all in your head.
And so you don't expect them to be as intelligent as don Juan said they were.
Which helps them out, because you never see what they are about to do, before they finish.
Though, I still prefer the sailor suit to the faint puff of a face.
When I say it was see through, I mean, I got my face just 2 inches from Fairy's face, and then looked her over full body.
She was real...
A funny story from yesterday:
I was sitting in a forest, near the beach.
My back layed on a tree, and I was sitted crosslegged, on the sand.
A black cat appeared, and sitted on my legs.
I was past the red zone, so I didn't bother.
So forcing deeper silence I entered in that wonderful dreaming view.
I realized how beatiful was everything around, and my attention focused on a tree, ten meters in front of me.
The sun was hitting righ there, and it was really pleasant to hold that view.
A hundred of faces started moving on the tree.
There were a crowd!
I could focus the one I wanted, in detail.
But I ended up ignoring it, so I could pass the bottom.
It was cool, but I don't remember much.
Something great about getting to the orange, is you can stay without moving at all for hours, without feeling any pain.
So I've been around 2 hours with that cat on my legs!
Maybe you were "greeble free" during that session.
And he needed a break.
Those greebles are relentless!
I'm afraid, last week I almost got myself trapped in the red zone.
I couldn't believe it! I actually saw that you can in fact get trapped in the red zone, unable to leave it. Like Julian.
I can't explain it now, but at the time the reasons were obvious.
But so far, the "pink zone" seems safe.
You have to back up just a tiny bit from the orange.
So that you can see both the whitish light, and the colorful puffs.
It takes a lot of control to literally check for whitish light, find it, and then "back off" a very tiny amount and reach out to grab some red zone stuff. Then find the place in the middle where both are visible.
But it can be done.
Even better is a phantom copy of your bedroom, with vivid red and purple to play with.
I don't know if you can get trapped there.
Seems like it ought to be ok, because you are seeing energy.
It also happens to me that.
I always tell myself to stop worrying, but each time feels horrible again.
Two weeks ago I was 4 days in a row without getting further than the red.
And I wasn't doing anything different!
"Why?? Did I just forget how to move further??!"
The ugly part is the internal dialogue never completly leavea, so you acumulate weird versions of you.
Maybe natural energy flow? Did Carlos reported something similar?
Yes, he did!
But I don't remember it anymore.
We really need to get some private class members to at least come remember stuff for us.
It's remarkable that they're so angry, they won't do it.
Just like don Juan said they'd be.
I've concluded lately, when you go recruiting in another subreddit it's very important to realize, you're just the knock of the spirit.
You aren't a salesman.
People only come over here, because intent gave them the inclination to do it.
Possibly, saying "Hey, Castaneda answered that question of yours well. Go to his subreddit."
And drop it.
But it's good practice to duke it out anyway.
You end up learning things yourself.
Unfortunately your comment this afternoon in that post on r/LucidDreaming titled " I just want to have sex. Anyone else?" got removed 😕
https://www.reddit.com/r/LucidDreaming/comments/oxpznp/i_just_want_to_have_sex_anyone_else/h7q881e/
Yea, I also tried to post there and it was removed so fast, it had to be a script.
Searching for "Castaneda" in the post.
I can't imagine they scraped my name from this subreddit, to accomplish that.
No big deal.
I know those guys believe it's their duty to keep Carlos in the toilet.
Some are former sunday class members.
Look at Jeremy.
He came here, tried to destroy it, and when it was obvious people were learning he tried to direct them into the lucid dreaming subreddit, perhaps to remove any path to actually magic.
I could have guessed as much.
It's those darned anti-vaxers...
I'm amazed that it never moved! It must have been engrossed by what you were doing!
It is winter here.
A human sofa really sounds better than the cold sand!
When my breath got rythmic, my stomach really pushed at him, but he didn't care.
"If itz warm I sitz 😸!" I've learned that much from meme cat gifs.
Oh, cat' memes.
Who the hell is Karen??!!
One of my cats is very interested in my gazing practice, often studying me very closely.sometimes I get the feeling he knows what I am doing.
I believe our orange zone state of awareness is much more similar to how the cats naturally are.
It probably applies to most animals.
So it seems easier to understand what they are really up to, with a second attention look.
Yes, I I think you are on to it! I
Juann is it possible that those lateral shifts caused by daily stress are more harmful to Darkroom gazers than to normal people?
It's weird but since I'm trying darkroom gazing, I seem to be more vulnerable to things that are opposed to sorcery, like daily stress for instance, following routines, etc. Or is it simply that Darkroom gazing takes energy on its own, so that all combined is just too much to handle?
I'd say people usually find ways to ignore the pain of the lateral shifts, but they don't solve it.
That's fooling yourself.
So yeah, facing them might be hard at first.
Until you figure out how to control, and realize you are better without them.
Then you get rewards.
I use them as cues that my silence has slipped, and I am fantasizing. I am finding that this will often give me a push I need in to silence again. Certainly not always, though. If someone or something has really gotten my goat, I'll need a time out to deal with it. The more I can force silence during the day,or hunt for power, the betterII do in drg. I think this helps to clean my link to intent.
I really notice a difference in the practice, according to how I behave.
Maybe the best is to don't have any obsession at all, dedicate to the daily activities, and have confidence about practice.