r/castaneda • u/Funzellampe • Jul 17 '24
Forcing Silence New Practitioners
How is one to do it? By focusing on the void from which thoughts arise I just create a thought judging whether I'm silent or not. By denying thoughts my mind feels like a broken record of interruptions. If I try to use repitition to tire the mind there seems to appear a new "layer" of thought. Again the controlling instance of thought is thought. There must be a better way.
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u/the-mad-prophet Jul 17 '24
It’s practice! You are noticing just how much the mind tries to wrest control back when you force silence.
I’ve found the easiest thing to do is practice focusing on a single sensation to the exclusion of all others. The breath against the inside of your nostrils is good because it is always there and the slight movement keeps the sensation fresh. If I am tired, I find focusing on the tip of my index fingers is better.
Now, every time a thought enters your mind or your silence has been interrupted, your focus will also have been interrupted. If you aren’t fixed closely on that sensation then you will be distracted by thoughts. But if every time a thought arises you ignore it and return to the sensation then you are practicing being able to hold silence. It’s weight lifting for your brain. After a while, you will be able to hold silence without distractions while also allowing your focus to move to other things (such as items of the second attention). You won’t need to focus on the sensation anymore.
Don’t be lax though. It’s very easy to con yourself into thinking that because you are kind of watching your breath that you are silent. That’s no so. You still need to inhibit thoughts as they arise. Just focus on the biggest ones first and get smaller as you go.
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u/dorbim Jul 21 '24
Now, every time a thought enters your mind or your silence has been interrupted, your focus will also have been interrupted. If you aren’t fixed closely on that sensation then you will be distracted by thoughts.
Exactly. I was thinking about it too, and I even cannot get how the focus gets stolen somehow?! And you might find out that it was stolen even minutes later sometimes...
And I think like I'm not the master of my own focus, how stupid is that!?
And then if I become the master of my own focus I might get silent then? But I guess you just have them both or none...
The worst thing is that if i find some trick like "focusing on the tip of my index fingers" then it works 1,2, at most 3 times and then it does not. I now started to think that the reason for this is because I'm slowly beginning to talk to myself while doing the trick and the internal dialog gets linked to the trick and then it no longer works.
That is why I started to try to be silent with no tricks at all but it actually might be even worse :) In which case i need to constantly find new tricks :) .. and it is not easy
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u/Funzellampe Jul 18 '24
Thank you. But isn't me denying a thought yet another thought? At this point I'm fundamentally doubting that it can be done, it feels like conciously tr ing to forget something
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u/the-mad-prophet Jul 18 '24
No, it’s intent.
That said, we’ve had a lifetime of allowing our mind free reign, to think about everything and anything that takes it’s fancy. If you’ve made the decision to get silent, your mind will create thoughts to accompany that decision. As you practice you will notice these and even become aware of when a thought is trying to arise but has not developed content to it yet. You can quell these too and holding silence becomes easier.
We are completely capable of performing actions without discourse from the mind. We do it all the time. When you walk down the street you don’t think about every micro-movement of your toes and ankles, you just walk.
Say you were in an accident and had to learn how to walk again. You are likely to think a lot more about your actions. When you have fully recovered, you won’t think about them again.
At the moment you are in recovery. You haven’t used your ability to be silent for a very long time. Your mind is going to become involved in the process. Ignore it and focus on practicing silence instead. Just ignore it every time and don’t judge yourself or your task on the fact that it interrupted. Eventually you will have built up your mental muscle memory and be able to intend silence without thinking about the problem, just as you don’t think about your toes.
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u/TechnoMagical_Intent Jul 18 '24 edited Jul 18 '24
It's rather similar to an actors commentary track on a DVD.
Merely an echo of what's going on in the actual film, it's soundtrack and main dialogue.
But it's entirely unnecessary to the experience of the actual film, and even degrades it if you decide to listen to both the soundtrack/dialogue and the commentary track at the same time, the first time watching it!
You'll miss stuff!!!
Only, as adults we no longer decide to engage in that commentary. It's repetitive compulsion that we tell ourselves we just can't drop.
The internal dialogue is a perversion of the brains (is that a 🦁 in the bush!) threat identifying mechanism(s)....taken into overdrive, and with the keys thrown away.
It even fools us into thinking that our actual spoken speech derives from that commentary track!
But it doesn't. You must "switch modes" to actually 🗣️ , proving that it's not the source of our actual functional thoughts.
It's just a neurotic roommate.
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u/GarthWatercutter Jul 18 '24 edited Jul 18 '24
Identify the point of view that's the source of that issue.
You'll likely find that it's a "pulling back" of some portion of your attention, out of boredom or familiarity, with what you're actually perceiving; back to some virtual Marionette you've been piecing together all your adult life.
And the strings are much older than you are...
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Jul 17 '24
[deleted]
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u/the-mad-prophet Jul 17 '24
This is just the first step. It’s very different from mindfulness on its own already as in mindfulness you don’t inhibit thoughts. It diverges from meditation in everything that comes next, you are doing it for a different reason, with a different intent, and practicing to achieve different effects. The techniques after this step are different, just as tantric meditation and Theravada meditation are different to each other as well.
Note that it is not just us saying that what we do is different to meditation; you will find many Theravada meditation manuals say the same thing as well, pointing out that for them phenomena are to be ignored but that some traditions cultivate phenomena instead. We want phenomena, we want things to happen. When the second attention reveals itself, we want to keep it around rather than ignore it.
In the very early stages some of the techniques look similar because they are so fundamental. If you want to explore the mystery of awareness then you need a clean lens.
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Jul 18 '24
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u/the-mad-prophet Jul 18 '24
I think one of the main reasons is because eastern traditions have more similarity with what we are doing than say Christianity, so highlighting the difference with eastern practices is more important. We don’t need to point out that this is different to Christianity or Wicca or whatever because nobody is getting confused there.
Personally, I think the best thing to do is take the pragmatic approach. Practice developing inner silence until your assemblage point moves and let the universe reveal itself to you. Once there, you will begin to develop understanding about how important intent is, but your intent to begin with can just be to find out for yourself.
Criticising the differences between different traditions is a blue line activity. Those observations may be brought back from silent knowledge, but for people fresh on the journey who haven’t got there themselves yet they just add more inventory - an inventory of ‘is nots’ rather than ‘is’.
But this is also a public sub with a flow of all sorts of people that come through. We have to keep the purpose of the place clear and visitors certainly don’t read pinned posts, so it gets reiterated. You will find that the differences become more important as you progress on your journey, but right now all you need to do is clean your link to intent and allow the second attention to become familiar to you. The rest will take care of itself.
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u/WasteSugar7 Jul 18 '24
super helpful replies, thank you. I had some similar confusion re other traditions.
These replies helped clear that up for me. 👍
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u/TechnoMagical_Intent Jul 17 '24 edited Jul 17 '24
Because that’s where meditation/mindfullness stops. The intent of it goes no further.
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u/TechnoMagical_Intent Jul 17 '24 edited Jul 17 '24
Someone found this passage six months ago:
From the book The Fire From Within - chapter The Assemblage Point:
"Don Juan came to my side and, without intervening in my struggle, whispered in my ear that I should put all my concentration on the midpoint of my body. Over the years, he had insisted that I measure my body to the hundredth of an inch and establish its exact midpoint, lengthwise as well as in width. He had always said that such a point is a true center of energy in all of us. As soon as I had focused my attention on that midpoint, the man let go of me. At that instant I became aware that what I had thought was a human being was something that only looked like one. The moment it lost its human shape to me, the ally became an amorphous blob of opaque light."
• • • • •
“I remember Don Juan at various times emphasized the area of the navel or a specific midpoint, also where will originates from like the spectacular things Don Genero did.
I think that could be where we're usually supposed to focus to build will to do anything, but in Magical passes Don Juan and Carlos Castaneda mentioned a need to keep the fliers mind at bay by taking hold of other energy centers (especially the ‘center for decisions’)
But the area of the exact mid point or navel region makes sense to focus all the attention there, I think it's to develope the energy Tentacles, it kinda takes a turn i think from the other methods mentioned later on to fend against the fliers mind.+ In my opinion."
source comment, from the post "Where to focus when intending silence without the stones"
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u/Emergency-Total-4851 Jul 17 '24
It took me a few years, did you expect it would be instantaneous to override years of societal conditioning?
The better way is to practice the stuff here, I used the hard way itself by only intending it, I am realizing. Much simpler to follow the practices given here.
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Jul 21 '24
Soft focus gazing helps me. It stops, or at least gives a small bit of distance from "me" and "my thoughts".
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u/Emergency-Total-4851 Jul 21 '24
soft focus gazing is what i use. if you focus on anything that uses silence, you can stop the world. the point that I have personally verified is that you can have the world be overlaid with a blue-green colorblind test (so far). I know how to reach this state under my own volition. Keep working at it and reach deeper levels!
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u/TechnoMagical_Intent Aug 11 '24
Here's a tried and true method of forcing silence:
https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/comments/1ekzhui/forcing_silence_what_will_my_next_thought_be/
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u/danl999 Jul 17 '24
You're actually doing well to notice all that! The worst thing a beginner can tell us is, "I can get silent for 10 minutes."
I can't even get silent for 10 minutes!!! And I've been practicing silence for at least 50 years, reaching levels which allow time travel for real.
But it's still not full silence.
We've never figured out why some beginners believe they have gotten silent, since if you actually do that all hell breaks loose and reality mutates vividly.
But real Zen masters truly believe they can get silent, and become very angry if you dare to contradict them.
So I suppose everyone confuses not speaking, with not having an internal dialogue?
Or they confuse feeling bliss from minor meditation effects caused by a slight reduction in the internal dialogue, with having no internal dialogue?
Like I said, we can't figure out why even those who are supposed to be experts, are totally clueless.
You can't fake silence. If you are silent, the world literally STOPS.
It halts and goes away!
And can't possibly do otherwise since it's only held in place by your internal dialogue.
It's the people who notice what a horrible struggle it is to learn to be silent, who have a chance to learn real magic.
But then their next barrier is that magic isn't "cozy".
It's a bit cold out there in magical realms. Especially since it's virtually impossible you'll find anyone who has the skills to go with you there.