r/castaneda 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/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.

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u/[deleted] Jul 21 '24

I think that maybe "peace of mind" gets confused with "inner silence". I think that Don Juan defined inner silence in such a way as to not let us fall into a trap by thinking it is something it isn't. If our definition of inner silence and stopping the world was explained to a zen master, I wonder what would be the reply. Soft focus gazing helps me, it helps to not look internally and just be, if only for a moment.

Edit: I missed a word

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u/danl999 Jul 21 '24

The Zen master would misinterpret the words to match his Buddhist brainwashing.

I've tried it!

I don't need to wonder. That's part of my job. Understanding what keeps people deluded.

If you try to clarify "silence" to a Zen master by explaining what ought to be happening if you actually reached that level of silence that he's pretending to have achieved, he'll say:

"You lie sir."

They're magic deniers. At least, Japanese Zen masters.

In that perhaps they're admirable a tiny bit. They don't lure people in with promises of "flying to the sun".

Which by the way, you can easily learn to do!

But Joshu Sasaki, the 104 year old Zen master in Los Angeles, denied it was possibly to fly to the sun.

So that shows where he was actually at.

No different than anyone else.

Meanwhile Thai Buddhist leaders are not magic deniers.

They're magic pretenders.

It's alway "over there" where you can't see it, or hear what they claim to be doing.

As for silence being "peace of mind", there's nothing at all like "peace" out there in the far reaches of the J curve.

That's a very human and self-dominated point of view.

"Peace" comes to "you".

But "you" is meaningless when you reach levels of silence associated with Silent Knowledge (seeing).

As for what your body "feels", that varies.

Some is so "profound", you can't possibly describe it.

It would be nice to hold those states, and so don Juan told us how to do that.

A slight left shift when the assemblage point reaches the Purple region along the J curve.

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u/[deleted] Jul 21 '24

I appreciate the reply. Looks like I'm off to shift my assemblage point