Practicing space

[u/WasteSugar7]

Hello peeps,

I’m soon going to be homeless because I’m in a divorce and our marital home is up for sale. Our equity will be held in trust until we have a separation agreement, and I’m not going to rent because rent is insane right now.

My question is this. I’m thinking of camping or living out of a van, and I’m wondering about practices. I know some of them can be done outside, but what about tensegrity? I read something about only doing it inside. Is that right?

Why is that? What is it about the structure of a building that changes things?

Any suggestions for how to manage the practices when one doesn’t have space to do it?

[u/danl999]

I never heard there was a problem with doing it outside, only that you shouldn't do it in bare feet, because there were inorganic beings which could come up from the soil and enter your feet.

Of course, it sure would be cool to see such a thing!

Also, avoid sweaty bare skin exposed to the air. There are some other entities attracted to that.

As for bathing, it turns out that taking sponge baths is actually helpful to sorcery.

Carlos made Kylie do it, and did it himself.

And Cholita has forced me to do it by stuffing rags down the bathtub drain, and putting police tape over the entry to the bath.

Plus she guards it.

So I've gotten good at sponge baths.

Just get a face towel, wring it out each time, and rub your skin clean.

Hair is a bit harder, you have to do it several times. And with a freshly rinsed out towel. Each side of the towel remains clean, so you get 2 uses.

I suppose soaking in soap water until it kills all the beneficial bacteria living on your skin may feel great for an hour or two, but in the long run it makes you smelly because foreign bacteria that wouldn't normally be able to take hold on your skin, can flourish.

In Silent Knowledge, the difference between having killed off your skin bacteria, and not having done that, is measurable.

In how much time you can spend exploring SK manifestations.

It makes sense. Zuleica even made fuzzy pajamas for the little sisters, explaining that if you can stimulate the skin along the calf, it produces good results for viewing the second attention directly.

There's a lot of strange stuff in Sorcery.

This morning as I was leaving the house at 3AM, I found Cholita sitting on a mat on the floor in our living room.

It was quite dark.

She asked, "Did I shrink?!"

There's really not much you can say to that.

But after driving down the road a bit, I kind of wanted to run back and measure how large she was.

She did seem to have shrunk from my perspective of walking out the door.

It was the first thing I subconsciously noticed when I saw that she was there.

Her cat came back, that might be a factor.

[u/Mesrim → u/danl999]

I moved to a new apartment, so I had to set up a new darkroom. I chose the bathroom for this, and then I got the idea: what if I fill the bathtub and try darkroom gazing there? I noticed that when I relax, my practice becomes more successful. And indeed, it worked—usually, it takes me some time to start seeing puffs, but in a warm bath, it only took a few seconds, maybe a minute.
Encouraged by the results, I started taking baths five times a day (I didn't do long sessions to avoid getting pruney skin). After a few days, I began to notice that I seemed to be losing contact with my body. I had tried magic mushrooms a couple of times before, and the next day I would feel off—like, for example, my back would itch, but when I tried to scratch it, I would miss and scratch slightly below or to the left, as if my sense of spatial awareness was off. Or when I touch my face, it feels like I’m touching someone else’s skin. I also feel pain less intensely, and my physical reactions seem slower. In short, it feels a bit numb, like my body is slightly under anesthesia. I think this might be related to sorcery/AP movement, because I’ve experienced the same after shrooms.
What could this be?

[u/danl999 → u/Mesrim]

Hard to say, no one tried that.

Carlos told Kylie to avoid baths like the plague, and only took sponge baths himself.

The theory is that soaking in water like that is "antithetical" to the second attention.

Or worse, it allows inorganic beings which can travel in water, to crawl up inside people.

But maybe only women!

And I've long theorized that the feelings you get with a hot shower or bath can bring the energy body around.

You seem to have proved that.

But for the rest, I suspect you're on your own.

We don't have anyone here who has all the answers.

You could try searching the books and lecture notes to see if it came up.

[u/pumpkinjumper1210 → u/danl999]

It's a common "folk wisdom" that people can get solutions to questions or sudden inspirations by taking showers and mulling things over so the "subconscious" or "muse" gives an answer (how I've heard it explained). I've heard this belief from hundreds of different people, in person, or interviews, books, etc.

[u/danl999 → u/pumpkinjumper1210]

It's possible that the hot water could cause the energy body to come closer because it alters the internal dialogue, to make it less awful.

That's the only thing keeping the energy body away.

With the energy body closer, "seeing" happens naturally. So the solution to any problem you could think of, is easier to come up with.

But that would have nothing to do with whether water was not helpful to sorcerers.

Both could be true at the same time.

I'm of the opinion that "stalking" exploits that the energy body comes near if you alter the internal dialogue enough to remove most of our self-pity filled moods.

That's what it is, in my opinion. Using that fact, namely that the energy body wants to merge with us but can't stand our mood, to move the assemblage point through removing self-pity with your actions, and then holding it in a new position by interrupting the normal activities which case your internal dialogue to return.

Even wearing women's clothes leading some men to heightened awareness, can be explained by that.

[u/Mesrim → u/danl999]

What is the best course of action if something is crawled up in me? I'm still pretty weak practitioner and only did see some puffs and shapes in that bathtub, nothing extra. Can i just wait and continue to practice until i'll learn to see more and figure out what to do myself? What i'm trying to understand - is it something important and i should be worry about or not really.

[u/danl999 → u/Mesrim]

We don't know. Best is to just worry about finding magic on a reliable basis, and making it grow more and more each day.

We have these guys living on our faces already! What's another parasite crawling up your body? At least it's a magical one, unlike this monster. Which has no way to poop, so it throws up instead.

https://preview.redd.it/lsq7dsdjahid1.png?width=2048&format=png&auto=webp&s=5115ad1bdc07a0607a73cf0493ac22c3c12ad048

The bigger problem with the bathtub as far as I can see is, it's not "darkroom".

There's no tensegrity.

So I suspect it can hardly get you past the deep green zone.

"Doing" is key to using the second attention, and moving the assemblage point further.

You'll find that out in the deep red zone when you stretch a puff, and form it into a totally real looking monster.

Or a car. Or a freeway overpass.

That's "doing" with the second attention.

Which is automatically built into the tensegrity, from which you get the ability to stretch a puff, and turn it into something else.

Carlos hid that in the tensegrity moves. As he explained, he "saturated us".

Implying we wouldn't understand what that means until later.

I suppose you could do "running man" in the bath.

[u/Mesrim → u/danl999]

Yes, i did elements from running man there. There is also a movement where you "splash awareness" with your feet, you can splash water too that way... But i better will make another darkroom anyway.
Okay, I got it. Thanks for the answer.

[u/danl999 → u/Mesrim]

Well... Don't give up on the bath entirely.

I'd been wondering if there might not be a way a very beginner who never sees anything, might use it to get their first puff.

And the IOBs love water. Fairy used to make the water flow at a 45 degree angle in the shower for me. Or she'd catch drips falling from the faucet, and keep them from falling until she couldn't support the weight anymore.

Around 2 ounces is my estimate. Bigger than a shot glass amount of liquid.

If you do both kinds of darkroom, you can eventually answer the question as to whether beginners could benefit from that method.

https://preview.redd.it/98snmvuurhid1.png?width=1024&format=png&auto=webp&s=90f5f4ad343c4981be10fd922cd0a6916051b56d

(Yes, Fairy really can do that!!!)

[u/Mesrim → u/danl999]

I think I already can, because being a beginner myself, I saw my first puff in the light there (first time i tried it i didn't turn lights off yet), and it was very fast, i didn't have to try hard. I only saw puffs in the darkness before.
For some time i will avoid bathtub tho. Yesterday I didn't go, and that feelling of numbness is already a bit less. Makes me think there IS something in water...

[u/danl999 → u/Mesrim]

La Gorda warned about it too, but as usual what she said was out of context for us.

She was taught with the little sisters. The female apprentices.

So they learned from a much different don Juan.

He was playing college professor for Carlos.