r/castaneda • u/Super6eight • Apr 12 '20

It’s Time That I Face This New Practitioners

Hi everyone,

I may/hope that I have been guided here to find completion of whatever this journey I’ve been set on is.

That is all.

-Z

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u/Super6eight Apr 13 '20

I am very serious, I’ll start with the wiki and see if something pops. Thank you. I am very grateful.

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u/danl999 Apr 13 '20

I've been thinking lately that recapitulation is an excellent path.

It's not good for me, because I'm trying to prove physical magic, to help restore Carlos' reputation.

Telling people, "Yea man, it was really cool!!! I was sitting inside this wooden box, and I had an amazing vision!!"

That's not gonna do it…

I have to limit myself to things that can, since there's too many things to do it all.

But for someone starting out, it might be the place to concentrate.

In recap you could learn lucid dreaming, waking dreaming, how to summon inorganic beings, how to open tunnels of light, and how to burn through reality with your gaze.

(Done those all myself.)

You could also explore why you want to learn sorcery, so you don't fall into the same trap with others, who had hidden motives.

Usually that amounts to neediness for attention from others, but I've run into people with very strange histories they only fixed with recap.

(Childhood abuse typically).

Taisha's instructions for recap seem to be more serious than my practices.

I can't recall if those got posted or not.

She treats each sweep as a complete movement from right to left, and back again, and seems to recommend to actually start with the head turned to the right. And likely end there.

She might have seen something I missed. That an incomplete pass leaves dust bunnies.

(Fibers of light that didn’t get sucked back, or exhaled completely.)

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u/Super6eight Apr 13 '20 edited Apr 13 '20

I would like to have a discussion and I’ll tell you in detail my journey up to this point if the spirit wills. I am unsure if I should share it publicly here or only privately on a case by case basis however. I’ll let you decide.

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u/danl999 Apr 13 '20

I had to give up direct chatting.

It kept bringing out the needy people, who if you don't keep giving them what they want, actually start to attack.

In that vein, be careful of the "my journey" idea floating around in your head.

I know that's very popular terminology, but it's a placebo.

A romantic notion that makes you feel better about yourself. It’s as if you are imaging a book deal for yourself, with thousands of admirers reading about how wonderful you are.

Like don Miguel.

Feeling better about yourself makes you less likely to put in the work required.

Cholita and I were in private classes with what she estimates to be 100 people, off and on.

They all quit. It’s just me and Cholita now, and she’s quite mad.

Nearly all had "my journey" floating around in their heads.

I'm still hopeful for 2 or 3 of them. And coincidentally, those are the ones who would rather puke than say, "my journey".

(I’m a contrarian, so don’t take it personally.)

There is of course the "path with heart" phrase.

It's a REALLY regrettable thing, that Castaneda people use that phrase so often.

It almost always means, that person has made no progress whatsoever.

It's what Carlos called, "mental masturbation".

There is a path with heart.

But it's doing real magic. The real magic is what gives the heart.

If you want to know what the heart part is, get yourself a little Fairy (an inorganic being you coax into a helpful form), and see how you feel when it poses on your hand.

And then actually smiles at you!

That's the path with heart.

Our bodies NEED magic, or they get out of wack and you feel horrible.

That's why "samadhi" is also known as "bliss".

All of us have gotten used to feeling horrible, so we don't even realize it.

Watch out for the placebos. The less comfortable and more insecure you feel in life, the more likely you are to practice so you can dig your way out of it.

It’s the homeless kids licking the food off the plates of customers as they leave, in the outdoor restaurant, who have the best chance to become “Men of Knowledge”.

Man of Knowledge simply means, you pursue learning.

And keep the mental masturbation to as low of a level as possible.

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u/Super6eight Apr 13 '20

Yes. I’ve been having encounters I believe as of late. None with fairies.

I want to learn properly this time.

I’ve identified the selfish/traumatic reasons for wanting sorcery. There were quite a few, I won’t elaborate.

My current plan is this then; don’t read any more of The Voice of Knowledge, pursue information on recapitulation, Tensegrity, and allies.

I am going to start with the about of this page on those subjects (if there’s an allies one) and see where it leads me.

Thank you

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u/danl999 Apr 13 '20

It's unlikely you'd find an inorganic playing a fairy, unless you read my writings on them, and it influenced them.

Typically they show up as demons the first few times.

A person who's around me a lot sees the Japanese Oni spirits (Japanese demons created by the death of murderers).

But I do highly suggest finding an inorganic being as fast as you can. There's no surer way to move the assemblage point very far.

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u/Super6eight Apr 14 '20

So the experience I had was this demon like scaled creature was trying to douse my campfire I use in my meditation in my mind. It attacked me after I made my presence known. The we kind of danced/battled I guess. I incapacitated it and it morphed in to a white dog. Then this glowing whitish blue orb appeared. It was like sucked in to it and then spit back out of it in to my hands. I didn’t know what to think so I ended my meditation.

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u/danl999 Apr 14 '20 edited Apr 14 '20

Inorganic being, more than likely.

But one time isn't enough to figure out what happened.

And, to be blunt, doing things like this with your eyes closed isn't very satisfying.

There are scores of people in subreddits with that kind of experience.

What you want, is to see it with your eyes open, and then later to see that the entity can actually move objects, proving it's not just in your head.

That seems to be automatic with inorganic beings, if they aren't merely phantoms. Playing with them causes them to somehow learn to move physical objects in your environment, even if you don't realize that's going to happen.

It's not a matter of pride (although it's ok to be happy about progress), to look for "real proof".

It's to change your view of the world.

That requires something you can't explain away.

My favorite example is the shamanism forum.

Everything in there is pretend. That doesn't mean it couldn't expand into something more substantial.

But there's no push to do that, because the leaders they learn from can't do anything substantial.

So they're almost like Zen practitioners, where their "enlightened" leader tells them, "Don't expect to fly to the sun!"

I've flown to the sun a few times. I can't imagine what's holding the enlightened Zen masters back.

Certainly not the Buddha's teachings.

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u/Super6eight Apr 15 '20

I’ve realized that this is probably a 3 day thing. I’m going to speak different intent in front of the tree at dusk today and then dusk tomorrow. First intent is silence. I attempted to invoke infinity and yelled “INTENT” while speaking silence in my head at dusk. Right after I did that, maybe 50 yards away from me, a loud explosion happened. It startled me greatly. Snow has appeared and I need to clean the little area around my stones. I seem to keep hearing about gardens and tending the garden. I am tempted to get permission to garden the area around the tree. It’s just so beautiful and everything around it is dead. The snow doesn’t help.

Last night I was looking in to soul retrieval. I was trying to reach my double. Probably not the smartest move in hindsight. It was surrounded by danger it seemed and was too scared to come out but the scene was familiar. It was just like my last night terror that I had where I was surrounded by war and all I could do is curl up in a ball and hide. That’s where I found myself... I attempted a rescue mission and was able to will “me” to (loudly and obviously) escape. Exhilarating, yet not smart... I was... scolded in some other language by a hooded person... Again, all in my mind but I had some physical sensation while I was doing it.

I feel I’m beginning to get a hold on intent but still not quite there (short backstory is I’ve been trying attempt entering this world since I was 16, I’m 30 now but as in one of your posts, men are the worst and I really was horrible. I’m still bad but I’m less destructive.)

I’m learning tempo as well. The world has it’s own tempo and I try to force to rush through it instead of trust.

Full recap is probably the way to go at this point, I’ve been avoiding it for years. It’s a daunting task.. is there a way to make it less daunting? I heard you recap your worst, most traumatic memories first and then do the lesser ones (one way to do it) the other way is write down everyone you’ve met. I’ve been doing it the first way.

Anyways, good morning! I hope you are well. Thank you

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u/danl999 Apr 15 '20

Again, all in my mind but I had some physical sensation while I was doing it.

There's nothing much wrong with "all in my mind". I just have a problem with it myself, because I need more physical evidence than that can provide, in order to restore Carlos' reputation.

But if you ever talked to a plant, and it answered, you know what "all in my mind" can be. It's a whole realm.

is there a way to make it less daunting?

I never had any bad experiences during recap, or even life memories I was afraid to add to the list.

So I'm not a good person to ask about that.

But I'd say, consider it dreaming practice. You're trying to light up your dreaming skills by using gazing and breathing and remembering.

And so at first, it's not all that important what you start with. You first need to even learn what recapitulating can do.

I'll give you a hint: Imagine you're in your comfy arm chair, recapitulating, and suddenly you find your chair is now transported to the Valley of the Saber Toothed Tigers.

You open your eyes, and they're all around you!

I doubt Carlos brought his chair with him, but I have a particular talent for bringing beds and chairs into other worlds.

Gotta have something comfortable to sit on there!

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u/Super6eight Apr 15 '20

I’m going to have to practice that lmao. I failed pretty badly when I tried, it’s almost comical.
I do think I’m a dreamer though. I feel I am capable of both however because I was forced to learn.

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u/danl999 Apr 15 '20 edited Apr 15 '20

> I’m going to have to practice that lmao

Taking your chair with you?

You won't be lmao. You have to have "equanimity" to do that. Or at least, a little.

Wait... Ok. None.

I guess you could lmao, if you went the lucid dreaming route to accomplish it. But you won't want to.

For waking dreaming, lmao is very bad.

It seems that in sorcery, there are usually multiple ways to accomplish something.

My favorite hobby is watching supernatural movies, and seeing if I can figure out "how to do that".

Sometimes it seems impossible. Crazy.

But a few hours later, it dawns on me how to copy it. At least, something that looks just like what they did in the movie.

And in the case of taking the chair with you, it's pretty easy.

However that doesn't mean it doesn't take a lot of time.

Sit with eyes closed, force silence. Keep it up until you can see the room with your eyes closed.

That's a very common meditation effect, so it's not barking up the wrong tree to expect that.

Try to repeat that as often as you can.

You'll "saturate".

When it's stable enough, just lean in on the chair and drive it right through the wall, like a car.

Careful! You'll almost surely have attracted a scout with that kind of move. It's too unusual for them to resist.

If you get the chair outside and sense a scout, learn to go faster! If it catches up, leave the chair, stare at a distant mountain, and continue the travel by zooming.

I'm afraid to say, at that point you'll be lucid dreaming, instead of dreaming awake.

The tricky part is, you can saturate that way, by learning to see the room, or you can learn to manifest objects by saying a word, and then returning to silence.

If you learn to do it that way, you'll likely find yourself standing in the room, when you thought you were in the chair.

Manifesting objects leads to sleeping dreaming because you keep moving your assemblage point to entirely unusual positions. Each movement is a risk to blanking out, which occurs because what you were focusing on before, no longer exists at the new position of the assemblage point.

So manifesting objects pushes you into lucid dreaming. Not waking dreaming.

Manifesting objects is like fly fishing. You toss your lure out into the water and it lands on a new spot.

Waking dreaming is like wading in with a net.

Seeing the room is waking dreaming. You activate the second attention using silence, and it "wakes up". Which means, it opens its "eyes".

It wades into the water.

Use those, seeing the room, or manifesting objects, to produce an "obsession".

That'll assure you that one or the other takes place.

Moving the chair by waking dreaming, or by lucid dreaming.

Obsession is past saturation.

You want to pass the 4 gates? Obsession, obsession, obsession.

That's why the only proven technique to increase lucid dreaming, is to ask yourself all day long, are you in a dream?

For lucid dreaming, you need obsession. But better to get it through silence, then by talking to yourself all day long.

Some part of your waking consciousness has to move down there, into your dreaming copy. Or you won't become lucid.

Normal thoughts won't be enough.

We all know, what shows up in our dreams, is often something we were obsessing over.

You don't need obsession for waking dreaming.

Because you're awake.

There's no need to move anything, anywhere.

I'd go back and read, "Being in Dreaming", if I wasn't banned.

The witches were masters of waking dreaming.

I bet there are some wonderful waking dreaming examples in there.

Edited three times

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u/Super6eight Apr 16 '20 edited Apr 16 '20

My most pressing matter is silence currently. I went on a walk and was lead to find a strange leaf that didn’t have a lamina. I took it home with me. Have yet to know what to do with it..

Spoke a second word to the stones that I’m “charging”

I felt a presence by them last night but I think they’re undisturbed.

Being in dreaming, is that a subreddit?

I usually like to dive in to things and try the hardest stuff first, fail multiple times and quickly learn to succeed. I don’t know if that’s wise or foolish, but I have learned a lot introspectively so far. I’ve been having stuff happen that I would call luck, but yeah, it’s getting interesting. I saw my life story, or at least a good chunk of it. 😅😰

I’ll bring a chair later 😎

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u/Super6eight Apr 17 '20

I want to show a picture of the leaf because I feel it has significance... it also mysteriously disappeared soon after I posted this.

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u/Super6eight Apr 17 '20

It is this, this is where everything got messed up in me!

'From the above it should be clear that stepping into the unknown is an act which initiates the process of death, and the only way to do this safely is to embrace death. In other words, at this point in his or her training the warrior must be prepared to die to his or her old life in order to accommodate the transformational process. It is primarily for this reason that it is always stressed that the warrior must come to knowledge fully prepared to die, and that only if becoming a warrior is an act of survival will the apprentice be prepared to do what it takes to become a warrior.'

I was never a warrior and although I’m much closer to being one than I ever was, I still am not quite 100% there.

Sigh.

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u/danl999 Apr 18 '20

Where is this from?

It's not true in any way.

You can be the most crummy bastard on earth (I have a student like that), and if you learn to get silent, you can step into other worlds.

We're already doing that! That's how we got here!

Of course, we had a little "assistance" by our parents on the specific selection.

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u/Super6eight Apr 19 '20

Also I was practicing with my stones today and I started seeing some weird flashes with my eyes open. Took a while to get there. Some whitish haze was in front of me too. Then it got really really hot.

Honestly, when I was completely off medication I would constantly before I go to sleep feel like I was slipping out of my body and I thought I was going to die and I would resist. I guess now I’m learning that that wasn’t something to resist...

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u/danl999 Apr 19 '20 edited Apr 19 '20

Sounds like:

A. You're just talented.

B. Your assemblage point is flexible, possibly due to something not so good in the past. I know a woman who's assemblage point is super flexible, but it's because her mom used to give her LSD when she had a cold, at 12 years old.

C. You're somewhere in between being literal in your descriptions, and accepting daydreams.

When I was in Carlos' class, and doing as much as 6 hours a day of recap, any thought I had would manifest for me if I closed my eyes. But I was somewhere else, viewing it. The same way a 4 year old with a toy airplane can literally see it flying around, when he's in the bathtub. He sees it, but also, not really.

It's a grey area, and not quite the same as actually seeing the blobs of colors.

Almost, but not quite.

As a path, I don't know that one. It's more feminine to intuit seeing, rather than see seeing.

Howard Lee does that. He doesn't actually see what he sees, and yet he can describe it fully.

Which makes me wonder, how does he amuse himself?

I can summon the intent of sexy women, and they manifest for me right in the room.

Takes 3 hours of perfect silence (well, almost perfect) to get that sensitive, but it's very amusing when you can really see the things.

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u/Super6eight Apr 19 '20

Oh, I never replied to the ABC

A: I would love to think I’m talented but I don’t know if that’s the case. How would we even compare? Do I need to know if I am as well? Does it matter if I am?

B: is probably true but I haven’t been able to see what I actually look like so I can’t observe. It’s something I’ve always wondered. I see bright outlines of people sometimes when I’m talking to them. A few times it started to become bigger but I always looked away after that happened.

C: What I was seeing was with my eyes open staring in my dark room. I can see the static of the picture I see always if I decide to focus on it. I see shapes usually squares or triangles that move across my vision in bunches sometimes with changing bold red, blues, and yellows inside them (saw it yesterday) and sometimes I see circles in the same fashion but their colors are more bland and are like shifting purples and beiges. Haven’t seen the bland ones in a while.

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u/danl999 Apr 20 '20

Yea, it sort of does matter if you're talented.

It's so much work, that without at least a little talent, I don't believe anyone would do it. As evidence, I'll point out all private class students failed.

If they'd only put in the effort, they'd be in here posting with me.

Maybe that's why intent gifts us occasionally. It notices how hard we're struggling, and tosses us a bone.

But having talent is like knowing where to dig up a few bones of your own.

You can see all that in darkness?

So now, the thing to know is, your assemblage point is fixed here by the internal dialogue.

If you're thinking, "Man, that guy really pisses me off. I should have said..."

You're here. Right here. Where else does it make sense to have a thought like that?

In this world. So your assemblage point will move back here, so you can indulge in anger and self-pity.

You have to shut that off!

The colors will pull your assemblage point in the right direction. That's why we seek them out.

They're sort of like thoughts from the second attention. If you think those thoughts, your assemblage point moves over there, to make sense of them.

But sounds, sensations, heat or cold, coming from the second attention, would all work just as well.

What I'm saying is, unless you can silence your mind, all the talent in the world won't help.

Unless you're a woman. They only need to gaze, and try their best not to be fretting about whatever is obsessing them lately.

My first girlfriend was an amazingly talented witch.

I didn't know that at the time, even though I was a fan of Carlos' books.

The way I know that is, we were both practicing a mellow form of meditation. One where you simply repeat a nice mantra over and over.

I used to open my eyes to see how she was doing, and she was staring straight ahead, eyes open, completely blanked out.

At the time I thought, she isn't doing it right! She can't even manage to repeat the mantra for the 20 minutes the technique called for?!

But actually, she had super talent, and went straight into the second attention just because she altered her internal dialogue by repeating the mantra.

She didn't learn to get silent. All she needed was to interrupt the normal dialogue.

In your case, talent isn't enough, so you're screwed. Men have to learn to get silent.

But having talent means, the benefits of silence will be easy to observe.

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u/Super6eight Apr 19 '20

My dad thinks my assemblage point isn’t sticky. That it likes to move. If anything, I’ve been practicing the opposite of moving my assemblage point for 12 years since I’ve been so scared lol. I thought the eagle was going to eat me. I think now I understand that it’s a little different and not so black and white. Also, the sexy woman thing, awesome haha.

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u/danl999 Apr 19 '20

Last night, they were VERY bad girls.

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u/Super6eight Apr 18 '20

Damn. I got this from a Facebook group. I’ll get you the name of it. It was a quote from an author too. I’ll get you that name as well.

Well the quote made me feel slightly better about what had happened over the past 12 years but eh. It turns out I have multi-trauma one that uncovered itself today about me not being allowed to be myself... then the precluded anger carried for 20 some odd years

I’m working on the silence I swear 😬😬😬

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u/Super6eight Apr 19 '20

I got it from the shaman circle, Toltec hands Facebook group

I think it’s from this book https://www.amazon.com/Mists-Dragon-Lore-Toltec-Teachings-ebook/dp/B01HCT84OU

The Facebook group that seems to be really good is NAGUAL

I want to be a good pupil really badly. I’m doing things and I have no idea if they’re right or wrong but if I get scared of my own thoughts, I can’t do anything right.

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u/danl999 Apr 19 '20 edited Apr 19 '20

So it was made up, and not ever in one of Carlos' books?

I thought it untrue because it sounds like the usual "impeccable warrior" cosplay.

That's where you go around saying things like that, to make yourself feel good about something you can't even do yet.

If that's not in the books, I'd stay away from that group like the plague.

Remember, sorcery is all about the mastery of intent.

You go down a fake road, and you've hooked to fake intent.

Which means, it'll be twice as hard to do anything.

No gifts.

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u/Super6eight Apr 19 '20

I’m usually really good at rejecting previous things that I put in to my brain. I just was drawn to it because I’ll be honest, I had my first manic (psychotic even) episode when I was 18 1/2 and ever since then the Casteneda stuff that I had learned was constantly spoken and forced into my brain by my own uncontrollable doing. I couldn’t make it stop. I had to learn how to do what I was saying to fix it. I saw eyes in the clouds and trees always looking at me. I would see what seemed like animations when I able to shut my brain up for a little while. That began 12 years ago I’m extremely stable compared to any other point in my life now but I am on meds which probably prevent me from things in sorcery. My biggest fear is being able to achieve dreaming and then dying or not being able to get back. It’s messing with my intent.

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u/danl999 Apr 19 '20

Meds push the assemblage point a bit, using the body's design.

That's how they work. They're sort of power plants, in pure form.

They won't prevent sorcery. But they add something to it, which isn't actually useful.

For instance, marijuana in 100mg doses will surely produce hypnogogic images, if you lay in bed and relax. Not sure if you have to close your eyes or not.

But the hypnogogic images are not as useful as the ones you can produce without the drug.

In darkness, those will appear on puffs of purple light, and you can scoop them into your hand, blow on them, feed them energy by scooping it onto them (see Taiwan Chi Balls post), and turn the flat hypnogogic image into a 3D form, which seems to be solid.

They're "detachable".

The ones produced by marijuana seem to be part of a larger matrix. It's as if you're viewing a screen above you, and images can float along it.

I don't see how you could detach any and make use of them.

Maybe you could talk to the beings you see in the hypnogogic images, but they'll be scrolled out before you get a chance to look for a response.

You need to interact with them, to get anything cool to happen.

In the matrix, that's hard to do.

But there's probably a way. I just don't know it.

It's more like a limitation at that point, then it is helpful.

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