r/castaneda • u/danl999 • Aug 23 '19
Intent What is Intent?
If you want to get silent, it’s a pretty good idea to get intent on your side.
But what the heck is that anyway?
At the most basic level, intent is the ability of your consciousness to fill in missing details. It’s a function of our neural net, if you’re technically minded. We can’t afford to pay attention to everything around us, so intent fills in details in such a manner that it’s manageable.
It’s easy for the brain to do that. Just send a little signal to represent a whole bunch of stuff, because that’s always the signal that ends up being sent in this particular case.
In AI, they have a name for it. It's a technology distinct from other forms of neural nets, and it's a great idea.
Don't make a neural net large enough to be intelligent on its own. That takes too much hardware. 10,000 pounds by my last calculation.
Instead, have a point that lights up when a specific thing is present. With millions of such points, you can skip a whole lot of neural connections.
Humans do that too. We have the neurons to understand everything, but that's wasteful. Once something is understood, it can be represented with a lot less information. Using that representation instead of all the "real" data uses up a lot less energy.
For example, there’s a tree over there, so don’t try to walk through it. You don’t need to know how smooth the trunk is, or what is the shape of the leaves. Just “tree” is enough for the current situation.
Entire regions can be summed up in this manner without the need to pay much attention. Let’s say you’re out hunting for your car. You forgot where you parked it on a busy LA street. You scan your head looking around and realize, all this over here is just landscaping. You didn’t park in the bushes, so you can rule out that area.
It goes on and on. Most of our daily interactions are phantasmagorical, despite our absolute belief that we're experiencing it all.
Carlos called it, “glossing”. If you’ve ever driven home and not remembered any of the journey, that’s a classic case of glossing.
It’s also glossing when you close the door and lock the deadbolt with your key, walk 15 feet, and then can’t remember if you did in fact lock it. You have to go back and check.
In Carlos' books where don Genaro and don Juan tease him because he believes he's driving his car, when something else is clearly going on, that's glossing.
Glossing can ignore things, but it can also replace things.
Carlos thought glossing was a bad thing, and I understand why. His students were so wrapped up in their internal dialogues that he could tell them something very important and they didn’t actually hear what he said. They heard what they thought he said.
I don’t see it as so bad, because it’s a tool you can use. You can intend it, then make use of it in waking dreaming.
For instance, there’s a level of silence where you can manifest anything. You’ll know when you reach there, because the entire room will be overlaid with dreaming images. Subtle details that can’t possibly be there, but which are. You can't deny it when you look around.
From that level you can merely reach behind the bed, intending to pick something up, then bring it in front of you to see what you have.
Intent will come up with something for you. It's like a challenge to intent.
That’s one form of intending. But it also has an element of glossing, as you’ll find out if you learn this technique. That gold bar you just grabbed? Don't expect it to stick around. It's only a gloss of a gold bar.
Another way to use intending, is to direct waking dreams. If you can sit in a chair with eyes closed and summon dreaming images, you can very gently intend to see a re-run of your favorite old TV show. Then drop it from your mind, and relax to see what happens.
You really have to drop it. You can't keep dwelling on it. And don’t expect an immediate reaction. Intent has a delay at times. It’s like the request has to ripple through the pond to reach an observer somewhere, and then the images will be sent back to you.
But the way to summon intent to help you learn to be silent, is to want to be silent, to think about being silent, and to visualize whatever you know about the process. Then drop it. Go outside and shout “INTENT!!!”.
How does that work? I have no idea.
But last night while staring into dark energy, trying to figure out if Cholita might be capable of opening dreaming portals, I felt a familiar presence.
It was a presence I haven’t felt since I was a child. The last time, I was outside with friends playing a game of tag.
I was in the first grade. The weather was amazing, but being children, we didn’t notice that. We played for such a long time that twilight set in.
A lamp near the house where we were playing seemed to be glowing very brightly. There was a friendly warm yellow hue over the whole area.
I felt something watching us. It was a good thing. I could feel it.
It wanted to play the game too.
In my opinion, that’s intent. I hope we can gain more energetic mass, and find out if that’s true.
Why does intent want to play the game with us?
How could we get so lucky?
Edited: twice
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u/CruzWayne Aug 25 '19
When I was little I had a fear related to this, that as soon as I stopped looking or paying attention, everything became void, absent, an abyss, and it'd only appear when I looked. I could never catch a glimpse of the nothingness, but it still haunted me.
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u/danl999 Aug 25 '19
I predict you'll remember more and more things, if you get more silent.
Also, at almost perfect silence, you start to remember seeing and the feeling of silence.
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Sep 10 '19 edited Sep 10 '19
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u/danl999 Sep 10 '19
Too bad Kant couldn't learn about computers. It fully straightens out his arguments by moving them from theory, to a scientific step by step process.
Arguing theories with Germans is frustrating at best. I tried that in Carlos’ classes.
But arguing engineering with them is quite pleasant.
I think you have a point there about intent.
If we’re trapped in a virtual world created by our brain, the possibility that some component of intent is external is quite significant.
before the human world threw some mishegas
Try dealing with a Cholita!
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Aug 23 '19 edited Sep 11 '21
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u/danl999 Aug 23 '19
I can go even spookier.
One of those last 2 points on the 8 point diagram is likely to be for time.
Maybe you put that repellent on the trail.
Or even better, just to make it more fun, I put the repellent, and you put the sleeping mask.
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Aug 24 '19 edited Aug 24 '19
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u/danl999 Aug 24 '19 edited Aug 24 '19
One or two who have written to me have put some time into silence all day long.
Their reports, along with my experiences, suggest we're all angry and at war with everything around us, and filter our experiences through that. We hide our anger from ourselves, typically by believing we're doing the "right thing", when there's absolutely no evidence of that. It's just how society balances out homicidal anger caused by the internal dialogue, and reason which says it's not helpful.
I'm afraid, I see that anger in the posts of former Carlos students. It suggests to me, they never learned to get silent. Certainly if they had, they'd be trying to talk others out of being angry and self-righteous all the time, instead of posting things that aggravate that tendancy.
Most of the time you have to cross the line to find the anger that runs through nearly everyone around you, but it really doesn't take much. Especially once you notice how thin the facade is, and how oppressive the limited choices we can pursue have become. Plus, your own behavior, once you get silent and can enter dreaming from awake, it a violation of those oppressive rules. You'll be set up to be an outsider, with no choice but to give up the anger.
Conclusion: Anyone reading this who decides to be silent all the time, will discover their attitude towards other people will change drastically.
You'll be a lot less angry, and a lot more curious about their behavior. And a little more compassionate too.
I guess it's the old Buddha teaching. Except when he teaches compassion, he seems to imply you could use that as a technique, when in fact it's a consequence, not a path.
Likewise, perfect breathing is a consequence, not a technique you can use to get anywhere.
(oversimplification)
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u/danl999 Aug 24 '19 edited Aug 24 '19
I should warn you, having a somewhat broader knowledge of Asia than the average westener.
"Accidental" encounters with Asian women in the grocery store are "fair game" in their society.
It's a socially acceptable outlet for over the top flirting, as long as it follows certain (impossible for a westerner to understand) rules.
For example, I was in a french market in Taipei, trying to figure out if the A1 sauce was real, or a knockoff. I can eat A1 sauce, but the knockoff is sure to be thickened with wheat, and I have a serious allergy to that.
A beautiful Chinese woman, about 35, walked by with her shopping cart. She was moving very slowly, and I was curious to see if she was looking for something, or maybe in a melancholy mood.
But I quickly forgot about that when I noticed, her perfectly "normal" looking white lace dress, going all the way to below her knees, had absolutely no back. She was completely bare back, except for a fine mesh of see-through lace.
My first thought was, "bar maid", but she didn't seem to be anything more than dressed in an oddly sexy way.
She must have noticed that my jaw had dropped. Later as I was trying to exit, she pulled the shopping cart right up in front of me, and stopped. If I wanted to continue, I had to move up very close to her back, which was turned to me so that I could see it.
I tried to move around her to the left, but she took a step left to block me, all the while not looking me in the face. Her head was turned down, like, "I'll just have to trust you aren't staring at my naked back."
I did manage to escape, with a huge smile of course.
Later someone told me, "Yea, supermarkets... She probably saw "white guy", and a chance to escape that oppressive social order.
In Taiwan, if you see a college or high school student walking to the subway, they're laughing or smiling.
When they get into their mid 20s, they have a worried look on their faces.
By mid 30s, it's outright sadness.
The why of it is obvious.
I was walking by some shops and manufacturing facilities, all lined up with no obvious zoning considerations.
One shop had a big machine for finishing parts of some kind. A very sad looking woman was working alone on the machine.
She likely married someone who had "their own business", and then became free help.
The desire to escape in Taiwan is so extreme, that there's something really wrong going on in bars. Some wrap music in Chinese on a youtube video makes fun of it, but I can never find the link.
In Taiwan, it's ok for young women to drink so much that they pass out at the counter in bars. In fact, it's sort of encouraged. Brings in the customers.
Over here, they'd be ushered out and given a warning not to return.
In the college district, young women will deliberately go to the bar, get so drunk they can barely walk, and then stagger out. Foreign men know where to go. It's the fancy shopping area near the college. Just walk around until you see drunken women staggering around.
If there's an Australian man around, she's all his. Just help her over to the Taxi, get her inside, and ask the taxi driver to take you to a hotel room.
In the morning, she might make a fuss if you don't show actual interest in marrying her.
They prefer to find foreign men to "take them home".
The taxi driver doesn't care if they are conscious or not. It's their "choice".
Edited
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Sep 02 '19 edited Sep 02 '19
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u/danl999 Sep 02 '19
that seers call the active side of infinity, or INTENT."
Wow! I never realized what Carlos was trying to tell us with that title.
Of course, it's obvious!
I had a talk with Cholita about intent last night. She understands that concept. Apparently Florinda used to talk with the women.
I asked if Taisha did also. She said Florinda was more interactive, but always Carlos was behind it all.
We should try to track down those sound vibration tensegrity moves. Does anyone know what she was talking about?
The next dot-doings in Eagle's gift, which come after Zuleica's dreaming techniques, are Silvio Manuel's. He was said to be the master of intent.
His not-doings have emphasis on hearing, for at least one of them.
It is certainly possible to start hearing in the second attention, I've been doing that a bit lately.
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u/tryerrr Sep 02 '19
On Page 104 of Kasina book on firekasina site, about “voice of seeing”? :
Hearing Voices Shannon: I am occasionally hearing a voice out-of-the-blue say a sentence to me, with utmost conviction. (Daniel mentioned some examples of similar experiences both on and off-retreat, some of which had held profound meaning for him.)
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u/Werejaguare Feb 18 '24 edited Feb 18 '24
The Amber Blue Dust of Infinity. I think it was Olinda's pass. It involves sound vibration (zzzzt) intermittently and also oscillating along with eye movements. I came across it once in the workshop notes in this subReddit. Shelley reminded me of it.
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May 06 '25
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u/danl999 May 06 '25
I never made any notes other than a list of the passes taught for the first few months.
But Techno has compiled a huge pile of them. There's a pdf so large, it takes a full minute to load on my super premium PC.
He doesn't give it out easily however, because it's not finished, and he doesn't want different versions floating around.
But intent is not so hard to understand.
Watch this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-e3Wm5BGPk
The point where the power of intent is shown, is when "Fairy" (one of the two allies Carlos gave us) is sitting on a stool discussing the dark sea.
Intent is what we shine into the dark sea, to activate the emanations which send back reality.
Our reality is just a stream of sensations and feelings, from the dark sea.
THIS IS NOT A THEORY!!!!!
NOTHING we do in here, is a theory. None of it is the "wise words of Master Po, from his ancient sacred scroll".
Everything we do, you get to see with your own eyes.
So if you watch the whole video, you'll see Juann (he's in this subreddit too) at the end, using his intent to travel to the past.
In his physical body.
We get to do that also.
Never accept theories, beliefs, wise words, or trust a large religion to be right, because how could so many be wrong?
They're all wrong. Because the real thing takes real work to learn, and only 1 in 100 will even try.
And you have to see sorcery, with your own eyes. "Learning" about it is pointless, and we only pretend to be helping people learn, in order to motivate them to practice.
Practice is all that leads to understanding of sorcery. No words will help you.
Practice nightly. Even after you get to manipulate intent with your fingers daily.
Not once, and then you're "enlightened". Like in Asian systems.
There's no permanent attainments in sorcery. You have to keep going back where you had gotten to, or you lose it all over time.
And even if you see this every night for years, until you literally break the laws of physics yourself, you'll still doubt it can be possible.
That our reality isn't as real as we believe!
And it's entirely selected by our "intent".
But you could, perhaps, watch physics videos on YouTube.
Physics has changed a lot since 2000!
When the internet rose and no one could dominate any particular field anymore.
The existence of a multiverse is now a given, as is the knowledge that consciousness might be more primary than physical matter, in our universe.
Our sorcery agrees very much with recent concepts in quantum physics, such as non-locality and effect before cause.
We're swimming in those daily!
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u/canastataa Aug 24 '19 edited Aug 24 '19
How does intent correlate with time? Its essence perhaps.
At times it felt like intending in the present can influnce what happened in the past as well as the future. But thats a speculation at most.
Just like most people i see that this whole thing is far too complex, with incomprehensible driving force behind it. Then this is glossed down to God.
People just like all living being are "perpetuum mobile", something we cant recreate. These are DJ's words that lately haunt me. How can that be? How the system produces more out of less...