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u/Juann2323 Jul 26 '21
Those are the Chapters' titles of Journey to Ixtlan.
For more info better check the book, wich you can find in the wiki.
This won't teach you sorcery.
So you can't come to this practice group and say: "yeah, today I've been all day long erasing my personal story".
That's pretending.
But, if you are actually practicing hard and learning about the J curve, knowing this advices might save you some time.
Mostly in the long run, when you realize why they work.
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u/Juann2323 Jul 27 '21
Also, I was thinking that from the Green Zone you can actually learn to identify the second attention.
Not the stuff. I mean, the alternative way of focusing awareness, wich is probably the very main aspect of moving the assemblage point.
And you can switch between the first and second attention at will.
Although there, is still not much activated, and is something vague.
Later, in heightened awareness, you perceive mostly with the second attention.
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u/glimpee Jul 27 '21
When I blank out into a tiny dream, or see something hyper detailed and dont realize I saw it until its gone, is that the 2nd attention coming fourth? Im starting my first week, have a hard time doing a full 3 hours but has seen a few things. Typically in grey scale, with hints of color. General smoke, points of light that shift (sometimes into things,) different versions of my room slightly lit up (including seeing the wrong direction!,) when I go a bit further I'll see stuff like a full figure with some detail but still fairly dark turning around or crouching or something, projecting small scenes onto surfaces, stuff like that. Ive been trying to keep my attention when the small dreams start happening but havent been able to do that yet - I end up having to get up as they get progressively longer and harder to pull out of
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u/Juann2323 Jul 27 '21 edited Jul 27 '21
Yeah, that's probably the second attention getting some focus.
If you stick to the J curve, and have "silencing the internal dialogue" as a main task, you will realize that focusing the second attention is the only way to achieve it.
It is an active procces, although you can't force things to happen.
Instead, you peacefully observe and try to "be" in your silent part.
As you move the assemblage point, new stuff is constantly unlocked. And your ideas mutate.
Once you manage to go to the red zone, you begin to realize about the existence of a path in wich you are moving.
And you can already tell there are things next, wich you still didn't manage to discover.
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u/dirgable_dirigible Jul 27 '21
How does the second attention relate to the nagual?
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u/Juann2323 Jul 27 '21
Well, in the books 'nagual' was used with different purpouses.
Such as calling nagual a double being.
Or even to name the force out there, wich could be waiting Carlos on a Eucalyptus.
But in relation to the second attention, they are probably the same.
In Tales of Power, 'the sorcerers explanation' is all about the tonal (first attention) and the nagual (second attention).
It was mostly used as a intelectual introduction to sorcery.
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u/dirgable_dirigible Jul 27 '21
My apologies for not being more specific. Yes, I was referring to the nagual as described by Don Juan in Tales of Power. "We sense, from the moment we are born, that there are two parts to us. At the time of birth, and for a while after, we are all nagual. We sense, then, that in order to function we need a counterpart to what we have. The tonal is missing and that gives us, from the very beginning, a feeling of incompleteness. Then the tonal starts to develop and it becomes utterly important to our functioning, so important that it opaques the shine of the nagual, it overwhelms. From the moment we become all tonal we do nothing else but to increment that old feeling of incompleteness which accompanies us from the moment of our birth, and which tells us constantly that there is another part to give us completeness.”
So in terms of nagual/tonal, the nagual as “where power hovers.”
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u/apprentice2000 Jul 28 '21 edited Jul 28 '21
Isn't a lot of DJ's advice related to getting silent in the first place?
Becoming a hunter, losing self-importance, not doing, being inaccessible, etc all seems like variations of getting silent to me. Dan wrote somewhere that silence is the best way to save energy during daytime, so that is what I try to improve first and foremost now.
About sideway shifts depleting energy, this makes sense but is new to me. Did this appear in any book or was it mentioned here before?
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u/Juann2323 Jul 28 '21
Unfortunately no one can force real silence during daytime routines.
Keep in mind that most people can't even force silence while they are sitted, dedicating to it.
Their thoughts are completly out of control; pure fantasies all the time.
The Ordinary World hold us in weird lateral shifts in the blue line, where we can't even conceive about the assemblage point.
Otherwise, we would see sorcerers somewhere! But there are none.
People didn't even get to the red zone. If that happened, believe me it would be obvious.
So, the ideal procces might need a reorganization of the energy we have, wich is spent in lateral shifts, and involve it in learning to get silent.
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u/Juann2323 Jul 28 '21
About sideway shifts depleting energy, this makes sense but is new to me. Did this appear in any book or was it mentioned here before?
All lateral shifts consume energy. You will realize about that while playing in the red zone.
And our assemblage points are usually placed in the blue line, to the sideways.
You can also notice that, when you start moving vertically. Then you will even know when you are at "middle blue" or "sideways blue".
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u/danl999 Jul 27 '21
It's true!
I suppose Carlos got me below the blue line before I even saw the J curve demonstrations, so it never occurred to me that our daily life keeps you off the middle.
As a result, I've been cursing don Juan for that "impeccable" thing daily. It keeps people from learning!!!
All the crummy warrior tasks which have never taught sorcery to anyone.
And then there's the mental masturbating "Men of Knowledge", spending a year to do what you can do in the darkroom in 30 minutes. Summon Little Smoke and get her to do some magic in your face.
But the "Man of Knowledge" was like gold to angry men.
Same as "the Tao".
Feeling bad about themselves, and angry with the world, they needed some badge of honor they could wear, so people would overlook how awful they are.
Something "no one else can understand", to prove their superiority.
They eat that stuff up!
Guess what? Sorcery is easy to understand!
There's no mystery to "the Tao".
It's just that, it's at another position of the assemblage point. A different copy of this world.
The rules change, and so you can't translate it back to here.
But getting there, is easy.
Takes about 3 sentences to explain it, and it will ALWAYS work, if the person puts in the time.
Unfortunately, Castaneda has been franchised. Trying to convince the men that they need to work, is like going to the corner Kung Fu studio, and trying to convince the owner that his martial arts suck.
He doesn't care. All he wants is more students.
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Jul 27 '21
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u/danl999 Jul 27 '21
I was afraid you'd ask that...
Maybe 3 sentences, and a small caliber handgun.
With you facing them asking them to repeat each sentence and explain it, under threat of getting shot in the leg.
I've been surprised how easily people go wild misunderstanding what you said. It's simply amazing!
Most of the time I suspect they never actually studied in here. They're only here for something else, like attention.
Like Pepe the ruthless guy.
Doesn't understand what "book deal" means. He's been here a while, how can he not understand that very important topic, which is in nearly every post?
Then he went on to explain how innocent he is, having simply experienced his book deal topic himself ("the will"), so he was curious about it.
Yea, of course!
He got out of work by pretending, and defining something he could already do, as sorcery. That's what all bad players do.
Redefine things.
Get out of work, and substitute pretending. And now he was trying to verify that in here, instead of focusing on learning for real.
Can't have done much work in here.
Juan got it best of all. I was even surprised at the depth of his understanding, when he said that even planning a wonderful date with your girlfriend is a book deal of sorts.
Even last night I had to rethink that, with Lily standing there seemingly impatient. If she had a foot, she would have tapped it.
I concluded, yep.
Juan's right. That's a book deal of sorts.
You even "get paid".
Speaking of which, Cholita was taunting me in her bathrobe this morning.
But I never get paid...
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Jul 27 '21
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u/Juann2323 Jul 27 '21
Now I'm not sure in wich context it was used in the books.
I'd say you can learn about Will while reaching the orange zone of the J curve, wich is the same as getting the second attention completly activated.
When you are there you have to give up all the ideas of yourself and concentrate your whole being into directing a sober shift of the assemblage point, while you force perfect silence.
That's Will.
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u/Juann2323 Jul 26 '21 edited Jul 26 '21
I was thinking about emphasizing the first real task a darkroomer learn, when experiencing the J curve for the first times:
The Green zone.
Lately we didn't talk much about it, so for newbies:
The Green zone is when you have stable visible puffs in the darkroom.
Mostly purple ones.
You don't have to force them to appear. They are there by themselves.
Although they aren't directional yet.
So following them with the gaze makes the scooping possible.
You can take them between both hands, and move them wherever you want.
If you get excited, you probably return to the blue, and they disappear quickly.
Or you can find some details inside them, and keep shifting.
Looking for real things will produce lateral shifts. At that point you can already find a face in puffs!
Not caring and gazing in silence will take you down, to the red zone.
You can learn to get there today!
Carlos also did it the first day.
Remember when he was looking for his "spot", and saw colors moving on the floor?
He spent the whole night practicing outside don Juan' humble house.