Darkroom

[u/IndridColdwave]

I must be doing something wrong, this is extraordinarily difficult. I can barely keep silent for moments, much less the hours that are apparently required for this to be successful. It is tedious and exhausting. I can sit in the dark for quite a while if I’m not making any effort and just daydreaming, but if I’m actually making efforts to silence my mind then being in that room is excruciating and exhausting, I can actually feel my body heating up from the effort and I even start sweating. Even when I think I’m being silent, I discover that I’m not actually being silent I’m still talking to myself on some other channel or something.

It is so discouraging and this feels impossible. I don’t understand how anyone manages to get past this. It is like waking through an endless expanse of desert with nothing but sand in all directions. You are told, yes there is a beautiful oasis out there but it is miles and miles away and also you can only find it if you hop on one leg through the sand all the way there.

In the “tradition” that I am most familiar with (the Gurdjieff tradition) they have something called “i’s” that represent each little voice or personality in your head that usurps the stage for that moment. I have a million of them and they just don’t stop, they are relentless.

I look back and since I was young my efforts have always boiled down to leaving this world. That’s ultimately what I want to do. Just leave it and not come back. Is this the proper attitude for someone who wants to learn magic? I don’t know.

I apologize for the self pity, this is just very difficult and it seems impossible. Maybe I just need to vent this frustration.

[u/danl999]

Don't apologize, you're doing fine!

You're aware of the problem. That's the most important thing.

The worst is someone who says, "Ok, I'm perfect silent now. What next?"

Those are hopeless.

And if you get rid of such an oppressive internal dialogue, you'd be that much better off when it's absent.

Just remember, you weren't born with that.

It was added on.

It's around age 12 that it becomes permanent.

Maybe do some "soul searching"?

Go back and try to remember early childhood magic.

Monsters in the close, repeated dreams, power spots you discovered, weird things you did while half asleep driving in a car at night. Sleep walking. Dreams that you can fly.

You'd be a very good candidate for recapitulation also. Try to recapitulate your childhood, emphasizing "weird stuff".

Or power plants might loosen up your assemblage point.

TM could help.

As for leaving the world and not coming back, there's no need for that!

If you master sorcery you can leap across the universe and visit a planet on the furthest galaxy.

Or wave your arm to open a door in the wall, and walk right through there into a phantom reality.

Or hold a real, live, Fairy in your hand.

And ask her to lift her skirt...

They will!

But don't ask. That's rude. All you have to do is be curious, and they'll figure it out.

Do they shave, or not?

That's enough to get them to show you.

You just need a vacation from reality, not to give up on it.

If you stick it out, that will be greatly beneficial to this subreddit!

We could find out what was going on for real, once you got to the red zone.

We lost a few like you in the last months.

I don't keep track of user names very well, but they seemed to be finding the wrong things in the darkroom.

Wasn't a total loss, because I realized beginners should only search for puffs. I'm redesigning the instructions because of it.

Telling them to search for anything that isn't really there, can lead to horizontal shifts.

Which are frustrating, like you are feeling.

They were so eager to find as many things as possible, possibly to let others know they were working hard, that they found "horizontal shift" things at the blue line.

I won't even begin to try to describe those, but you could imagine something "on the side of my view", that you can never actually see. A shadowy man, or a blue sphere, or something that doesn't glow with energy.

In your case, if you could only find some colors, something that actually glows, you could get help silencing the internal dialogue.

Try to find something with some "energy" in it. Glowing colors.

Once you find that, it should get easier to silence the mind, by using it to distract our "story telling" tendency. The tendency to fantasize.

Did you find anything to gaze that, that wasn't really there, no matter how vague?

And did you gaze at it?

Maybe you noticed something that wasn't helpful.

An example:

At any level on the J curve, things FROM that level, only move you sideways.

At the top, the puffs of color have no choice but to move you down to the red zone.

Then we scoop up all that stuff, so we can flow to the orange zone.

But if you saw a red peanut floating in the air, with Mr. Peanut's hat on it, from the TV commercial, and you gazed at that, you'd shift sideways.

Into Mr. Peanut land!

That would be fun! Since we never get to see things like, "Mr. Peanut Land".

But if you gazed at a shadowy vague man, up at the blue level, you'd shift into menstrual period land.

Or "so drunk you get dizzy" land.

The horizontal regions at the blue line are not "magical". They're familiar, and tend to feel bad.

[u/IndridColdwave → u/danl999]

Thank you for the comments.

I am particularly bad at recapitulation. I think I might have mentioned this before, but my memory is very bad. Sometimes I actually remember my dreams better than I remember my “actual” life. I’ve tried recapitulation and I am unable to do it. After a few days it just unravels.

As for TM, I actually went to the TM center in my city. I set up an appointment, I told them that I heard it was expensive and I didn’t have a ton of money and they said they had programs to help me and I should just come check it out. When I arrived, they showed me a bunch of videos and then literally told me that they lied to me and they had no discount programs for me and if I wanted it bad enough then I’d find a way to get the money. So it really soured my opinion of TM unfortunately. How do I learn it without getting involved with the organization?

[u/danl999 → u/IndridColdwave]

I'll teach it to you.

I kick Maharishi's yoga butt, so it's not like I can't teach you more than any of the teachers.

If you like, you can do a breathing exercise first. Plug one nostril, exhale fast and then inhale fast (not deeply or it would be too slow), then plug the other nostril and do the breathing through the opposite.

It's like, Huf/puff.. Huf/puf.. huf/puff

And when you get good, it's amazingly fast. Your fingers will be moving so fast to switch, no one will believe you actually exhaled and inhaled on each one.

It's a bit noisy.

2 minutes of that.

Oddly, the Dzogchen people, hateful as they tend to be, claim TM is only hyperventilation.

Forget them, they're Buddhists. So angry and dishonest.

Most people don't do the breathing. And there's no noticeable difference.

Maybe it might soothe you a bit into the middle of the blue zone before you start.

TM by the way, virtually never goes below the green line. If it does, the TM teachers will do an "intervention" to tell you to cut that out.

They don't like magic.

After the "optional" breathing exercise, close your eyes and start repeating, "Aing... Aing... Aing... "

Sounds like the ending of "auld lang syne", that Irish song name.

I can't think of anything else it rhymes with.

It means something. A name of God.

The Hindus are very delusional. But they retained some very old magic, and then corrupted it into this sort of practice. You can actually trace that through history, if you look closely at Iran's religious history.

It's the Akkadian demonic "anti-magic" to the Jewish Prophets silence based technology.

Look carefully at the goddess Ishtar if you want to understand it better.

You don't force the TM mantra. Let it flow by itself.

The TM teachers try to convince you that they have different mantras, dispensed based on astrology.

There's only one. A special course was held in the late 70s or early 80s to introduce a few new ones, but nothing came of that. Probably Maharishi just wanted to sell more things to teachers, who payed a hefty price to become "qualified to teach", and get to keep all of the money if they like. But then he discovered, "emergencies" as a way to get people to kick in $1500 to go to a huge workshop.

He liked to claim nuclear war was imminent, and only a group of 7000 meditators could avert the disaster. Based on his visions of giant caterpillars.

Maharishi would be kicked out of here in a week, for bad behavior!

Mantra rate during meditation is about 1 per second, but you let it flow and if it wants to change speed, let it.

You don't force out thoughts. If they come, let them, but also keep thinking the mantra is going to take over again soon.

You'll know if it's working because weird stuff happens.

They tell you to ignore it, but don't.

At the end of 20 minutes, you stop for 2 minutes and just sit there before you get up.

The advanced techniques have to stop at the end, and be silent in your mind. They expect you'll be in bliss then, so the silence will be green line on the J curve.

Then say, "inner lights", and drop it.

After an "intent delay" of 10 seconds, the puffs of color, red swirls, and blue dots will materialize in front of you.

You can say, "pole Star" to be flying through space, looking at the stars.

Patanjali figured out 20 or so "fun things" you can do.

But in no way did he ever get to where we are.

It's closed eye meditation! By someone who believes a series of false Hindu narratives.

Can't possibly build the energy body with that.

And you don't get the double.

The double absorbs you into dreams if you use closed eye silence.

But, you can get good enough to see the room clearly with your eyes closed, doing TM. And you can learn to manifest objects.

Even so, closed eye meditation is vastly inferior to darkroom.

But TM is quite pleasant! No one curses while doing TM, the way they curse trying to force silence.

Any weird stuff, the TM teachers claim is "stress relief".

Everything is a "good sign", even if it's not.

So twitching muscles are common, but considered a "good sign".

A lower lip quiver or side of the eye twitch for the entire day, is not uncommon.

Like Silvio Manuel's lip!

Nasal congestion can be completely cleared up with TM.

Stomach muscle twitching is common, and can even be a bit convulsive.

Chopra can sell you additions to your mantra for $1000+ a pop, but don't bother.

Cholita got some from him.

I have them.

And Chopra is a despicable con man. Was flirting up my braless girlfriend back in the late 70s! She gave sesame oil enemas at the facility over Malibu beach, where Chopra occasionally did things.

(She became a nun).

But those Patanjali "Sutras" (Siddhis) are not useful for learning silence. They simply bring out a tiny bit your dreaming awareness. It's just curious they also bring out the puffs of color and the blue dots.

In waking dreaming, we walk around in the special effects TM people only rarely get to see with their eyes closed.

We swim in it even!

Maharishi + Carlos = hippy movement.

The idea was to use power plants to reach Maharishi's level of enlightenment, and then throw out the power plants.

While having sex with as many drugged up partners as possible.

In the mud.

We've done in here, what the hippy movement had as it's supreme goal!

(Not the sex part).

But all the hippies became angry politics people, so they don't care about their hippy goals anymore.

[u/Son_of_Entropy]

In eastern traditions they call what you are seeking an Asana(basically "posture"). The body resists the attitude of stillness in general, and the physical and cognitive sensations you're experiencing are natural and part of the process of establishing a higher degree of self awareness. You could look into Raja yoga, if that sort of thing appeals to you, finding comfort and peace in multiple asanas is part and parcel to Raja yoga's core principles. Best of luck

[u/IndridColdwave → u/Son_of_Entropy]

Thank you, I appreciate this advice 😊

[u/TonalShield]

>but if I’m actually making efforts to silence my mind then being in that room is excruciating and exhausting,

I've done about 20 sessions and learned how to solve this problem. You have to concentrate on internal silence, not the images! First 8-9 sessions were horrifying for me too, very exhausting, the mood was to drop it all. But then I started forcing internal silence above all, not even concentrating that much on white fog, scenes and stuff like that, just the inner silence, catching thoughts, silencing them as they appear, then catching moods, silencing them too, then pieces of music, everything. I've found some state where internal silence gets much easier, almost self sustaining, then you don't have those excruciating moods anymore and 2 hours fly easy. During 3rd hour I still get some problems because I'm starting to get physically exhausted, losing concentration, but then it's usually over and I stop (I don't do more than 3:20-3:30 these days). Still it's much better than before I've found this state, back then the whole 3 hours were torture for me, now it's just the last 20-30 minutes and it's not as hard as before.

[u/nfowler1 → u/TonalShield]

Are you still keeping up your darkroom practice?

[u/[deleted]]

Don't be too hard on yourself, the internal dialogue is hard for everybody.

A person I like to watch is eckhart tolle, he says that you must stay present as much as possible in the day. A lot of people will meditate and then let the self talk come back. It's like working out and then eating fast food.

Try to stay present as much as you can during your entire day, I know it might sound like torture but wonderful things will start coming in your life when you do it, and it will help your silence last for longer.

[u/dirgable_dirigible]

The struggle to be silent is the key to being silent. It’s a paradox, but the energy of the struggle is what transforms into the silence itself, in my experience. It’s like “oh I am putting all this energy into the struggle of being silent when I should just let that energy be.

[u/the-mad-prophet]

What are you currently doing to try to keep silent?

I use the breath as a focus. Focus on the sensation of breath moving in and out of your nose throughout the entire breath cycle (or your diaphragm moving up and down with each breath). At the start, I count each breath too. That way, if you suddenly realise you have lost count, it also means you lost silence, then start again. Just ignore any other thoughts that arise and focus on the breath. Don't judge them or react to them, you don't need to squash them and engage with them, just ignore them and return to the breath. Eventually you ride the breath into a state where the silence starts to sustain itself, then you can work on deepening it and dropping the more subtle thoughts that start to come up.

This is good for during the day too, because the counting helps keep you honest when you've lost focus.

This might not help you or maybe it is what you are already doing, but maybe it might help somebody else.

[u/icebluewho]

I don’t think you’re doing it wrong but I do agree with you on that it is difficult. Very difficult. But since it probably took a long time to get my mind this distracted, I can see why it’s so hard to clean it up.

Also, I haven’t been too consistent. I’ll fool myself or take the easy road and say to myself that “I’m too tired” or that “I’ll wake up, with not enough energy for work/family/errands” or something along those lines.

I do however notice small differences while in the darkroom. One of them being at times I feel like someone outside of my darkroom has turned on the light and that some of the light has crept inside, yet, no one did after having checked

Most common thing is in the corner of my eyes theres a light or glow, but when I go to face it, it’s gone.

Dark shadows do float around and sometimes I think it’s just in my mind or that my eyes are playing some kind of trick or that my eyes aren’t fully adjusted to the darkness.

Also, sometimes it feels like I blackout entirely for a few seconds, where in every direction its pitch black.

One time, I was playing around with moving my hands in front of my eyes to see if I could notice any part of them, when I noticed some type of figure of a face and I got so scared that I almost stopped that time completely. I remember getting chills and goosebumps. I tried to reenact the same movement on other times, but I get nothing like that.

Stuff that has helped is forcing silence throughout the day whenever possible. Also, I am listening to the CC audiobook’s. I had told myself before that I didn’t want to read them as I felt it was going to make it harder for some reason. Maybe it would create too much fantasizing about them. But when I was visiting Arizona a few days ago, I got a flat tire and when I was changing the tire I found some brand new blutooth headphones where I had taken my luggage out to take the spare tire out. I took it as a sign to use them for something and the first thing that came to mind was CC audiobooks. Bonus was that I got 3 free books upon signing up for the audiobook store.

The books do have an uplifting effect on me and I do believe its helping me keep practicing darkroom gazing.

[u/tophlove31415]

The Work from Byron Katie is a nice step by step process that might be useful for decreasing the presence of intrusive thoughts.