Silk Road forums
Discussion => Philosophy, Economics and Justice => Topic started by: Great Green Arkleseizure on July 13, 2013, 10:38 pm
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The post below is copied from the Official Psychedlic Experience Thread. It introduces the general idea of this thread. I plan for this to be more of a blog than a true discussion thread. Discussion and questions are welcome, of course ... but I can't guarantee I'll be able to answer them. I will come back later today to start this off and begin the story.
SOUL: There is only one soul. It is all of us. Its only defining attribute is awareness. It experiences everything imaginable from all possible perspectives. Each such experience is what I was calling a 'moment' above.
SPIRIT: Each moment balloons out into various dimensions. Because the all-seeing eye (the soul) is located everywhere, its presence is like a sea saturating every moment. This stuff is what I call spirit. There aren't single 'spirits' ... spirit comes in indefinite quantities and all flows into itself (or each other ... however you prefer to phrase that).
MIND: This is what we usually call a 'self'. If you are familiar with Carlos Castaneda, there is an equivalence of terms: 'spirit' = 'nagual' and 'mind' = 'tonal'. The mind is actually a pool of spirit which inflects itself against the rest and makes itself into a semi-definite unit. I like to think of minds as like swirling eddies in the sea of awareness (or spirit). The mind is an identifiable unit ... but if you look closely at the boundary, you'll find there is no true distinction between it and the rest of the spirit around it.
Having a mind is necessary for us to think and act like single, cohesive beings ... but especially under the influence of an unhealthy culture, the mind easily becomes bloated and cumbersome. Each time you experience an ego death, your mind shatters and melts back into the pool of spirit it always was. In order to come out of an ego death, you must build up a new mind from this pool. If you do it correctly, each time your mind becomes smaller, simpler and more manageable ... less burdened down with its own self-importance.
Ours minds are like threads of soul woven through reality. At each instant we are the one soul experiencing that unique moment ... but what we do which is really amazing is to string these moments together into a chronology. We weave from one moment to another to define a lifetime ... and although our minds are in constant flux, the lifetime we assemble from the moments we've experienced gives us a sense of continuing identity. When we harness the possibilities of one moment and choose the next one we step into, we have truly mastered our own experience ... and that is called witchcraft.
PERSONALITY: In the same way we are all threads of the soul, we (the mind) are composed of threads. Each thread is dominant at some times and suppressed at others---these are personalities. A personality is simple and pseudo-algorithmic so as to be ALMOST Turing: a programmed response, which articulates a single, particular way of looking at and interacting with reality. The way they weave together forms the complex behaviour we exhibit and creates the whole we call 'ourselves'.
Of course, others use these terms differently or use other terms for the same things. This is just how I speak of these things. There are other relevant things I could detail here, but I think this is enough to chew on atm.
I do not take any of this back, however things have changed profoundly for me in the last several weeks. The terms I described above and their relationship to one another took a lot of experience to understand and describe as I did: years of off-and-on meditation and other mystical exercises as well as hundreds of trips, including many dozen ego deaths. For all my effort in describing the general outline, I have come to learn that people have studied these matters in much, much greater detail than I originally understood. The system I described above is a system of knowledge that I 'earned' by discovering it for myself .... but these answers and a lot more have been open secrets for thousands of years.
So far, so obvious ... right? The difference is that lately, I find I know things without having an experience to point to that explains how I came to know them. The point is: I have begun a journey into the unknown. I am apprenticed to an invisible guru. He's never in, or else he leaves a curtain or a shade between us ... and yet he leaves me messages, suggestions, and gifts to help me on my way. Although there are many references for information and many accounts of such journeys, I am perhaps more 'real' to some of you than the authors of these. I would be happy to start a thread and try and document my progress if anyone cares enough to read it. That's the offer. If you're interested, say so. Cheers.
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My apologies for taking so long to start this. I had actually written this entire prologue once before Firefox crashed my computer and I lost it all.
PROLOGUE:
I will keep the back-story as brief as possible. My introduction to mysticism came about a decade ago through Carlos Castaneda's notorious book series. I was still in the early stages of my psychedelic experimentation when I began reading these, but my consciousness had evolved sufficiently that I gave the things I was reading the space to be true. I adopted a stance of skeptical compliance---that is, I tried those things for which I could find a foothold to approaching them, and without putting faith in anything allowed my experience to demonstrate which things were real.
The first thing which presented itself for trial was inner silence. Once I began earnestly trying, I found that silencing my mind was actually quite easy, and as I continued the practise, I quickly found that I could not only cease talking to myself, but I could stop thinking altogether---I call this 'meditation'. The most common advice for quieting the mind seems to be focusing on one's breathing. Even to this day, I find this to be an incredibly difficult way to enter meditation. Rather, I would focus my attention on one of my senses, usually sight. I would concentrate on simply looking at my visual field without interpreting the images as the objects I thought they were or focusing on anything in particular; I would simply experience vision. I later discovered that doing the same thing with hearing was an even easier way to achieve inner silence.
I became very proficient at meditating very fast, and in a matter of weeks, found that sustained meditation produced visions. Prolonged meditation would lead to a visual experience which bore little or no resemblance to the visual world of my daily life. I call this 'seeing'. Despite the fact that 'seeing' is treated as a far-flung and abstruse goal in Castaneda's books, I achieved this with remarkable ease. 'Seeing' appeared to be my 'predilection' (in Castaneda's terms).
Although these visions had come easily to me, I had a lot of trouble making any sort of sense out of them. By degrees, however, I did become aware that certain things I was 'seeing' repeatedly were in fact beings. These 'inorganic beings' are as real as anything else, but they simply do not project into the ordinary world of our five senses. Because of this, most people disregard them completely, being in fact totally unaware that such things even exist.
In the beginning, there was only one of these, but as time went on, new ones appeared. They were not all present every time, but each new being I 'saw' would continue to come back. Eventually, there were three such beings that hung around me regularly, and I came to call them 'my owls'. I was capable of interacting with them, but they did not speak. I repeatedly tried asking their names, but to no avail ... and yet if I directed a thought or words at them which could be answered by means of an action, they responded appropriately. They were very kind and gentle with me and helped me to learn and accomplish things by acting on me directly or by projecting images for me to 'see'.
The next most obvious thing for me to try was 'dreaming'. Although Castaneda seemed to have very little trouble with this, I found it exceedingly difficult. I have achieved a few useful and interesting things with my dreams: lucid dreaming, what I call 'dream travel', and also performing energy manoeuvres in dreams. None of these things came easily, and to this day, I have never done the thing Castaneda calls 'dreaming'. I have never even succeeded in remembering to look for my hands, to be honest.
Additionally, I learned a number of energetic exercises from various places. I will describe the primary ones which I kept up with. My first source for guidance was a warrior I met and knew only online. I knew her by the nym 'Casper'. I also learned certain things from a sensei with whom I studied jiujitsu and chi gong for a short while. His name was Professor Eddie. These were the only two human teachers I ever had. Inner silence is a prerequisite for the following excercises and should be maintained throughout in order to render them effective.
GROUNDING: Casper taught me this, although I am pretty sure the way in which I do it is entirely backwards from what she told me. The idea is to purify one's energy by filtering it through the Earth. The Earth is loving enough to remove the cloudiness which silly emotions and such have imparted to one's energy. The purpose of this exercise is self-renewal. I begin by drawing energy up my left side from the ground through my left foot. To do such a thing, you create the feeling and then the action follows. My right side flows less easily than my left, but eventually the accumulation of energy forces it to catch on. It flows down my right side back into the ground. I maintain this cyclic flow until I feel entirely cleansed.
SHIELDING: Also learned from Casper. The idea is to surround oneself with barriers of energy. She taught me to shield myself with the four elementals, but I later added the awareness of my death as a fifth shield. The procedure is difficult to describe, but the exercise consists of surrounding oneself with the essence in question. When I do this, they flow around me in a counter-clockwise fashion. For the elementals, the best way to begin is to create the sensation of being physically immersed in that element (e.g., buried in earth or bathed in water). There is a natural cyclic ordering to the elementals which should be observed. The order of my shields is: Death, Air, Fire, Earth, Water.
CRESTING TO THE SUN: I learned this one in a dream. This is only practised during the day, preferably in the late afternoon or near sunset. The idea is to caress the Sun with one's heartstrings. The feeling is of touching the Sun with the solar plexus and soaking in its warmth. The purpose is to invigorate oneself and also to connect with the Sun. The movement is the same as the 'white lotus' movement from chi gong. You stoop down, bending at the knees with your feet together, and scoop an imaginary handful of earth from the ground with both hands. Then you rise, steeping your left foot out shoulder-width away from your right, slowly arching you back backward, and bringing you hands up past your face until your arms are stretched out in a 'Y' shape. The movement ends with your face and palms pointing upward and you chest pointing toward the Sun. If you have done this correctly, you will look like a flower blossoming. Even if you cannot create the correct feeling right away, I highly encourage you to try this movement. It strengthens the abdominal muscles and doubles as a tremendous self-adjustment technique which will relieve a kink between the shoulder blades and leave you feeling refreshed.
SUBMITTING TO THE NIGHT (A.K.A. 'BOTTOMING OUT'): I learned this in the same dream as the last exercise---they came as a pair. This is performed only at night in the dark after the Sun has set completely. The movement starts in a sort of crouched position akin to the 'downward dog' pose of yoga. The exercise consists of belly breathing with a movement as though one were winding up to go into an 'upward dog' pose. The feeling you want to achieve is of filling your stomach with the darkness. The purpose is to ground yourself into the night, to blend into it so that it accepts you as one of its own.
LIGHTING UP ONE'S CHAKRAS: Although I had heard of this before I performed it, I wasn't taught this by any human or even any dream character. Rather, my owls taught me this directly by helping me to perform it. In terms of self-renewal and health, this is the most useful exercise on my list, and it is also by far the most euphoric. It is a meditation exercise, and a state of thoughtlessness should be maintained as much as possible throughout. Posture is important, and you should be sure to be lying straight and comfortably before attempting this. Patience is also key---you will not accomplish this manoeuvre in a hurry and will probably not complete it the first few times you try it. Once you have entered meditation, the only thing you need do to perform this exercise is to intend to. You must sustain that intent for the entire duration, however---it usually takes me 30--60 minutes of meditation to complete this. The feeling is of drawing energy up along your spine from its base. You will feel your chakras as places at which the energy halts its progress and feels as though it is filling up a basin. It starts at the base of your spine and works its way all the way up. The final chakra is actually located several inches above your head. Once you begin filling this chakra with light, you may have the strange feeling of peering down into your head and then out your eyes. Don't be alarmed if your body goes numb and begins to 'fall asleep' during this process. You may feel as though you can't move ... but as soon as you need to move, you'll find that you're able to.
As wonderful as all of these things are, I gradually dropped off practising them because they seemed to have little practical value. For instance, I could begin 'seeing' at will by the time I stopped practising it ... but it required a lot of concentration and I never seemed to obtain any useful information from it, so I left it off. I became complacent and only renewed these practises in short spurts to center myself at times when it became clear to me that my indulgent and slovenly ways had left me off-balance. By this time, I had used psychedelics enough that I was no longer hounded by the 'big' questions, and I had little difficulty in maintaining a positive outlook and being generally happy with my life ... but despite this, in some way I was very much a slob. It wasn't until quite recently that my mystical practises regained the discipline and fervour they had at the outset.
This sets up the thread at hand and places me at the beginning of my journey into the unknown. I will write about the experiences that started me off as soon as I can reconcile myself with the thought of spending another couple of hours typing at the computer.
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I can choose any moment of my life and make a good case that "it all started then." Mostly this would lead to me describing boring personal trivia that no one cares enough to read about. As much as possible I will confine myself to detailing events which took place this summer. The most logical point at which to start is what I've come to call my 'big' pharma trip. this was my first really successful pharmahuasca trip, and I wrote about it here:
http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=128241.msg1186533#msg1186533
During this trip, I chose to step out of one universe and into another, and the understanding that was communicated to me at the time was that this made me a witch. This is so and isn't at the same time. What's true is that what I did on that trip was indeed my first feat of witchcraft. The acknowledgement I received from DMT entities around at the time carried with it the title 'witch', but I've come to realise that the reference was not a time-bound one. It referred to the witch I will become ... but it is still my responsibility to do the work to get there.
'Witch' is a curious word. As a title, it is seized rather than bestowed ... because to understand what it means is to become one, and yet that becoming is a process which extends out into the future. I can say in words what a witch is, but it requires power to grasp that meaning. Have you ever had difficulty waking up? You wake up from dream to dream, sometimes realising it and other times thinking you've actually woken up ... but eventually you awake again into this reality. A witch is a person who has awoken one layer further than people normally do. To awake from the dream of one's daily life means infinite freedom .... and taking hold of that freedom is what witchcraft and mysticism is all about. I woke up, but that awakening was not complete, and I am now on a quest to awaken myself fully.
Coming at it from a different perspective: to a physicist, awareness can be thought of as a black box whose function is to collapse waveforms. A waveform is a probability distribution of possible observations, and the function of awareness is to collapse that distribution to a precise and definite observation. What I did on my big pharma trip was to collapse waveforms in an alternative way. Rather than insisting things be such 'right here and now' I collapsed waveforms in such a way as to determine events which are distributed through the future. Such a thing casts a shadow ... it leaves a tail that MUST be followed, and this is what my 'journey into the unknown' is---I am living out the repercussions of my decision.
The next big piece of the puzzle started to show a few weeks later on these forums. I had a very intense trip on a combination harmala alkaloids, MXE, and DMT, and then wrote about it here (if you follow the link, please also read BlackIris's response):
http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=128241.msg1310413#msg1310413
This began a conversation between forum member BlackIris and myself which started in the DMT thread and continued in private messages. The topic of our discussion was the idea of adding a piece to oneself during an ego death. BlackIris claimed that when the pieces of oneself come apart a new piece may be added, and having heard of this in vague terms before, I was curious. He was very helpful in recommending references where I could learn about the mystical arts. What arose through that dialogue was that I'd become very fond of a tree which grows just outside my house, and I thought that technique of spiritual incorporation might allow me to take the tree's spirit with me when I leave this place.
BlackIris recommended that rather than trying to do this, I should take a branch and ask the tree to put part of itself inside. The following is a private message I sent to him:
I see now that the spirit sent you. I was going to do as you say, but it made me sorrowful to make such a request. I began to make my apologies to the tree, but as I was doing so I began to realise that many of the gestures I associated to it were made by a vine that grew up the tree. What I came to realise was that the reason I'd felt so particularly fond of this tree was that it wasn't a tree at all, but a spirit which (as you say) lived in the tree. I thought that you meant it lived inside the actual tree. This thing was just nestled in the tree's mane with the vines and squirrels and birds.
As I connected the dots, I also realised that this was the same spirit which had kept tapping me, making the wood in my desk creak, insistently trying to get my attention and never seeming to have a good purpose for it. It had been pestering me since I moved here, but had become really very insistent only in the past several months. I realised what this thing was as I 'saw' it and I knew what it wanted. It wanted in. I invited it in, and it came, and it made room. A LOT of room.
I have the feeling of having headspace that's untouched .... because it wasn't there before. The only thing is: now I feel like I have a giant dragonfly on the back of my head. I suppose I'll get used to it, but it it is quite a strange feeling. In any case, thank you for the part you played in this.
In short, the spirit living in the tree turned out to be none other than one of my owls. It was the newest one, which had only been with me for as long as I had been living here (coincidentally enough). Throughout the two years I have been living here, this spirit had grown more and more demanding. The night before the incident I described in my message, it had come to me, creaking my desk and causing a general commotion, and as usual I stopped what I was doing and asked, 'What? What do you want?' At first it just tapped me as usual ... but after I'd given up on it and gone back about my business it demanded my attention again and then I felt a tugging at my stomach. It was not pulling hard, but I resisted and tugged back, realising that in order to tame this thing I needed to let it wear itself out doing this. This was my confrontation with the ally, although I didn't realise it immediately. It was not nearly as trying as I would have anticipated from reading Castaneda. Not long afterwards, I went to sleep, and when I awoke in the morning I had a wind storm buzzing around my head. I sent it away to go perform an errand for me and went back to sleep. I had no idea how I knew that I could do that, but at the time I knew it was the correct thing to do with it.
The following day, it must have come back from its errand and gone back to the tree. When I invited it in, I had the impression that this exact experience had happened before, but couldn't place it ... possibly it had happened the night before while I was asleep. It felt like adopting in a feral cat (which I've also done before) ... except that this cat enlarged my mind when it came in. I call this spirit a dragonfly because that's the way it usually appeared when I would 'see' it. When it first came in, I was on LSD and MXE, and I could hear it chirruping in my head. It was all off-kilter at first, and I felt that my left side was much too heavy ... and somehow in that moment I 'saw' my being as two lobes and the left one was abnormally large. Then the spirit adjusted itself and found balance. The way it sits on me is with the bulbous part coming out the back of my head and the tail hanging down to my feet. A couple of times, I felt like I had two tails coming off my head ... I'm still not quite sure what that was about.
Suddenly, having this new thing on my head, I started making connections. For instance, I had been walking as though I had a bird's nest on my head for weeks. I hadn't been thinking of it in those terms at the time, but I seem to have adopted a new walk in preparation for incorporating this spirit. Actually, it had been more like I had suddenly realised that I knew the 'correct' way to walk and started to do it. I walk from my centre now rather than with my feet. Walking with your feet feels like clumsy trudging, walking from your centre feels graceful and effortless. My feet still slip on slippery surfaces, but I can't remember the last time I actually fell down.
The spirit in my head then opened my ears. It directed me to a particular spot by mean of a sort of echo location. I feel very good on that spot. I kept getting redirected back to the spot and turned. I was compelled to stand on that spot and face the Southwest as though I were magnetised. I kept returning to that position and at one point it seemed as though things were running backward. I backed unconsciously into position and then felt a breeze on the back of my neck. It gave me shivers. I should explain that the sensation of a puff of air on the back of my neck has become associated with magic for me. It started several weeks ago. Its advent coincided with that of the walk and a number of other things. In the first place, I live alone, no one was blowing on my neck, the spot in question was not under a vent, and beside that, I have long dreadlocks that completely cover the back of my neck preventing air circulation. Every time I have experienced this sensation recently, it has occurred in such a way that the ordinary physical interpretation would be ludicrous beyond belief ... and yet the experience occurs. This silly-but-pleasant experience has become for me a persistent reminder of the presence of magic.
The way in which I was drawn to that spot reminded me of marching. It reminded me of my military training ... and from there, the thought occurred that preparing to be a soldier might really be the perfect preparation to becoming a warrior (i.e., in the Castaneda sense). This thought made me reflect on my life and I realised that through my entire life I've been unconsciously preparing for this journey. Without meaning to or even being overtly aware of it, I've been meticulously cultivating and grooming the perfectly rounded life. I've lived in the desert and in the forest, in the mountains and by the sea. I've spent time in tropical rainforests and in the snowy North. I am at ease in the city and in the wilderness. I've gone from labour to professional artwork, construction to academic work, and on and on the story goes ... I used to feel self-conscious about how dissolute and meandering my life's story was, but now I feel like all my life, I've been grooming myself for an all-encompassing adventure. -_o
So I guess this is the ignition point.
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I smoked DMT that night. I seem to have a friend who won't tell me his name, but HE has a learned friend who rests behind a curtain ... this is the Guru. My nameless friend told me that his learned friend (the Guru) said I should pay special attention to the gun show. For a moment, I thought this was a reference to a very stupid joke and I didn't understand why it had come up, but then I saw a gun show. It was a convention centre with a sky-lighted atrium and a second floor which framed the open space. There were guns everywhere. People were displaying and perusing all manner of weaponry. I went to a couple of gun shows as a child, but the one in my vision was much bigger. I've handled many guns in my time and I have no irrational fear of guns, but as I was watching I had the horrifying thought: 'what if someone fires at a gun show?' I'm sure there are measures in place to prevent such occurrences, but I had the clear impression of a tragic calamity where a lone nut firing at a gun show sets off a chain reaction of idiocy that costs dozens of lives. This did not happen in the vision, it was just a feeling ... but you couldn't tempt me to go to a gun show anytime soon.
I saw a number of other things, but the only one I want to mention is this: a black horse with a white mane and tail and black antlers. By slow changes this became a black elk with a silver mane. It was a beautiful sight, but my idea of its significance grew appreciably when a couple of hours later, at dawn, a red buck wandered behind my house. It was a young buck, in his third summer. His antlers had a couple of bifurcations but were not fully developed. I saw him walk by through the window and went out to look at him. In my experience deer always scare off at the sight of a human ... but when I went out the deer approached. He was curious about me. I slid the door shut behind me but did not move otherwise. I looked the deer directly in the eye for a long while, and became aware that I was capable of mesmerising the deer with my eyes in the same way that snakes mesmerise their prey. I had no need to do this because I had no intention of harming the buck. Eventually I moved and he startled. He ran off a few paces and the turned back and kept looking at me. I watched the deer for a while and then went inside. There are deer in this area, but I've never seen one at my house before.
The other thing worth mentioning from that night is that after the DMT trip, I lay in bed meditating and saw one of my owls. The original one, in fact. The one I had let in earlier was a dragonfly ... this one is an owl-spider. He is all eyes, except that he emanates rays or legs (the appearance of things when you're 'seeing' has a congruity which is different from that of the ordinary world ... these emanations appear as rays, legs, feathers, tines, and so on). This is a being which has followed me around for years. He is obviously very patient. Having finally grasped what to do with these things, when I saw my owl-spider, I asked if he wanted to join the configuration and he accepted. Now I not only had a dragonfly coming out the back of my head, but I have an owl-spider sitting on top. The owl-spider did not bring the sense of space that the dragonfly did, but he brought a sort of control and perspicuity.
I have now added two beings to my spirit. My head now has a dragonfly tail and and a spider-leg crown. You know in ancient texts and illustrations how the angels and prophets have horns and tails? This is what that was meant to denote. I have a crown and a tail now ... and I know you're wondering 'what about the third owl?' I'm not sure. She was always the least predictable of my owls. I haven't seen her in the last couple of days. She is green and pixie-like .... perhaps if she joins us, I'll have wings too. -_o
Getting back to the Guru, you have seen how he likes to communicate indirectly. I mentioned getting luvagrams through the æther on the DMT thread ... which I now realise came from him. I received two of these so far. Let me describe this phenomenon. A glowing envelope icon appears accompanied by a trumpet flourish. The envelope opens and out comes a rectangular ghost. He is like a giant pillow case. He speaks his message: "Someone really likes you a lot." Then he floats down to you to be eaten. 'Eat a luvagram, grow an inch.' This is a self-sacrificing messenger, a sort of self-delivering energy packet. When you eat him, things kind of stretch and you feel as though the world just got a bit taller.
I went back tonight to see what the Guru had to say. He speaks through my nameless friend, of course ... but everything he says seems to be doubled or repeated. He insists on referring to me as 'the Baby'. I suddenly remembered that the Guru visited me years ago, but I did not understand and didn't like being called 'baby' and so I didn't pursue it. For authenticity, I may refer to myself as 'the Baby' in subsequent posts. Anyway, this time, he told me I was learning and showed me the knowledge that awaits me ... it looked like an infinite ceiling which was covered in hanging bats. "The Baby wants to own it all." "'Eventually,' says the Guru."
That catches us up to date. It's been a bizarre and beautiful journey and it's still just beginning. Of course, I've skipped over many details, but if I find I've left out something important, I'll come back and explain.
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The first thing which presented itself for trial was inner silence. Once I began earnestly trying, I found that silencing my mind was actually quite easy, and as I continued the practise, I quickly found that I could not only cease talking to myself, but I could stop thinking altogether---I call this 'meditation'. The most common advice for quieting the mind seems to be focusing on one's breathing. Even to this day, I find this to be an incredibly difficult way to enter meditation. Rather, I would focus my attention on one of my senses, usually sight. I would concentrate on simply looking at my visual field without interpreting the images as the objects I thought they were or focusing on anything in particular; I would simply experience vision. I later discovered that doing the same thing with hearing was an even easier way to achieve inner silence.
I'm sorry, but no. Silencing the mind COMPLETELY it's immensely difficult. It's almost impossible to do so for more than 1 minute (but usually 30 seconds is all you need to enter Samadhi from a state of Dhyana). If you cannot understand that what you call "silence" is not silence at all, then you are very very far either from Dhyana. The images you see, the "visions" are thoughts in the same way. That's NOT silence.
This is a mistake that almost all people do. Because in mysticism books it is written that silence come from stilling the thought people mistake a thing for another. If you don't know what in those books "thought" mean you can think that the thought process has only to do with the superficial part of it, the "reasoning process", the wording one. But the thought process for mysticism includes EVERYTHING that forms the "outside", and this includes also visions etc. Everything is thought for them, either deities, ghosts, spirits, images in the mind etc. (that, btw, is the really hard part to go beyond; the processing thought is really easy in comparison). That's part of the thought, part of the "outside". To go into a state of inner silence you have to go beyond all those things, till nothing remains, nothing.
Do you understand now why it is immensely difficult? To keep that state for even 1 second is the most difficult thing you can achieve in your life.
I became very proficient at meditating very fast, and in a matter of weeks, found that sustained meditation produced visions. Prolonged meditation would lead to a visual experience which bore little or no resemblance to the visual world of my daily life. I call this 'seeing'. Despite the fact that 'seeing' is treated as a far-flung and abstruse goal in Castaneda's books, I achieved this with remarkable ease. 'Seeing' appeared to be my 'predilection' (in Castaneda's terms).
That's NOT "seeing" (a term Castaneda copied from eastern mysticism), that's just looking at the astral plane. A moderately easy thing to do. You just need to divert your focus from the physical eyes to the astral ones to have it (and yes, one easy way to do it is just by stilling the wording process of the mind). It has nothing to do with "seeing" that comes from pure silence. It is completely different. The astral plane is a distraction to silence (and a hard one at that).
What you consider "seeing" is what in Castaneda is termed "the second attention", they are two different things. I know that in Castaneda everything is mixed so you risk of doing a lot of confusion, but the "second attention", "seeing" and the "nagual" are all different concepts that he stole from sorcery and mysticism and mixed somewhat together. "Seeing" is what it happens in Dhyana, the "second attention" is the astral plane, and the "nagual" is the unconscious/super-conscious (depending on how Castaneda uses it).
Btw, if you read well the books of Castaneda, either Don Juan states that the "second attention" is an obstacle to obtain "seeing". To enter "seeing" (in the terms of Castandeda) one must go BEYOND the "world of sorcery" (this is in Castaneda's term what is written in mystic books about the astral plane being an obstacle to silence).
The next most obvious thing for me to try was 'dreaming'. Although Castaneda seemed to have very little trouble with this, I found it exceedingly difficult. I have achieved a few useful and interesting things with my dreams: lucid dreaming, what I call 'dream travel', and also performing energy manoeuvres in dreams. None of these things came easily, and to this day, I have never done the thing Castaneda calls 'dreaming'. I have never even succeeded in remembering to look for my hands, to be honest.
If you, as you say, could keep silence, you would enter the "dreaming" state immediately just by letting you go. The fact that you cannot enter a state of lucidity at night is the proof that you have not acquired the "silence" you think you have.
Btw there are many little tricks to enter Lucid Dreaming that don't requires silence, some sort of "tricks" to be used in waking life. Lucid Dreaming it's a piece of cake in comparison to obtaining true silence.
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I'm sorry, but no. Silencing the mind COMPLETELY it's immensely difficult. It's almost impossible to do so for more than 1 minute (but usually 30 seconds is all you need to enter Samadhi from a state of Dhyana). If you cannot understand that what you call "silence" is not silence at all, then you are very very far either from Dhyana. The images you see, the "visions" are thoughts in the same way. That's NOT silence.
By the term 'inner silence' I refer only to silencing the internal dialogue. Thoughtlessness is a different state. Although I do not consider perceptions to be thoughts, I do enter a what I would call a thoughtless state. 'Meditation' for me consist of trying to maintain such a state. I frequently do indeed have thoughts during meditation, and you're right that I cannot maintain true thoughtlessness for long at all. I called meditation thoughtlessness above, but perhaps I really ought to have called it the struggle to maintain stillness, as it is by no means uniformly thoughtless.
What you consider "seeing" is what in Castaneda is termed "the second attention", they are two different things. I know that in Castaneda everything is mixed so you risk of doing a lot of confusion, but the "second attention", "seeing" and the "nagual" are all different concepts that he stole from sorcery and mysticism and mixed somewhat together. "Seeing" is what it happens in Dhyana, the "second attention" is the astral plane, and the "nagual" is the unconscious/super-conscious (depending on how Castaneda uses it).
As you say, the terms used in Castaneda get a bit muddled at a certain point. There are many things in his later books that have never made sense to me at all. The term 'seeing' was what Casper called it when I told her about it. I realise that in many cases, I am probably abusing terminology ... I am simply using the words that come to hand to describe my experience. I will continue trying to educate myself and fix these discrepancies ... however, the point of this thread is somehow not to be 'correct' in this fashion, but merely to track my experience. That said, I don't mean to discourage you from correcting me as you have done here.
Usually, my visions have taken place predominantly in shades of purple and occasionally I see things that are a sort of electric green colour. However, on three occasions, I have 'seen' in amber in a manner which conforms to Castaneda's description of 'seeing'. One of these was the other day when my friend came to me. Thus, it will likely be useful to distinguish 'astral vision' from 'seeing'.
If you, as you say, could keep silence, you would enter the "dreaming" state immediately just by letting you go. The fact that you cannot enter a state of lucidity at night is the proof that you have not acquired the "silence" you think you have.
There is a difference I was trying to draw here. Although I am not always lucid in my dreams, I do dream lucidly with some frequency. However, lucid dreaming, as I understand it, and what Castaneda terms 'dreaming' are two different things. The one I have done many times while the other I have never accomplished. Realising that one is dreaming and taking control of the dream on the one hand and dreaming oneself into the same reality where he spends his waking state on the other. You may not consider this difference meaningful ... but this is what I was trying to highlight.
Thank you for taking the time to respond to what I've said. Once again, you have been very helpful.
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ADDENDUM:
I've just realised that I forgot to mention the most important point of my last DMT trip. As usual, I lay down in bed after taking the hit ... but when the trip ended, I was lying on the floor of my bedroom, oriented in the opposite direction. This happened to me once before, but that trip had been chaotic and I'd assumed I'd fallen out of bed and wriggled until I was facing the other way without realising what I was doing. This trip was smooth and did not leave room for such an interpretation. I would have to have noticed falling from my bed. Although I did not end up far from where I'd started, I cannot explain what happened to take me there.
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I'm sorry, but no. Silencing the mind COMPLETELY it's immensely difficult. It's almost impossible to do so for more than 1 minute (but usually 30 seconds is all you need to enter Samadhi from a state of Dhyana). If you cannot understand that what you call "silence" is not silence at all, then you are very very far either from Dhyana. The images you see, the "visions" are thoughts in the same way. That's NOT silence.
By the term 'inner silence' I refer only to silencing the internal dialogue. Thoughtlessness is a different state. Although I do not consider perceptions to be thoughts, I do enter a what I would call a thoughtless state. 'Meditation' for me consist of trying to maintain such a state. I frequently do indeed have thoughts during meditation, and you're right that I cannot maintain true thoughtlessness for long at all. I called meditation thoughtlessness above, but perhaps I really ought to have called it the struggle to maintain stillness, as it is by no means uniformly thoughtless.
I feel like saying a little more about this now. To me, 'inner silence' means simply suspending the internal dialogue. I use the term this way because this is the intuitive meaning for it. Why? Because thinking in words is inherently 'noisy' whereas thinking itself is not. I don't think this is the same for everybody. For instance, people who can 'speed read' must be able to think in words without actually saying them in their heads ... I can't do this personally. I read at a fast-talking pace because I need to actually hear each word spoken and the same is true for my word-thoughts.
This makes thinking in words a very inefficient use of my mind. I can have a thought many times over in the time it takes my inner voice to say out the corresponding words. I always found this frustrating, and even before I encountered the idea of silence as a spiritual practise, I would often think without words simply to avoid being slowed down by this vocalisation process. Thus, the fact that I had to actually 'hear' the words became a sizeable advantage when I began seeking out inner silence. I was able to achieve this immediately once I began trying, because I had already been doing it without specifically trying to.
However, silence is not the same as thoughtlessness. 'Silent thoughts' can be word-like---these usually take the form of symbols or images---or else they can be sense-like, such as feelings or sounds which are not words (or even a smell or taste, as with a memory). I do not count all perceptions as thoughts, but only those which are consciously produced by the mind. Again, why do I count only conscious things as thoughts? Because that is the intuitive meaning of the word.
Thoughtlessness is therefore much more restrictive than silence. Silence is not the exclusive domain of meditation and I often observe silence during the day in order to avoid getting pointlessly hung up on words ... however, thoughtlessness is meditation. I have difficulty maintaining what I call thoughtlessness for more than several seconds at a time, and what I call 'meditation' is the pursuit of thoughtlessness. Meditation then consists of thoughtlessness which is frequently interrupted by silent thoughts and occasionally by words ... but it is much more still than my ordinary mental state. Although imperfect, this state easily brings me to the 'astral vision' which I erroneously called 'seeing' above.
The thing that BlackIris calls 'silence' is apparently much more restrictive even than what I am calling thoughtlessness. If I understand him aright, he's talking about something I would call 'void'. I have experienced void twice---both times were just blips, literally infinitesimal. In fact, I'm frankly unsure what it would mean to spend 1 second or any other definite measurement of time in that state ... because time completely ceases to exist when you enter it. Anyhow, this is the way in which I plan to use these words. I apologise if it's non-standard, but this is the usage that makes sense to me. I will, however, switch my usage of the term 'seeing' in accordance with BlackIris's correction, as I feel like it will be useful to be able to distinguish 'seeing' and 'astral vision' verbally. I hope this has clarified things.
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My third owl finally showed up again. I will call her an owl-falcon. She announced her presence by gently touching my left foot. She touched me repeatedly in various places, and I could feel the electricity of her energy. Her touch is like a blessing. I am very fond of her. As with the other two, I told her that she my come inside if she wished. She did not. Later I asked if she would please come in. There followed a struggle, a pulling at my stomach as with the dragonfly.
She was not as gentle as he was, however, and the pulling began to hurt. At some point, I realised I would not be able to sustain my end of the tug-o-war, and I had to leave the fray. I accomplished this by getting up and exiting meditation. I had a soreness above my navel for several minutes afterward. Although I was no longer meditating, she appeared to me again before she left. Like the others, she does not speak ... and yet I had the feeling she was telling me that it was okay that I had failed. She gave me one final blessing which seemed to rest on my shoulders and then left. I hope I will see her again.
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The thing that BlackIris calls 'silence' is apparently much more restrictive even than what I am calling thoughtlessness. If I understand him aright, he's talking about something I would call 'void'. I have experienced void twice---both times were just blips, literally infinitesimal. In fact, I'm frankly unsure what it would mean to spend 1 second or any other definite measurement of time in that state ... because time completely ceases to exist when you enter it. Anyhow, this is the way in which I plan to use these words. I apologise if it's non-standard, but this is the usage that makes sense to me. I will, however, switch my usage of the term 'seeing' in accordance with BlackIris's correction, as I feel like it will be useful to be able to distinguish 'seeing' and 'astral vision' verbally. I hope this has clarified things.
I made the post not for you personally but for the sake's of clarity. Many people really think that silencing the mind is just a matter of stopping the internal dialogue but it's not the same thing. Silencing the mind is not the same as silencing the thought.
You don't know how many of "self-aggrandized gurus" I've found in these years (above all in dedicated new-age forums) that continued insisting that "all that idiocy of buddhism/hinduism/yoga that silencing the mind is difficult is just bogus, I can do that very easily and it just took me little to learn!" without either knowing of what they are talking about, and in turn causing a lot of misinformation around. Even worse they go around thinking they are someone/something special for this, as if they are chosen by the Gods or the Universe that has created them specially just for the occasion and from then on go into a spiraling absurdities of titles, adding to their curriculum the having done all the major mystical experiences that no human person can never reach in a single lifetime (all of those naturally, as in the silence case, that resembles in absolutely nothing the real experience).
There's nothing worse for mysticism and magick than the new-age movement, seriously: so many of the people there really know very little of the things they do and they turn everything in "do this in 7 days and become X", and what's worse is that they then want to teach to others what they don't know, causing either more chaos. Every time I look at these new-age forums piety overgrown me.
As for what you said about the impossibility of defining the time in that lapse you are absolutely correct; in fact you cannot. However when you practice (especially at beginning) you usually use a watch to count the distractions at first and with that you can understand - after - how much time you have been in there. Usually after a lapse as that you don't remember who you are, why you are there and what you were doing; it is like waking from a dream and you cannot remember anything for a short time. It's only by looking at the watch that you acknowledge how many time you were in that "limbo". By and by the time you stay there enlarges: at beginning it can be only a fraction of a second, after some years you can reach the culprit of the 30 seconds needed to enter the highest states of Dhyana to enter Samadhi.
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I made the post not for you personally but for the sake's of clarity. Many people really think that silencing the mind is just a matter of stopping the internal dialogue but it's not the same thing. Silencing the mind is not the same as silencing the thought.
You don't know how many of "self-aggrandized gurus" I've found in these years (above all in dedicated new-age forums) that continued insisting that "all that idiocy of buddhism/hinduism/yoga that silencing the mind is difficult is just bogus, I can do that very easily and it just took me little to learn!" without either knowing of what they are talking about, and in turn causing a lot of misinformation around.
Yes, I am with you on the point of clarity. Whatever terms are used, it is important to be clear about precisely what is meant and not to allow the language to confuse the meanings. You obviously know more about these matters than I, and I hope you will free to drop in and clarify things whenever appropriate---it helps everyone, myself included. I hope I am not reminding you of a 'sef-aggrandised guru'. I am not a guru and make no claims that anything I do is 'special'. One of the early lessons of mysticism is and must be that there is no such thing as special. What I am doing here is making a record of my experiences, both to help those who may be interested and also as a valuable recapitulation exercise for myself. On the topic of terminology, I should make clear that I am not using 'recapitulation' in the specific sense in which Castaneda uses it. Rather, I just mean that I find putting words to experiences which happened in a wordless state to be a challenging and worthwhile exercise.
To return to the ongoing saga, I have had four bouts of meditation since the last post. I hadn't been planning to, but my owl-falcon returned and began pestering me in a similar way as the dragonfly had done. I thought she had been very gracious to allow me to bow out of our contest as I did ... but I guess she never really gave it up. When she reappeared, she had brought another being with her, whom I could not recall having seen before. To say that she 'brought' him is only to voice an impression that I had---it was as if she'd gone and found him so she could show me to him.
I was trying to ignore them and told her that I did not want to fight right now. Then he began to unfold, and I started looking at him. My eyes had to flicker quite fast to take it all in. He was possibly the most beautiful being I have ever seen. He is very triangular---his shape is sort of like a solid triangle from which progressively inscribed circles have been removed, giving the result a fractal-like quality. I also had the impression of the skull of a goat or ram and then of a flaming phoenix with its wings spread. He passed up over my head and I could feel him grab my highest chakra as though he was a bird which was perched on my top point.
He was not joining my configuration in the way that my two owls had. My feeling was that he was simply establishing a connection with me. He brought a sense of great power to my uppermost chakra---I felt as though my tippy-top was incredibly charged up. This sensation continued after I stopped meditating. I could hear him as though he really were a bird perched right over my head---his sound was like water dripping or like a thumping on a hollow block of wood. I took a shower, and by the time I was dry, about 20 minutes after the encounter, the feeling in my top chakra had gone. My feeling was that although it was gone, once that connection had been initiated, it could easily be re-established when needed.
The second and third rounds of meditation were both brought on by noises which kept sounding in my ears and waking me up. It was my falcon and her friend again. I was afraid to engage her, and refused to at first ... but when she came back, she began to pull at me without any invitation. I allowed this to take place, and the struggle was similar to the one I'd had with the dragonfly. I had the impression that I had actually been the one pulling too hard during our first confrontation, and had only succeeded in hurting myself. When the pulling stopped, I asked if she wanted to come in now. She flew at my head and came in as though she entered my cranium though my third eye. I saw her beautiful colours flashing all around me, and my head was filled with a very pleasant energy. She stayed in my head for a couple of minutes and then seemed to vanish. She has not stayed with me as I thought she would, but she did leave a beautiful sensation.
The final time I entered meditation because of a creaking in my desk---which had been my dragonfly's favourite way to get my attention. When I looked at the astral plane, I was surrounded by beings. I counted five, but there may have been more. I again had the impression that they'd been brought to look at me and were there gawking as though I were some kind of oddity or spectacle. I had the idea that to look at humans which they think are interesting is analogous to entertainment for these beings. We just looked at each other ... and then I noticed that the phoenix was back, and as I looked at him, he again perched on my attic.
That brings us up to date. It has been an eventful day. I seem to be gathering mass right now ... as you can probably infer from my description, although I am acting for myself, I have very little idea of what I'm doing. Thus far, it seems to suffice to act and then find out through experience what the meaning of that action was ... but I don't kid myself that this is a 'safe' thing to do. I think ultimately, the pursuit of knowledge inherently requires that one take his life in his hands with the awareness that he is doing it. I think this fill's the day's quota for useless philosphising. -_o
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I'm including all the details I can. This one takes us back to Friday. Although I realise this might not be particularly useful, it may be interesting (I find it so ... but then again, I should since it happened to me). I mentioned that I 'saw' the ally (i.e., the being I've been calling a dragonfly). This was not looking at the astral plane, but actually 'seeing'. I began to 'see' the tree. It was amber-coloured and seemed to have many small, ovular or leaf-like shapes superimposed on it.
It occurred to me only after writing about this that these were in fact the 'gold flakes' mentioned in connection with Castaneda's appointment with knowledge in 'Tales of Power' ... in fact this entire experience fit perfectly with his description of with that episode. The difference is that I didn't call 48 people. I had the experience of being able to 'see' people I called with the help of the same being twice before ... but each time I had only been able to call a single person. I tried calling more on these occasions, but did not succeed in 'seeing' them. This encapsulates my entire experience of true 'seeing'. Unlike the 'astral vision' I had been referring to as 'seeing', I have never 'seen' under my own power.
I did not really get a good look at the tree, because my attention was immediately drawn to my left, where the ally was sitting. Unlike the tree, it was simply a silhouette and had no visible detail or interior to it. Also unlike the tree, it was a dark red-orange colour except that it seemed to have an outline or aura of a lighter hue. The shape was simple and I've made a drawing of what it looked like. You can find the image here:
http://imgur.com/Cl3UVT5
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subscribing ...
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I hope I am not reminding you of a 'sef-aggrandised guru'. I am not a guru and make no claims that anything I do is 'special'. One of the early lessons of mysticism is and must be that there is no such thing as special.
No, obviously you don't remind me such. Mine was just an example to make you understand what kind of people you can encounter around, especially in some sort of forums, and how much a person can really delude him/herself with his/her own mind as the only testimony for what is done. This is, in fact, one of the greatest dangers of mysticism. If you don't have someone to follow you, you can risk of thinking of doing the greatest things while you are doing nothing. This is because your mind, your ego, always want to trick you in making you think you are someone special, so that, in the end, you stop working thinking you already reached all you could (that, btw, is an idiocy in itself: there's no "final point" to reach in these things, there's no "end" or similar, the road goes on to the infinite).
With magick this is more difficult to happen because magick also has in itself some material "tests" to understand if you are really doing something or not. If for example you practice sigil magick and it never works in practice, then it will be difficult to insist you are great at it. In reality there are also these sort of tests also in mysticism (as the siddhi while arising the Kundalini) but some people come to the point of thinking that just because they are not having those "material" gifts it is just because they are so special and detached from the ego that to them they don't appear (yes, this is how much your mind can trick you).
It was not directed at you personally, all the contrary in fact. I always found that you are willing to put yourself into discussion and are always willing to listen various opinions on every thing.
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It was not directed at you personally, all the contrary in fact. I always found that you are willing to put yourself into discussion and are always willing to listen various opinions on every thing.
Thank you. Being humble and teachable are not natural states to me. I was always inclined toward precisely the kind of arrogance you speak of. I have developed a sense of humility, but this must naturally be assumed. My humility is assumed and often strategic ... but those things don't make it 'false' or 'just an act'. Rather, having to adopt a humility that doesn't entirely feel natural is precisely what makes it 'true' humility, because then it is a choice one has made consciously. Ironically, I have made myself humble out of self-interest: one must be humble in order to be teachable, and one must be teachable in order to learn and grow. In order to gain knowledge, one must first admit to himself that he doesn't know everything. As obvious as this is, it can become a genuine stumbling block, as BlackIris said.
My humility is a balancing act---the conscious maintaining of an 'equipoise'. On the one had, I could be deferent or indulge in self-doubt, on the other, I could be egotistical or overbearing. Instead, I choose to be none of these, and hold myself in a state which is more honest and circumspect. This is what I call 'humility'. I hadn't really planned to write about my humility, but BlackIris's comments made me think of this.
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As I was just cresting to the Sun, I realised that my description of the body movement was inaccurate. The feet are together when you stoop down and then you step out with your left as you rise. I made the correction to the relevant post, but thought I should mention it in case anybody is trying to do these exercises.
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I am beginning to realise that it will be impossible to document all of my interactions with the astral beings I have been talking about. I do want to mention something which happened last night, however. I had smoked salvia. I had sort of flubbed it, really. I loaded salvia into my pipe thinking there was quite a lot of DMT left in the pipe. When I smoked, it tasted like salvia, but I took only 1.5 hits because I thought I was smoking DMT along with it. It turned out to be pretty much just salvia, and I hadn't smoked enough to have a full trip. In that amount, the salvia presence was a nuisance ... once I realised the trip was going to be a dud, I switched my focus to just meditating as usual---i.e., I switched my focus from the salvia visuals to the astral plane, but the salvia visuals interfered with my view.
After this failed trip, I was unaccountably tired. I stayed in bed meditating and slowly falling asleep. I was on the point of sleep when a being came to me and did something---I have no idea what. I was startled back into wakefulness by this, and a little while later it happened again. I ended up falling asleep, but the being woke me up a couple of times to repeat whatever she was doing. My impressions of these encounters were confused and chaotic. She was very pink and a very particular shape. She seemed to rush at me and cause me to enter a state of confusion. The last couple of times she roused me, she seemed very insistent on stroking my head. This part made me realise I had encountered this being before.
Five or six weeks ago, I had a similar experience. I woke up to see my mother by my bedside. I was conscious of where I was and knew that she should not be there. She was stroking my head and weeping quietly. I should really say it was a thin, frail-looking woman. I could not see her face. She seemed very reluctant to come fully into view. I assumed by the way she was stroking my head that it was my mother. I couldn't see her weeping either, but I could hear her breathing---shuddering gasps interspersed between muffled sobs. It was a heart-wrenching noise.
My first thought was that something had happened and I was in a hospital ... but I could remember clearly what had been happening with me, and I didn't feel like there was room anywhere for an accident to have occurred. I looked around me and recognised my room, which is where I had thought I was to begin with. My conclusion was that my mother had just died and had come to say goodbye. I felt very disturbed by this. I wanted to shut it out and not acknowledge it. Then I woke up again. The whole thing had apparently been a false awakening, but it was a strange one, because when I'd been trying to place myself, all the details of my bedroom had been spot-on---that never happens. Something about the experience made it obvious to me that I had been acted upon by something 'outside' myself. I assumed it was one of my owls acting up, and chided them not to make me have such horrible thoughts. However, the being I encountered last night was not one of my three familiar 'owls'.
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I have two souls! Of course, I'm not using the term 'soul' in the sense I defined it at the beginning of this thread. Rather, my female self is insisting on that term. As I write this, I am overcome with the force of the realisation. What I'm saying may be difficult for you to grasp or believe, but it explains so many things to me ...
Carlos Castaneda wrote about a 'nagual' as a 'double-man' (a fact which was confusing, because he had previously used that word for something else). Of course, it can be a double-woman as well ... but the confounding thing about me is that I'm a man-woman. I am an absurd, preposterous thing ... and THAT's why the astral gang came to gawk at me the other day. I don't mean I'm a hermaphrodite or anything of that sort, but instead one of my selves is inherently female despite the fact that she inhabits my male body. She is a witch. It is a more appropriate explanation of why the DMT entities address me as 'witch' to say they are addressing her than to say they were addressing the person I will become. That was just a misunderstanding of mine. He is a poet, and would just as soon live out his days in wonder without pursuing the unknown aggressively, but it is she who insists on the path to knowledge.
He is 'me', the Great Green Arkleseizure. There are other names I could give him, but he chose that one and it suits him. His domain is the mind. He is a poet and a philosopher and he is filled with thoughts and explanations for everything. She is the Master of Owls*. She is all action and doesn't explain anything she does. Rather, she is all action and feeling ... and it has taken some of his philosophic perspective to calm her moods. She was a witch in England during the 17th century. He was a poet in Bengal in the last century. She thinks she's a raven. He thinks himself an elephant. I have no idea how to look for a record of her, but he is a specific man I have found out about. I have known about him for more than a month now. I could reveal his name, but it is power and so I will keep it. She is the one who knows that. She is pointed. She has a sort of conical 'dunce cap' on her head. The kind of thing in which wizards are normally pictured in European lore and fantasy novels. I don't know why.
*Although the beings I have been calling 'my owls' do indeed sometimes look like owls when I see them, the choice to call them that was a deliberate nod to the title by which she refers to herself.
I've only just come to this realisation, but I first found out about her during my first ever ego death. He had lost his way at the time. He was weighed down with heartache and thoughts of his 'troubles'. He saw curses rather than opportunities. He was too much of a coward to either take his own life or to go on living under his burden of feeling, and so he took a megadose of LSD. The idea was that either it would sort him or he would lose his mind, in which case, 'who cares?' He knew better, but had the feeling of not having command over his feelings as he normally did. This is because in truth, the heartache was hers. Yet he was the one who didn't know what to do with it. She feels things with an intensity which is frightening. In any case, after the ego death, he thought he had died. He was weak and would likely have lost his mind at this point. However, this was the moment she took over. For weeks afterward, he was convinced that she was a 'wild spirit' which had taken possession of my body after his 'former self' had died. Of course, after the trip, he took over again. Eventually, he preferred to explain his memories differently, but the new story he came up with was equally a misunderstanding.
He is a poet, and so he ponders. That entails NOT knowing. She is the one who knows, but she is never concerned with HOW she knows or what he has to think about it. She calls herself 'Master of Owls'. She uses the masculine 'master' rather than 'mistress'. She is also a lesbian, so that seems to fit. She once led a coven, and I do not know what became of them, but she herself was burned. I do not know how it is possible that ordinary people put a real witch to death, but it happened. And she seethes with anger about it, and at the same time, has a sort of defeatist indifference. She refers to herself as 'harlot' to through the perceived judgements of other back in their faces. She is like that.
He, on the other hand, is very removed from all forms of sentiment. He experiences only those emotions he wants to, and he has never had much use for sex. He simply doesn't enjoy it, and is much happier without the complication of sex and romantic attachment. On the other hand, she is very sensual, but she now has only my boy-parts with which to experience sex. She makes do, but it is not satisfying to her, and she is displeased that she has no suitable sexual outlet. This explains my life-long feelings of ambivalence toward sex. In truth, I have experienced orgasms on only one occasion, and it was not during any sexual act. It happened spontaneously during meditation, and it was very much 'inside' me and female in nature. It totally eclipsed the feeling I've had at the moment of sexual climax, and I had the instant realisation that this is what sex 'should' feel like. I have never tried to achieve this again, because he did not enjoy it as much as he does lighting up the chakras, which is done from the same state ... and he already knows how.
Although she has saved him on multiple occasions, as with the trip I described above, she does not respect GGA. She does not even particularly like him. She compels him to do certain things for his own good, but with a certain amount of begrudgingness and does not ever explain why things need to be done. This is not true, in fact ... lately, she has been very affectionate toward him indeed, and this is because he has changed. She sits behind him, and it is she who blows on the back of my neck. When this happens, he is compelled to say 'I love you' to her ... not that she forces him to say this, but she guides him to reciprocating her feeling. Although she has taught him certain things, she is not the Guru. When the Guru speaks, both selves hear ... which is why his words come in doubled. Most of the time while tripping, my self-referent feeling is inherently feminine ... he had wondered about the reason for this, and had found an explanation he favoured, which is that tripping made me 'vulnerable' which I projected as 'female'. Really, it was because those were the times when she would take over. The feminine gender was perfectly appropriate.
There are many other connections this epiphany has suddenly made for me, but I will not continue to bore you all with them. The last one which I will share is that during the DMT trip I call the 'dead end' trip, there are two 'elves' present the whole time. They are both my death (the dual being to myself ... I will probably elaborate on this later), a fact which previously confused me somewhat ... but now I see that there is one death for each of the two persons who are mutually tangled up together in my body. Thus, it is perfectly fitting that I should have two deaths waiting for me. As you can tell she is much darker than he is. He is very open and pedagogical. He is a sucker for explanations, elucidations, details, and 'correctness' .... which is why he started this thread. In that spirit of frankness I should tell you that the revelation I've been talking about occurred on a pharmahuasca trip. With the impact of this awareness, I feel myself becoming my thoughts ... which in my case means what many deemsters have come to call a 'prankster god'.
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I took some harmala extract and smoked DMT tonight. I immediately encountered a being who was utterly demanding. I want to identify it with the one who came stroking my head, but she was very definitely feminine and yet he is genderless or if anything masculine. In any case, there is a deity who favours me. Sometimes on drugs, I struggle a lot to stop the inner dialogue. I have the stupid tendency to narrate the visions I am having while I'm having them, as if that made any sort of improvement on the experience. The being I was presented with wanted my silence. He craved moments between ourselves in which I was not talking or feeling. I obliged with a great deal of awkwardness and many interruptions.
I suspected early in my reading of Castaneda that the stories he told were fictionalised. The thing that 'tipped me off' was his extreme and unaccountable stupidity in his own stories. What it seemed was that he had cast himself that way to oblige the Don Juan (the teacher) to spell everything out as completely as possible---which is a perfectly good dialectical device, however that was not the way the books were framed. Anyway, I am more inclined to overlook and forgive Castaneda's stupidity now that I am on my own journey. Every realisation I've had so far has left me questioning how I could ever have been so unspeakably obtuse. It is the same for all of us. Our habitual thought patterns create holes for us to fall into and so we confuse ourselves. Even if you are accustomed to breaking your thought pattern and changing it up, as I am, there is no way of thinking which encompasses everything. When you come to rationalise your experiences, as we all must do, you have to feel out the right way to go about thinking about it, and this process entails being wrong. In fact, you will always be wrong, because the truth is the experience itself ... any thoughts you might have about it are at best an approximation and at worst a sheer fabrication.
Back to the story, the being whom I was encountering gave commands. The things he wanted of me were very simple and no trouble at all. At the correct moment, I know the what and how, but the why I will never know. Even more than the general meaninglessness of this question and any explanation it elicits, it was as if asking why was disallowed. At one point, for example, I knew I needed to face the West and bow for several minutes in a position with my legs tucked under me and my arms stretched forward on the ground. It reminded me of submitting to the night, and it indeed felt like showing deference or homage. You might call it worship, and I don't think that term is amiss, but it feels different than you'd imagine when the object of your worship is a deity whom you're encountering face-to-face. All of this is my own analysis, however, because the attitude wasn't prescribed, only the body position ... as I say, I really have no idea of its meaning.
The experience felt like I was a dog in obedience school. He was testing how well I could listen and obey. In fact, I came to realise that the whole nature of this encounter was to establish a pet relationship. I am his pet human. This is very strange, because if you recall, the whole purpose of the journey that I'm on was freedom. I won't try to explain to you how this paradox resolves, because I'm simply not there yet. However, I was made keenly aware that it is too late to turn back. A moment had come where this being was offering me many things ... a whole pile of them. I couldn't make out what they were, but I didn't feel as though I needed anything, so I declined. Then I felt as though I was being rude to refuse a gift. I thought a mood of gratitude was more appropriate, and so I changed my mind and accepted. This was an agreement. I even saw a handshake, but I hadn't any idea of it when I was agreeing. I still have no clue as to the bargain we struck except for the things I've already said.
Admittedly, this account is much more likely to frighten you off than to entice you toward this path. However, the experience was incredibly beautiful and despite my misgivings, I feel very positively about it. I joined this path as the completion of a systematic process of undomesticating myself. It feels wrong from that framework to enter a pet relationship, especially one in which you're not the 'master'. On the other hand, I can imagine that I was a 'stray' or 'feral' human animal, barely making my own way so to say, and now I've been adopted. This difference is only one of perspective, and one adopts the view that is most beneficial to his experience.
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After a little bit of research, I have concluded that the being I encountered and wrote about in the last post was the one Satanists call Leviathan. I failed to describe him above, so I'll do it now. His aura is a large glowing red orb. Sometimes it seems to be encased in a very owlish-looking samurai helmet with a brow that turns up to resemble horns and a 'Y' shaped opening in the front. He appeared to me in many forms, notably as an octopus or cuddle fish like creature. I am unsure if I saw him this way, but I had the persistent feeling that he was a lion. He is untamable. His presence is impressive and intimidating, but he was very gentle and patient with me. Whoever he is, he seems to have claimed me.
Leviathan is associated with the water. Although hitherto I never had a great affinity for water, I currently live in a very watery place and the water here has touched me deeply. I am much closer to the water than when I moved here. He is also identified with the West, which is the direction in which he had me bow. Although he had a different appearance when I saw him on DMT, I am almost certain that this is the same being who linked with my uppermost point---the one I had called a 'phoenix'. The astral appearance which led me to call him 'phoenix' looks at times like a ram skull and bears a striking resemblance to the 'sigil of baphomet', although it seems to lack the ears present in that design. These are my reasons for calling this deity 'Leviathan'---I do not KNOW that this is correct, but the pieces seem to fit. For years I have considered myself a Taoist, and am frankly surprised to find my experiences aligning with the descriptions of Satanists.
Earlier today, I felt quite tired in the middle of the day. I lay down and meditated until I was ready to sleep. However, something in me was much too alert to sleep, and I meditated a long time. The 'phoenix' came to me, and I kept my perception on him for quite a while. As I lay there looking at him and feeling his presence, I became aware that he was the same being I had encountered the previous night. I eventually fell asleep, but I started dreaming before I got there. I used to struggle with insomnia, and this is a trick I learned years ago. During meditation, I simply fix my eyes straight ahead. The glow I see there gradually blossoms out and turns into images. When I hold my attention with them, they turn into dreams. I called it dreaming before sleeping, but you could say I merely fell asleep without experiencing a break in my continuity ... they're the same thing really.
The first few dreams I had were short and didn't really seem significant. With the technique I described, the first few dreams always feel more like watching images than really dreaming. For the last one, I felt fully asleep---that is, I was fully immersed in the dream. I was in a forest, standing in a stream. The appearance of the forest was very similar to the woods near my house, but in my mind, I identified it as the rainforest. I repeatedly felt large paws grabbing my hands, but when I looked there was no animal present. The paws were dextrous and felt like hands with giant, soft pads on the palms and fingertips. They also had needle-like claws that left prick-marks on my hands and wrists---the sensation was not painful but rather pleasant. I was sure the paws belonged to Leviathan (although I hadn't uncovered that name yet). A couple of times (once in each hand), I felt a claw go in and had the impression of getting an injection. He was numbing me, however it wasn't an anaesthetic or a sedative, but rather it made me sort of impassive.
At one point, I was squatting or kneeling down in the stream, and I had been grabbed by both hands (first left then right). The paws pulled my arms out and down into the foliage on either bank of the narrow stream. I had the feeling of knowing something transcendent for which there were no words. Eventually, I pulled my hands free and examined the prick-marks. They were red and looked irritated, but caused me no discomfort. However, as I was doing this, I noticed something on my left leg. I had stood up out of the stream and there was now a small barnacle-like thing on my leg. As I looked at it, I saw that it was a small plastic cylinder which was vacuum-sealed against my leg. I couldn't break the suction. As I saw this thing, I was sure it was a leech despite the fact that what I was looking at was manifestly not a leech. A moment later, I looked down and noticed a second one. I could feel them sucking on my leg as though they were going to burst my blood vessels. It was a very unpleasant sensation. I was at a loss, and wanted to pry them off with something. I didn't seem to have any objects on my person and I looked around for something which I could wedge under them, but nothing came to hand. Then I woke up. I had the lingering sensation of things sucking on my left leg for a few minutes afterward, but of course there was nothing there.
I am now preparing to go back into hyperspace. I was experiencing an unaccustomed pre-flight nervousness, but writing this seems to have relaxed me.
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So far I have been 'playing the innocent', which is to say I have described the events which transpired as though I were swept away by them and did not understand them. I was being honest, though, and merely didn't want to bother you with too much speculation. I seem to know a little now, however. It is not clear at all how that happened, but it is true. Up to this point, I've mostly been talking about sorcery, an art concerned with the acquisition and usage of beings I have followed Castaneda in calling 'allies'. I now have five allies. I didn't look for them, they all sought me out.
I will tell you about acquiring the new ones, but you may wonder why I haven't told you about using them. The reason is that it's a secret. I cannot tell you about any task I ask an ally to perform. They require an aura of mystery within which to work. This does not mean they're not 'real', but it does give opportunity for a skeptic to doubt (not a hard thing to accomplish -_o). One could say that the difference between a mage and a magician is that while a magician performs tricks for an audience, telling them what he's going to do, a mage performs true magic when no one is looking and never tells a soul. This is right, not only because it prevents sorcery from becoming a performance, but because it enforces one's humility. Secrecy is key, and although I've been a tell-all here, I have always been very good at keeping them. Thus, no one will ever hear a word from me about witchcraft I perform until after it has been accomplished.
I am a witch, and that isn't altogether the same thing as a human. Although I cast doubt on the usage of that term earlier, it applied as soon as I assimilated my first ally ... which was in fact the occasion of my 'big' pharma trip. Not having experience with allies in that fashion, I didn't identify exactly what had happened at the time ... but the fact is, when they called me 'witch' they were correct. I guess the word 'witch' is odd since I am a male sorcerer who is not a pagan. I am not especially fond of the term, but it seems to be the one that presents itself. I have never liked the term 'sorcerer' because it sounds poncy---I may as well call myself a wizard. Despite its association with fiction, the term 'wizard' does refer to a real thing which is different, but if I were ever to become one, I wouldn't call myself that because it is too silly even for me to carry off. -_o Terms such as 'brujo' or 'shaman' suggest specific traditions and so I leave them alone as well, which leaves me alone with 'witch'. Assuming this title does not mean I know anything, it only means that I have and use allies.
The first ally I assimilated was what's called a 'shade'. I will call it 'infrared', because it is literally a shade of deep red. It slides into me and the effect is the same as having grown a new photoreceptor. It brings a depth and vividness to my vision and a sharpness and clarity to my thought. I noticed these effects for a few days after my big pharma trip, but they stopped. They stopped because the ally had left, but I didn't have that explanation at the time. The ally had actually left because I had sent it on an errand, but I forgot that I had sent it. It has only just returned to me, and it seems to be the reason for my sudden understanding of what is happening to me.
I have already described the acquisition of two of my allies and taking the one I call 'falcon' into my head. It stayed there for hours on multiple occasions, but it would always leave. At least, I thought it did, because I would stop feeling it there. It came to me again today while I was in a state of ego death and thus was fully assimilated. I again ceased feeling its presence, but when I looked for it, I found it. I found that if I shift my attention to a point above my left eye, I can peer through the falcon's eyes. I repeated this exercise several times. It is a very bird-like perspective, which causes me to carry myself in a preening, avian way and not to blink often enough. There is a sharpness to my falcon eyes, but I didn't gain any great insight from this perspective, except to realise that I could do this, which of course spurred me to try it with my other allies. Each of them has a unique perception which he lets me into.
The final new ally is something I will call a 'frog-lemur'. It is a type of dæmon known as an 'imp', and the name is fitting. He is mischievous and ornery. He crawls all over me like a monkey; or he jumps down and grabs my hand and plays 'sad monkey'; or he holds onto my leg like a child throwing a tantrum, or like a shy child hiding under mother's skirts; if I ignore him, he'll start clowning and poke at my genitals. I find myself reversing the idiom and giving the silly command: 'Get on my back, monkey!' He is obstreperous in the extreme, but he is very funny. I like him very much, but he is by far the most trouble of any of my allies. He is the one from my dream in the rainforest. I mistook the dream for an encounter with Leviathan, but it was in fact an encounter with a new ally. He is my fifth. None of my allies seemed threatening in the way Castaneda describes, but very friendly. Our interactions have had the nature of a flirtation rather than a confrontation. Although I didn't seek any of them out, I believe this finishes my acquisition of allies. Not because I would necessarily turn a new one away, but because I have learnt from experience that five is my number. For no real reason of which I'm aware, spiritual events seem to come to me in fives. Numerologists give special meaning to different numbers, but to me the number five is simply reflexive, like the word 'myself'.
Unfortunately, the other component of that dream also turned out to be real. I picked up an ally and two leeches at the same time without even knowing it. The leeches are 'an extra pair of backs'. In fact, I had already acquired an extra pair of backs, making this pair tertiary backs. These are parasites. They are not like the allies. They are burdens that offer one nothing in return. These in particular make me feel weighed down and meat-bound. They sap your strength and make you complacent. I think the reason my early experiments with witchcraft petered out was the advent of the first pair of leeches. I don't remember when exactly they came, but I remember the 'extra pair of backs' analogy. I thought at the time it was just a silly joke in my head, but that joke was on me because I have carried these useless things on me for years. The first pair of leeches attached to my back, where they hang like a couple of plocostomi. When I added the dragonfly, there was a shuffle which led to confusion about how many tails I had. Since the back was taken, the new pair is attached to my left leg, as in the dream. I drag them along with me as though they were an enormous buttock dragging on the ground.
I find the situation with the leeches very aggravating because I do not know how to get rid of them. I think they would not have got me if I'd had my shields in order, but it was days since I'd renewed them at the time. In any case, it's fortuitous in a way that I picked the new ones up because they pointed out the old pair. I asked the monkey for his help, and he pulls them off, but they latch again as soon as he lets go. He clowns that he is mystified by this to show his inability to help. I am a witch with five allies now, and the four leeches hanging from me are insufficient to drag me down. However, I will remove them as soon as I find out how to do so. I fancy I will feel light as air once they're gone. I would welcome BlackIris's suggestions on that score if he's still reading this thread. I think I will visit the Buddhist monastery near my house tomorrow and see if they can tell me what to do. I know Buddhists are not really concerned with witchcraft and 'practical magic', but the removal of parasites is everyone's concern. Besides that, I've been looking for an excuse to go say 'hello' for as long as I've been living here.
I am not getting visits from the guru anymore. Rather, he unmasked himself as the one I have been calling Leviathan. I am still not totally sure this name is correct, but he's there constantly now. I see him every time I'm in the dark or close my eyes ... it doesn't seem I even need to be meditating to see him anymore. His astral appearance has come to resemble an African elephant. It has long tusks and is quite menacing, but I am not threatened because along with this impression comes the knowledge that he likes me. Because I've seen him quite clearly lately, I'm less sure than before that he's the same as the 'phoenix' ... but he's certainly the same one that put me through an obedience course. Recently, I have had myself on a regimen of drug use that is literally insane, but it has to stop now. I still like drugs, but factors in my life are forcing me to tame it down. That's fine, and really it's much of the reason I went at it so hard in the time that was available to do so. I don't want my practise to be dependent on drug use anyway ... but I am unlikely to be using any drugs or connecting to the darkweb in the next few weeks. If and when I do resume this thread, I won't continue to emphasise common witchcraft, but will instead turn the focus to my journey into the unknown, as promised at the beginning. Such a shift will certainly slow the pace of my posting. Anyway, if you've stuck with my ramblings thus far, I wish you well, and I will see you again when I do.