[NEW PRACTITIONER] - Could anyone help me figure out where to actually start? Seems like everyone is years ahead of me and I’m having trouble understanding much of what’s in here. I found the books just this year, and it’s been difficult to actually absorb the knowledge, often feels like my mind is breaking. Is anyone who’s somewhat advanced in the knowledge willing to have conversations with someone who might be mostly blind still?
[TechnoMagical_Intent] - My vote would be to find, or source, some silence stones:
You can try a couple of sticks, but they don’t have the gravitas and it’s harder to generate momentum in practice with just those…in my opinion. Sticks are more for when you’re out and about, walking around, and can use them:
And, along with some simple magical passes to start:
MAGICAL PASSES FOR BEGINNERS - (we also offer a live practice session on Saturdays!)
And begin setting up the process of the recapitulation:
This way you have open eye sitting, open eye standing, and closed eye awake practices to cover all the bases outside of sleeping 4 Gates Dreaming.
You could use the silence stones during recap, if time is an issue.
[NEW PRACTITIONER] - A lot to digest but thank you.
[TechnoMagical_Intent] - What’s most important is to begin getting familiar with what silence is, and the struggle to reach it. Or to STRUGGLE to reach it. That effort broadcasts…putting you in a position to start receiving outside NON-HUMAN help to spur you onward, if you let it.
In my opinion it’s not very useful for new people with a mind that’s very cluttered with an internal dialogue to start out with dark room practice.
In the absence of external stimuli it’s very likely that your mind will instead turn inward, causing your internal dialogue to increase rather than decrease.
You have to first build some basic foundational familiarity with what it’s like to turn your attention away from that running commentary chatter.
Silence Stones, Magical Passes (once you’ve got the movements down in daylight) and Recapitulating, in ascending order of relative difficulty for beginners, are how that foundation is built.
A simpler and more streamlined approach, the one that u/danl999 recommends, is to use the colors seen while doing a magical pass in darkroom (aided by getting some “sunlight glitter” during the day, do a search on the subreddit for this) to direct attention away from the internal dialogue. But using some stones and recap, leading up to this will, improve your results and focus.
[NEW PRACTITIONER] - I don’t see much talk about stalking in the main discussions, but while I was reading the portions on stalking in the books, especially in The Fire From Within, those really hit home for me. I frequently recite the 4 agreements and consider the 4 moods of stalking, also control, discipline, forbearance, and timing, another 4. These have helped me a lot with clearing my mind and saving my energy I think, is this just basic stuff everyone starts with and that’s why tensegrity and darkroom take up most of the discussion? I did watch the stream and follow along btw and will start doing tensegrity daily
[the-mad-prophet] - Over the years, the wider community of people interested in sorcery focused on aspects of Castaneda’s work that made them feel like a sorcerer but without developing the ability to access the second attention.
This became widespread.
Stalking is very important for sorcery. But because it deals predominantly with the first attention it is easy to trick one’s self into seeing it as the complete achievement.
This community emphasizes practices that deal with the second attention as a course correction.
Darkroom produces visible results so we cannot lie to ourselves about whether we have moved our assemblage point or not. Recapitulation, which is a stalking practice, can also produce visible results. Discussion about recapitulation is very welcome here. It is perhaps not as popular in conversation because it does not seem as ‘fun’.
There have been many bad players in the wider community who misrepresent stalking and four gates dreaming for their own agenda, usually to gain renown, money, or influence. There are plenty of places beyond this sub to discuss these practices. We try to keep the intent of this place focused on visible magic to keep the essence of these practices alive.
danl999 - I sure hope that’s not Miguel Ruiz’s phony “4 agreements”. Hopefully he’ll fade away and stop victimizing people soon. Although he seems to have passed the con artist reigns to his son. Anything in the books of Miguel Ruiz will harm your ability to actually learn. Basically any books by people other than Carlos, Taisha, or Florinda, are harmful to you succeeding at this. But you won’t be able to understand that until you can gaze directly into the Nagual, for sustained periods, and start to consider what the fake sorcerers are telling people. It’s in the opposite direction of where you need to go. Unfortunately, to directly view the second attention takes very precise practices; and only someone who had seen it daily for years, could possible help others learn to see it. Outside here, there’s no one like that. It’s terrible shame, but it’s the facts for now.
[NEW PRACTITIONER] - I totally hear you Dan, I will take that advice to heart. I was only viewing the 4 agreements as a means of conserving energy in my day to day life but maybe that shows how misguided I actually am. I think stalking is important for me because I have a lot of self importance to dispel but I can see that recap would be the best thing for me to do next and I’ll get after it along with tensegrity, and can see that it would be better to stick more directly to the source and that there’s more than enough information in Carlos’ books to guide me. I didn’t even know Florinda and Taisha had books so I’ll be checking those out next!
Emergency-Total-4851 - Recap is the stalker’s primary arena of activity. From The Eagle’s Gift:
She explained that a recapitulation is the forte of stalkers as the dreaming body is the forte of dreamers. It consisted of recollecting one’s life down to the most insignificant detail. Thus her benefactor had given her that crate as a tool and a symbol. It was a tool that would permit her to learn concentration, for she would have to sit in there for years, until all of her life had passed in front of her eyes. And it was a symbol of the narrow boundaries of our person. Her benefactor told her that whenever she had finished her recapitulation, she would break the crate to symbolize that she no longer abided by the limitations of her person.
Can’t be much of a stalker without recapitulation
Just remember, that time travel is possible with it! Don’t limit yourself, and remember to try to stay silent. Even in my limited experience, after opening my eyes, i saw sparkles everywhere, and when i touched one, i felt the wall of my childhood room!
danl999 - You’re confused about what stalking is, but that’s very common. Stalking has to move the assemblage point until you ARE someone else. If you’re just pretending to prank someone, that’s the opposite of stalking. That’s moving your assemblage point back to your normal ranges. So that when done correctly, you get a very strong effect at least equal to the green regions on that J curve map, and hopefully more like the orange region towards the end. I’m sorry to say that beginners latch onto stalking out of laziness, and the belief they can pretend the results.
[NEW PRACTITIONER] - I think I see what you mean about it being pursued out of laziness but I did understand that it’s not just pretending to be someone else it is actually being someone else, my personal interest piqued when I realized how big my own self importance was and how difficult properly stalking would be for me, I thought I was pursuing my greatest weakness, does that make sense? Regardless I’ve already decided to start pursuing recap and tensegrity as recommended, and see that those will also be extremely challenging for me, am I right in assuming that those processes will also help me shed my self importance? Am I right in placing the value I do on that issue?
danl999 - Go read Taisha’s unpublished book (available only in electronic form). She goes up into a tree house after the sorcerers move her assemblage point, and uses the tree spirits she can perceive in that state, to hold her assemblage point position where it is. Then she visualizes doing her kung-fu on the ground, below the tree house, which lures her double to come and do it for real. THAT’S stalking. It’s magic supreme. However, yes it’s also stalking when the witches of the old group pranked Carlos by pretending to be shoppers who bumped into him. It’s just that, they already had their assemblage points moved as far as they could go.
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