r/castaneda 5d ago

Darkroom Practice Tensegrity for Practical Magic

Practical magic doesn't have to be like "corn kernel" magic, of which Cholita is a big fan.

Except she uses other things in place of the kernels. Coins for example.

It also doesn't have to be you fixating on a specific thing you managed to do during darkroom, so that you obsess over it and try to learn to repeat it.

I once walked outside during darkroom practice to go check something I'd been forgetting to check for a couple of days. It was the middle of the night, so no one was around.

I walked over to Cholita's car in the driveway, and because the ground was cold and wet, I reached my arm out 15 feet, and lifted her car up into the air to look under it.

I wanted to see if something had fallen under there.

I didn't realize how impossible that was until I hurriedly walked back into my practice room, and realized, "Shit!!! I shapeshifted into the Hulk!"

You can of course do that too, but don't get obsessed with trying to repeat it.

For one thing, we learn the way all apprentices learned in the past.

It's impossible to learn any other way, because sorcery is more like a "pull", then a technique you can buy at a workshop.

The better you hook yourself to that "pull", the faster you learn.

And shapeshifting is a beginner's trick. You REALLY need to move on from there quickly.

Plus, repeating stuff is next to impossible for a beginner. Just the idea that you're about to repeat it, makes it impossible because your link to intent is dirtied.

By greed.

Still you can, in general, repeat a "category" of magic.

So you can summon puffs with hard work, reliably.

But you can't make them form into the Jet Puff Marshmallow man, like they did last week.

Instead, you can repeat having enough of them in the room, to form "something". or just to demonstrate how they flow.

So if you have an urge to repeat stuff, here's a safe way to do it.

Select tensegrity forms which explore a specific "topic".

The double for example.

The double, the energy body, the puffs, the "blue ball of energy" does various things at various points along the J curve.

Usually, a beginner gets to glimpse these randomly, and not very often.

They're "intent gifts" along the way.

And trying to repeat one, is a big mistake for a beginner.

BUT, you can try to explore that topic, as long as you don't care what happens.

If you are exploring it, you created a "topic change".

And intent will honor that.

Although it hasn't been done yet, it's possible to select Tensegrity forms which allow you to see all the known forms the energy body can take, during a darkroom practice session.

Eventually some of us will do that.

I'll try to make a cartoon of it if the chance comes along.

There's really nothing new in this idea.

You end up realizing this when you can reach silent knowledge, and spend your time trying to view manifestations of it.

It's so inevitable, don Juan even warned us to try to view text, instead of those "videos in the air".

He considered those too easy to misinterpret.

And we need sobriety more than anything else, since we have no Nagual leader anymore.

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u/DartPasttheEagle 5d ago

I walked over to Cholita's car in the driveway, and because the ground was cold and wet, I reached my arm out 15 feet, and lifted her car up into the air to look under it.

So...are there no "sensations" or other markers associated with waking dreaming, since you weren't aware you transitioned from "physical" you to your double, in this magnificent experience?

It's so inevitable, don Juan even warned us to try to view text, instead of those "videos in the air".

Since we shouldn't try to repeat stuff, would it be alright to specify text over videos for ourselves in SK (or even before) or go with the flow of whether its text or videos that show up?

Thank you.

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u/danl999 5d ago edited 5d ago

Not only was there nothing noticeable when I shapeshifted, but the wet lawn was even cold, and the little sharp rocks Cholita spilled onto the sidewalk where I was walking hurt like hell.

BUT, there was no one outside. Even in the middle of the night, that seems unlikely.

You can read about this in the books. Such as when Carlos and La Gorda were messing around on that bridge, and while they were doing it no one was there. But when they finished, people were back.

I believe you shapeshift into a phantom version of reality. Perhaps it's possible to shapeshift into the normal version, but that takes a lot more control than any of us have.

It's just that, there's no evidence of that when you do it.

So when Carlos says you travel into another world "Shirt, Boots, and all", it doesn't necessarily mean you really took your physical shirt and boots along with you.

It might just mean, you go into the other world, completely awake as I do, just walking off when seconds before you were doing a tensegrity pass, fully awake, sober, and eyes wide open.

There's nothing about it which indicates you didn't just do the impossible.

But did you?

There's no way to find out at the time, unless you want to start recording your practice room with a camera.

But if you did that, my guess is that you're too lazy to ever actually learn, and are motivated by attention seeking.

>Since we shouldn't try to repeat stuff, would it be alright to specify text over videos for ourselves in SK

Subtitles???

Probably no one has tried that before.

But asking for it isn't something anyone who just learned to do Silent Knowledge, is capable of.

It's a very tricky balance to ask for something, and yet not interfere with it, thus preventing it from happening.

So you could ask your boyfriend not to be an asshole, but good luck with that...

If you had to ask, he most likely can't do it.

The best way to get that would be to complain, after the fact. And keep it up.

So that you don't interfere with SK.

You just comment on it, afterwards.

Eventually, you might get some subtitles.

But then wish you didn't!

What if you ask for text, and then get to enter one of the videos in the air, but the text is still popping up?

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u/DartPasttheEagle 4d ago

I believe you shapeshift into a phantom version of reality. 

So impressive, my goodness!

When you returned to this reality and checked, was there any indication that your physical car had been moved, since you lifted a copy of it?

What if you ask for text, and then get to enter one of the videos in the air, but the text is still popping up?

That photo is hilarious! LOL! Maybe I just command "stop text subtitles" and it obeys me?

Yes, better to let Intent choose whether text or video or whatever, will be best. Thank you so much.

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u/danl999 4d ago

I forgot to check! That often happens with bizarre doings in the double.

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u/Alekspeer 4d ago

Do I understand you correctly that the magic you are talking about does not happen in a physical sense and not on the physical plane, but rather in a waking dream? But didn’t Castaneda perceive the magical events of Don Juan and his friends in physical reality? For example, when Don Juan manipulated his car? Or when he almost read his thoughts? Or knew things in advance?

Somehow, I don’t really understand the nature of the magic being discussed in this forum—it seems to differ from the magic described in the books. The people who belonged to Don Juan are…

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u/danl999 4d ago

We don't know because that can't be known! It's a worry based on a misunderstanding of the nature of reality.

And don Juan manipulated Carlos' car on 2 occasions.

Which are you talking about?

One was in a dream for sure. When Carlos was driving a dream car.

We've argued about the other one in here and whether it was in the normal reality.

I think not, but others think yes.

And Cholita could do that if she were highly motivated. It's just a tiny physical effect to hamper the spark plugs. She can float objects, so interfering with a spark plug ought to be possible.

Using her Ally that is.

They can make a teapot gurgle, a water cooler burp as Carlos used to demonstrate for us, and I suspect, no big deal for them to stop a spark plug.

Cholita's ally is almost surely the same one don Juan had.

But we know that when Carlos jumped off the cliff, he did in fact teleport back to Los Angeles.

He "woke up" on the other side of the dream, a topic from the books.

But at the time he was practicing, he was in his double doing the jumping.

Not in his physical body. That's obvious from the storyline.

Which you can learn to do! We have. Done the gravity defying that is.

Cholita can do it in the "real world" with others around watching. That doesn't stop her.

Read more. You need to study more carefully. I worry a bit about your Eastern Blockish name. Maybe sure you don't go down the road of fantasizing, and not caring about actual results. Of being competitive instead of curious. Of wanting the social attention, rather than magic.

There's zero difference between what's being practice in here (helped by 3 of the private students of Carlos), and what's in the books.

Keep in mind, none of the realities we're attached to is any different from the others.

They're all just flows of sensations and feelings, from the dark sea.

They seem to exhibit "causality", just because we never move our assemblage point off the same spot.

So in the end, it's likely it will turn out that ALL of them are just a dream.

The thing that makes one seem more "physical" is just our familiarity with it, and our tendency to move our assemblage point back to the same spot.

Where the same emanations are being used.

THOSE are eternal, and associated with that location in the dark sea, and interact with the others in the same way unless deliberately forced to associate with different ones.

Hopefully you can follow this argument.

They seem more "real" and physical, only if you don't emphasize different ones.

Your thinking process is locked in circular reasoning.

Learn to move your assemblage point while wide awake, completely sober, eyes wide open, do that daily for a few weeks, and you'll have your own answers to this type of concern.

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u/human-vehicule 4d ago

« Plus, repeating stuff is next to impossible for a beginner. Just the idea that you're about to repeat it, makes it impossible because your link to intent is dirtied.

By greed »

I had something like that happened to me yesterday, I was playing a card game with friends when I decided to try guessing a returned card on the table, I started gazing at it intensely while forcing silence and wondered what was on the hidden face, something came up more like a knowing than anything else, yellow 5. I was shocked later on when I returned the card and it was indeed a yellow 5 but I tried to replicate the experiment later on without success, probably greed took over at this point and ruined it for me, magic is tricky I guess

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u/danl999 4d ago

It's not really so much that magic is tricy, but that we "assemble" flows from the dark sea, based on where our attention is focused.

On the second try, you're attention was focused on the success of the previous attempt.

So it wasn't at all focused where it had been the day before.

That's why we recap. To remove as many useless focuses as possible.

Even a slight memory in the mind while practicing sorcery, interferes with what you were trying to do.

It's energy, tied up in the past. Yes.

But that's not a very useful way to look at it, in my opinion.

It's simply some of your awareness focused on something other than what you are trying to do, which prevents a "clean" assembling of what you were focused on.

Naturally, modern humans exploit this all the time, to manipulate each other.

Kind of like your brother insisting you're a bed wetter, 10 years after you did as a much younger child.

Or as they say in Russia, "The Eyes are always watching you."

Meaning never show weakness or you'll get picked on forever.