The Sorcerer's World

THIS POST IS VERY LONG, I APOLOGIZE. I WOULD REALLY LIKE TO PUT THIS OUT THERE, HOWEVER.

recently i have begun to realize that i am not as aware as i used to be. now before you laugh at the idiosynchrity of this statement, let me just touch on why... and note, if you want to just skip my own reflecting and get to the point, just cut right to the '~~~~' below.

back when i was first getting into the Castaneda books, I was an active participant in the teachings. at the time I was still going to high school and so that was my hunting ground for the most part. I would practice walking the halls without focusing my eyes, hands held in certain positions, etc., even in class, I exercised being aware of my death and seeing through what my peers were saying to each other with that in mind. I did this for a while, for months, really, just offhand and whenever i remembered or reminded myself.

It really helped cuz at the time, i had a petty tyrant of a stepmother that literally had total power over my household, and my father. so i had no help at home from her tyranny. she literally fed me less than her son tyler, made demeaning remarks to and about me to the family and in public, and basically just pressured me in every way possible with disdain and this false 'concern' that i still can't explain to this day. she had a hormone imbalance or something, and took testosterone pills, and was basically a real freakin dike, to put it that way. she was just with my dad for money and almost left him when he told her he'd never marry her without her signing prenups.

anyways, nowadays i rarely exercise the old sorcery techniques described in Journey to Ixtlan, which I consider the greatest roadmap to warriorship there is. i used to be, back in the time period described above, so... detached, i guess, and so aware of my self and the world that i felt like i wanted nothing more than to be like every one else, unaware of the folly of our existence and our being. being aware was like a burden to me, because here i was in the social school world with every one else, but here i REALLY was, mentally and emotionally, investing in this other, alien world that no one could really relate to except a few of my closest, dearest friends at the time. i was disgusted with the plasticity of everything, and didn't even consider myself a warrior or anything like that. i thought i was weak and incapable of ever becoming free of the bounds of my being, being neither fully committed to my spiritual journey nor my scholarly, social journey.

so i think sometime during my first or second acid trip, when these feelings were confronted head-on with an almost near-death feel, i just said 'screw it'. i literally decided then and there to screw the sorceror world and just live like how i felt, like how i thought i wanted to. what's the point of telling myself how to live, ya know? especially with advice from a book i couldn't even validate the validity of. so i got a job and listened to my parents and tried school and did terrible in college, basically not showing up at all, and since then i've lived largely on my own, homeless for the most part, living from paycheck to paycheck, job to job, all the while ingesting about 700mgs of a drug called DXM daily. I have literally done this dissociative synthetic-opiate nearly every day for the last 2 or so years. I honestly can't believe i'm even rational right now, it's freaking insane. i should be dead or brainfried by now... i used to have an IQ of 142, i just wonder, how freakin low is it right now, after all the drugs and mental rapings. hell, i'm on it right now, that's how disgusting i am.

my point in all this is that i feel a turning point. I don't want to live a 'normal life'. i CANT live a 'normal life'. try though i have tried, and sometimes even not-trying just to see if it worked, to be like i was back before reading castaneda, totally involved with societal gain and shit i now see as pointless, I CANNOT COMMIT. I sincerely believe with all my being in these energetic facts that i have acquired, because it is like they say in the books, it is my BODY, or SOMETHING that learned them, through feeling directly those 'emanations at large'. I cannot deny these truths through logic or anything else, hell, these realizations are what shape the rationalizations and truths i deduce nowadays. they are more real than anything i can 'learn' at school or in books written. it's like castaneda wrote, there really is only one path, it feels like, and that path is the one where death is the advisor, where dreams are as real as reality and must be treated as such, where our spiritual journey encompasses more than just this one life on earth we are in right now, and will extend beyond our deaths and has spanned beyond our births. well that last one is sort of something i've deduced myself, but point is, i feel like a turning point is in order.

~~~~

my question here is, is it possible to begin anew? to really, solidly erase personal history, see death as an advisor, and be an active participant in dreaming? is this just a ploy, a waste of time- are we ever too far over the edge via drug use, brainwashing, or just idle living to DO THIS?

even asking these questions, i feel i know the answer. i am ashamed to even be posting this, it seems like a cry for attention to me about something i know is obvious.

i don't know what i want, maybe just to know that there are others out there who believe as much as i do ya know. who have to believe, really. i just wonder, if i can't commit myself fully to this life i decided to live back when i didn't WANT to live the warrior life, am i capable of committing fully to the Warrior life at all? if you are capable of being broken away from the life you lived before realizing Warriorness or w/e, then aren't you already fragmented, broken? weak? incomplete?

well i'm glad i wrote this, in any case. i'm sorry to waste forum space, i think i'll copy and paste this into my myspace blog or something... i can't expect any one to read through all this garbage.

good luck out there, warrior-folk. wherever you are, whatever you are feeling, i hope you find the right path and follow it with grace~

_________________
...It's all a dream we dreamed one afternoon~ long ago...~

Oh right, cool, i'll just disregard the bulk of this post



Seeing through the bullshit

For me, yeah, initially the path seemed like fun and i entertained it on a sort of 'part-time' basis for a long time.

Then, after a few years of delving into the masses of information available to me, the synchronicity on certain issues was what spurred me on.

And the evolution of those ideas planted by castaneda started to take hold on my life.

For the last few years my assemblage point has been bouncing around like crazy, and i don't mind admitting what happened to me here.

I was feeling increasingly trapped in what i was 'supposed' to do, the long term relationship, the journey through academia, the tedious 9-5, the routines, and the subsequent pointlessness of all of that just got the better of me.

For example, i have a teaching degree, but do i really want to be a teacher of any kind? no, i was just following in my father's footsteps, as the old saying goes.

I'm not proud of the selfish, arrogant, dependent asshole that i have been for most of my life. and I have hurt many people through my misinterpretations and laziness in understanding my 'true' nature.

I was a person who lived his life pretending to be in love, when i didn't understand what that really meant - or I did, but cast it to the back of my mind.

something had to change.




I can relate to this, I had this 'knowledge' that people seemed oblivious to, and I thought they were dumb and stupid, living in their own delusions and personal hells, not realising that I WAS EXACTLY THE SAME, and probably still am!

the folly of underestimating other people basically nearly destroyed me.

we are all fools, and being aware IS a burden!

The burden of consciousness is what drives people to drink and drugs in the first place, anything to distract themselves from the awesome responsibility we all have.

every precious breath i've ever wasted came back to haunt me.



Funny this one, everything that I have experienced on LSD (and i've taken it more than a few times now, stupid? probably) was what I found interesting reading about in the books of CC. I found correlations with states of mind, like the whole thing about inner silence, as well as the idea that how can we trust the validity of our perception?

so many things that i had experienced on LSD seemed to 'make sense' after reading CC.

Anyway, so you said "screw the sorcerer world and just live like how i felt, like how i thought i wanted to."

Then....



This is similar to my experience, although i never said 'screw the sorcerer world', and in fact tried to LIVE it - whilst doing a similar thing to what you did here!

So I thought, go to college, then university (twice!), follow the path put forward by my parents, in between I worked in offices, and throughout all this - thinking that i was following the 'path of heart', what CRAP!

I have been smoking weed almost every day for the last ten or so years, I was drinking alcohol every day for a time, I had a job in a kitchen which I used to turn up late, drunk and stoned to!

I'm not listing these things to sound cool, these are all things i have found detrimental to progress on some level.

The question is that OK, i have these things in my life - these shields, but what am i trying to protect myself from?

Why do I find it necessary to get stoned as soon as i wake up?

These are all just barriers that need to be removed, in order to sweep the tonal clean.



I don't see it as 'one path' - isn't every path different?

Diversity is the basic essence of humanity, every human is different and has their own 'way', right?

To me, I am constantly making decisions, changing my path - trying new ideas, evolving through recognising mistakes and solving problems in my way.

I have to have a goal, but that goal could change!

The person I was is certainly not the person that I 'know' I am, I don't even identify with that person any more. That was a good lesson for me to learn, that when my self-identity was relegated to obscurity I became aware that it was a FICTION to identify myself with the 'person i was in the past'. I'm not that 'guy' at all, I have the capacity to make decisions and change my actions.

People i used to consider were 'my friends', turned out to be true agent smith's (like della said in an earlier post), living in the past and trying to get me to come back on that less-than-sea-worthy vessel "the malaise of nostalgia", no thanks.



What do you mean by beginning again?

If you really 'began again', then you'd have to re-learn all these ideas, and go through the same stuff you have just been going through!

our existence right now is the culmination of everything we have experienced, we can look back only in 'reference'.

if you want to solidly erase your personal history, you just have to act upon it, i'm sure that like me - you read that and thought 'no way, i have some good friends, my family's ok', or whatever. on my path however, recently, without really 'wanting to', i.e. in my mind (which just wants things to go back to the way it was, before all this CC rubbish), i severed connections to a lot of people i used to 'like', purely because they were a detriment to my path.

that may sound way egotistical, but i got to the point where I HAD TO CHANGE, and to do that, erasing my personal history is one of the ways we can achieve that change.

Right now i'm in the best position I have ever been in my life to actually get out there and do what i feel is right for me, which is going on the road with my band, and that would not have been possible with the limitations imposed on me by a long-term relationship and the friends who sought to pound me with judgements about how I should be 'realistic' and 'get a proper job'.

I see evolution as happening right now, i'm sure that's nothing new to say

You could turn into someone completely different if you wanted to - in one second.

For me, when I feel the need to 'change' some aspect, i just intend it, and the more I intend - the stronger it becomes.

I set up the intent to change my world completely, to have my 'old' character die out, and follow the path with heart.

this has manifested itself in ways i did not expect, and to achieve this I did some pretty insane things which i would never have 'normally' done (just another validation that the 'old' me is being phased out), and things are starting to change in my life quiet drastically.

The path of heart is definitely not as 'fun' as i thought it would be, or at least - where i am right now isn't that 'fun', because i guess I am in the eye of the needle, and at any point I could revert back to my old life.

I guess once that 'old' life has disappeared completely from my awareness, then maybe things will get 'better'.

Not that I'm expecting sunshine and lollipops, LOL

The point is that in my experience, it just requires unbending intent to achieve any of the things suggested by CC, sometimes the results are unexpected, i suppose, and maybe you just have different expectations?

To be honest, if I was castaneda, I wouldn't advise ANYONE to do the things he's done, all of these things are deliberately designed to completely change our lives - to sever the ties to consensus reality is something that NO-ONE wants to do, who wants to go through life alone? who wants to be a warrior on the razor's edge?

No it is safer to reside within our boundaries, clutching our shields like they are real, and staving off death for as long as possible.




It's not a waste of space - space is infinite anyway isn't it?

and it's always good to post something on this forum, I believe that it helps a lot.

i see what you're saying about the 'warriors way'.

For me, a lot of the work I have done involved dissolving rigid belief systems I have developed, for example, you ask if there are others who have to believe, well yeah - but don't take their (or my) word for it.

I've always been fooled, and I've always picked up things second hand - tried them for a while eventually realising they were complete bullshit.

basically, i honed my bullshit detector. if it doesn't feel right - it's not.

the 'warriors way' has been misinterpreted by myself on so many levels, that I have to vigilant with MYSELF, and really question what the hell it is that i'm doing.

consistently though - through re-reading and research/experimentation, it has shone through, and certain ideas have 'felt right' for me, and i have followed these and found knowledge down these avenues.

getting back to my point, having any fixed idea on what the warriors path 'should' be has been detrimental to me, and through assimilation/meditation, i guess i am in the process of 'working out' what is 'right for me'.

all of this is a process, and part of that process is intent. if we 'have to believe' that EVERYONE is capable of becoming a warrior, then we also 'have to believe' that everyone is TRYING, because it is really 'the only way'.

A lot of people have 'given up', and that is definitely verifiable the further i go.

To me, 'giving up' isn't really an option any more, I used to indulge in the 'forgetting' this stuff - but these days it is my one and only priority - I understand that if I do decide on any level to 'go back' to my old ways then I am a goner, for sure.

In the realms of all possibility there are two possible futures for me, as i see it - continue to seek the path of heart or give up.

Sometimes they hang in perfect balance, and maybe i do entertain the nostalgia for a while, but i don't know - something has changed, and now it just doesn't feel the same any more.

A tiny example, computer games - i used to be hooked, and found no greater pleasure in wasting my time guiding some false 'ego' around a maze, killing everyone i came in contact with - this synthetic 'happiness' i felt comes back from time to time, and i waste a little energy in entertaining it - going online and downloading some of the old Amiga games I used to have or whatever.

After an hour or so, i realise the futility of it, and go back to the point at which I first remember realising this!

It was the day that I became bored of the games I was playing, and sought to WRITE MY OWN!

I became obsessed with learning to program in BASIC, and during high school I would sit in the library and work on code (man, was i a geek ) - which is possibly where a lot of my sexual frustration built up to the point that I went a bit 'mad' on fulfilling those desires later on in life!

anyway, getting back to the story, I developed a massive urge to figure out how things worked!

I used to wake up in the mornings early so I could get on the internet whilst my parents were asleep and rack up a massive phone bill talking to hackers hahaha (this board is probably one of those connections - i am now spending my time online talking to hackers of the mind )

So this nostalgia for old games always brings me back to the point where I decided I was bored of playing the game, and wanted to program my own.

i always remember reading a hacker talking about the day he realised his brain worked in exactly the same principles of programming, i.e. IF - THEN statements, GOTO, and most important (that i can't believe he left out of the analogy!) DO - LOOP!!!

How deep and metaphorical hahaha

Believe it or not, petty tyrants such as this are a wonderful blessing (though usually in hindsight, and seldom at the time). You were treated "unfairly", and it opened your eyes to the reality of the world in ways I doubt most "privileged" kids ever know. Most of my friends who are the "best" warriors didn't come from privileged or even "normal" backgrounds. Most came from harsh or even abusive surroundings, and though the stories they tell might break an average heart, the warrior recognizes that adversity is what creates strength far more than privilege. You are blessed, as I was, with a tyrannical parent. Rejoice!



Torn between two worlds - again a common story among warriors, myself included. As a young child, I often wondered what was "wrong" with these adults who believed in the sky bully, who bought a car to drive to work just so they could work to pay for the car they just bought... and never had time to do anything but drive back & forth to work, to gather little green slips of paper which allegedly bought "food & shelter" even though the old homestead was paid for and food was growing in the back yard. Yes, the world of matter & men is nuts. The warrior sees this and simply allows it to be on BEING nuts, while simultaneously inhabiting "a separate reality" within the continuum of his own being. This is the art of controlled folly in one regard - seeing the madness all around you, even in those closest to you, and Knowing with absolute certainty that the world is a nuthouse and the lunatics are running the asylum. There was a point in one of the CC books where Pablito expressed the wish that he could just go back to the way things were before he became aware. And as he quickly learned... there is no going back the way you came. There is only living as impeccably as one can in the midst of the madness, creating an island of sanity, even if there is only an inhabitant of one.




If/when you reach the point where change in your lifestyle is mandatory, you may find it useful to adopt the philosophy of... "That was then, this is now." I was a heavy smoker for over 22 years, but one day I made the decision to be a non-smoker. I wasn't "quitting". I wasn't going to "try" to "cut back." I simply became a non-smoker. Which meant... I didn't smoke and BECAUSE I was a "non-smoker", I didn't have the withdrawal/addiction issues which many people trying to "quit" will experience. That was October, 1994, and I have not smoked a single cigarette since then. In fact, I loathe the habit and consider someone else's second hand smoke like an assault - which it is. It was a shift of the assemblage point - self-willed & self-performed - from the mindset of a smoker to the mindset of a non-smoker. What I've found in others I've worked with who are involved in addiction therapy is that the ONLY thing that seems to work in the long run is 1) a GENUINE desire to change; and 2) a fully aware change of mindset. As Yoda said, "Do, or do not. There is no try." *heh* Gotta agree with that.



May sound trite, but the only to do it is to simply DO it. Don't plan for it. Don't think about "tomorrow" or "next week". Anything is possible. Literally anything. My own experience with erasing personal history is that it begins to occur somewhat "naturally" once the warrior commits to the path.

The problem I've observed is that people from our past don't really WANT us to change - so in many ways, the "phantoms" in our lives are holding onto our personal history far more than we are ourselves. Example: My mother still saw me as a little girl even when I was late into my 40s. Former friends think I'm still "into" the things that interested me back in the 80s, or even the 60s. There are memories that are essentially "frozen" into their minds, and it is those memories they use to create their "idea" of you - whether it is accurate, or ever was. So when DJM encouraged Carlos to let go of his past, that was probably the first and most important step toward erasing personal history. You can talk till you're blue in the face about who you are NOW, but if someone REMEMBERS you as a "troublemaker", they will never allow you to be anything BUT a troublemaker in their own mind... and so that "history" is then attached to you, whether it's your own doing... or not.

So... what I've found is that as I began to actually "live" a sorceric life, my personal history more or less erased itself. Oh, sure, people still know who I am and what I've done in the past - and there is very little that can be done to change that. People knew Carlos. People (allegedly) knew don Juan. That's life. So the actual sorcery of erasing personal history is more about distancing oneself from the ideas & beliefs others may hold about you. I've found it necessary to terminate long-term relationships with people who insist on seeing me as I was 10 years ago or 20 years ago... people who will invest a lot of time & energy into attempting to convince me that "no one ever changes" or something of that ilk. There is simply no point for a warrior to maintain contact with their "past" - and that's just one of those ugly and unfortunate truths. And, sadly, it's that seeming NEED to "run with the herd" (walk with the phantoms) that sinks most warriors before they ever reach their own genuine sense of autonomy. Maybe some folks really do have a loving & supportive family, but humans are humans and our nature is to resist change - not only for ourselves, but for those around us. Sure, we can argue that until the cows drop dead, but we know in our hearts that it is the undeniable truth.

So... bottom line is that you can do anything you want/need to do... That is our nature as humans, too. We have an incredible power within ourselves... IF we are willing to take it even when it's the hardest thing we ever have to do.

If you're feeling lost between two worlds, turn around and ask yourself which one calls to you with a feeling of "home." That's where you'll find your path with heart. Maybe it's the sorceric journey. Maybe it's trying to be somewhat more "normal." But from the sounds of your post, "normal" flew out the window years ago... so I think you're like the rest of us who are on this strange journey... we cannot be "normal" even if we want to, because somewhere along the line, we got hooked into the path and now the path is what we are.

_________________
"You have to be immortal before you will know how to become immortal."
Quantum Shaman | Evolutionary Workshops For Solitary Warriors

man i am gonna bookmark this stuff.

thanks for taking the time to answer...

mmmm it's a lot to think through, but in particular, this one segment really hits home with me:

"If/when you reach the point where change in your lifestyle is mandatory, you may find it useful to adopt the philosophy of... "That was then, this is now." I was a heavy smoker for over 22 years, but one day I made the decision to be a non-smoker. I wasn't "quitting". I wasn't going to "try" to "cut back." I simply became a non-smoker. Which meant... I didn't smoke and BECAUSE I was a "non-smoker", I didn't have the withdrawal/addiction issues which many people trying to "quit" will experience. That was October, 1994, and I have not smoked a single cigarette since then. In fact, I loathe the habit and consider someone else's second hand smoke like an assault - which it is. It was a shift of the assemblage point - self-willed & self-performed - from the mindset of a smoker to the mindset of a non-smoker. What I've found in others I've worked with who are involved in addiction therapy is that the ONLY thing that seems to work in the long run is 1) a GENUINE desire to change; and 2) a fully aware change of mindset. As Yoda said, "Do, or do not. There is no try." *heh* Gotta agree with that. " -Dellah

you either know you have to change, or you don't. i think the trouble with my situation is, i'm so consistently twacked out all the time that i can't even trust my own judgement on whether i have to or don't.

it's rough stuff, i really gotta digest these feelings lol.

thanks again transitions, dellah. i didn't think anyone would answer such a self-full and long post, but i appreciate it ;_;

hopefully i can post again soon with some better news ya know.

~take care guys

_________________
...It's all a dream we dreamed one afternoon~ long ago...~