Thread: Techniques For LUCID DREAMING - Preparing Oneself For The Endeavor

Darkmatters,

You have taken some very powerful and empowering concepts from the works of Carlos Castaneda. My only familiarity with 'Toltec Sorcery' comes from reading the same books that you have - that and my own personal experiences which have, for the most part, cooroborated the teachings there-in. Of course, his books were a work in progress... and his later knowledge and the system of belief that his writings eventually make apparent were cobbled together over time and imperfect from the very beginning. He was human, after all. As are all of us. My own understanding is a thing in progress. I continue to have experiences for which there is no apparent presidence. At some point, each person's path is their own. The question is, i guess, where would you have your path lead to? For me, 'sorcery' includes every type of practice or exercise which leads to improving one's mastery over awareness. For me, it predates buddhism, existensialism, etc... and has been with us since the very beginning. With shamanism i would just be weary of the 'fluff' which can be found in that 'genre'. I'd not waste my time with North, South, East and West, paying homage to Earth, Wind, Fire, and Water... following rituals or saying incantations and such. Don't get me wrong... i'm all about respecting Father Sun and Mother Earth... i just want to keep things as real as possible while trying to decipher some of the mystery that surrounds us. For Buddha, i guess enlightenment was for the greater purpose of escaping the 'wheel of karma and rebirth'... or the disintegration that takes place before reintegration as a sorcerer would say. And i would say that this is the greatest practical goal that sorcery has to offer... i'm not really prepared at this time to offer anything more consise than the following haphazzard summary of the possibility of attaining immortality... (my 'book' is a work in progress for just this reason)

DEATH DEFY

To practice against the folly of dreaming is as close to practicing against the 'folly of dreamless sleep' as one can get. Dreamless sleep is as close to death as we can come, it is much the same as a temporary coma, with little or no brain activity beyond maintaining our respiratory and circulatory and other repair functions. When we sleep without dreams we have quite literally come apart at the seams. The ephemeral self, or soul, has detached from the body and has experienced a very real dissolution. A small spark of life, like that which exists in every fertile seed, is almost all that remains as a beacon for calling the self home again. Our energetic essence is in constant flux, it swells and recedes. Our attachment to this earthly plane simply cannot be maintained for any great length of time. It has been said to those seeking immortality and escape from the grasping hand of death that if they would refuse His calling then they should practice by attempting to refuse the call of Death's little sister Sleep for a period not less than seven days. Perhaps a particular meditative state might enable a person to accomplish the feat of cheating Sleep for that length of time or longer. It has already been discussed that all sorceric practices are geared toward one end; the displacement and fixation of the assemblage point upon different bands of perceptual awareness. To increase the fluidity, mobility and staying power of one's assemblage point and to improve one's mastery of awareness - the element of being which allows us to claim sentience. One of the greatest feats that a sorcerer can undertake is to seek an extension of that coveted sentience, repreive from the absolute folly of death. It is said that only two things are certain in this life; taxes and death. That there are no survivors here. And that no one gets out alive. Sorcerers, however, view the human condition as being both a great gift and a great opportunity. The physical form is the eggshell of an egg. By practicing the art of manipulating awareness a sorcerer is sharpening his egg-tooth, intent. With impeccable intent a sorcerer aims to maintain a strong degree of cohesion - even after the physical shell has lost its usefullness.

Many will find only oblivion at the end of their days. Everything that they are will be thrown back into the void and disintegrate utterly and completely. The only thing that will remain is an image of their being in the memories of those that still live and had contact with them. Having never heard of sorcery or taken part in any sort of religious practice or lifestyle, even ‘devout’ atheists may experience something else entirely, however, a continuation of their consciousness. Some will be so caught up in the act of perception that they won’t even realize that they have died. Infallible reason will continue to offer solace in their self-delusion of living in a comprehensible world. Idiosyncracies will be explained away and they will exist almost perpetually in a dreamlike state. Some will know that they have passed on and feel compelled to stay here, near to persons and places that they know. Others will experience realms that are idyllic or even hellish in accordance with the bent of their character. Some will be whisked away by beings more powerful than themselves to a place not of their choosing, others to places so beautiful that they couldn’t have been imagined. Most will gravitate toward beings of similar character as themselves. Some will choose rebirth almost immediately. Some will feel compelled toward rebirth or have little or no choice as the matrix takes from them what it needs in order to form the continuing weave. Most will lose almost all of the energy that was once at their disposal. Some will find reserves of strength and energy they never knew they possessed. Their whole lives will flash before their eyes and in that moment the Eagle will devour their experiences and the energy that accompanied them. Being devoured by the Eagle will be a pleasant experience for pleasant persons and unpleasant for others. This may be experienced as becoming part of a greater thing than onself, joining with an all powerful and all-knowinusg presence. At the moment of death we grow just the smallest amount lighter. The electric current that is carried in our mind and body jumps out away from the body. Perhaps it immediately dissipates, perhaps it hangs together. Some will gravitate again to the world of dreams without a physical body to go back to. Others will become not much more that the eyes which line the wall of the matrix, the vortex which creates and uncreates everything around us. Others will become full ephemerals, ‘haunting’ the physical and waking world, an insatiable interest in the living. Imagine what you can become in a dream, and you will begin to understand the myriad of forms that a person may attain after death. The Void / The Birthing Abyss / ETC. (Unfinished chapter concerning what happens when we lose both conscious and subconscious mind.) where does all of this lead, the ultimate act of sorcery, the mastery of awareness.. is in choosing to hold rather than relinquish the gift that you have been given, Try staying awake for seven day (sleep is death’s sister) - Tibetan Buddhism posits that learning to control the dream state also prepares an individual (through practice) to determine where the soul or consciousness goes after death of the physical body. I posit that it leads , in fact, to greater control of the ephemeral self in an ephemeral world, etc. - For my part I would say that the whole lot of it is just plain old folly. Wasted time. Here and Now gone. The folly of waking like merges with the folly of dreams Unless the Sleeper Awakens and the Waking Dream. A sorcerer reaches toward the totality of their self by recalling not only conscious and subconscious minds but also the field upon which they originate. The plane toward which the reintegrated gravitates. - Sorcerers maintain that everything that we do as men is the work of the ‘Tonal’. The tonal begins at birth and ends at death, it is the organizer of the world. When dreaming or awake we concern ourselves with the tonal alone. The field from which it originate is not dealt with us at all. This field is referred to by some as the ‘Nagual’. “..All possible feelings and beings and things float in it like barges, peaceful, unaltered, forever.” Then the glue of life binds and clusters some of them together into the organized chaos of the area where beings hover, the tonal. - And so, “.. the shell must be broken in order to liberate our being. It must be broken from the inside at the right time, just as creatures that hatch out of eggs break their shells. If they fail to do so, they suffocate and die.” A sorcerer that manages this feat is said to have unfolded the wings of his perception and to have gained the totality of himself. A sorcerer with enough energy claims knowledge as power by intending the shift of his assemblage point from the center of reason to the center of will, and as his world collapses, the mystery of the nagual unfolds. Several times each night we pass from the utter folly or dreaming or the controlled folly of lucid dreaming into the nagual. Though most persons will never remember this journey, it is here each night that the cluster that we are disintegrates and later reforms, here that we die and are reborn. Deep sleep, the place beyond dreams; a coma of death for the ordinary man, but for an impeccable sorcerer- here lies opportunity. Having mastered the art of self-remembering while both awake and adream, there is some chance that he may carry his selfremembering over into the nagual. Remembering the self in you that is going to die is the not doing of the mortal self. What a sorcerer does in journeying into the nagual is very much like dying except that due to his master over awareness his cluster does not disintegrate entirely completely, but expands a bit without losing its togetherness. Thus, the absolute liberation of the sorcerer is at hand when he may practice against death. The gift of the nagual is difficult to accept, but a sorcerer may chose to forever keep the awareness that he has been given. Like the plumed serpent Quetzacoatly of Toltec legend, he may rearrange the cluster of his existence to take on any form. Time and space would no longer limit the beings that he could contact or the worlds to which he could travel. - Sorcerers of antiquity had different terminology than we do today. There was no ‘matrix’, etc. The nagual used to be referred to as the ‘Great Eagle’ and it was said, “To die and be eaten by the Eagle is no challenge. On the other hand, to sneak around the Eagle and be free is the ultimate audacity.” • “I proclaim”, says the Buddha, “that in this fathom-sized, feeling-afflicted ascetics body dwell the world and the origin of the world and the annulment of the world and the path that leads to the annulment of the world.”

Wow!!

Thank you for posting all that!! That's another section from the book? Or did you just write all that??!

Heh... it seems if we're patient and keep asking questions, You'll eventually post the entire book here little by little!!

Ok, must re-read and try to absorb this.

Sorcer you are very generous

My phone won't wrap, so I have copied post one, in 5 parts, to my note application and read it.

I too like how you write.

I will be copying all your stuff and looking forward to buying your publication when you are ready.

And i dont read much but i like your stuff.

printed, and will read during my break, on account of the glowing comments.

Don't get me wrong, I like to read.... books. Not a giant wall of text on a page that ends up burning my eyes and I lose my place everytime I blink.
Plus most of this stuff is over my head a little, it doesn't need to be so complicated if he wants people to understand.

You read all this, and you get it. I tried to read it but couldn't be bothered after about the 2nd section. That doesn't mean everyone my age wants to throw away books and live as imbeciles. I want to learn what's being said, but since it's not broken down into a shortened, bullet point guide, I find it hard to summon the will to read it. Especially since I know little of what it's actually about.

I wish I could understand that, but im only a 15 year old german kid.

Also this post got me into considering self hypnisis seriously, and last night i got to a point of relaxation where i could not feel my body and eyes were fluttering. However it ended because I wanted to see how suggestable I was, and told myself that my eyes would be stuck shut (they weren't). Is this supposed to happen or am I not very suggestible?

Sorry Origami - I do agree it's hard to read huge walls of text on the computer. I take it back.

yays

Originally Posted by siuol

Also this post got me into considering self hypnisis seriously, and last night i got to a point of relaxation where i could not feel my body and eyes were fluttering. However it ended because I wanted to see how suggestable I was, and told myself that my eyes would be stuck shut (they weren't). Is this supposed to happen or am I not very suggestible?

If a person says to you, "I cannot be hypnotized" then you must believe them. A person becomes hypnotized by either choosing to do so... or by being very skillfully tricked into it. If you are not a skilled hypnotist then you aren't going to trick yourself into doing anything A hypnotist doesn't walk someone up on stage and immediately say to them, 'Your eyes are now stuck closed'. The person would immediately resent the hypnotist. You vs. them (or you vs. yourself in this case). A hypnotist starts out by only making very factual statements, ie; he sees that your eyes are starting to droop shut so he says, 'it's getting harder for you to keep your eyes open'. You are not a sucker or a fool, so you cannot try to play yourself like one. Self-hypnosis should have a deffinite goal in advance. Do not stray from that goal. When the time comes you are partioning off the greater part of yourself to be the subject and only leaving a very small part of yourself to give the pre-determined directions.

If you talked yourself into a state of extreme relaxation such that your body was numb or without feeling ... and your eyes may even have been going through REM movements... i'd say it was working for you just fine, until you decided to either lie or rebel against yourself.

Origami, Fantersam, siuol, DarkMatter

And anyone else

I have now copied all sorcer’s stuff, so far, and I am taking it home to my stand-alone, home computer to put it into paragraphs of about 3 sentences. I will bold anything that stands out to me. Short phrases only though, not chunks.

When I’m done (in 16 hours) I will comeback here to Netzone Internet Café and private email you the easier to read (tahoma font size 12). Let me know if you are interested.

I'm down! I already read MOST of Sorcer's big posts, but I still haven't quite waded all the way through the one at the beginning of this thread (I'm so ashamed- and after what I said to Origami too! )

But yeah, I had to mark my place repeatedly by highlighting a word or a line as I went down the page so I wouldn't get lost.

Thank you debrajane, you're a lifesaver!!

I have root access to the source.

Oh good! So, you're volunteering to post the whole book, all neatly broken into paragraphs.... ?

'Tis not mine to share, but Sorcer permitting I can pm it?

I actually read through this last night rather than skimming. It brings up a lot of interesting topics and ideas, many of which I realized I had already applied to my life and noticed considerable positive improvement with them. Improving my awareness is something I need to work on, however, and will be using this material as reference to aid me in that. Really looking forward to seeing the finished product.

If it can be done, could anyone just summarize in a post what the different sections are about? It will save you a lot of time and effort doing the whole thing, to just explain key points, and disregard anything that isn't necessary.

I would love to know everything in it, but I would also like to be able to speak every language in the world. It's too much effort for what I would achieve in the end.

At the very least tell me WHAT it's about.

It is about the language of the world.

Elaborate on that please. Just keep elaborating until you feel the message in it's most basic form has been delivered. If I actually understand it I will read the whole thing.

That was a reference to The Alchemist.

In short it's about mastering awareness. And taking full conscious control over all energy available to you. The end goal being enlightenment, nay - immortality.

The Alchemist? Is that a book by any chance? Because I read a book called that but I'm not sure if it's the same one you are talking about.

i read it. this summary doesn't do it justice, as it actually contains a lot more information. though i do find carriage returns and breaks to be key in written communication, in all the time people have spent whining about how hard it is to read they could have read it over twice, saved it and broken it up, and / or printed it.

it opens up with a bit of Castaneda's Yaqui sorcerer precepts, centered around the idea of "folly" or misperception in various states and reclaiming wasted energy that is burnt up on useless internal dialogue. also included is the idea of "assemblage points" or foci of consciousness.

then on to some unique breathing and visualization exercises (of which "facing the double" is the only one i have seen, though the breathe one is along common breathing visualization themes) and a fairly novel summary of several common techniques, including WBTB, focusing on hypnogogia, and the daily wristwatch RC. also mentioned is the "keep the arm raised into hypnogogia" technique which laberge mentioned about robert louis stevenson in ETWOLD, i believe.

also mentioned is an expansion of the whole "wearing jewelery" which has shown up on these forums as "the inception" technique. basically, one places a bracelet or a ring on that they wouldnt normally wear and the physical sensations / memories tend to show up in dreams as a dreamsign.

overall its an overview on LDing w/ an initial pretty spiritualist approach, which then transitions into more concrete techniques often seen on these forums, but from a set of fresh eyes, so to speak. it was refreshing once i made it past the castanada bits. i do like some castenada, but dont take it very seriously after the end of "the art of dreaming."

So how can this help us with our own endeavors? What special advice and tips does it give?
Excuse me for not really caring/minding about the art of dreaming or the deepness it entails, all I want to know is is there any practical advice to be found in the text? Like does it tell you a new way to see lucid dreaming as a concept or does it even just show you how to approach lucid dreaming each night, mentally?

That's all I want to know in the end. Think of me liking only the simple things in life like monster trucks and watching t.v., but really I'm not mentally inept and lazy. I would like to learn about lucid dreaming as a topic, but right now I have yet to even try it, so forgive me if I just want to get straight to the point and get some experiences.

Originally Posted by debrajane

Origami, Fantersam, siuol, DarkMatter

And anyone else

I have now copied all sorcer’s stuff, so far, and I am taking it home to my stand-alone, home computer to put it into paragraphs of about 3 sentences. I will bold anything that stands out to me. Short phrases only though, not chunks.

When I’m done (in 16 hours) I will comeback here to Netzone Internet Café and private email you the easier to read (tahoma font size 12). Let me know if you are interested.

Oh im very interested! =).

btw. sioul: how do you got to that point of relaxation?