11-14-2012, 12:01 AM
quantumshaman wrote:trinsic1 wrote:
One of the things don Juan said that originally caught my attention many years ago was that... when a man leaves this world in the manner of a sorcerer, he can take his awareness with him. That's a paraphrase, but generally accurate.The way I see it is that an "ordinary man" (a non-sorcerer) gives up his awareness to the eagle at the moment of death. That awareness is shredded and returns to the cosmos to go through the infinite cycles of life, rebirth, death, and so on.Someone who dies with awareness (a sorcerer) has the ability to "slip past the eagle to be free." Depending on how one interprets this (and there are lots of interpretations around these parts), that generally translates to keeping one's awareness (and identities) in some manner of eternal existence. My personal interpretation is that we transfer our awareness into our double (the energy/dreaming body) instead of giving up our awareness to the eagle. The double is the key to survival beyond the threshold of "death". I wonder why Don Juan decided to leave and not come back. I have read all of the books and never understood that.I am working with magical passes but the biggest problem i have is not staying consistant with my practices, if anyone had any advise for that it would be helpful.The question is... was "Don Juan" ever really "here" at all? My personal theory at this point, after many years of being on this path, is that don Juan was actually the double and alter-ego of Carlos himself. Carlos was clever enough to play the fool and have us all believing it - but by the time he COULD have revealed the "deception", he was ass-deep in criticism about other aspects of his work, and to reveal that he himself was don Juan... would not have played well in the midwest, as the old saying goes. Bottom line - it really doesn't matter whether don Juan was a flesh-and-blood human being, or the double of Carlos personified into his own personality. I've experienced my double as both (solid flesh and blood, and the higher-self personified). What matters is that the teachings are real, wherever they came from - as anyone who really does The Work will discover. I know a lot of armchair philosophers who like to sit around and debate the veracity of don Juan, the "truth" of Castaneda's teachings, and many end up bitter and disenfranchised - largely because they are spending their time debating rather than DO-ing.
As for the magical passes... I don't really find them to be helpful in the least. They are, for the most part, martial arts kata re-dressed and sold as "tensegrity". If it works for you, that's cool, but mopping the floor, doing the dishes or raking the yard are all just as effective as "not-doings". I don't say that to be critical of tensegrity, but as someone who studied martial arts actively for 15 years, I can say there is value in the discipline, but the movements themselves are only as "magical" as the practitioner. You are the magic.
D
Yeah I have a hard time believe that DJ was carlos's alter-ego. Too much information from which we know little about is contained in his books. There has to be something to DJ IMHO. But its true the teachings is most important. Its my understanding that you need a certain amount of energy to do this work and magical passes is suppose to help with that. How did you go about reaching your double?
One of the things don Juan said that originally caught my attention many years ago was that... when a man leaves this world in the manner of a sorcerer, he can take his awareness with him. That's a paraphrase, but generally accurate.The way I see it is that an "ordinary man" (a non-sorcerer) gives up his awareness to the eagle at the moment of death. That awareness is shredded and returns to the cosmos to go through the infinite cycles of life, rebirth, death, and so on.Someone who dies with awareness (a sorcerer) has the ability to "slip past the eagle to be free." Depending on how one interprets this (and there are lots of interpretations around these parts), that generally translates to keeping one's awareness (and identities) in some manner of eternal existence. My personal interpretation is that we transfer our awareness into our double (the energy/dreaming body) instead of giving up our awareness to the eagle. The double is the key to survival beyond the threshold of "death". I wonder why Don Juan decided to leave and not come back. I have read all of the books and never understood that.I am working with magical passes but the biggest problem i have is not staying consistant with my practices, if anyone had any advise for that it would be helpful.The question is... was "Don Juan" ever really "here" at all? My personal theory at this point, after many years of being on this path, is that don Juan was actually the double and alter-ego of Carlos himself. Carlos was clever enough to play the fool and have us all believing it - but by the time he COULD have revealed the "deception", he was ass-deep in criticism about other aspects of his work, and to reveal that he himself was don Juan... would not have played well in the midwest, as the old saying goes. Bottom line - it really doesn't matter whether don Juan was a flesh-and-blood human being, or the double of Carlos personified into his own personality. I've experienced my double as both (solid flesh and blood, and the higher-self personified). What matters is that the teachings are real, wherever they came from - as anyone who really does The Work will discover. I know a lot of armchair philosophers who like to sit around and debate the veracity of don Juan, the "truth" of Castaneda's teachings, and many end up bitter and disenfranchised - largely because they are spending their time debating rather than DO-ing.
As for the magical passes... I don't really find them to be helpful in the least. They are, for the most part, martial arts kata re-dressed and sold as "tensegrity". If it works for you, that's cool, but mopping the floor, doing the dishes or raking the yard are all just as effective as "not-doings". I don't say that to be critical of tensegrity, but as someone who studied martial arts actively for 15 years, I can say there is value in the discipline, but the movements themselves are only as "magical" as the practitioner. You are the magic.
D
Yeah I have a hard time believe that DJ was carlos's alter-ego. Too much information from which we know little about is contained in his books. There has to be something to DJ IMHO. But its true the teachings is most important. Its my understanding that you need a certain amount of energy to do this work and magical passes is suppose to help with that. How did you go about reaching your double?