Sorcery starts with stopping the world.

[Nagual LoneWolf]

The basics of sorcery for a sorcerer is that the world is not real, or out there, as we believe we see it. For a sorcerer, "reality" is only a visual reality.
This visual had been part of you from the moment you were born.
Everyone who came into contact with you since you were a child is a teacher who describes the world to you in a visual manner. Once you set your assemblage point on this general perception you see this visual like everyone else. From that moment on, your a member of this visual universe of mankind on earth.You now know the description of the world.

As a becoming sorceror your very first "step" is to(drum roll).....stop the world.
This also is the chance to enact seeing for the very first time.
The sorcerer's description of the world is also a visual.

In order to arrive at seeing one first has to stop the world .
Don Juan the Sorceror said this about stopping the world:
"Stopping the world is indeed an appropriate rendition of certain states of awareness in which the reality of everyday life is altered because the flow of interpretation, which ordinarily runs uninterruptedly, has been stopped by a set of circumstances alien to that flow. In this case the set of circumstances alien to our normal flow of interpretations is the sorcery description of the world. The precondition for stopping the world is that one has to be convinced; in other words, one has to learn the new description in a total sense, for the purpose of pitting it against the old one, and in that way break the dogmatic certainty, which we all share, that the validity of our perceptions, or our reality of the world, is not to be questioned."

Once a Sorceror can stop the world he then will have to learn how to visualize again. This new way to percieve the stopped world is often referred to seeing.
You the reader of this: Have you ever stopped the world?
Have you ever tried? What did you see?

[Aranno Way]

In my opinion one is not a true warrior until they stop the world and everyone has the potential to stop the world but won't because most people don't have the courage to do so, because it means that their cozy world will go bye-bye.
The problem is that most people will cling on to their familiar world and don't want to venture outside of that.
I don't blame people for such a move but the harsh reality of our mysterious is really frieghtening but at the same time I don't regret my path.
People that have occasional lucid dreams and think that they are warriors have alot more to embrace and remember that it is just the beggining of something else.
My advise to anyone that wants to follow the path of a warrior is either follow it 100% or just live a normal life.
To act in between the paths you will be following a path that leads to something undesirable and most likely in the I.B. realm.
When chooseing the warriors way there is very little gray area that is a good path.
I stopped the world years ago and learned to see in my dreaming and normal percption and the fear that I had the most was feeling alone in this world at the time when it happened and now I don't feel the impending loneliness that I felt when I went through the movement which was paramount in my lifes experiances.
The act of doing such a thing is quiet extroardinary but essential to progress as far as acting outside of the predatory fixation that has us all.
L.Wolf what was your experiance on this matter?

[Guest]

I haven't stopped the world without the benefit of ally plants; I have, in dreaming, without them.
Intense experience the first time.
Wakulla

[Bob May]

Don Juan taught Carlos about "agreements from the world around him". He also referred to this phenomena as "reaffirmations". He also taught him about "stoppping the world".
At one point when Carlos saw a piece of cloth caught in a cactus, thinking that it was some kind of animal, Don Juan said that for a short time he actually had "stopped the world". Later he pointed out that another small instance of "Agreement" or "Reaffirmation" was also "stopping the world". This confused Carlos and he asked about it saying somthing like; "I thought you said I already "Stopped the world."
Don Juan's answer was very important. He said that "Stopping the world" comes a little at a time and then all at once.
When I "stopped the world", as far as I know there were only 4 Castaneda books published at the time. I had been living the excecises in those books for about a year and a hal to two years. They were my constant companions and I followed all of Don Juan's recomendations; I left a successful band that I belonged to, got my body in good shape, practiced "not doing" excercises in perception and left my family and friends an moved 300 miles from everything I knew.
In short, I was living the life of a warrior as best I knew how. I had been experiencing "reaffirmations" for a long while, like I said 1 1/2 to 2 years when the world actually "stopped" for me.
Nothing I had done was sufficient to have prepared me for what happened that night. I had taken some mushrooms and when they took effect I was in the dining room/ party room in the house that I rented a room in. Some of the guys who also rented rooms there were playing cards and I was sitting talking with them. Their faces began to change into other beings, some were aware that my perception had begun to change and began taunting me. I heard and felt a "snap" in the base of my skull and I knew at that moment that I was not going to be "coming down" the next day. Or the day after either.
I taunted back and forth with the demons while at the same time guarding what I said so that the people in the oom had no idea that this was going on. It's hard to explain except to say that everything had more than one meaning.
As the evening wore on, Language began "coming apart". Words had no meaning and I lost my ability to speak. Actually it was more than that. It was as if I knew the words, but their meanings were so inadequate that it was no use talking. Then everything started to dissolve. But it was not like anything I had ever experienced before. It was as if everything was dissolving from the point of my navel. Everything that I saw and felt was turning to grey and coming apart along lines. I could hold it together by using my will at the center of my body but I was losing the battle and the world kept dissolving along these geometric paths or lines that seemed to hold everything together and yet began at my navel.
That was the night my world stopped. And i was right in my knowing that night. I did not come down the next day or the next. It was actually a matter of months before I began to feel that I was come back to any kind of normal life again. And even then, sometimes just a cup of coffee would start to send me back into that state of awareness.
During that two month period the reaffirmations were Constant. That is the best way to describe it, or maybe living in two worlds at once. The television spoke to me as did peoples conversations not meant for me. Lcence plates on automobiles and addresses on houses that I walked by began forming a code that I could read and understand. It was as if the loss of language that first night created a void within me that had to be filled with another language. It was as if it were an automatic response in my mind to create a new language to supplement the old.
Over that period of time there were many sensual changes, not just visual. At one point I was able to hear a leaf rolling across the street a half a block away. Another time, I woke up to find that everthing was "short".
I mean everything was short and fat. If I had a ruler, I would not have been able to prove it because it too would have been short when held vertically and long when held horizontally. If I had to guess, I would say that proportionally, everything was half as tall as it should have been and two times as long and wide. I spent a whole morning amazed by this phenomena.
For two months my perceptions were assaulted in various ways along with constant guiding and affirmations from all around me while at the same time the presence of beings superimposed on peoples faces. And sometimes just the beings by themselves without people being there.
Nuff said for now.
Bob

[seeitall]

the question is if any AP shift can be labeled as
"stoping the world" ? My understanding was that
it is special AP position, where you can perceive the energy
flowing in the universe directly without interpretation.-------------------
Less book-learnin'! More book burnin'!

[Nagual LoneWolf]

Seeitall...there is such a ap point but its descripion is more than merely "stopping the world".
Stopping the world can be defined as when one perceives more than the visual one recreated by mainstream society.
For an instant perception or all the way to Seeitalls total seeing of the energetic universe.
That I have seen the world crumble before my eyes many times and all I could "see" was energy. There were times when I saw things that were not part of the world thus in a sense stopping the "tonal" of the world.
The description is that of perceiving differently the world than what you were taught to keep and hold.
Its a general thing but once again tie it with silencing the internal dialogue and an act of "will/intent" and thus you have created sorcery.

[Bob May]

"the question is if any AP shift can be labeled as
"stoping the world" ? My understanding was that
it is special AP position, where you can perceive the energy
flowing in the universe directly without interpretation."
Slight shifts can be more accurately labeled as "altered states" or "heightened perception" as Carlos puts it.
"Stopping the world" is where the whole world view collapses all at once and can be a devastating experience.
I have no doubt whatsoever that many people have ended up as permanent residents of mental institutions after having experienced this.
Perceiving the universe directly or "Seeing" as Don Juan describes it with lines of the earth and people as egg shaped bundles of light fibers would be a very specific AP position.
I have experienced this myself, but I have experienced other ways also, that would involve "seeing" to the heart of the matter (no pun intended) without the benefit of interpretation.
For example; People talk about seeing auras around people and how certain colors mean that this person has certain personality traits or emotions running through their mind.
So, there is an interpretation needed to understand what the aura means. This would be a psychic experience and an enhancement of certain extra-sensory organs or "Chakras", but not true "Seeing".
I have experienced a type of "Seeing", not exactly fitting the description given by Don Juan, but in which the very soul or essence of the person shows on their face. No interpretation. This also is "Seeing".
There are more realms "out there" than we realize. And probably as many AP positions.
I think the main subject here is that "Stopping the World" is a doorway into which a Warrior steps and out of which a Sorcerer emerges. It is the first Major Initiation from Power, God, the Universe or the Nagual, however you want to understand it.
It is the point at which there is no going back. A change in perception that is so great, that after a person has experienced it, there is no denying that the world and your place within it are not what you thought they were.
At that point a person begins to either build a new description, or realizes that any new description would also be an illusion, and therefore begin to search for the place between those worlds.
I chose the latter path, and didn't bother with the Sorcerer's description much after "Stopping the World".
What would have been the point? There was no teacher to guide me, and my goal was not to be a Sorcerer anyway.
My goal was to understand the Truth.
More akin to a "Seer", or a "Man of Knowledge" who learn to slip "between" the two descriptions of the world.
Bob

[Nagual LoneWolf]

Such a good post Brught Flame. And I agree...to address the burning bush in the sorcery tale as "stopping the world" I see it as that one threw off their once solid hold on reality.
Their world changed. It stopped. It wasn't what it used to be.
Something very different happened. All of a sudden the world was not constant. It stopped.
And I have had it collapse around me and thought I would die in its rubble.

[Bob May]

"And I have had it collapse around me and thought I would die in its rubble."
And, in a sense, you did die in it's rubble. Bob

[Guest]