[true]

Thanks for the reply.

I started to respond to your post and I came across the answer that I was looking for and asking you about. In my experience, it's the "saturation" in Tensegrity and other practices that opens the door for non-volitional awareness and seeing. I emphasize saturation as the "key joint" in the Tensegrity "machine". Tensegrity is one way of "clothing" saturation.

Being "immediate", "functional" or "present" are other forms of saturation - the opposite of "skimming".

[forfuckssake]

Thanks. A succinct explanation.

From that, I could say that when I saw something and tried to "grab onto it", the automatic reaction was for the "skimming" to re-engage or to re-affirm itself.

[Crow]

forfuckssake:

I ask you to close your eyes or squint during Tensegrity for three reasons.

1) My daughter is a seer. She sees with her eyes closed. I have also seen fleeting glimpses and every time, I have been squinting. Just enough light past the eyelids to make out the (tonal) shape. I have read that men are incapable of seeing with their eyes closed, but True says no.

2) It is my understanding that Tensegrity works primarily because the practitioner becomes immersed in the activity, effectively cutting off the internal dialogue. Although the movements themselves may do something, it is the focus on doing them just so that really matters. Martial arts forms are not intended as tools to affect energy, but they are intended as tools to improve focus and balance. A valuable tool for mastering a form is to do it with the eyes closed. You have to really concentrate to know where the hell you are.

3) If you learn to see, maybe you can teach us.

[Crow]

True:

When I wrote my previous post I started with a dicussion on symmantics, re-read your previous post, determined it wasn't a matter of symmantics, and edited my reply. Now, again, I think it was just symmantics. I think you use "accept" the way I would use "acknowledge". You did not imply a judgement when I thought you did. If that is right, then I agree, Acknowledgement is the first step. Then you have to decide whether or not you will go along with it.

My hopes and desires are corrupted by my arrogance and my fear. I can't trust what I want. My behavior is to be determined by whim, or by probability analysis.
By the way, I am not a probability expert. If I make errors in my math, who cares? The point is to avoid fear and arrogance.

[true]

I feel for you Crow. I wish I could help you see that it's impossible to avoid things. That's not a working path. It should be apparent that it hasn't worked so far. Fear and arrogance are still concerns for you, so whatever you've been doing up to this point hasn't worked.

If you don't mind my advice, I'd stop trying to avoid them and just simply notice them when they arise... try to see what they are, what their source is and to whom they belong. Who or what is it that is feeling this fear, this arrogance? Is it not the tonal that is afraid to die, afraid to be exposed as a lie, and has developed arrogance as a shield, as an effort to continue its lie that it has things figured out and under control? Is not this tonal already dead? It has no future and no present... just a past that it must keep repeating in order to give itself the illusion of continuity.

I have led you with answers, but do not accept them. You have to see to whom this fear and arrogance belongs for yourself. To name it "tonal" doesn't change anything at all. Our knowledge of the tonal is not equal to seeing what the tonal actually is. When it is seen for what it actually is, it may not stop altogether, but it doesn't need to. It just needs to be removed as an extreme and put in its true place as another of the million items on the tonal - no more and no less than any other item. The emphasis that avoiding gives to these items makes them seem to be greater than they are, worthy of concern. Nothing in the tonal will survive. The tonal is concerned with itself as another effort to perpetuate this false continuity.

Who is it that peers out from behind your eyes? When your awareness looks behind your eyes, does it find the back of your head or infinity? The tonals items are happening, arising, in this awareness/infinity/nagual. This is the proper perspective for someone to choose their automaton, to stalk an identity, to emphasize and de-emphasize items at will. But all the items have to be made equal first. Avoiding and desiring make the prerequisite of equality impossible. Then you have to find out how to choose without desiring. B) That requires intent. Intent cannot go against what is, whereas all desiring (and avoiding) goes against what is.

Good luck Crow.
I hope the statistics favor you.

ps. What was said about fear and arrogance goes for hopes and desires too. Hope is the tonal's effort to project itself into a future... to maintain an appearance of continuity and reality.

[Crow]

Thank you True. I appreciate your advice. I think I get what you have been saying now.

[true]

Sweet. May the knowledge become power for you. Which means that something has to die. Maybe you'll be noticing an influx of crows again.

[Merged]

"So how are things going for you guys and girls? Are you finding what you're looking for in CC's work? Is there fulfillment or do you not expect to ever be fulfilled? What will it take for you to say to yourself, "This is it. This is what I dreamed it would be like. I've accomplished my quest."? Or will there be eternal longing?"

Three of four years ago when I was living and breathing Castaneda everyday, life seemed so much clearer.
Not doing was enough. It was the easiest thing in the world to do because there was no right or wrong to it. Everything had an edge of mystery that covered enough of the semantics that the imagination would fill in the rest. There was a comfortable lack of sobriety. The desire was clear - it was for power and understanding, what else could it be for? Freedom? Freedom from what?

Behind the every fanciful intent to lose self-importance lurked visions of power and seduction, to conquering this gate and that... these concepts were far enough removed from everyday awareness that they cast no real shadow of responsibility. And there were so many validators along the path that the world was alive and responsive!

And now some years on, branching into Tao and the 4th Way. All similar concepts, all pointing at the same thing, the mind, the centers... the terminology describing the process, the levels etc... It 's all the same on paper.

You know what it actually feels like? Leaving your first school where you know everybody and everything about the school. You like it there because it feels so familiar but at the same time you're bored sick by its familiarity and yearn for something different, something new. It would be nice to have the new thing come to you in your familiar surroundings, keeping them as they are, but then they wouldn't really be new would they? No you have got to change schools, start at the bottom where you suddenly know no-one. Meet new friends, learn in a different style. So what's it to be? The sickly familiar everyday?

But imagining the alternative and doing the other are like being told what an apple tastes like and actually biting into an apple and tasting it for oneself. I had to jump off backwards when I did a bungee jump. And thats what it feels like now, that I am bored shitless with repeating the same shit over and again and yet I watch myself do it over an again! I say I! Not that there's anything wrong with that either - you know I think that's what really gets me more than any of it - its the fact that there is nothing wrong with it, judgement is just another trick the mind uses against itself... that tangles the knot even tighter... And even saying this is just another example. The idea always gets in the way, particularly the ideas about oneself...

But say we get to a point where we do see something. Do we try and verify it thereby automatically negating its validity! Maybe by doing absolutely nothing we begin to realise that there is really nothing to do - the sheer weight of nothing becomes unbearable - give me something to do! Crave the old routines!!! Anything to keep that silence from tearing my world apart!

And then - well, now the pressure eased maybe I can return to the emptiness, but what made me think I had ever left???

But how serious should we take, after all isn't it one big cosmic joke?

Better let the cat out...

[true]

Hey Wall.

I too found other schools greatly helpful in clarifying and broadening my grasp of CC's teachings. I find the fourth way a wonderful resource for stalking oneself - you know, observing the centers, the many I's, aim, considering, lying, etc. It's like a very systemized path of stalking. And I find correlations between self-remembering and heightened awareness.
And I've utilized alot of non-dual paths like zen, tao and advaita to do some deeper deconstructing of core beliefs and bring me closer to seeing and stopping the internal dialogue and the world, dropping the mind, etc. Before I had those references, I didn't really know what much of that meant. I found dropping the sense of self as a seperate I-ego-identity accomplished many of the tasks set forth to CC - recapitulation, erasing personal history, self-importance, routines, perceiving the mystery, transcending reason-tonal, etc.