Merkabah

[Skarekrow]

This looks pretty sweet

 

[Skarekrow]

Can we perceive those inorganic beings, don Juan?" I asked.
"We certainly can," he replied.
"Sorcerers do it at will.
Average people do it, but they don't realize that they’re
doing it because they are not conscious of the existence of a twin world.
When they think of a twin world, they enter into all kinds of mental masturbation,
but it has never occurred to them that their fantasies
have their origin in a subliminal knowledge that all of us have:
that we are not alone."

-Carlos Castañeda, The Active Side of Infinity

 

[Skarekrow]

 

[Skarekrow]

Selected quotes from Carlos Castaneda

​

Years ago in my 20s I started to read a Carlos Castaneda book; his writings had been referenced by other works to which I was drawn, so I figured there was much wisdom to gain from him.

However, as I recall I did not really get what Carlos Castaneda was saying.
At the time, I was apparently not ready for what he had to say – or perhaps more accurately, how he said it.

Now I am in my 40s.
I happened to run across his book, The Wheel of Time, which consists of quotes from his previous books along with a commentary describing where he was at the time those books were written.

While I still don’t claim to understand all of what Carlos Castaneda has to say, I did find quite a few Carlos Castaneda quotes to be worthwhile and applicable to my life experiences and present worldview.

I now realize that one of the main reasons I did not previously seem to comprehend his philosophy related to semantics relating to Toltec wisdom and spirituality.

The Toltec spiritual tradition frequently uses words and phrases like “mitote,” “dreams” and “dreaming,” being a “warrior,” etc. to convey basic ideas for spiritual growth, and I simply did not get that during my early readings.

My proper exposure to Toltec spiritual teachings — a perfectly valid, transformative, wonderful set of spiritual teachings – did not occur until I began reading books by Miguel Ruiz, who has since become one of my all-time favorite spiritual teachers.

I have read three (3) wonderful books by Miguel Ruiz:

1. The Four Agreements
2. The Voice of Wisdom
3. The Mastery of Love

Here are a few of my favorite quotes, many of which I could appreciate only after I familiarized myself with the Toltec path.

Quotes from The Teachings of Don Juan

Power rests on the kind of knowledge that one holds.
What is the sense of knowing things that are useless?
They will not prepare us for our unavoidable encounter with the unknown.

Nothing in this world is a gift.
Whatever has to be learned must be learned the hard way.

Dwelling upon the self too much produces a terrible fatigue.
A man in that position is deaf and blind to everything else.
The fatigue itself makes him cease to see the marvels all around him.

To be angry at people means that one considers their acts to be important.
It is imperative to cease to feel that way.
The acts of men cannot be important enough to offset our only viable alternative: our unchangeable encounter with infinity.

Quotes from A Separate Reality

Feeling important makes one heavy, clumsy and vain.
To be a warrior one needs to be light and fluid.

A warrior lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting.

A warrior chooses a path with heart, any path with heart, and follows it; and then he rejoices and laughs.
He knows because he sees that his life will be over altogether too soon.
He sees that nothing is more important than anything else.

An average man is too concerned with liking people or with being liked himself.
A warrior likes, that’s all.
He likes whatever or whomever he wants, for the hell of it.

A warrior takes responsibility for his acts, for the most trivial of his acts.
An average man acts out his thoughts, and never takes responsibility for what he does.

Only the idea of death makes a warrior sufficiently detached so that he is capable of abandoning himself to anything.
He knows his death is stalking him and won’t give him time to cling to anything, so he tries, without craving, all of everything.

The spirit of a warrior is not geared to indulging and complaining, nor is it geared to winning or losing.
The spirit of a warrior is geared only to struggle, and every struggle is a warrior’s last battle on earth.
Thus the outcome matters very little to him.
In his last battle on earth a warrior lets his spirit flow free and clear.
And as he wages his battle, knowing that his intent is impeccable, a warrior laughs and laughs.

We talk to ourselves incessantly about our world.
In fact we maintain our world with our internal talk.
And whenever we finish talking to ourselves about ourselves and our world, the world is always as it should be.
We renew it, we rekindle it with life, we uphold it with our internal talk.
Not only that, but we also choose our paths as we talk to ourselves.
Thus we repeat the same choices over and over until the day we die, because we keep on repeating the same internal talk over and over until the day we die.
A warrior is aware of this and strives to stop his internal talk.

The world is all that is encased here: life, death, people, and everything else that surrounds us.
The world is incomprehensible.
We won’t ever understand it; we won’t ever unravel its secrets.
Thus we must treat the world as it is: a sheer mystery.

The things that people do cannot under any conditions be more important than the world.
And thus a warrior treats the world as an endless mystery and what people do as an endless folly

Quotes from Journey to Ixtlan

One shouldn’t worry about taking pictures or making tape recordings.
Those are superfluities of sedate lives.
One should worry about the spirit, which is always receding.

Personal history must be constantly renewed by telling parents, relatives, and friends everything one does.
On the other hand, for the warrior who has no personal history, no explanations are needed; nobody is angry or disillusioned with his acts.
And above all, no one pins him down with their thoughts and their expectations.

When nothing is for sure we remain alert, perennially on our toes.
It is more exciting not to know which bush the rabbit is hiding behind than to behave as though we knew everything.

Whenever a warrior decides to do something, he must go all the way, but he must take responsibility for what he does.
No matter what he does, he must know first why he is doing it, and then he must proceed with his actions without having doubts or remorse about them.

In a world where death is the hunter, there is no time for regrets or doubts.
There is only time for decisions. It doesn’t matter what the decisions are.
Nothing could be more or less serious than anything else.
In a world where death is the hunter, there are no small or big decisions.
There are only decisions that a warrior makes in the face of his inevitable death.

For a warrior, to be inaccessible means that he touches the world around him sparingly.
And above all, he deliberately avoids exhausting himself and others.
He doesn’t use and squeeze people until they have shriveled to nothing, especially the people he loves.

A warrior must learn to make every act count, since he is going to be here in this world for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it.

A warrior must focus his attention on the link between himself and his death.
Without remorse or sadness or worrying, he must focus his attention on the fact that he does not have time and let his acts flow accordingly.
He must let each of his acts be his last battle on earth.
Only under those conditions will his acts have their rightful power.
Otherwise they will be. for as long as he lives, the acts of a fool.

A man, any man, deserves everything that is a man’s lot – joy, pain, sadness and struggle.
The nature of his acts is unimportant as long as he acts as a warrior.
If his spirit is distorted he should simply fix it – purge it, make it perfect – because there is no other task in our entire lives which is more worthwhile.
Not to fix the spirit is to seek death, and that is the same as to seek nothing, since death is going to overtake us regardless of anything.
To seek the perfection of the warrior’s spirit is the only task worthy of our temporariness, and our manhood.

The hardest thing in the world is to assume the mood of a warrior.
It is of no use to be sad and complain and feel justified in doing so, believing that someone is always doing something to us.
Nobody is doing anything to anybody, much less to a warrior.

A warrior is a hunter.
He calculates everything.
That’s control.
Once his calculations are over, he acts.
He lets go.
That’s abandon.
A warrior is not a leaf at the mercy of the wind.
No one can push him; no one can make him do things against himself or against his better judgment.
A warrior is tuned to survive, and he survives in the best of all possible fashions.

It doesn’t matter how one was brought up.
What determines the way one does anything is personal power.
A man is only the sum of his personal power, and that sum determines how he lives and how he dies.

Personal power is a feeling.
Something like being lucky.
Or one may call it a mood.
Personal power is something that one acquires by means of a lifetime of struggle.

A warrior acts as if he knows what he is doing, when in effect he knows nothing.

Quotes from Tales of Power

A warrior doesn’t know remorse for anything he has done, because to isolate one’s acts as being mean, or ugly, or evil is to place an unwarranted importance on the self.
The trick is in what one emphasizes.
We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong.
The amount of work is the same.

The self-confidence of the warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man.
The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence.
The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness.
The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to infinity.

There are lots of things a warrior can do at a certain time which he couldn’t do years before.
Those things themselves did not change; what changed was his idea of himself.

The internal dialogue is what grounds people in the daily world.
The world is such and such or so and so, only because we talk to ourselves about its being such and such or so and so.
The passageway into the world of shamans opens up after the warrior has learned to shut off his internal dialogue.

To change our idea of the world is the crux of shamanism.
And stopping the internal dialogue is the only way to accomplish it.

When a warrior learns to stop the internal dialogue, everything becomes possible; the most far-fetched schemes become attainable.

A warrior takes his lot, whatever it may be, and accepts it in ultimate humbleness.
He accepts in humbleness what he is, not as grounds for regret but as a living challenge.

The humbleness of a warrior is not the humbleness of the beggar.
The warrior lowers his head to no one, but at the same time, he doesn’t permit anyone to lower his head to him.
The beggar, on the other hand, falls to his knees at the drop of a hat and scrapes the floor for anyone he deems to be higher; but at the same time, he demands that someone lower than him scrape the floor for him.

The flaw with words is that they always make us feel enlightened, but when we turn around to face the world they always fail us and we end up facing the world as we always have, without enlightenment.
For this reason, a warrior seeks to act rather than to talk, and to this effect, he gets a new description of the world – a new description where talking is not that important, and where new acts have new reflections.

A warrior considers himself already dead, so there is nothing for him to lose.
The worst has already happened to him, therefore he’s clear and calm; judging him by his acts or by his words, one would never suspect that he has witnessed everything.

Whenever the internal dialogue stops, the world collapses, and extraordinary facets of ourselves surface, as though they had been kept heavily guarded by our words.

The world is unfathomable.
And so are we, and so is every being that exists in this world.

Warriors do not win victories by beating their heads against walls, but by overtaking the walls.
Warriors jump over walls; they don’t demolish them.

A warrior must cultivate the feeling that he has everything needed for the extravagant journey that is his life.
What counts for a warrior is being alive.
Life in itself is sufficient, self-explanatory and complete.
Therefore, one may say without being presumptuous that the experience of experiences is being alive.

Their reason makes them forget that the description is only a description, and before they realize it, human beings have entrapped the totality of themselves in a vicious circle from which they rarely emerge in their lifetimes.

Human beings are perceivers, but the world that they perceive is an illusion: an illusion created by the description that was told to them from the moment they were born.

Only as a warrior can one withstand the path of knowledge.
A warrior cannot complain or regret anything.
His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad.
Challenges are simply challenges.

The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man takes everything as a blessing or as a curse.

The average man is aware of everything only when he thinks he should be; the condition of a warrior, however, is to be aware of everything at all times.

A rule of thumb for a warrior is that he makes his decisions so carefully that nothing that may happen as a result of them can surprise him, much less drain his power.

When a warrior makes the decision to take action, he should be prepared to die.
If he is prepared to die, there shouldn’t be any pitfalls, any unwelcome surprises, any unnecessary acts.
Everything should gently fall into place because he is expecting nothing.

A warrior, as a teacher, must first of all teach about the possibility of acting without believing, without expecting rewards – acting just for the hell of it.
His success as a teacher depends on how well and how harmoniously he guides his wards in this specific respect.

In order to help his ward to erase personal history, the warrior as a teacher teaches three techniques: losing self-importance, assuming responsibility for one’s acts, and using death as an adviser.
Without the beneficial effect of these three techniques, erasing personal history would involve being shifty, evasive and unnecessarily dubious about oneself and one’s actions.

A warrior acknowledges his pain but he doesn’t indulge in it.
The mood of the warrior who enters into the unknown is not one of sadness; on the contrary, he’s joyful because he feels humbled by his great fortune, confident that his spirit is impeccable, and above all, fully aware of his efficiency.
A warrior’s joyfulness comes from having accepted his fate, and from having truthfully assessed what lies ahead of him.

Quotes from The Second Ring of Power

When one has nothing to lose, one becomes courageous.
We are timid only when there is something we can still cling to.

A warrior could not possibly leave anything to chance.
He actually affects the outcome of events by the force of his awareness and his unbending intent.

If a warrior wants to pay back for all the favors he has received, and he has no one in particular to address his payment to, he can address it to the spirit of man.
That’s always a very small account, and whatever one puts in it is more than enough.

The human form is a conglomerate of energy fields which exists in the universe, and which is related exclusively to human beings.
Shamans call it the human form because those energy fields have been bent and contorted by a lifetime of habits and misuse.

Any habit needs all its parts in order to function.
If some parts are missing, the habit is disassembled.

The world of people goes up and down and people go up and down with their world;
warriors have no business following the ups and downs of their fellow men.

The core of our being is the act of perceiving, and the magic of our being is the act of awareness.
Perception and awareness are a single, functional, inextricable unit.

Human beings love to be told what to do, but they love even more to fight and not do what they are told, and thus they get entangled in hating the one who told them in the first place.

Quotes from The Eagle’s Gift

The recommendation for warriors is not to have any material things on which to focus their power, but to focus it on the spirit, on the true flight into the unknown, not on trivialities.
Everyone who wants to follow the warrior’s path has to rid himself of the compulsion to possess and hold onto things.

People’s actions no longer affect a warrior when he has no more expectations of any kind.
A strange peace becomes the ruling force in his life.
He has adopted one of the concepts of a warrior’s life – detachment.

All the faculties, possibilities, and accomplishments of shamanism, from the simplest to the most astounding, are in the human body itself.

A warrior is never under siege.
To be under siege implies that one has personal possessions that could be blockaded.
A warrior has nothing in the world except his impeccability, and impeccability cannot be threatened.

A warrior relaxes and abandons himself; he fears nothing.
Only then will the powers that guide human beings open the road for a warrior and aid him.

When faced with odds that cannot be dealt with, warriors retreat for a moment.
They let their minds meander.
They occupy their time with something else.
Anything would do.
That is the fifth principle of the art of stalking.

Warriors compress time; this is the sixth principle of the art of stalking.
Even an instant counts.
In a battle for your life, a second is an eternity, an eternity that may decide the outcome.
Warriors aim at succeeding, therefore they compress time.
Warriors don’t waste an instant.

Applying these principles brings about three results.
The first is that stalkers learn never to take themselves seriously; they learn to laugh at themselves.
If they are not afraid of being a fool, they can fool anyone.
The second is that stalkers learn to have endless patience.
Stalkers are never in a hurry, they never fret.
And the third is that stalkers learn to have an endless capacity to improvise.

Self-importance is man’s greatest enemy.
What weakens him is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of his fellow men.
Self-importance requires that one spend most of one’s life offended by something or someone.

One of the greatest forces in the lives of warriors is fear, because it spurs them to learn.

Once inner silence is attained, everything is possible.
The way to stop talking to ourselves is to use exactly the same method used to teach us to talk to ourselves; we were taught compulsively and unwaveringly, and this is the way we must stop it: compulsively and unwaveringly.

Impeccability begins with a single act that has to be deliberate, precise, and sustained.
If that act is repeated long enough, one acquires a sense of unbending intent, which can be applied to anything else.
If that is accomplished the road is clear.
One thing will lead to another until the warrior realizes his full potential.

The worst that could happen to us is that we have to die, and since that is already our unalterable fate, we are free: those who have lost everything no longer have anything to fear.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Carlos Castaneda: Was He a True Shaman, or a Con Artist & Cult Leader?
​

In the 1960s, the author Carlos Castaneda took America by storm with his stories of studying psychedelic sorcery under the Yaqui wizard Don Juan. Unfortunately, the stories turned out not to be true, and Castaneda quickly spiraled into cult leader territory.

Carlos Castaneda was one of the most celebrated authors of the 1960s—his tales of psychedelic initiation at the hands of the probably at least partially fictional shaman Don Juan inspired a generation of seekers, including numerous celebrities.

Arriving on the scene just as the youth of America were discovering drugs, and into a marketplace that was largely devoid of any real information on shamanism or consciousness exploration, Castaneda’s books cleaned up.

Over a successive series of new tales, Castaneda described his initiation into what he called sorcery, the ability to alter awareness at will, and to live fearlessly by cutting all ties to the world.

He regaled his readers with increasingly bizarre stories of energetic parasites that blanket the earth, trips into other realms and even stranger forays into high weirdness.

Carlos Castaneda’s ideas remain unique, standing out as completely “other” in today’s “Mind/Body/Spirit” marketplace of recycled ideas.

However, for those who knew Castaneda personally, and strove to join his inner circle of devoted female acolytes, the “Separate Reality” they had entered could be a very dark one indeed.

Amy Wallace’s book Sorcerer’s Apprentice is a harrowing recounting of her time under Castaneda’s influence (and a great read, as well).

The book recounts how a highly educated member of a prominent literary family could get sucked into the hallucinatory web of a personality cult, and stands as an important testament (one of many) to the dangers faced on the road to higher consciousness.

Below, Amy Wallace is interviewed about the book and her experiences.

From the Examiner:

One night, my parents returned from a dinner party thrown by my dad’s agent, who was also Carlos’ agent. They were excited and enthusiastic, and my dad said, “We just met Carlos Castaneda! He’s fantastic – you have to meet him!” I was 15, and on a break from my New England hippie boarding school. I was never scared to meet famous people, they were part of the landscape. When Irving met John Lennon, Lennon was shaking with excitement. Yoko had grabbed him by the sleeve and said, “Look, John, it’s your favorite author, Irving Wallace!” (His favorite book was The Man, about a black man becoming president. Oh, if he had lived to see that dream come true!)

If a Lennon/Ono invitation had been forthcoming, I would have jumped at the chance. But Carlos Castaneda! He would grace the cover of Time magazine, lived in secrecy, and was too famous for me, too awe-inspiring.
I said, “No.”

My father said something very unusual for him: “I insist”…

[…]

Never give your power away to someone else, who claims to have special knowledge. Its the worst mistake I ever made. This is not to say that Carlos’ speeches and books do not contain some wisdom, they do indeed, but cults are evil, and I was in a cult. Still suffering from PTSD, nightmares, chills in the old neighborhood, etc. That this book has helped others so much means more than I can ever say.

​

 

[Skarekrow]

The Rise of an Intuitive Humanity
~ Accessing the Living Intelligence ~

​

Social and cultural change is occurring fast right now across this planet and it looks as if it will accelerate further.

Many people are experiencing a wide range of personal impacts, disruptions, and rearrangements in their lives.
At the same time we are also seeing how our social infrastructures and modes of communication and connectivity are adjusting and shifting to these changes.

Within the last 150 years alone we have witnessed an amazingly rapid process of transition in human civilization, perhaps even without being consciously aware of it.

In terms of the bigger picture, this is an incredibly swift rate of change.

The ebb and flow of human history has cradled the gradual unfolding of the individual, and the growing responsibility that this implies.

This emerging 'blooming of the individual' has occurred alongside the story of,

• the slow decline in aristocracy and elite rule
  
  
• the demise of tyranny
  

This human story has accelerated in recent centuries, with the fall of feudalism; the birth of democracy; and the growth of an increasingly connected global humanity.

Alongside this we have also seen the increasing acceptance and sharing of planetary values.
We could say that human society is in the early contractions of the birth of a planetary civilization.

Conscious development is a psycho-spiritual process, aided by socio-cultural impulses and influences that have woven throughout our history.
Most recently, the strong impulses in the 1960s, and the end of the 1980s, have helped to catalyze the conscious awareness of many people the world over.

Many seeds were planted that would actualize over time.

The psychic states experimented with in the 1960s showed that there were alternative dimensions of consciousness, and gave a taste of these to a hungry young audience.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the end of several archaic political institutions, gave a taste of the power for change when many thought it almost impossible.

Impulses of renewal and regeneration have long been part of the ongoing processes of human, cultural, and psycho-spiritual development.
True revolutions are not those of physical violence but of radical shifts in perceptions, knowledge, and ultimately the individual self.

The increasing presence of human consciousness has been evident over the years through the expansion of intelligence, psychological awareness, humanitarianism, empathy, and creative innovation.

The emergence of the intuitive human has been seen out on the playing fields of the world - in stadiums, fields, and in streets the world over.

The collaborative nature of sport, with its team work, its shared rules and game-play, is one example that has arisen to help shift the human spirit.

What I am suggesting is that as this trend unfolds we are likely to see new generations of individuals coming into the world who will be the change, rather than being born into change.

And these new arrivals will challenge even further our social systems and 'big institutions' from the very fact that they will be acting more from instinct and intuition.

The age of Guru-hood, spiritual elitism, and the throng of commercial 'Teaching' methods is going to be replaced by a greater gnosis within humanity.

External belief systems that we often depend upon will be challenged, and gradually replaced, by the recognition of a living intelligence - an intelligence that has always existed within the human race.

Children and young adults of today are beginning to break the old patterns and become the early wave of pioneers and system-change agents.
They are showing a remarkable intuitive grasp of our modern technologies.

They are,

• reaching out and connecting
  
  
• forming networks
  
  
• supporting ecological practices and alternative health practices
  
  
• forming community projects
  
  
• seeking out healthy food
  
  
• prioritizing well-being over career roles
  
  
• re-invigorating a sense of the sacred
  
  
• pushing out the boundaries for new thinking
  

It is not occurring everywhere, or with everyone.
There is still much confusion and emotional angst in our younger generations.

However, a more intuitive human is coming through.

The Emperor Finally Has No Clothes

New thinking patterns and expressions of consciousness are now emerging in communities and societies throughout the world that are no longer tolerant of the old paradigm structures of separatism, egoism, and conflict.

Rather than being a full-frontal revolt against incumbent systems, a more subtle wave of reformist change is arising that contributes to constructive social transition.

Part of this reformist change will be the increase in transparency in our social systems.
It is already happening now - we are seeing increased instances of corruption (political, financial, personal, etc) coming to the surface and being exposed.

As the sun rises, they say, the shadows will at first become sharper and more visible.
As the patterns of a different consciousness begin to be expressed through people, the inadequacies of many of our systems will increasingly be exposed.

Those institutions, practices, and societies built upon fear and disingenuous values will falter as a new awareness within people demands a change in values and integrity.

Old patterns of thinking - especially the disruptive patterns - will become increasingly obsolete over time as an intuitive intelligence is expressed through human consciousness.

Soon, even our youngest babes will be pointing at the old idols and declaring, open-mouthed:

'But look, they are not wearing any clothes!'

At that point, edifices and traditions will be forced to either disintegrate or re-calibrate themselves according to the new patterns.

The protective veneer of social appearance and status that once held sanctuary for certain people will no longer operate:

• celebrities
  
  
• politicians
  
  
• wealthy elites
  
  
• religious figures
  
  
• once-respected public figures, etc.,
  

...the façade will drop for many such people and the wave of transparency will make visible their misdemeanors.

So much dirty laundry will be washed in public as a generation of intuitively-driven young minds and hearts will wish to heal a planet in order to bring in reform.

The early tremors of youth insecurity (witnessed in violent outbursts and psychological instability) will come to be replaced by greater expressions of human intuition and inner confidence and balance.

Many of us are already becoming students to our children and to the young adults in the world.
We are seeing how our once unquestioning faith in external sources of information, opinions, and authority are now questioned by these young minds.

Young people the world over are stepping away from dogmatic belief structures that they find limiting to the self and that take away the responsibility for an individual's own self-empowerment.

A new form of common sense will emerge - one that is neither 'common' nor makes 'sense' to us now - and it will originate from a different state of awareness.

Human behavior that made sense for when we imagined we lived as islands of individuality will no longer 'make sense' - nor be functional - for a species that consciously experiences the interconnectivity of all life.

The more the human species transforms internally, the greater the change we will see occurring in our physical world - in our societies, technologies, culture, etc.

The next generation can not be the same as the present, or the previous.
In this moment of human history, to give birth to a duplicate generation - with the same ideals and values - would result not in a perpetuation of human societies but in their demise.

That is why we need transformational change at the psycho-spiritual level both within and between generations.

For those of us in the world now it has taken consistent exertion and energy to challenge our conditioning structures.

In the past also we have struggled greatly against socio-cultural systems that were opposed, or unsupportive, to individual inner development.
Now, however, change will come easier and at a more rapid pace.

The changes that we are likely to see in the coming years will be more profound than the changes that took place during our previous industrial revolutions.

The period of our western industrialization transpired over several centuries.
Now we are going to witness great changes set to occur within the span of just one single human lifetime.

We will observe that communication, transparency, and honesty are much more powerful tools than secrecy, fear, and confrontation.

The emperor's false suit of body armor will disintegrate in the face of transparent, honest eyes.
The sham elements within our political, financial, corporate, and media structures will scramble to maintain their façade.

Yet their desperate actions will be viewed for what they truly are in the eyes of a more aware, informed, and awakened generation of young minds and hearts.

With or without us, the new young minds will create their own freedom to inspire and renew their world into being.

They will have access not only to a vast intuitive inner world, but they will simultaneously be connected to a planetary network of information, contacts, and friends.

Fearful incumbent structures of authority will attempt to control such networks of connection and communication,[1] yet they will ultimately fail against the inevitable tide of great human awakening.

[1] See 'The Struggle for Your Mind: Conscious Evolution & The Battle to Control How We Think.'

The younger generation(s) will likely be the ones to free humanity from the dominance of erroneous ideas - ideas that forged war, created poverty and hunger, and sustained dis-ease.

We are seeing a generation that will be successful in removing these illusions from old thinking patterns.
The new intuitive human has been in the making for some time now.

Our world is far more peaceful today than it has been at any time in recent past epochs - despite what the mainstream media may be saying.

This signals to us that the way energy patterns flow over the Earth is changing, encouraging people to seek peaceful solutions wherever possible.
The living intelligence that is a part of the intuitive human is also a,

• spiritual
  
  
• empathic
  
  
• nurturing intelligence,
  

...which has been lacking in much of modern civilization.

Those of the new generation(s) will usher in a period where the feminine and masculine energies of the world will be re-configured and placed into greater balance and harmony.

Human values of,

• love
  
  
• compassion
  
  
• understanding
  
  
• patience
  
  
• tolerance
  
  
• empathy,
  

...will be more openly expressed and part of an informed world - and not erroneously seen as being only predominantly 'female' values.

The division that separates the masculine and feminine energies will continue to dissolve, and be replaced by a newer energy of unity - of coming together.

Similarly, the artificial stigma around 'male' and 'female' roles in the world will be challenged and forced into change through the younger men and women actively re-modeling role expectations.

Women's participation will be more keenly appreciated, sought after, and brought into collaboration in such major areas as global politics, economy, and business.

An intuitive energy will be more present in the world in the upcoming decades, and will find expression as younger women increasingly hold key influential positions in society.

We are more open to recognize now that notions of duality - of one side having dominance over the other, whether male or female - is an old energy.

The newer energies will be focused more on balance, and on bringing everything together into an integral whole that respects diversity within unity.

Humanity is now poised upon the cusp of a transition for which developmental potentials have long been preparing for.

It seems that the rate of our preparedness grows exponentially with each passing year.
A new form of energy has now entered upon this planet, and which facilitates an altogether different mode of operation.

It is an energy that supports a networked and decentralized way of connectivity.
It is now working through our human societies to engage with change from within.

Its aim may be to help form a membrane of conscious human-planet intelligence across the Earth.

These energies are also spreading more rapidly from human to human through our integrated digital and biological fields of energetic connectivity.

Soon there will not be an area isolated from such influence, as each village and town will have amongst its midst a new intuitive human - more so when the younger generations enter upon the Earth and begin to take up their roles and responsibilities.

There is something immensely exciting happening here on this planet.
Something is rising within us, amongst us, through us, and penetrating the very fabric of our reality.

It is a transformation without words, passing through each and every individual.

It appears that some latent human capacities are now set to become activated, in alignment with evolutionary requirements...

 

[Skarekrow]

A few interesting talks.
Enjoy!

Lucid dreams as a bridge between realities
Chongtul Rinpoche
TEDxFultonStreet

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences.
By walking the line between the dream world and the waking world, we can train to access more of our own wisdom and our own consciousness.
In this discussion, we learn about his mode of spirituality.

Chongtul Rinpoche is a reincarnated Tibetan lama who grew up in India and studied philosophy for over 20 years.
He was the director of a Bön monastery in India and now resides in America and gives various courses in Tibetan philosophy.

In the US he founded a Bon educational fund that provides education and training for students of Tibetan philosophy around the world as well as for over 400 Tibetan orphan children living in India and Nepal. Bön is the indigenous religion of Tibet.


Out-of body experiences, consciousness, and cognitive neuroprosthetics:
Olaf Blanke at TEDxCHUV

What is a conscious self ?
What exactly makes an experience a subjective phenomenon?

Starting with the neurology of out-of-body experiences and the breakdown of bodily mechanisms of self-consciousness, this talk presents novel neuroscience data on selfconsciousness and subjectivity in healthy subjects using techniques from cognitive neuroscience and engineering-based technologies such as virtual reality and robotics.

It translates these research findings to the bedside and show how control over the brain mechanisms of our daily "inside--body experience" can join forces with neuro-engineering and thus impact treatments for patients with amputation and spinal cord injury.

Olaf Blanke is director of the Center for Neuroprosthetics at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), holds the Bertarelli Foundation Chair in Cognitive Neuroprosthetics, and is consultant neurologist at the Department of Neurology (Geneva University Hospital).

He received his MD and PhD in neurophysiology from the Free University of Berlin.
Blanke's research targets the brain mechanisms of body perception, corporeal awareness and selfconsciousness, applying paradigms from cognitive science, neuroscience, neuroimaging, robotics, and virtual reality in healthy subjects and neurological patients.

His two main goals are to understand and control neural own body representations to develop a neurobiological model of self-consciousness and to apply these findings in the emerging field of cognitive and systems neuroprosthetics.
His work has received wide press coverage; he is recipient of numerous awards.


DMT, Life after Death & Consciousness
Graham Hancock
TEDx Talk

Graham Hancock - TEDx Talk - DMT, Life after Death & Consciousness.
Graham Hancock -
The real widespread war the rages every day is a war not for anything more than our consciousness and it affects everyone under the top 1%.

Take hold of humanity by the balls and the mind and you've got them in a non real trap - supporting a system the kills and plots bloody murder each day and hides the tracks of it's existence to cover and distort the truth and to keep YOU from finding the simple answers to free energy and the simple answers to cancer cures and to keep you bound by the state affairs called 'the economy' that is completely manipulated.

A wise man once said - the devils greatest trick is convincing you that he doesn't exist.
Most men and women today fall at the feet in Stockholm syndrome fashion begging for mercy to the lord money.

It's no wonder that life follows the events written out in the bible - for life is predictable and the cycles of it are also predictable - many people know more than we could possible hope to know about the reality we live in - as the events that occur follow the book to the word like a comical magicians tale - we buy into different factions of the same system, be it through science, religion, or history.

Money was never the solution and is fast becoming the demise of this planets eco systems and health for profit.
Little do we know that we have enough food, we have enough resources and we have enough health to be able to achieve monumentally amazing feats of life if we worked together.

Unfortunately the entire system is designed to keep us from discovering any truth.
Business is built on secrecy and without it - it could not survive.

The evolution of Open Source and Free Energy are putting a strangle hold on the system.
While the top bankers of the world are committing suicide "being killed" we stand by and watch ... as we've been programmed to do by fear mongering governments who constantly put out a barrage of fear each day in the air in forms of audio, sound and energy in the air.

Any person who is slightly spiritual will tell that fear in it's single powerful form is enough to keep you
from experiencing almost all things spiritual or scientific.
The real human deficit is lack of human experience and lack of knowledge and lack of spirituality.

The universe is a spiritual "conscious" thing, we are a mirror of the universe.
We must align or be forgotten.

Understanding is easy if you have the ability to really questions your "knowledge" and "beliefs" ... and have the balls to create new ones the SERVE the planet and that SERVE humanity as a whole.

Only then can we truly experience our greatest potentials that lay dormant and suppressed by thousands of year old science invented to do just that. Control the masses for the gain of the minority.​

 

[Skarekrow]

​

 

[Skarekrow]

"The doors to the self are few but precious.
If you have a deep scar, that is a door, if you have an old story, that is a door.
If you love the sky and the water so much you almost cannot bear it, that is a door.
If you yearn for a deeper life, a full life, a sane life, that is a door."

~ Clarissa Pinkola Estés

Painting: Salvador Dali​

 

[Skarekrow]

"If we wish to stay on the heights we have reached,
we must struggle all the time to consolidate our consciousness and its attitude.

But we soon discover that this praiseworthy and apparently unavoidable
battle with the years leads to stagnation and desiccation of soul.

Our convictions become platitudes ground out on a barrel-organ,
our ideals become starchy habits, enthusiasm stiffens into automatic gestures.
The source of the water of life seeps away.
We ourselves may not notice it, but everybody else does, and that is even more painful.

If we should risk a little introspection,
coupled perhaps with an energetic attempt to be honest for once with ourselves,
we may get a dim idea of all the wants, longings,
and fears that have accumulated down there-a repulsive and sinister sight.

The mind shies away, but life wants to flow down into the depths.
Fate itself seems to preserve us from this,
for each of us has a tendency to become an immovable pillar of the past."

~ C. G. Jung, Symbols of Transformation. Coll Works, Vol 5.​

 

[Skarekrow]

As the “facilitator”
The current goal/project I’m working toward.



Details

As knowledge around the successful use of psychedelics for depression, anxiety, addiction,
PTSD, disconnection, isolation, etc. grows, it makes sense they would pique the interest of the chronic pain sufferer.
After all, chronic pain typically comes attached with many if not all of the above.

In this sharing group, our facilitator (Skarekrow - not my real name btw ) and others
will talk about how they have used psychedelics to help manage chronic pain.

If you have a story to share, are currently experimenting, or would like to learn more,
this is the time and place to do that.
Information is based on personal experience and experimentation as this area is little studied and we are all pioneers.

Donation requested to pay for the room.​

 

[Free]

Why you should go crazy.

We live in a world where everyone is always trying to keep it together.

Our appearance, attitudes, bank accounts, and lifestyles are massive factors in how society views us.
We are constantly pressured to be "on," leaving little to no room to fall apart.

Family, friends, and jobs are always relying on us, making the pressures to perform incredibly high.

As we've all experienced, life is not simply made up of a bunch of highs.
The lows come roaring in sometimes when you least expect it.

Life doesn't allow us time to deal with troubles, physically, mentally, or emotionally, leaving us frantic as we try to put the puzzle pieces back together.

But can you imagine if we were "allowed" to break down?
What if we lost control and everyone around us let it happen?

We might find resolve much sooner, since, in real life, we find ourselves pushing away the inevitable, as the storm slowly accumulates inside until it hits you that much harder in the face later on.

The School of Life released a video that brings new light to breakdowns.
Called "The Sanity of Madness," it exposes the trouble with having to be on your game all the time.

No matter how little sleep we get or what problems at home we are having, mental blockages we are experiencing, or health concerns are bogging us down, we are told we must be at work on time, with our presentation ready, with no excuses given, and a smile slapped on our pretty little faces.

It can create a vicious cycle; one filled with energy drinks to wake up, sedatives to calm down, routines lacking time for exercise, home-cooked healthy meals, and sleep, and too much attention given to computer screens.

The video points to the seemingly obvious but the easily forgotten:

"No good life can or should go by without a few quite open incidents of complete breakdown.
Moments when we pull up a white flag and declare ourselves simply unable to cope or fulfill any of our normal functions for a time."

When these breakdowns happen, those around us, whether it be colleagues, friends, family, or complete strangers, might think we've gone insane; that we have some sort of illness.

But it should be seen as a sign of normality and health.

Breakdowns can vary depending on the person and the circumstances.

It could be as passive as lying in bed, staring at the ceiling for a long time, unusually babbling on to anyone who will listen about out-of-the-box feelings or ideas, wearing strange clothes, breaking out in dance, shouting at the top of our lungs, letting fits of laughter overcome us, making new friends that don't seem to fit our lifestyles, and traveling to faraway destinations.

We should be able to tolerate these phases, not freak out over them.

"We allow our bodies to have moments of breakdown and rest. We should allow similar moments for our minds," the video points out.

Another thought The School of Life brings up is that we need moments of madness as a corrective for the way we view ourselves in the world:

Puppets meant to make a certain amount of money by working ourselves to the bone, toxic media clips that brainwash us into believing we should, look, act, and feel a certain way or else we are not worthy of attention or love.

The emphasis should be on how to have a "good" mental breakdown, the video suggests.
This entails doing things that help us to reconnect with valuable truths that our ordinary lives are preventing us from understanding.

These include: sexual exploration, creativity, contact with our bodies, empathy, a new kind of self-knowledge.

"The idea is that we should return from the land of madness and plant in the fields of apparent sanity a lot of pretty valuable seeds that can bear fruit and sustain us," the video continues.

"We are not automatons, but highly complicated, volatile collections of proteins that needs careful and sympathetic administration.
We should expect that periods of madness just do belong to every wise and good life."

​

Love this!

I’ve been asked to speak at a conference in Portland

I was so excited for you when I read this.

The conference the other night that I was lucky enough to take a part in was a HUGE success.

And so happy that it was successful ❤

Well, I am going to lead a chronic pain group in Portland

That's wonderful! I wish you so much prosperity, well always, but definitely for this. Please keep us updated!

Donation requested to pay for the room.

PM the deets! ❤

 

[Free]

I'm still spending way more time reading the various posts on this thread than posting...

I don't post often either. I consider myself a pupil of this thread.

 

[Tin Man]

Selected quotes from Carlos Castaneda

​

Years ago in my 20s I started to read a Carlos Castaneda book; his writings had been referenced by other works to which I was drawn, so I figured there was much wisdom to gain from him.

However, as I recall I did not really get what Carlos Castaneda was saying.
At the time, I was apparently not ready for what he had to say – or perhaps more accurately, how he said it.

Now I am in my 40s.
I happened to run across his book, The Wheel of Time, which consists of quotes from his previous books along with a commentary describing where he was at the time those books were written.

While I still don’t claim to understand all of what Carlos Castaneda has to say, I did find quite a few Carlos Castaneda quotes to be worthwhile and applicable to my life experiences and present worldview.

I now realize that one of the main reasons I did not previously seem to comprehend his philosophy related to semantics relating to Toltec wisdom and spirituality.

The Toltec spiritual tradition frequently uses words and phrases like “mitote,” “dreams” and “dreaming,” being a “warrior,” etc. to convey basic ideas for spiritual growth, and I simply did not get that during my early readings.

My proper exposure to Toltec spiritual teachings — a perfectly valid, transformative, wonderful set of spiritual teachings – did not occur until I began reading books by Miguel Ruiz, who has since become one of my all-time favorite spiritual teachers.

I have read three (3) wonderful books by Miguel Ruiz:

1. The Four Agreements
2. The Voice of Wisdom
3. The Mastery of Love

Here are a few of my favorite quotes, many of which I could appreciate only after I familiarized myself with the Toltec path.

Quotes from The Teachings of Don Juan

Power rests on the kind of knowledge that one holds.
What is the sense of knowing things that are useless?
They will not prepare us for our unavoidable encounter with the unknown.

Nothing in this world is a gift.
Whatever has to be learned must be learned the hard way.

Dwelling upon the self too much produces a terrible fatigue.
A man in that position is deaf and blind to everything else.
The fatigue itself makes him cease to see the marvels all around him.

To be angry at people means that one considers their acts to be important.
It is imperative to cease to feel that way.
The acts of men cannot be important enough to offset our only viable alternative: our unchangeable encounter with infinity.

Quotes from A Separate Reality

Feeling important makes one heavy, clumsy and vain.
To be a warrior one needs to be light and fluid.

A warrior lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting.

A warrior chooses a path with heart, any path with heart, and follows it; and then he rejoices and laughs.
He knows because he sees that his life will be over altogether too soon.
He sees that nothing is more important than anything else.

An average man is too concerned with liking people or with being liked himself.
A warrior likes, that’s all.
He likes whatever or whomever he wants, for the hell of it.

A warrior takes responsibility for his acts, for the most trivial of his acts.
An average man acts out his thoughts, and never takes responsibility for what he does.

Only the idea of death makes a warrior sufficiently detached so that he is capable of abandoning himself to anything.
He knows his death is stalking him and won’t give him time to cling to anything, so he tries, without craving, all of everything.

The spirit of a warrior is not geared to indulging and complaining, nor is it geared to winning or losing.
The spirit of a warrior is geared only to struggle, and every struggle is a warrior’s last battle on earth.
Thus the outcome matters very little to him.
In his last battle on earth a warrior lets his spirit flow free and clear.
And as he wages his battle, knowing that his intent is impeccable, a warrior laughs and laughs.

We talk to ourselves incessantly about our world.
In fact we maintain our world with our internal talk.
And whenever we finish talking to ourselves about ourselves and our world, the world is always as it should be.
We renew it, we rekindle it with life, we uphold it with our internal talk.
Not only that, but we also choose our paths as we talk to ourselves.
Thus we repeat the same choices over and over until the day we die, because we keep on repeating the same internal talk over and over until the day we die.
A warrior is aware of this and strives to stop his internal talk.

The world is all that is encased here: life, death, people, and everything else that surrounds us.
The world is incomprehensible.
We won’t ever understand it; we won’t ever unravel its secrets.
Thus we must treat the world as it is: a sheer mystery.

The things that people do cannot under any conditions be more important than the world.
And thus a warrior treats the world as an endless mystery and what people do as an endless folly

Quotes from Journey to Ixtlan

One shouldn’t worry about taking pictures or making tape recordings.
Those are superfluities of sedate lives.
One should worry about the spirit, which is always receding.

Personal history must be constantly renewed by telling parents, relatives, and friends everything one does.
On the other hand, for the warrior who has no personal history, no explanations are needed; nobody is angry or disillusioned with his acts.
And above all, no one pins him down with their thoughts and their expectations.

When nothing is for sure we remain alert, perennially on our toes.
It is more exciting not to know which bush the rabbit is hiding behind than to behave as though we knew everything.

Whenever a warrior decides to do something, he must go all the way, but he must take responsibility for what he does.
No matter what he does, he must know first why he is doing it, and then he must proceed with his actions without having doubts or remorse about them.

In a world where death is the hunter, there is no time for regrets or doubts.
There is only time for decisions. It doesn’t matter what the decisions are.
Nothing could be more or less serious than anything else.
In a world where death is the hunter, there are no small or big decisions.
There are only decisions that a warrior makes in the face of his inevitable death.

For a warrior, to be inaccessible means that he touches the world around him sparingly.
And above all, he deliberately avoids exhausting himself and others.
He doesn’t use and squeeze people until they have shriveled to nothing, especially the people he loves.

A warrior must learn to make every act count, since he is going to be here in this world for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it.

A warrior must focus his attention on the link between himself and his death.
Without remorse or sadness or worrying, he must focus his attention on the fact that he does not have time and let his acts flow accordingly.
He must let each of his acts be his last battle on earth.
Only under those conditions will his acts have their rightful power.
Otherwise they will be. for as long as he lives, the acts of a fool.

A man, any man, deserves everything that is a man’s lot – joy, pain, sadness and struggle.
The nature of his acts is unimportant as long as he acts as a warrior.
If his spirit is distorted he should simply fix it – purge it, make it perfect – because there is no other task in our entire lives which is more worthwhile.
Not to fix the spirit is to seek death, and that is the same as to seek nothing, since death is going to overtake us regardless of anything.
To seek the perfection of the warrior’s spirit is the only task worthy of our temporariness, and our manhood.

The hardest thing in the world is to assume the mood of a warrior.
It is of no use to be sad and complain and feel justified in doing so, believing that someone is always doing something to us.
Nobody is doing anything to anybody, much less to a warrior.

A warrior is a hunter.
He calculates everything.
That’s control.
Once his calculations are over, he acts.
He lets go.
That’s abandon.
A warrior is not a leaf at the mercy of the wind.
No one can push him; no one can make him do things against himself or against his better judgment.
A warrior is tuned to survive, and he survives in the best of all possible fashions.

It doesn’t matter how one was brought up.
What determines the way one does anything is personal power.
A man is only the sum of his personal power, and that sum determines how he lives and how he dies.

Personal power is a feeling.
Something like being lucky.
Or one may call it a mood.
Personal power is something that one acquires by means of a lifetime of struggle.

A warrior acts as if he knows what he is doing, when in effect he knows nothing.

Quotes from Tales of Power

A warrior doesn’t know remorse for anything he has done, because to isolate one’s acts as being mean, or ugly, or evil is to place an unwarranted importance on the self.
The trick is in what one emphasizes.
We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong.
The amount of work is the same.

The self-confidence of the warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man.
The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence.
The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness.
The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to infinity.

There are lots of things a warrior can do at a certain time which he couldn’t do years before.
Those things themselves did not change; what changed was his idea of himself.

The internal dialogue is what grounds people in the daily world.
The world is such and such or so and so, only because we talk to ourselves about its being such and such or so and so.
The passageway into the world of shamans opens up after the warrior has learned to shut off his internal dialogue.

To change our idea of the world is the crux of shamanism.
And stopping the internal dialogue is the only way to accomplish it.

When a warrior learns to stop the internal dialogue, everything becomes possible; the most far-fetched schemes become attainable.

A warrior takes his lot, whatever it may be, and accepts it in ultimate humbleness.
He accepts in humbleness what he is, not as grounds for regret but as a living challenge.

The humbleness of a warrior is not the humbleness of the beggar.
The warrior lowers his head to no one, but at the same time, he doesn’t permit anyone to lower his head to him.
The beggar, on the other hand, falls to his knees at the drop of a hat and scrapes the floor for anyone he deems to be higher; but at the same time, he demands that someone lower than him scrape the floor for him.

The flaw with words is that they always make us feel enlightened, but when we turn around to face the world they always fail us and we end up facing the world as we always have, without enlightenment.
For this reason, a warrior seeks to act rather than to talk, and to this effect, he gets a new description of the world – a new description where talking is not that important, and where new acts have new reflections.

A warrior considers himself already dead, so there is nothing for him to lose.
The worst has already happened to him, therefore he’s clear and calm; judging him by his acts or by his words, one would never suspect that he has witnessed everything.

Whenever the internal dialogue stops, the world collapses, and extraordinary facets of ourselves surface, as though they had been kept heavily guarded by our words.

The world is unfathomable.
And so are we, and so is every being that exists in this world.

Warriors do not win victories by beating their heads against walls, but by overtaking the walls.
Warriors jump over walls; they don’t demolish them.

A warrior must cultivate the feeling that he has everything needed for the extravagant journey that is his life.
What counts for a warrior is being alive.
Life in itself is sufficient, self-explanatory and complete.
Therefore, one may say without being presumptuous that the experience of experiences is being alive.

Their reason makes them forget that the description is only a description, and before they realize it, human beings have entrapped the totality of themselves in a vicious circle from which they rarely emerge in their lifetimes.

Human beings are perceivers, but the world that they perceive is an illusion: an illusion created by the description that was told to them from the moment they were born.

Only as a warrior can one withstand the path of knowledge.
A warrior cannot complain or regret anything.
His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad.
Challenges are simply challenges.

The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man takes everything as a blessing or as a curse.

The average man is aware of everything only when he thinks he should be; the condition of a warrior, however, is to be aware of everything at all times.

A rule of thumb for a warrior is that he makes his decisions so carefully that nothing that may happen as a result of them can surprise him, much less drain his power.

When a warrior makes the decision to take action, he should be prepared to die.
If he is prepared to die, there shouldn’t be any pitfalls, any unwelcome surprises, any unnecessary acts.
Everything should gently fall into place because he is expecting nothing.

A warrior, as a teacher, must first of all teach about the possibility of acting without believing, without expecting rewards – acting just for the hell of it.
His success as a teacher depends on how well and how harmoniously he guides his wards in this specific respect.

In order to help his ward to erase personal history, the warrior as a teacher teaches three techniques: losing self-importance, assuming responsibility for one’s acts, and using death as an adviser.
Without the beneficial effect of these three techniques, erasing personal history would involve being shifty, evasive and unnecessarily dubious about oneself and one’s actions.

A warrior acknowledges his pain but he doesn’t indulge in it.
The mood of the warrior who enters into the unknown is not one of sadness; on the contrary, he’s joyful because he feels humbled by his great fortune, confident that his spirit is impeccable, and above all, fully aware of his efficiency.
A warrior’s joyfulness comes from having accepted his fate, and from having truthfully assessed what lies ahead of him.

Quotes from The Second Ring of Power

When one has nothing to lose, one becomes courageous.
We are timid only when there is something we can still cling to.

A warrior could not possibly leave anything to chance.
He actually affects the outcome of events by the force of his awareness and his unbending intent.

If a warrior wants to pay back for all the favors he has received, and he has no one in particular to address his payment to, he can address it to the spirit of man.
That’s always a very small account, and whatever one puts in it is more than enough.

The human form is a conglomerate of energy fields which exists in the universe, and which is related exclusively to human beings.
Shamans call it the human form because those energy fields have been bent and contorted by a lifetime of habits and misuse.

Any habit needs all its parts in order to function.
If some parts are missing, the habit is disassembled.

The world of people goes up and down and people go up and down with their world;
warriors have no business following the ups and downs of their fellow men.

The core of our being is the act of perceiving, and the magic of our being is the act of awareness.
Perception and awareness are a single, functional, inextricable unit.

Human beings love to be told what to do, but they love even more to fight and not do what they are told, and thus they get entangled in hating the one who told them in the first place.

Quotes from The Eagle’s Gift

The recommendation for warriors is not to have any material things on which to focus their power, but to focus it on the spirit, on the true flight into the unknown, not on trivialities.
Everyone who wants to follow the warrior’s path has to rid himself of the compulsion to possess and hold onto things.

People’s actions no longer affect a warrior when he has no more expectations of any kind.
A strange peace becomes the ruling force in his life.
He has adopted one of the concepts of a warrior’s life – detachment.

All the faculties, possibilities, and accomplishments of shamanism, from the simplest to the most astounding, are in the human body itself.

A warrior is never under siege.
To be under siege implies that one has personal possessions that could be blockaded.
A warrior has nothing in the world except his impeccability, and impeccability cannot be threatened.

A warrior relaxes and abandons himself; he fears nothing.
Only then will the powers that guide human beings open the road for a warrior and aid him.

When faced with odds that cannot be dealt with, warriors retreat for a moment.
They let their minds meander.
They occupy their time with something else.
Anything would do.
That is the fifth principle of the art of stalking.

Warriors compress time; this is the sixth principle of the art of stalking.
Even an instant counts.
In a battle for your life, a second is an eternity, an eternity that may decide the outcome.
Warriors aim at succeeding, therefore they compress time.
Warriors don’t waste an instant.

Applying these principles brings about three results.
The first is that stalkers learn never to take themselves seriously; they learn to laugh at themselves.
If they are not afraid of being a fool, they can fool anyone.
The second is that stalkers learn to have endless patience.
Stalkers are never in a hurry, they never fret.
And the third is that stalkers learn to have an endless capacity to improvise.

Self-importance is man’s greatest enemy.
What weakens him is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of his fellow men.
Self-importance requires that one spend most of one’s life offended by something or someone.

One of the greatest forces in the lives of warriors is fear, because it spurs them to learn.

Once inner silence is attained, everything is possible.
The way to stop talking to ourselves is to use exactly the same method used to teach us to talk to ourselves; we were taught compulsively and unwaveringly, and this is the way we must stop it: compulsively and unwaveringly.

Impeccability begins with a single act that has to be deliberate, precise, and sustained.
If that act is repeated long enough, one acquires a sense of unbending intent, which can be applied to anything else.
If that is accomplished the road is clear.
One thing will lead to another until the warrior realizes his full potential.

The worst that could happen to us is that we have to die, and since that is already our unalterable fate, we are free: those who have lost everything no longer have anything to fear.

__________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Carlos Castaneda: Was He a True Shaman, or a Con Artist & Cult Leader?
​

In the 1960s, the author Carlos Castaneda took America by storm with his stories of studying psychedelic sorcery under the Yaqui wizard Don Juan. Unfortunately, the stories turned out not to be true, and Castaneda quickly spiraled into cult leader territory.

Carlos Castaneda was one of the most celebrated authors of the 1960s—his tales of psychedelic initiation at the hands of the probably at least partially fictional shaman Don Juan inspired a generation of seekers, including numerous celebrities.

Arriving on the scene just as the youth of America were discovering drugs, and into a marketplace that was largely devoid of any real information on shamanism or consciousness exploration, Castaneda’s books cleaned up.

Over a successive series of new tales, Castaneda described his initiation into what he called sorcery, the ability to alter awareness at will, and to live fearlessly by cutting all ties to the world.

He regaled his readers with increasingly bizarre stories of energetic parasites that blanket the earth, trips into other realms and even stranger forays into high weirdness.

Carlos Castaneda’s ideas remain unique, standing out as completely “other” in today’s “Mind/Body/Spirit” marketplace of recycled ideas.

However, for those who knew Castaneda personally, and strove to join his inner circle of devoted female acolytes, the “Separate Reality” they had entered could be a very dark one indeed.

Amy Wallace’s book Sorcerer’s Apprentice is a harrowing recounting of her time under Castaneda’s influence (and a great read, as well).

The book recounts how a highly educated member of a prominent literary family could get sucked into the hallucinatory web of a personality cult, and stands as an important testament (one of many) to the dangers faced on the road to higher consciousness.

Below, Amy Wallace is interviewed about the book and her experiences.

From the Examiner:

One night, my parents returned from a dinner party thrown by my dad’s agent, who was also Carlos’ agent. They were excited and enthusiastic, and my dad said, “We just met Carlos Castaneda! He’s fantastic – you have to meet him!” I was 15, and on a break from my New England hippie boarding school. I was never scared to meet famous people, they were part of the landscape. When Irving met John Lennon, Lennon was shaking with excitement. Yoko had grabbed him by the sleeve and said, “Look, John, it’s your favorite author, Irving Wallace!” (His favorite book was The Man, about a black man becoming president. Oh, if he had lived to see that dream come true!)

If a Lennon/Ono invitation had been forthcoming, I would have jumped at the chance. But Carlos Castaneda! He would grace the cover of Time magazine, lived in secrecy, and was too famous for me, too awe-inspiring.
I said, “No.”

My father said something very unusual for him: “I insist”…

[…]

Never give your power away to someone else, who claims to have special knowledge. Its the worst mistake I ever made. This is not to say that Carlos’ speeches and books do not contain some wisdom, they do indeed, but cults are evil, and I was in a cult. Still suffering from PTSD, nightmares, chills in the old neighborhood, etc. That this book has helped others so much means more than I can ever say.

​

Hm, interesting stuff. His words definitely hold wisdom, but that attitude can also be dangerous, just as that woman's experience showed.

I like the idea that no act is more important than another. That no matter what road we take, or how much we accrue, death is inevitable. So putting so much emphasis on the choices we make is folly. I can see how freeing it can be to think so, how it could help in creating a positive attitude to self worth. However, it could also lead to believing that, as long as you act like a warrior, anything is permitted. Which Castaneda obviously came to think was the case

 

[Tin Man]

PM the deets! ❤

I would also appreciate it if you send me the "deets".

 

[Skarekrow]

Love this!

I was so excited for you when I read this.


And so happy that it was successful ❤


That's wonderful! I wish you so much prosperity, well always, but definitely for this. Please keep us updated!


PM the deets! ❤

Thank you very much as always for your kind and generous words!
It was a great experience and has put me down a path in my life that has always been of interest to me.
I have to admit I am a bit worried about health issues getting in the way, but it also will give me a chance to get out of the house for an actual activity (besides grocery shopping and such), and has put me in touch with a large group of good and knowledgable people.

I feel lucky that I get to be the “facilitator” of the group, I hope I am worthy and competent enough to make the group a success.
I will keep you all in the loop!
Thank you again for being your compassionate self...much love!

 

[Skarekrow]

I don't post often either. I consider myself a pupil of this thread.

As am I.
Everything I have posted here is also something that I have found while researching these subjects for myself or for someone else who requested info about.
I will always be a pupil...I think once you stop considering yourself a “pupil” or “student” of life and reality and spirituality then you are fooling yourself and creating self-stagnation...once you start thinking that someone else has nothing of substance to offer you - IHMO either you have failed to pay close enough attention, or that person is unwilling to share and be open-minded toward you and others.

Thank you everyone who has helped to make this thread what it has become!
I hope it will carry on in the future, and I always try to keep up to date and interesting articles on here, as well as some fun things.
This thread would be nothing without all the people who are interested and have viewed or contributed to it...much love to you all!

 

[Skarekrow]

I would also appreciate it if you send me the "deets".

Will do!
You want them cold or heated up?

Hm, interesting stuff. His words definitely hold wisdom, but that attitude can also be dangerous, just as that woman's experience showed.

I like the idea that no act is more important than another. That no matter what road we take, or how much we accrue, death is inevitable. So putting so much emphasis on the choices we make is folly. I can see how freeing it can be to think so, how it could help in creating a positive attitude to self worth. However, it could also lead to believing that, as long as you act like a warrior, anything is permitted. Which Castaneda obviously came to think was the case

Yes, it’s similar to Osho who we previously discussed.
Though Casteneda hasn’t been perhaps as naughty.

I thought there were still worthwhile things to take from his writings....of course he is still a flawed human and I think his ego got the better of him like you suggest, I agree.
I guess if you were to include trying to act a gentleman as being part of the warrior’s nature, then you may have a better outcome perhaps?

 

[Skarekrow]

William Tiller ~ Energy (Chi) and How Energy Intentions Effect The World

Here William Tiller explains the importance of energy (chi), meditation, and other forms of building ones internal energies.
To have a inner quiet to enhance your energy.

William Tiller is a teacher, researcher, author and consultant, and is currently
Professor Emeritus of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University.

He previously worked as an advisory physicist at Westinghouse Research Laboratories, and has published 275 scientific papers and three technical books in the field of materials science.

He has carried out experiments with highly trained Tibettan monks, and found that their intentions can 'condition' space in a machine on an atomic level (subatomic technically).

He is one of the few scientists that is not put off by the scientific communities overwhelmingly negative opinion on these sort of effects.
A knowledge of science and physics is needed to understand what he is saying in its entirety.
_____________________________________________________________________________________________________

HOW TO STRENGTHEN YOUR CHI
Mantak Chia on London Real

_____________________________________________________________________
​

Understanding QiGong and Qi
1 - 3

​

 

[Skarekrow]

by Roger D. Nelson

Adapted from an article in the International Journal of Parapsychology

(Part Four of a series prepared for The Golden Thread)
Global Consciousness Project)

from GlobalConsciousnessProject Website​

"When you put a thing in order, and give it a name, and you are all in accord, it becomes."
From the Navajo, Masked Gods, Waters
1950​

Overview

The Global Consciousness Project is an international collaboration of researchers interested in the possibility that we can detect faint glimmerings of a coalescing layer of intelligence for the earth, what Teilhard de Chardin called the Noosphere (1).

We maintain a network of detectors located around the world in over 50 host sites ranging from Alaska to New Zealand.
These devices generate random data continuously and send it for archiving to a dedicated server in Princeton, New Jersey.

The data are analyzed to determine whether the sequences of unpredictable random values contain periods of structure that may be correlated with major events in the world.

According to standard physical theory, there should be no structure at all in random data.
Yet, we find that many of the global events we look at are associated with striking patterns in the data.

Special times like the celebrations of New Years, and tragic events like the attacks on September 11, 2001, show changes that are correlated with shared periods of deep engagement or widespread emotional reactions.

Our analyses establish that the non-random behavior cannot be attributed to mundane sources such as electrical grid stresses, mobile phone activity, or ordinary electromagnetic fields.

The evidence suggests instead that the anomalous structure we see is somehow related to the unusually coherent focus of human attention generated by extraordinary events.

Laboratory experiments demonstrate that intentions can affect random processes, and field trials with groups show that strong and resonant engagement seems to affect physical random event generators(REGs).

Yet the next step is a big one.

How do we leap to a world-spanning network testing for signs of a "global consciousness"?

Why should there be any effect of a world-wide New Year’s celebration, or the beginning of a war, or a billion people watching a funeral ceremony, on REG devices placed in far corners of the world?

Although it’s only a metaphor, it may be helpful to envision a "consciousness field".

Picture a faint radiance of information extending out indefinitely from each mind, with a wavelike interpenetration creating tenuous interference patterns that differ depending on our intentions and our degree of engagement.

Remember that this is a metaphor, and there is no actual physical energy that we can directly measure.

Yet, there appears to be something like a field carrying information that may be responsible for the anomalous effects in studies with REGs.
Our network is designed to capture subtle effects of such a field, which we think may be a manifestation of interacting fields of thought and emotion all over the world.

We are able to detect something of it whenever large numbers of people become attuned to a common interest and feeling.

We collect data continuously, day and night, month after month, generating a history of synchronized readings from all over the globe, corresponding to every moment and naturally covering any momentous occurrence on the world stage.

Our central archive is thus a database of responses that might be registered when a major event stimulates an unusual coherence of thought and emotion anywhere in the world.

Friends and colleagues around the world form a network of people with interest in the Global Consciousness Project who are willing to set up a computer to host an egg – one of our REG based detectors.

A map of the world shows the network of over 50 host sites at the beginning of 2003.

GCP eggs are located around the world, from Alaska to Fiji,
on all continents and in most time zones.​

Picturing Outcomes

With the data in hand, we ask what happens during a global event.
The measures we use are designed to identify small signals in what is typically a very noisy background of random numbers.

Even tiny changes from what’s expected, if they are consistent, can become “statistically significant” indicators of a real effect.
We interpret departures from the expected behavior in our data as a measure of something related to consciousness, following principles developed over decades of laboratory research showing that human intentions and special states of consciousness can affect the randomness of such devices.

To show how the analysis we use can reveal structure, we will look at some special cases that show with unusual clarity how graphs of the data represent the correlations we are interested in, and how these dry statistics can take on meaning.

We have a variety of instances with departures from expectation that make sense if there is a burgeoning global consciousness.
It is important to acknowledge there may be other causes or explanations, such as an effect of the experimenters’ strong interest, but we are sure at this point there is no mistake – the data show real anomalies.

To give an idea of the scale and nature of the effects, let us look at some examples.

First, a six hour period centered on the beginning of NATO bombing in Kosovo, which was judged by the Western nations and the US in particular to be the only choice available to stop the ethnic war in Yugoslavia.

It was a shock to the world, even though it was not unexpected.

The GCP data appear to be markedly different before and after the beginning of the bombing.
For the three-hour period leading up to the first explosion, the trace is a classic random walk, with no noticeable trend.

Then, beginning abruptly at that time, the trace changes; the next three hours no longer look random.
This is, of course, an interpretation of a picture of statistical quantities, and as a single instance, does not answer the question.

But it is not alone.
It turns out that about two thirds of our formal tests have a positive trend supporting the hypothesis, and almost 20% are statistically significant at the level where we expect 5% by chance.

Such results begin to add up to a persuasive case, even though the effects we seek to capture are subtle.

Three hours preceding and three hours following the beginning of bombing in Yugoslavia.
Adapted from a figure by George deBeaumont.​

The intuition that there is a deep sharing of emotion during big events on the world stage leads to asking whether this shared consciousness state might have manifestations in our data.

An event that attracted a great deal of media attention and was followed with positive regard by people everywhere was the week-long pilgrimage of Pope John to the Middle East to sites that are regarded as the sacred locus of origin for three of the world’s major religions.

The data have a persistent trend over the six-day period that certainly does not look random.
The sustained departure was so striking that I felt compelled to extract and process a special “control” dataset to be sure there was no mistake.

The control data are a splendid example of a random walk, wandering up and down, but showing no trend at all.

The Pope’s pilgrimage to the Middle East was the focus of news
because it was a sign of hope for resolution of the unending strife.
The lower trace is “control” data taken 10 days later.​

In early 2003, concern about a possible war in Iraq was at the forefront of world news, and, one might expect, a focal issue for our hypothetical global consciousness.

On the 15th of February, enormous numbers of people in the great cities of the world came together in demonstrations aimed to show worldwide support for peaceful resolutions of the conflicts in Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East.

The EGG network seemed to respond.
The data are clearly random for the first few hours of the GMT day, but by 11:00, when people were assembling for major demonstrations in Berlin, Rome, and London, the composite measure departed from expectation with a steep trend that continued for the rest of the day.

Taking a careful scientific stance, we must recognize that the deviation could be just a chance variation, but the timing and the strength of the trend are striking.

Gathering great numbers to show opposition to war
and support for peaceful solutions to crises in the Middle East.​

Tragedies and Celebrations

Several other cases of violent disruptions of the social fabric have been assessed, and most, though not all of them show substantial effects.

The clearest of these cases was the terrorist attack of September 11 2001, in which we see extraordinary departures of the data from expectation, matching the intensity of this event for world consciousness.

Because this was an extreme instance of what we call a global event, we looked at it from every angle.
This is detailed in several publications (2-4).

The accompanying illustration gives an idea of the kind of departures we found in the data on that terrible day.

The main figure traces the variability among the 37 REG devices reporting on September 10, 11, and 12.
Early in the morning of the 11th, the eggs began showing consistently large variance, and that tendency continued until about 11:00 or a bit later.

Then the variance became compressed, and remained smaller than usual on average until early evening.
This is a remarkable figure in many ways.

The peak departure on September 11 has odds of less than one in a thousand, and is essentially unique; no other day in four years shows such a large deviation.

Moreover, if we read the graph directly, there is a perhaps more startling note: the EGG network began to react well before the first plane hit the World Trade Center towers.

There may be a more mundane explanation (chance fluctuation is possible, though unlikely) but this looks as if our global consciousness somehow registered a precognition, or a presentiment of the terrible events to come.

click image to enlarge

The World Trade Center towers fell on September 11 2001,
and there is no question that this event affected our global consciousness deeply.
The EGG data appear to represent the shock and dismay,
with changes apparent in all the views we have of the data.​

Perhaps the most obvious global event for which widespread engagement can be predicted ahead of time is the celebration at New Years, in which there always is great interest and participation practically everywhere in the world.

One of the first items entered in the GCP Prediction Registry was for non-random patterns in the data collected during a period of 10 minutes surrounding the midnight transition from 1998 to 1999.

We predicted that there would be changes around midnight in each time zone, expecting to do an analysis that would sum the results for the whole 24-hour period.

Each year since then, we have made two primary predictions, and each year one or both has been statistically significant.
The data aren’t random; instead they show a pattern centered on midnight.

The graphically depicted data are not only visually compelling; they are also statistically impressive, especially because we see the non-random structure repeated year after year.

click image to enlarge

New Year celebrations are an easy time of shared thought and feeling.
We all wait for the moment to arrive,
and our attention is on friends and perhaps on raising a glass in a toast to the future.​

The Bottom Line

In the first four and a half years of the GCP (Global Consciousness Project), we have found two or three major events every month, ideal for testing the notion that we may be able to detect the presence of a shared field of consciousness.

Some results are as striking as the pictures of New Year celebrations or September 11, while others have no suggestion at all of departures from expectation.

Over this period, we have made more than 130 formal predictions from which it is possible to generate a bottom line assessment of the project’s basic hypothesis that there will be a correlation of patterns in the REG data with special moments of widespread engagement of consciousness.

We might be able to ignore the data from a few of these cases, or say that, after all, if we look long enough we must find an occasional remarkable pattern in random fields, but patterns appear in the random data more often than they should, in correlation with meaningful events.

Though we have more work to do, it seems that these correlations may be material from which we can derive insights into the far-reaching capabilities of consciousness.

The grand, composite result, shown graphically in the accompanying illustration, represents the repeated confirmation of our hypothesis, and it clearly isn’t just a chance fluctuation.

The odds that this accumulated deviation from a random relationship would occur by chance is on the order of a million to one.
Defining global events is necessarily somewhat arbitrary, but there are cases that most people will agree upon, and there are general ways of assessing the data to see if there is any unexpected structure.

Cumulative total deviation of results for 130 formal predictions.
The dotted smooth curves show the 5%, 0.1%, and 0.001% significance criteria.
A truly random trace would fluctuate around a level trend.​

Our primary results are based on correlating specially chosen moments, usually drawn from world news headlines, with data taken at the same time by the EGG network.

When we assess the correlations carefully, we find a tendency for the data to be different from what is expected of random data, leaving only a few possibilities to consider.

It may be that the interest and desires of the people in the EGG project produce what is called an "experimenter effect" which is registered by the detectors.

It may also be that the nature of the question we ask somehow shapes the outcome, and there may be subtle contributions from other sources.

The results are remarkable in any case, but I think it is fair to say that the pattern of correlations shows a primary influence linked with the events themselves.

While we cannot at this point claim that “global consciousness” is the responsible agent, my detailed experience with the complete database leads me to believe it is a good candidate for a major role.

That is, I think the deviations are most clearly and most strongly related to the important world events and human reactions to them as the main source of the effect.

We have found, for example, that correlations among the eggs are strongest when a completely independent measure of “news intensity” is high (4).
This means that the experimenters don’t need to identify the events specifically, or even to know about them; a correlation exists in any case.

Over all, it is arguably simplest to interpret the anomalous trends in the data as evidence that something like our hypothesized global consciousness exists in a faint but detectable form.

But there remains a lot of work to do before drawing that conclusion as a final interpretive model.

We can be quite sure these results represent a genuine anomaly, but at this point, it is not possible to offer a definitive explanation.
There are suggestions that might begin to explain these effects, although these remain speculative.

One of the most promising physical models is drawn from David Bohm’s theory of active information (2).
In his terms, information (and concomitant meaning) can be nonlocal, extending indefinitely throughout space and time.

Active information may be envisioned as a potential field interacting in the development of manifestations in the physical world.
Thus, active information is virtual, but when a "need" for it exists, the need actualizes the information by creating a repository for it.

In such a model, the question we ask in the EGG project plays the role of the need for information, making it possible for the inchoate meaning of a major event resonating in global consciousness to manifest as subtle changes in the behavior of our detectors.

Suggestions like those made in many intellectual and cultural traditions, that there is an Earth consciousness, appear to have a modicum of scientific support in the GCP results.

Similarly, the idea of a large-scale group consciousness, potentially engaging whole populations, gains some credence.
At the very least, these results are consistent with the idea that a subtle linkage can exist between widely separated people, and that we may be interconnected on a grand scale by consciousness fields.

A sequence of unlikely "chance" events leading to the EGG project has brought us the means to examine questions like this by looking for distortions of chance itself, apparently wrought by consciousness reaching out to connect our minds and to touch the material world.

Acknowledgements

The Global Consciousness Project would not exist except for the immense contributions of Greg Nelson and John Walker, who created the architecture and the sophisticated software.

Paul Bethke ported the egg software to Windows, thus broadening the network.
Dean Radin, Dick Bierman, and others in the planning group contributed ideas and experience.

Rick Berger helped to create a comprehensive Web site to make the project available to the public.
The project also would not exist but for the commitment of time, resources, and good will from all the egg hosts.

Our financial support comes from individuals including Charles Overby, Tony Cohen, Reinhilde Nelson, Michael Heany, Alexander Imich, Richard Adams, Richard Wallace, Anna Capasso, Michael Breland, Joseph Giove, and an anonymous contributor.

The Institute of Noetic Sciences provides logistical support as a non-profit home for the project, and the Lifebridge Foundation has provided generous support for documentation of the GCP.

Finally, there are very many friends of the EGG project whose good will, interest, and empathy open a necessary niche in consciousness space.


References

1. Teilhard de Chardin, P. (1959). The Phenomenon of Man. New York: Harper & Row, Publishers.
2. Nelson, R. D., Radin, D. I., Shoup, R., and Bancel, P. A. (2002). Correlations of Continuous Random Data with Major World Events. Foundations of Physics Letters, 15, 6, 537-550.

 

[Tin Man]

Will do!
You want them cold or heated up?



Yes, it’s similar to Osho who we previously discussed.
Though Casteneda hasn’t been perhaps as naughty.

I thought there were still worthwhile things to take from his writings....of course he is still a flawed human and I think his ego got the better of him like you suggest, I agree.
I guess if you were to include trying to act a gentleman as being part of the warrior’s nature, then you may have a better outcome perhaps?

You know I like my deets flame grilled.

I came across this while searching for pics of a gentleman warrior, which I quite liked.

Hm, it's apparently attributed to William Butler, an 19th century Lieutenant General in the British army. By current standards, he would considered to be a war mongering invader of African. So...yeah. Still, great quote.