You presume, in looking at the world around you, that you know what reality is. You presume, that that world which you see in so looking, is reality. But before we can proceed further I must tell you that that presumption is in error. I must tell you that what you see, in looking at the world around you, is a subjective experience that is far removed from the reality it was based upon. I must also point out to you that at this very moment you are taking that subjective experience to be reality, and in so doing, you are blinding yourself to the truth of the reality that surrounds you. You have become so caught up in the believability of the illusion your mind has created for you in the form of that subjective experience, that you find yourself hard-pressed to see beyond it.

Let me illustrate the truth of what I am trying to convey to you with an example, that you may better grasp this opportunity to step beyond the confinement imposed upon you by your subjection to an illusion. For that example, let us examine your sense of hearing. Your hearing a sound begins when waveforms of energy find their way to your outer ear where they are transformed to mechanical energy by small bones within your middle ear. This mechanical energy travels on to your inner ear in the form of vibrations picked up by the organ of Corti. Those vibrations are then converted into and transmitted as electrical and chemical signals passed between nerve cells within your auditory nerve until they eventually reach the temporal-cortical areas of your brain. Here they continue to be shuffled about between neurons in the form of chemical and electrical exchanges between these cells and somehow, through this electrochemical dance occurring within your brain, you come to have the subjective experience we all understand as sound. Though we donââ?¬Ë?t quite fully comprehend how those many transformations become our ultimate experience of hearing a sound, most all of us are familiar with the experience of hearing a sound.

When you hear a sound you presume that you hear that sound because there was first a sound to be heard, but the truth is that there is no sound until you hear it, there are only energetic waveforms. Your experience of hearing a sound, though caused by these waveforms of energy, is not the waveforms themselves. Within your awareness you hear those waveforms as a sound, but the waveforms themselves never experience themselves as a sound. The sound only exists within your experience of the sound.

That experience you call sound is a concoction prepared for you by the perceptual peculiarities of your mind, and is an impression of the ââ?¬Å?out thereââ?¬

CONCEIVING THE SELF
Purporting to be a study of self as gleaned from the writings of Carlos Castaneda. Any conclusions herein drawn (indicated by parentheses) are of the author of this compilation and in reference to Castanedaââ?¬Ë?s own descriptive system. The ordering of the quotations is not meant to imply additional conclusions. Quotations are referenced so that the reader may pursue their own studies of this subject matter the better to draw their own conclusions should they feel the need to do so. Quotations given are not all-inclusive or exhaustive.

CONCEIVING THE SELF

“The idea of the personal self has no value whatsoever.” TPOS 219
“War, for a warrior, doesn’t mean acts of individual or collective stupidity or wanton violence. War, for a warrior, is the total struggle against that individual self that deprives man of his power.” TPOS 150

SELVES: THE CONGLOMERATE SELF

The self as the “me I know” VS. “a conglomerate of separate and independent feelings that had an unbending solidarity to one another. The unbending solidarity of my countless awarenesses, the allegiance that those parts had for one another was my life force.” TOP 268-69
“The idea of the abstract, the spirit, is the only residue that is important. The idea of the personal self has no value whatsoever. You still put yourself and your own feelings first. Every time I’ve had the chance, I have made you aware of the need to abstract. You have always thought that I meant to think abstractly. No. To abstract means to make yourself available to the spirit by being aware of it.” TPOS 219
(The “conglomerate self” is comprised of many elements; one of these elements is the sense of the “me I know’, this sense of “self-importance” takes predominance in consuming the energy of our awareness and is what we normally consider as the “self”.)
“In the case of the recapitulation, the secret option that only sorcerers take is to choose to enhance their true minds.
“The haunting memory of your recollections…could come only from your true mind. The other mind that we all have and share is, I would say, a cheap model: economy strength, one size fits all…which exists in you and in every other human being…their syntax.” TASOI 168
“we are not naturally petty and contradictory…Our pettiness and contradictions are, rather, the result of a transcendental conflict that afflicts every one of us, but of which only sorcerers are painfully and hopelessly aware: the conflict of our two minds…One is our true mind, the product of all our life experiences, the one that rarely speaks because it has been defeated and relegated to obscurity. The other, the mind we use daily for everything we do, is a foreign installation.” TASOI 9
(The “mind we use daily” is our self-reflection, our sense of an individual self, this is not our true mind but rather, ââ?¬Å?a foreign installation;ââ?¬

I’m at the point where I am using certain behaviors in my stalking, not from the standpoint of acting them out, but feeling them, intending them, etc. And these states include an element of self importance in them ie:intimidation, aloofness. Now I am able to switch back to my baseline state, but if those emotions and feelings are energy draining, doesn’t that confuse the issue?

When I first read about the flyers from The Active Side of Infinity I was a little disappointed. I have always been fond of an idea that we all human beings are supposed to be responsible about everything that comes from our ego. That is the ideal situation to me that we wouldn’t blame any imagined creature like a devil or satan about our misbehavings. I’m quite against religions, and I have felt at peace with nagualism thinking that there is no such things as “demons” or “angels”, only beings and forces we don’t understand and like to think they are evil or good.

Now that there could be a creature, a flyer, who comes into us as a foreign installation and I have understood that it mainly IS the ego in us all, that makes me feel that once again there is a thing we can blaim and so we can imagine we aren’t resbonsible about a thing we do or say. Luckily, if one truly believes in a flyer, there’s atleast always the task of getting rid of the foreign installation…

It also makes me wonder that trough all the CC’s books there’s no mention about these things and suddenly they are mentioned in the last book.

:unsure:

I have been using a technique for the last few months for stalking the self. I started out by pausing every few hours to make a note on the state of my mind, then I increased the frequency. With some effort I was able to dispense with the notes and check in on myself mentally every 15 to 20 minutes….a habit formed. Whenever my awareness changes a check automatically happens. I try to objectively observe what I am thinking and feeling. This has led to much tighter control over my emotional processes. The frequency of emotional upset and drama in my life has dropped considerably presenting a saving of energy that would otherwise be spent on such wasteful acts. This has also given me greater control over my perception and allowed me to assume responsibility for myself down to the level of my thoughts.

One thing that I find interesting is using the cover of the internet to try on different personalities. Or perhaps different aspects of my own personality.

Who says we need to be “ourselves” online (or otherwise)? In my experience, online forums have given me a chance to try on different masks and play with different feelings.

It’s fun to sometimes be young, old, male, female, asshole, nice guy, fat headed idiot, and arrogant know-it-all.

For me it seems to have useful possibilities as a training ground before heading for the real thing. Out there.