Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan’s Teachings

R: It’s fine if you don’t want to educate me about the behavioral sciences, but you are good with words, couldn’t you have simple said something like, “Rick, there is much information regarding these matters that you obviously don’t have. A good place to gather this missing information would be … bla bla bal. I suggest research into… bla bla bal” Something like that.

M: Do you recall your reaction when there was a suggestion for you to read two books by Ayn Rand? It was a profound and intense rejection that even stimulated a “mini-rant.” There is nothing that has occurred in the interim to suggest that any new suggestions would not be similarly rejected with equal intensity. Consider also, that these recent exchanges were a test to evaluate the possibility that there had been an integrated modification to your impulse reactions. Since the reactions came in a form that mirrors similar experiences in the past, it could be concluded that progressive integration has not occurred in any substantive way.

R: Yes, I’d read this before writing the above stuff and much of that writing came from the realizations of this. “Progressive integration has not occurred in any substantive way.” I really had not even seen much to integrate. It’s been more, compiled, what I already “know.” But I’ve not held it that way intentionally. It’s just been part of who I’ve been with all of this exchange. So maybe that explains my shock at your writings these last couple of days. I was just happily going along in my non-evolving way, and suddenly you dropped the hammer.

R: But your deciding to “decouple” … I really wish it was a test that you are giving me to see how I’ll react to “decoupling” … but I actually don’t get that it is that. And I do, then, find this very odd.

M: It was not intended as a test. Consider the indications provided above and couple those with the mandate that energy be conserved through efficiency.

R: Well, this is complete for me now, save for seeing what I do with it from here. I don’t feel a need to apologize for anything as I think I’ve explained where I was coming from in how I saw your comments, and I’ll let what I’ve already said now be a form of apology. I really thought that you were losing it and could not even imagine what was going on. Thank you for taking me through it. I’m sitting here normally. Yet I don’t even feel like going into the other room. No wonder I have so little at 49. Not to drop into self-pity. But I just did, and I guess that is a reflection of doubt that I will change, yet maybe I already have and will now see it. -Rick

R: Also you said, “There are always a mix of attributes, of course, however each metaphorical “level” has emphasis of the mix of attributes that efficiently cause progress. While, based on experience, there is some consistency to your comment, the analogy could be express to note that roller skates have wheels, and airplanes have wheels that they use prior to flying, therefore, roller skates can be projected like airplanes because of the commonality they share, “wheels.” Airplanes can lift off the wheels and fly, but roller skates are far better at their purpose of small movements upon the ground in which quick navigational movements are employed, but the user can never fly with only roller skates despite the implied similarity with airplanes.”

R: That makes more sense to me, that “each metaphorical “level” has emphasis of the mix of attributes that efficiently cause progress. Okay, good. See there, I love to find out new things, … always have, there is not a closed-minded bone in my body when given or pointed to the truth.

R: Also you said, “Yes. That is your approach. Words and interactions, it is observed, are useless against such preconvictions and predispositions.”

R: Sigh, … What “words and interactions” did you even try? I guess this is losing the spirit of the first paragraph, but if this is heading for “decoupling” it ought to at least be closed with some sense of completion… of something. Okay, sorry, I’m going back into the total feeling of this and forgetting that I’m making points above that you’ve not had a chance to reply to, which hopefully will eliminate much of what I’m reading down here.

M: Suggestion is that you might evaluate your words above.

R: Also you said, “In 18 million years, almost all of what is currently understood and considered important or intense in any human endeavor, other than evolution into the third attention, will be irrelevant because the new information base that will follow with be sufficient to replace the current concepts. The third attention is timeless, and the 18 million years exemplified by the above, have no significance whatever.”

R: Now there are some interesting things I’d love to hear more about. I wish I could just erase all of this and the last two days, but that’s not possible, so, I’ll be looking forward to your reply.

———–

R: It started when I left the computer after writing to you last night. I went out and my daughter was there and I accidentally knocked her jacket into her soup… Just a tiny bit. She got mad at me, just a tiny bit, I would always get mad at her back for getting mad at me. But instead, I felt like crying, told her I was sorry, and had to leave the room so she wouldn’t see me.

R: This morning I forgot to give her lunch money and we were walking as we always do, to her friends house where she then walks to school with her friend. I said, can’t you borrow from the school again (knowing that this had been done in the past and paid back the next day) she said, “I thought you don’t believe in borrowing.” I was stopped, I finally said, I don’t know what I believe so much right now. Then I said, “I guess it’s not so good to just make blanket statements. I guess it’s better to look at the different possibilities on a case by case deal…

R: I know more now about negating experience too. I’m already catching myself doing that with this experience.

——-

R: I’m felling so melancholy since last night because what keeps coming up are the old was of being and on the one hand what you’ve said above is already part of my understanding of how evolutions occurs and I have so much attachment to having it happen … and seeing the breakthrough that is occurring with this all and the huge sadness … I don’t know where it is coming from except from doubt of myself to move through this and not succumb to the pull of the old reflex reactions. I think the sadness is that I think that the old is who I am inclined to being again, yet even this present state of seeing it’s loss of power over me doesn’t seem to be producing anything but a feeling of emptiness in it’s place … and I know that is good and the doubt comes back again that I won’t push through to the other side of this. I wish I could just go away from everything and everybody for a while. I feel so alone and like who I’ve been has been torn from me with nothing in it’s place but sadness…

M: The “approach adjustment” reported by the immediately prior e/mail (last night) and this below are, of course, positive indications of the retrospection and contemplative processes that could eventually move you across a threshold. There is full understanding that this probably will not be an overnight progression. With a commit to yourself you may continue to move forward into a new awareness, which may have already started. If you can accomplish this feat, it will change your life – forever.

R: I took a nap after writing last and while first lying there with my reported sadness, many things passed through my thinking. One was the realization that nearly all (the thought was actually, “all”)of what I do is with a motive.

M: Yes. Sometimes intentional and sometimes reflexive and not understood, as automatic responses, more or less in the form of habitual.

R: As that thought was occurring within the sadness and the feeling of nothing, it seems a good realization, I then saw for a few moments that I was so closely watching, right then, all of my thoughts as being inauthentic that suddenly I noticed I was going into moments of really no thoughts.

M: Okay, other than the word “all” (of my thoughts). The thoughts that seem inauthentic are actually authentic BUT within the frame of an alternate but inauthentic reality. Adjust the reality, and the thoughts adjust themselves.