Every time anyone enters into the second attention, the assemblage point is on a different position. To remember that experience, then, means to relocate the assemblage point on the exact position it occupied at the time those entrances into the second attention occurred. Not only do sorcerers have total and absolute recall but they relive every experience they had in the second attention by this act of returning their assemblage point to each of those specific positions. Sorcerers dedicate a lifetime to fulfilling this task of remembering.
Learning something in the second attention is just like learning when we were children. What we learn remains with us for live.
Entering into the second attention forces you to sustain, for long periods of time, new positions of your assemblage point and to perceive coherently in them, that is to say, it forces you to rearrange your uniformity and cohesion.
The assemblage point becomes very easily displaced during sleep. Dreams are totally associated with that displacement. The greater the displacement, the more unusual the dream or vice versa: the more unusual the dream, the greater the displacement.
Sorcerers view dreaming as an extremely sophisticated art; the art of displacing the assemblage point at will from its habitual position in order to enhance and enlarge the scope of what can be perceived.
The art of dreaming is anchored on five conditions in the energy flow of human beings.
1. . Only the energy filaments that pass directly through the assemblage point can be assembled into coherent perception.
2. If the assemblage point is displaced to another position, no matter how minute the displacement, different and unaccustomed energy filaments begin to pass through it, engaging awareness and forcing the assembling of these unaccustomed energy fields into a steady, coherent perception.
3. In the course of ordinary dreams, the assemblage point becomes easily displaced by itself to another position on the surface or in the interior of the luminous egg.
4. The assemblage point can be made to move to positions outside the luminous egg, into the energy filaments of the universe at large.
5. Through discipline it is possible to cultivate and perform, in the course of sleep and ordinary dreams, a systematic displacement of the assemblage point.
As a preamble to the first lesson in dreaming , I will talk about the second attention as a progression: beginning as an idea that comes to us more like a curiosity than an actual possibility; turning into something that can only be felt, as a sensation is felt; and finally evolving into a state of being, or a realm of practicalities, or a preeminent force that opens for us worlds beyond our wildest fantasies.
Being a by-product of a displacement of the assemblage point, the second attention does not happen naturally but must be intended, beginning with intending it as an idea and ending up with intending it as a steady and controlled awareness of the assemblage points displacement.
The first step to power is to set up dreaming . To set up dreaming means to have a precise and practical command over the general situation of a dream.
This control is no different from the control we have over any situation in our daily lives. Sorcerers are used to it and get it every time they want or need to. In order for you to get used to it yourself I taught you to look at your hands while dreaming .
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Explanations always call for deep thought. But when you actually dream, be as light as a feather. Dreaming has to be performed with integrity and seriousness, but in the midst of laughter and with the confidence of someone who doesn’t have a worry in the world. Only under these conditions can our dreams actually be turned into dreaming .
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I selected your hands as something to look for in your dreams because they will always be there. Looking for anything else is just as valid provided that you pick one thing in advance and stay with it night after night until you succeed in finding it. The goal of the exercise is not finding a specific thing but engaging your dreaming attention.
The dreaming attention is the control one acquires over one’s dreams upon fixating the assemblage point on any new position to which it has been displaced during dreams. The dreaming attention is an incomprehensible facet of awareness that exists by itself, waiting for a moment when we would entice it, a moment when we would give it purpose; it is a veiled faculty that every one of us has in reserve but never has the opportunity to use in everyday life.
There are seven gates and dreamers have to open all seven of them, one at a time. There are entrances and exits in the energy flow of the universe. In the specific case of dreaming , there are seven entrances, experienced as obstacles, which sorcerers call the seven gates of dreaming .
The first gate is a threshold we must cross by becoming aware of a particular sensation before deep sleep. A sensation which is like a pleasant heaviness that doesn’t let us open our eyes. We reach that gate the instant we become aware that we’re falling asleep, suspended in darkness and heaviness. There are no steps to follow. One just intends to become aware of falling asleep.
Intent or intending is something very difficult to talk about. I or anyone else would sound idiotic trying to explain it. Bear that in mind when you hear what I have to say next: sorcerers intend anything they set themselves to intend , simply by intending it.
For sorcerers, because the statement I made pertains to intent and intending , understanding it pertains to the realm of energy. Sorcerers believe that if one would intend that statement for the energy body, the energy body would understand it in terms entirely different from those of the mind. The trick is to reach the energy body. For that you need energy.
The energy body would understand that statement in terms of a bodily feeling, which is hard to describe. You’ll have to experience it to know what I mean.
Intending is a subject not for your reason but for your energy body. At this point, you can’t yet comprehend the import of all this, not only because you don’t have sufficient energy but because you’re not intending anything. If you were, your energy body would comprehend immediately that the only way to intend is by focusing your intent on whatever you want to intend .
The goal of dreaming is to intend the energy body. In this particular instance, since we’re talking about the first gate of dreaming , the goal of dreaming is to intend that your energy body becomes aware that you are falling asleep. Don’t try to force yourself to be aware of falling asleep. Let your energy body do it. To intend is to wish without wishing, to do without doing.
Accept the challenge of intending . Put your silent determination, without a single thought, into convincing yourself that you have reached your energy body and that you are a dreamer . Doing this will automatically put you in the position to be aware that you are falling asleep.
When you hear that you have to convince yourself, you automatically become more rational. How can you convince yourself you are a dreamer when you know you are not? Intending is both: the act of convincing yourself you are indeed a dreamer , although you have never dreamt before, and the act of being convinced.
I don’t mean you have to tell yourself you are a dreamer and try your best to believe it. It isn’t that.
Intending is much simpler and, at the same time, infinitely more complex than that. It requires imagination, discipline, and purpose. In this case, to intend means that you get an unquestionable bodily knowledge that you are a dreamer . You feel you are a dreamer with all the cells of your body.
You must reach your energy body on your own. Intending the first gate of dreaming is one of the means discovered by the sorcerers of antiquity for reaching the second attention and the energy body.
To ask a dreamer to find a determined item in his dreams is a subterfuge. The real issue is to become aware that one is falling asleep. And, strange as it may seem, that doesn’t happen by commanding oneself to be aware that one is falling asleep but by sustaining the sight of whatever one is looking at in a dream.
Dreamers take quick, deliberate glances at everything present in a dream. If they focus their dreaming attention on something specific, it is only as a point of departure. From there, dreamers move on to look at other items in the dream’s content, returning to the point of departure as many times as possible.