Perception as ever, is a strange shape shifting beast. First encounters also always happen in the past.

Our senses become rendered as chemical synaptic antagonistic keys released swirling to awaiting agonist locks where conformational ion channels fire sparks shooting neuronal length. At swift journeys end electrical notes transpose through cell walls chemically once more and release into the brainy brine.

Left the task of witness ‘we’ re-assemble this cacophony releasing symphony and symmetry.

Perception takes Time. Time which ‘we’ perceive via consensus regarding it’s arbitrary divisions.

That sweet first encounter occurred many, many picoseconds ago by the Time we actually experience, Experience.

In the meantime ‘We recollect, we recollect’.

Ready for the next instant.

Carlos Castaneda proposes that this little recognized lag between occurrence and perception offers a cubic centimeter of chance for dual perception.

Perceiving in the ‘here’ and ‘here’ at the once.

If, as modern physics states, mass and energy are interchangeable and the basic indivisible unit of matter is energy, which has no mass, Castaneda proposes that we should make every effort to train our ability to perceive everything as pure energy itself to transcend this perpetual perceptual lag.

Castaneda maintains that all life is born with innate abilities to perceive in this manner and in the case of human beings it is during the process of our rapid socialization after birth that we forget our quiescent access to our energetic side.

Have you ever wondered what an infant is actually perceiving as they gaze in goggle eyed wonder? Perhaps far more than you.

Perception arising from our innate indivisible energetic state lies at the heart of alternatives presented by Castaneda who describes all life forms as being essentially sections of the energetic fibres of which the Universe is comprised, encapsulated within a cocoon.

Castaneda states that perception for all life forms occurs as a result of pressure produced by the energetic fibres from the Universe at large impinging on the fibres trapped within the cocoon. He goes on to term the glowing locus of interaction between the infinite number of exterior and finite enclosed interior fibres as the Assemblage Point.

According to Castaneda the Assemblage Point filters the interaction between exterior and interior fibres and that it is the location of the Assemblage Point within the energetic cocoon that determines the nature of Perception itself for each life form.

Castaneda avidly maintains Humankind’s unconscious ability to collectively and simultaneously hold our Assemblage Points rigidly fixed on the same position is our species’ sole readily accessible magic. This energetic consensus enables us to all essentially perceive the same physical world and to agree upon things such as the hardness of physical objects, when all that actually exists is energy.

Castaneda describes the energetic form of the human being as a luminous egg, larger than our physical bodies, with the Assemblage Point located as a point of brilliance surrounded by a tennis ball sized glow on surface of the cocoon about an arms length behind our right shoulder blade. He goes on to maintain that if the position of the assemblage point could be made to move to new locations on the surface of, or within the cocoon, we would perceive in completely new ways.

Four main strands of techniques are presented by Castaneda as a means of gaining voluntary control of the movement of our Assemblage Points thereby allowing ourselves to re-access abilities we are apparently all born with. Performing the arts of Not-Doing, Dreaming, Stalking and the Recapitulation aims to dramatically expand our options of perception to include all our available energetic possibilities.

With a keen insight into the routine nature of social existence Castaneda maintains that most of what we do is habitual.

The shoe put on the left foot first as a child becomes left foot first as adult always forever more.

The art of Not-Doing offers an escape from the unfortunate energetic side effect of our rote-by-rote living that rigidly fixes our Assemblage Point immobile in place during our socialization. Not-Doing attacks this immobilization by shocking and vibrating the Assemblage Point loose from its habitual position with gentle streams of new and ever more subtle courses of action.

Put your shoes on right foot first, do your belt up the other way, look for shadows in foliage rather than leaves.

Castaneda’s Tensegrity presents a system of deliberate alternative actions for the physical body that further assist to relax our habitual nature, increase our personal energy levels and loosen the Assemblage Point from its customary position.

Castaneda assigns dreams compelling power by proposing the Assemblage Point naturally drifts to new positions as an energetic result of the act of sleep. Dreams themselves are elevated from mere fantasies or imaginary projections to be realized as entire actually perceived energetic worlds which by stabilizing the Assemblage Point in its new sleep cast position become fresh theatres of volition, action and exploration.

The art of Dreaming describes slowly becoming aware of new volitional possibilities of action and exploration within entirely new energetic worlds accessed by dramatic natural movements of the Assemblage Point during sleep.

Accordingly movement of the Assemblage Point will produce chaotic perception we can only interpret if it is held stationary on the new point to where it has been cast. The art of Stalking describes working towards the high personal energetic level needed to accomplish this intangible task by applying impeccability in our daily lives.

Dreaming and Stalking techniques go hand in hand. To be effective in moving the Assemblage Point, Dreaming needs to occur without conscious effort via natural sleep, the art lies in becoming aware that you are dreaming and that the Assemblage Point has moved. Stalking is the art that enables us to develop the personal energy required to impeccably stabilize the Assemblage Point in its new position and thereby enable coherent perception of foreign energetic possibilities.

Memory itself, that most elusive ephemeral process which ascribes meaning to our lives also lies within mysteries of positions of the Assemblage Point; however here the movements are so small as to be infinitesimal rather than the grand movements produced in dreaming.

The Recapitulation is the crowning task described by Castaneda where regaining volitional control over the infinitudes of minute positional changes of the Assemblage Point that comprise our entire day-to-day emotionally charged energetic history enables us to foster the discipline, detachment and precision required to regain the totality of ourselves and our possibilities.

Retracing memory takes on new unprecedented power in the two stages of the Recapitulation where the discipline required to access and actually relive every moment of our lives steadily increases our energetic prowess which in turn enables us to more readily reproduce the minute variations in the position of the Assemblage Point that accompanied each experience.

This transformation of memory from some vague electrochemical response to a perhaps even vaguer energetic event whereby the minutia of each and every past experience is actually relived is the heart of this overlong preamble.

If, as Castaneda adamantly maintains in each of his twelve books, the information he presents is truthful and actually occurred then in my opinion it is the most important text ever written.

Evidence however would tend to suggest that Castaneda wrote fictionally, primarily for the purpose of cult formation.

Still the residue of his work has obviously left an indelible impression on me.

I find it difficult to argue with Castaneda’s chillingly acute observations of the destructive habitual and dogmatic nature of our societal and individual lives and find it easy to imagine how new options and new possibilities taken as harmonious deliberate courses of action might be incredibly liberating both individually and collectively for Humans themselves and as a happy side effect might also bode well for every other life form existing on this planet Earth we seem so hell bent on needlessly destroying with our relentlessly habitual self importance.

Some of these new possibilities might well be discovered in dreams as so many of our now readily accepted amazing modern realities have been in the past. A systematic magical approach to the endless possibilities of Dreaming seems almost reasonable.

Impeccable discipline brought to bear on all our actions can only auger well for all concerned despite Stalking being an ephemeral concept almost completely foreign in my own real life.

Which brings us finally to our little blog, our little walk around small sections of Europe.

Arriving agog in Paris from Australia all that Time ago, Pam wrote her first entry before we went to sleep that first night in our delightful blue-green stripy soft fabric walled hotel room ala Le Dokhan’s.

It was to be half diary, half saving her having to individually email friends and family.

I randomly blasted out an entry of my own when I awoke to the unfamiliar sounds of 3:30am Paris and unexpectedly discovered myself having a ton of fun. Instantly I was hooked and became the unfortunately much more loquacious primary writer.

Recollecting like nobody’s business fixes done deeds down deep into the recesses of whatever memory is. I have definitely been performing a Recapitulation.

Magical.

Our little blog was primarily to be a real source of shared enjoyment for ourselves created by retracing and rediscovering memories of our happy journey whenever Time and Space made this possible and was then accidently flung out into this modern day aether as a mere communication simplification.

And so it has become, a little personal tale of shared recollection spun from joy and fun.

Having derived so much enjoyment from the process I am at a loss to provide reasonable explanation for the long gap between posts.

I can only put it down to circumstance and negligence.

Having finally re-gathered initiative my intent is to pick up where we left up in Antalya, Turkey and just charge onwards in a manner similar to past entries.

Using Breath as the magical vehicle that it is, I shall, exhaling, fan over events and actions now long past as a true Recapitulation. As my breath slows, quiets, deepens, my chattering monkey-mind shall fall silent, dropping me truly back into each breath, step and action taken in lands now far away.

I shall have the great fortune of living adventure twice.

Hopefully I’ll write down the good bits.

PLL

Mick

Fall’s Release

Whence came you
Whence came I
Born to live
Then live to die
Fallen, from the universe without
And squeezed within these bones
This flesh
This heart

Formed fallen
Flesh upon flesh
Supple life-force bundled
Fibre beside fibre
Woven, filamentous from without
Bestowed awareness being the resin
That binds fast these bones
This flesh
This heart

Chaos, my true parents
Bay strident Siren songs
Born to live
Then live to die
Too soon I’ll be unbound
My awareness is the Eagle’s
Bestowed, enhanced, reclaimed
My folks shall set to feast upon
These bones
This flesh
This heart

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