The state of consciousness
Silence is an inner state of consciousness in which all thoughts of the mind stops, as are frozen and inactive. In the silence you can hear what comes from space and time that go beyond what the mind can perceive under normal conditions. You can access the knowledge they have very little "human" both belong to humanity profoundly. The artists performing their work, consciously or unconsciously are in this particular state. Shamans from all over the world to bring healing, knowledge and wisdom to their communities have developed various practices to achieve a tangible and reliable to silence. Trained by Carlos Castaneda Don Juan Matus, a Yaqui shaman in the desert of Sonora, has described in great detail in his later books like the shamans of ancient Mexico entered into the depth of inner silence through the Magical Passes. These are movements and breathing from the visionaries dreamed of his lineage, in very remote and that reported in this reality with practical purposes.
Through the silence within you can beat that in almost all the spiritual traditions of the East to the West, is identified as the greatest obstacle to the evolution of mankind. The inner mind keeps saying "I. .. I ... I ..." with its noise covers all the other signals and other perceptions that are available to man. Carlos Castaneda, in his book "Tensegrity" recounts the episode in which, having attained inner silence, for the first time was able to "see", and the thing that upset him most of the episode was not so much the vision of a landscape ever seen, prehistoric animals, the ancestral sounds he could hear through the traffic in Los Angeles, but the fact that somehow these things even before he had perceived, ever since.
Shamanism is the practice at once easier and harder to live it just for that, because things often come in such a simple and immediate that we are not aware of their intrinsic value. The mind gets in the way it complicates and obscures the direct perception, bears judgment, lack of trust and devalues what you feel with your heart instead.
But how can we reach inner silence?
Shamans have developed many stratagems to put aside silence may last a few seconds or minutes of the whole depends upon the individual skills and also by means that are used. Those who manage to overcome a certain threshold is then able to achieve silence in a spontaneous way. One of the most fascinating is the one who handed down through the lineage of Carlos Castaneda Magical Passes, which uses some of the movements of the body. According to the visionaries of his lineage in addition to the physical body we have an energy body, and this is outside the control of the mind. The Magical Passes have the ability to bring the two bodies to join them in a perceptual units able to tap into the silent knowledge, as it was called by his teacher, the nagual don Juan. The Magical Passes stimulate appropriate points of connection between the physical body and energy body and activate areas of energy that are often unused. The combined action of these two actions leads to a complete saturation of the mind, which is no longer able to interfere with the higher states of consciousness, allowing those who practice them in a disciplined, sober, of seeing energy as flows in the universe.
The Magical Passes handed down to the inner silence in darkness have their main source, because the darkness, removing the organ closer to the mind's eye, the ability to be active, makes this absence of thought-verbalization characteristic of mental activity.
They are very basic movements, such as the track with your foot or hands of simple shapes, or put pressure on some parts of the body in sync with the breath, which alter in subtle but profound state of consciousness. These movements enable the body to take the knowledge that truly belongs to him, by activating areas that seem to exist in everyday life, and give it a charge of being easily perceived.
One of the most powerful tools to achieve inner silence is the drum. With the beating continued monotonous and the brain begins to slow down his activities, thoughts are quickly put aside to make room for understanding non-verbal. In this case the transition from the inner dialogue, that is from that series of thoughts that continually overcrowd the mind, and gradually becomes silent, the continuity of the drum also allows to return to silence at any time, even if the dialogue is briefly returned .
In the lineage of Carlos Castaneda's the sound of the drums is used in combination with some steps similar to a dance, to reinforce the effect and the whole body to give the perception of silence.
What happens between two thoughts is silence within, but how often does that happen to us Westerners, completely at the mercy of external stimuli, such as radio, TV, film, computers?