The Internal Dialogue, Self Importance and War with the Self

Talking about the Internal Dialogue earlier prompted me to do a little digging.

Found this great part of an interview with Florinda:

Quote

Abe: What's the nature of the battle? Because you use the language of the warrior. What's the
nature of the battle? What are you fighting?

Florinda: The self.

Abe: The self.

Florinda: It's not even the self; it's an idea of the self, because if we would really get the self
below the surface, we don't really know what it is. And it is possible to curtail this idea, this
bombastic idea we have of the self. Because whether it's a negative idea or a positive idea
doesn't really matter. The energy employed to sustain that idea is the same.

Abe: So there's tremendous emphasis in this tradition on overcoming what is called
self-importance.

Florinda: Self-importance, exactly. That's the main battle. To shut off our internal dialogue.
Because even if we're isolated someplace, we are still constantly talking to ourselves. That
internal dialogue never stops. And what does the internal dialogue do? It always justifies itself,
no matter what. We replay things, events, what we could have said or could have done, what we
feel or don't feel. The emphasis is always on me. We're constantly spouting this mantra-
me...me...me, silently or verbally.

Abe: So, an opening emerges when...

Florinda: ...when that dialogue shuts off. Automatically. We don't have to do anything. And the
reason people reject Castaneda as not true is because it's too simple. But its sheer simplicity
makes it the hardest thing there is to do for us. There are about six people in our world engaged
in the same pursuit. And the difficulty we all have is totally shutting off that internal dialogue. It's
fine if we're not threatened. But when certain buttons are pushed, our reactions arc so ingrained
in us that it's so easy to go back on automatic pilot.

You see, there's one great exercise that Don
Juan prescribes- the idea of recapitulation. The idea is that you recapitulate your life, basically.
And it's not a psychological recapitulation. You want to bring back that energy you left in all the
interactions you've had with people throughout your life, and you start of course from the present
moment and you go backwards in lime. But if you really do a good recapitulation, you discover,
by the time you are three or four years old, you have learned all your reactions already. Then we
become more sophisticated, we can hide them better, but basically the pattern has already been
established, how we're going to interact with the world and with our fellow human beings.

Abe: So here is the image, then, or the awareness of a kind human being who is travelling a
parallel path to the world of the Tonal, or the world of the person, the social person. This other
world, his other opening, is something that has apparently always been there.

Florinda: Yes, it's always there. It's available to all of us. Nobody wants to tap into it, or people
think they want to tap into it, but as Don Juan pointed out, the seeker is involved in something
else, because a person who seeks already knows what he's seeking.

Abe: Yes, that's clear.

Florinda: The disappointment that so many people who are "seekers" have with Castaneda is
because, when he talks to them, well, they have already made up their mind how things should
be. And they are not open. Even if they're listening, they're not open to anything anymore,
because they already know how it should be, what it is they're seeking.

Abe: My version of that is that I am not interested in self-improvement. I'm interested in
self-realization, but not im- provement, and I'm not concerned with whether or not what I turn
out to be in the process of recapitulation is something nice and spiritual and acceptable, because
it's going to contain elements of madness as well as everything else.

Florinda: Exactly.

Abe: But this is a very deeply disturbing idea for most people.

Florinda: It is, yes, definitely. You see, we believe in this idea that we are basically energetic
beings. Don Juan said everything hinges on how much energy we have. Our energy to fight,
even to fight the idea of the self, requires an enormous amount of energy. And we go always to
the easiest path. We go back to what we know, even us who have been involved in this for so
long. It would be a lot easier just to say, oh, to hell with it, you know, I' m just going to indulge a
little bit. But the thing is, that little bit of indulging would plunge you right back to point zero again.

Abe: Except for one thing that we both know, Florinda, which is this: that once you pass a
certain point within yourself, if you have reached that silence, I believe, even for one moment, if
its real...

Florinda: ...you can't stop it. Exactly. But to reach this moment of silence you need the energy.
You can stop it, what Juan calls this momentary pause, this cubic centimetre of chance, and you
can stop it immediately.

Abe: And once it's happened, you'll never be the same again.

Florinda: Absolutely.

Abe: And you might want to go back to your old ways and indulge, but you can 't get any
satisfaction out of it.

Florinda: Exactly. No, you can't. There's no satisfaction. That's totally correct. I think, if we
would really arrive...let's say a critical mass would arrive at that feeling or at that knowledge, we
could change things in the world. The reason nothing can change is because we're not willing to
change ourselves, whether it's political dogma, economic or social issues, it doesn't really matter.
What the hell is the whole thing with the rainforest and the environment at the moment? How
can we expect someone to change if we're not willing to change ourselves? Thc change is
phony; the change is restructuring or replaying the pieces, but there's no change. Basically we
are predatory beings, you see. That hasn't changed in us. We could use that predatory energy to
change our course, but we're not willing to change ourselves

She makes a lot of great points here, I think!