‘Reading the Wall’ is Just Gazing

I read a couple of posts about reading off the wall. My personal opinion is that “reading the wall” is just gazing. Why the Nagual made it into something distinct is not clear to me. If you listen to how the witches described it the waters get more muddy, so I think that making it into some kind of technique might be misleading.

The Experience Described

Even so, I’ve observed it taking place exactly as the Nagual said. There’s a purple mist, like clouds that materialize, then shrink away, then are replaced by others coming back in. The color is like that you will see if you look at a bright light bulb, then darken the room or close your eyes. It’s a purple after image. As I stare at the purple clouds blooming into sight, then shrinking out of sight (with eyes closed or open in darkness), eventually I’ll see a red/orangish light get burned into the center of this. If I stare into that there’s a release of energy. If I’m not startled by the little jolt of energy, a vision of some kind follows. A few times this has been text, and a few times it was a little city, like the one the blue scout painted a couple of years ago.

One time I actually read some recognizable information, but now I can’t remember it at all, so it wasn’t earth shattering. I think it was something like “Rosebud,” so context sensitive that it’s useless.

The experience is entirely similar to the ones I get if I use the stick a lot. Isn’t it all just dreaming attention?

As a kid I had a technique to get the purple clouds to start coming. I’d close my eyes very tightly, then roll them around until I saw an orangish circles (a physical response). After I did this a bit, it would usually get the purple clouds started, but I didn’t always have to do this. Driving a lot at night, with the headlights, seems to also promote this later on. If you get the clouds to come, just watch them patiently, it took me years as a child to get the reddish light to come, but back then I never succeeded in seeing anything more. I stopped after I asked my parents what else I could do with the colored lights and they acted really strange about it.

©️ 2000 by Daniel Lawton, all rights reserved

Daniel Lawton is the son of Harry Lawton, a writer and historian who wrote a lot about Native Americans and who was very involved with the Morongo tribe, where Castaneda may have found some of his original inspiration. Daniel was the editor and publisher of The Nagualist, whose issues appear on this website, and a contributor to the original version of SustainedAction.org. He was also a member of the Sunday group. In recent years he took over the r/Castaneda subreddit and has written a lot of interesting material there designed to give practical suggestions for achieving inner silence and ‘dreaming.’

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