Time managers have it right when they tell us to place priority first on that which matters most. It is a simple concept, but we can spend a lot of time spinning our wheels, waiting for things to take hold and change our world or even skipping important foundational work that opens to avenues of enhanced perception. That is why I am starting with the topic of the Internal Dialogue.

Castaneda describes this as the single most important technique (Power, 236) in altering the context of our ordinary world. (Power, 240) Stopping the internal dialogue is the key to the sorcerer’s world (Power, 238) and the key to everything. (Power, 92)

What is the internal dialogue, though?

The first act of a teacher is to introduce the idea that the world we think we see is only a view, a description of the world…We are complacently caught in our particular view of the world, which compels us to feel and act as if we knew everything about the world. Tales of Power, 236

The internal dialogue is the constant chatter in your head that defines a desk as an office and a tree as a forest. It’s the lexicon that defines you as this acting in a world of that, that which defines your place in this world and your relationship to the world and all that comes with it. Toltecs call this the Island of the Tonal, where everything known exists. This is also referred to as the Inventory.

Toltecs strive to increase their view of the world to include non-ordinary events. One of the arts of the warrior is to collapse the world for a specific reason and then restore it again in order to keep on living. (Ixtlan, 168) But I am ahead of myself.

Our enemy, and at the same time our friend is our internal dialogue, our inventory…without the inventory the assemblage point becomes free. The Fire from Within, 258

Don Juan explained that the passageway into the world of sorcerers opened up after the warrior has learned to shut off the internal dialogue…To change our idea of the world is the crux of sorcery, and stopping the internal dialogue is the only way to accomplish it. Tales of Power, 13

Whenever the [internal] dialogue stops, the world collapses and extraordinary facets of ourselves surface, as though they had been kept heavily guarded by our words. Tales of Power, 33

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Two pragmatic tasks when trying to shut off the internal dialogue include the ‘Right Way of Walking’ and acting without expectation or reward, both of which are better explained by reading the text itself. (Power, 236-237)

Stopping the internal dialogue starts with two major activities: Erasing personal history and Dreaming (Power, 238) both of which are big topics all their own.