Robert Moss - Lucid Dreaming and Shamanic Dreaming

Robert has some great posts and wanted to share his site on Substack. His work fits right in with Castaneda and don Juan. Here's a bit from his profile:

Robert Moss is the creator of Active Dreaming, an original synthesis of dreamwork and shamanism. He is a bestselling novelist, poet and historian. His books include Conscious Dreaming, The Secret History of Dreaming and Dreaming the Soul Back Home.

Warrior of Lite

The Silver Bullet Talk

The Silver Bullet Talk

It is tradition that with the coming of a New Year we create in our minds a cross-road of introspection between the past and the future.  

It is therefore common that we reflect upon the unaccomplished resolutions to which we committed last year, and without greater self-analysis call ourselves `flakey' and `undisciplined' and continue to declare new resolutions for the following year, resolutions that will similarly remain unattained.  

It seems we can thus pass an entire lifetime without losing the weight we want to lose, without learning the new ‘latest and greatest’ we wish to learn, without playing the instrument of our dreams, without spending more time with our families, etc. 

As an existential strategist, father and friend I often find myself engaging individuals who, year after year, have seen their lives go by and (now desperate) wish me (or anyone) to rescue them with a few chosen words of solace or inspiration.  Now-a-days I dare not post about any ‘personal’ matters due to the fact that I’m asked a ton of questions looking for instant solutions. This is frequently when I offer my ‘Silver Bullet’ talk, which goes something like this: 

The European Medieval tradition relates that a gunshot with a silver bullet is the most certain and reliable method of killing a lycanthrope, that is, a `werewolf,' that diabolic figure that for centuries terrorized the existence of a superstitious people who believed in supernatural beings and therefore in magical solutions that would end the same. 

For most of us the days have passed in which we feared werewolves, placed gargoyles on our rooftops to ward off evil spirits, and lined the entrances of our homes with rings of garlic to fend off vampires.  Nonetheless, the concept of a `silver bullet' as a metaphor for a quick, effective, and effortless solution to a challenging and resilient problem remains.  

Logically the expression is often applied with skepticism, sarcasm, and irony:  although it is common that problems manifest that are as gloomy and overwhelming as werewolves,' rarely do they present with `silver bullets' as solutions. 

Nevertheless, in today's world this is what people seek most: an immediate solution with a minimum amount of inconvenience.  

We want to lose weight but continue eating sweets, drinking beer, ingesting fats, and only exercising from the couch to the bed, from the bed to the table, from the table to the car, from the car to the office, and from the office to the couch.  

We want our relationships with our significant others to improve, but without self-compromise and only as a result of indicating the improprieties and defects our partner exhibits as prerequisites to our relational bliss.  

We want our youth to stop taking drugs, but without our having to stop consuming alcohol or nicotine, which constitute, by far, the two drugs that cause the most social and economic damage.  

We want our societies to be safer, cleaner, more prosperous, even more beautiful, but we continue to delegate our civic duty to a class of professional politicians who year after year deceive us with words only to later disappoint us with deeds.  

We want to understand the self, personal power, ego, personal history and self importance, yet provide only a fleeting ‘goings over’ of attention to The Work that assists in this understanding.  

In short: We want the silver bullet that kills the `werewolves' of our existence and that changes our lives, our relationships, and our circumstances but without the effort of changing our own perspectives, attitudes, and behaviors. 

During these days of festivities, celebrations, promises and reflections, take a few moments to contemplate upon your lives, your families, your neighborhoods, your societies and countries, and if you find defects and problems therein, think about the following:  If you are not part of the solution you are the problem; and when you search for `silver bullets' to solve your problems know that you do not have to look beyond yourself to find the werewolves that terrorize your own existence. 

Wishing you all a Happy and Prosperous Holiday Season and New Year, 

TMMK

Controlled Folly as Described by Carlos Castaneda

Controlled Folly as described by Carlos Castaneda ~ Please note that these quotes were taken from many different pages of many different books. Thus, the comments below may not 'flow' very well, as in one reading a story. I attempted to get to the 'gist' of controlled folly from the books. 

"It's possible to insist, to properly insist, even though we know that what we're doing is useless," he said, smiling, "But we must know first that our acts are useless and yet we must proceed as if we didn't know it. That's a sorcerer's controlled folly."

"I wonder if you could tell me more about your controlled folly," I said.

"What do you want to know about it?"

"Please tell me, don Juan, what exactly is controlled folly?"

Don Juan laughed loudly and made a smacking sound by slapping his thigh with the hollow of his hand.

"This is controlled folly!" he said, and laughed and slapped his thigh again.

"What do you mean ... ?"

"I am happy that you finally asked me about my controlled folly after so many years, and yet it wouldn't have mattered to me in the least if you had never asked. Yet I have chosen to feel happy, as if I cared, that you asked, as if it would matter that I care. That is controlled folly!"

We both laughed very loudly. I hugged him. I found his explanation delightful although I did not quite understand it.

"With whom do you exercise controlled folly, don Juan?" I asked after a long silence.

He chuckled.

"With everybody!" he exclaimed, smiling.

"When do you choose to exercise it, then?"

"Every single time I act."

I felt I needed to recapitulate at that point and I asked him if controlled folly meant that his acts were never sincere but were only the acts of an actor.

"My acts are sincere," he said, "but they are only the acts of an actor."

"Then everything you do must be controlled folly!" I said truly surprised.

"Yes, everything," he said.

"But it can't be true," I protested, "that every one of your acts is only controlled folly."

"Why not?" he replied with a mysterious look.

"That would mean that nothing matters to you and you don't really care about anything or anybody. Take me, for example. Do you mean that you don't care whether or not I become a man of knowledge, or whether I live, or die, or do anything?"

"True! I don't. You are like Lucio, or everybody else in my life, my controlled folly."

I experienced a peculiar feeling of emptiness. Obviously there was no reason in the world why don Juan had to care about me, but on the other hand I had almost the certainty that he cared about me personally; I thought it could not be otherwise, since he had always given me his undivided attention during every moment I had spent with him. It occurred to me that perhaps don Juan was just saying that because he was annoyed with me. After all, I had quit his teachings.

"I have the feeling we are not talking about the same thing," I said. "I shouldn't have used myself as an example.

What I meant to say was that there must be something in the world you care about in a way that is not controlled folly. I don't think it is possible to go on living if nothing really matters to us."

"That applies to you," he said. "Things matter to you. You asked me about my controlled folly and I told you that everything I do in regard to myself and my fellow men is folly, because nothing matters."

"My point is, don Juan, that if nothing matters to you, how can you go on living?"

He laughed and after a moment's pause, in which he seemed to deliberate whether or not to answer, he got up and went to the back of his house. I followed him.

"Wait, wait, don Juan." I said. "I really want to know; you must explain to me what you mean."

"Perhaps it's not possible to explain," he said. "Certain things in your life matter to you because they're important; your acts are certainly important to you, but for me, not a single thing is important any longer, neither my acts nor the acts of any of my fellow men. I go on living, though, because I have my will. Because I have tempered my will throughout my life until it's neat and wholesome and now it doesn't matter to me that nothing matters. My will controls the folly of my life."

He squatted and ran his fingers on some herbs that he had put to dry in the sun on a big piece of burlap.

I was bewildered. Never would I have anticipated the direction that my query had taken. After a long pause I thought of a good point. I told him that in my opinion some of the acts of my fellow men were of supreme importance.

I pointed out that a nuclear war was definitely the most dramatic example of such an act. I said that for me destroying life on the face of the earth was an act of staggering enormity.

"You believe that because you're thinking. You're thinking about life," don Juan said with a glint in his eyes.

"You're not seeing."

"Would I feel differently if I could see?" I asked.

"Once a man learns to see he finds himself alone in the world with nothing but folly," don Juan said cryptically.

He paused for a moment and looked at me as if he wanted to judge the effect of his words.

"Your acts, as well as the acts of your fellow men in general, appear to be important to you because you have learned to think they are important."

He used the word "learned" with such a peculiar inflection that it forced me to ask what he meant by it.

He stopped handling his plants and looked at me.

"We learn to think about everything," he said, "and then we train our eyes to look as we think about the things we look at. We look at ourselves already thinking that we are important. And therefore we've got to feel important! But then when a man learns to see, he realizes that he can no longer think about the things he looks at, and if he cannot think about what he looks at everything becomes unimportant."

Don Juan must have noticed my puzzled look and repeated his statements three times, as if to make me understand them. What he said sounded to me like gibberish at first, but upon thinking about it, his words loomed more like a sophisticated statement about some facet of perception.

I tried to think of a good question that would make him clarify his point, but I could not think of anything.

I asked him if he was in a mood to answer some questions.

"What do you want to know?" he replied.

"What you told me this afternoon about controlled folly has disturbed me very much," I said. "I really cannot understand what you meant."

"Of course you cannot understand it," he said. "You are trying to think about it, and what I said does not fit with your thoughts."

"I'm trying to think about it," I said, "because that's the only way I personally can understand anything. For example, don Juan, do you mean that once a man learns to see, everything in the whole world is worthless?"

"I didn't say worthless. I said unimportant. Everything is equal and therefore unimportant. For example, there is no way for me to say that my acts are more important than yours, or that one thing is more essential than another, therefore all things are equal and by being equal they are unimportant."

I asked him if his statements were a pronouncement that what he had called "seeing" was in effect a "better way" than merely "looking at things." He said that the eyes of man could perform both functions, but neither of them was better than the other; however, to train the eyes only to look was, in his opinion, an unnecessary loss.

"For instance, we need to look with our eyes to laugh," he said, "because only when we look at things can we catch the funny edge of the world. On the other hand, when our eyes see, everything is so equal that nothing is funny."

"Do you mean, don Juan, that a man who sees cannot ever laugh?'

He remained silent for some time.

"Perhaps there are men of knowledge who never laugh," he said. "I don't know any of them, though. Those I know see and also look, so they laugh."

"Would a man of knowledge cry as well?"

"I suppose so. Our eyes look so we may laugh, or cry, or rejoice, or be sad, or be happy. I personally don't like to be sad, so whenever I witness something that would ordinarily make me sad, I simply shift my eyes and see it instead of looking at it. But when I encounter something funny I look and I laugh."

"But then, don Juan, your laughter is real and not controlled folly."

Don Juan stared at me for a moment.

"I talk to you because you make me laugh," he said. "You remind me of some bushy-tailed rats of the desert that get caught when they stick their tails in holes trying to scare other rats away in order to steal their food. You get caught in your own questions. Watch out! Sometimes those rats yank their tails off trying to pull themselves free."

I found his comparison funny and I laughed. Don Juan had once shown me some small rodents with bushy tails that looked like fat squirrels; the image of one of those chubby rats yanking its tail off was sad and at the same time morbidly funny.

"My laughter, as well as everything I do, is real," he said, "but it also is controlled folly because it is useless; it changes nothing and yet I still do it."

"But as I understand it, don Juan, your laughter is not useless. It makes you happy."

"No! I am happy because I choose to look at things that make me happy and then my eyes catch their funny edge and I laugh. I have said this to you countless times. One must always choose the path with heart in order to be at one's best, perhaps so one can always laugh."

I interpreted what he had said as meaning that crying was inferior to laughter, or at least perhaps an act that weakened us. He asserted that there was no intrinsic difference and that both were unimportant; he said, however, that his preference was laughter, because laughter made his body feel better than crying.

At that point I suggested that if one has a preference there is no equality; if he preferred laughing to crying, the former was indeed more important.

He stubbornly maintained that his preference did not mean they were not equal; and I insisted that our argument could be logically stretched to saying that if things were supposed to be so equal why not also choose death?

"Many men of knowledge do that," he said. "One day they may simply disappear. People may think that they have been ambushed and killed because of their doings. They choose to die because it doesn't matter to them. On the other hand, I choose to live, and to laugh, not because it matters, but because that choice is the bent of my nature.

The reason I say I choose is because I see, but it isn't that I choose to live; my will makes me go on living in spite of anything I may see.

"You don't understand me now because of your habit of thinking as you look and thinking as you think."

This statement intrigued me very much. I asked him to explain what he meant by it.

He repeated the same construct various times, as if giving himself time to arrange it in different terms, and then delivered his point, saying that by "thinking" he meant the constant idea that we have of everything in the world. He said that "seeing" dispelled that habit and until I learned to "see" I could not really understand what he meant.

"But if nothing matters, don Juan, why should it matter that I learn to see?"

"I told you once that our lot as men is to learn, for good or bad," he said. "I have learned to see and I tell you that nothing really matters; now it is your turn; perhaps some day you will see and you will know then whether things matter or not. For me nothing matters, but perhaps for you everything will. You should know by now that a man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting. A man of knowledge chooses a path with heart and follows it; and then he looks and rejoices and laughs; and then he sees and knows. He knows that his life will be over altogether too soon; he knows that he, as well as everybody else, is not going anywhere; he knows, because he sees, that nothing is more important than anything else. In other words, a man of knowledge has no honor, no dignity, no family, no name, no country, but only life to be lived, and under these circumstances his only tie to his fellow men is his controlled folly. Thus a man of knowledge endeavors, and sweats, and puffs, and if one looks at him he is just like any ordinary man, except that the folly of his life is under control. Nothing being more important than anything else, a man of knowledge chooses any act, and acts it out as if it matters to him. His controlled folly makes him say that what he does matters and makes him act as if it did, and yet he knows that it doesn't; so when he fulfills his acts he retreats in peace, and whether his acts were good or bad, or worked or didn't, is in no way part of his concern.

"A man of knowledge may choose, on the other hand, to remain totally impassive and never act, and behave as if to be impassive really matters to him; he will be rightfully true at that too, because that would also be his controlled folly."

I involved myself at this point in a very complicated effort to explain to don Juan that I was interested in knowing what would motivate a man of knowledge to act in a particular way in spite of the fact that he knew nothing mattered.

He chuckled softly before answering.

"You think about your acts," he said. "Therefore you have to believe your acts are as important as you think they are, when in reality nothing of what one does is important. Nothing! But then if nothing really matters, as you asked me, how can I go on living? It would be simple to die; that's what you say and believe, because you're thinking about life, just as you're thinking now what seeing would be like. You wanted me to describe it to you so you could begin to think about it, the way you do with everything else. In the case of seeing, however, thinking is not the issue at all, so I cannot tell you what it is like to see. Now you want me to describe the reasons for my controlled folly and I can only tell you that controlled folly is very much like seeing; it is something you cannot think about."

He yawned. He lay on his back and stretched his arms and legs. His bones made a cracking sound.

"You have been away too long," he said. "You think too much."

He got up and walked into the thick chaparral at the side of the house. I fed the fire to keep the pot boiling. I was going to light a kerosene lantern but the semidarkness was very soothing. The fire from the stove, which supplied enough light to write, also created a reddish glow all around me. I put my notes on the ground and lay down. I felt tired. Out of the whole conversation with don Juan the only poignant thing in my mind was that he did not care about me; it disturbed me immensely. Over a period of years I had put my trust in him. Had I not had complete confidence in him I would have been paralyzed with fear at the prospect of learning his knowledge; the premise on which I had based my trust was the idea that he cared about me personally; actually I had always been afraid of him, but I had kept my fear in check because I trusted him. When he removed that basis I had nothing to fall back on and I felt helpless.

I told don Juan that my conflict arose from the doubts into which his words about controlled folly had thrown me.

"If nothing really matters," I said, "upon becoming a man of knowledge one would find oneself, perforce, as empty as my old friend and in no better position."

"That's not so," don Juan said cuttingly. "Your friend is lonely because he will die without seeing. In his life he just grew old and now he must have more self-pity than ever before. He feels he threw away forty years because he was after victories and found only defeats. He'll never know that to be victorious and to be defeated are equal.

"So now you're afraid of me because I've told you that you're equal to everything else. You're being childish.

Our lot as men is to learn and one goes to knowledge as one goes to war; I have told you this countless times.

One goes to knowledge or to war with fear, with respect, aware that one is going to war, and with absolute confidence in oneself. Put your trust in yourself, not in me.

"And so you're afraid of the emptiness of your friend's life. But there's no emptiness in the life of a man of knowledge, I tell you. Everything is filled to the brim."

Don Juan stood up and extended his arms as if feeling things in the air.

"Everything is filled to the brim," he repeated, "and everything is equal. I'm not like your friend who just grew old. When I tell you that nothing matters I don't mean it the way he does. For him, his struggle was not worth his while, because he was defeated; for me there is no victory, or defeat, or emptiness. Everything is filled to the brim and everything is equal and my struggle was worth my while.

"In order to become a man of knowledge one must be a warrior, not a whimpering child. One must strive without giving up, without a complaint, without flinching, until one sees, only to realize then that nothing matters."

Don Juan stirred the pot with a wooden spoon. The food was ready. He took the pot off the fire and placed it on an adobe rectangular block, which he had built against the wall and which he used as a shelf or a table. With his foot he shoved two small boxes that served as comfortable chairs, especially if one sat with his back against the supporting beams of the wall. He signaled me to sit down and then he poured a bowl of soup. He smiled; his eyes were shining as if he were truly enjoying my presence. He pushed the bowl gently toward me. There was such a warmth and kindness in his gesture that it seemed to be an appeal to restore my trust in him. I felt idiotic; I tried to disrupt my mood by looking for my spoon, but I couldn't find it. The soup was too hot to be drunk directly from the bowl, and while it cooled off I asked don Juan if controlled folly meant that a man of knowledge could not like anybody any more.

He stopped eating and laughed.

"You're too concerned with liking people or with being liked yourself," he said. "A man of knowledge likes, that's all. He likes whatever or whoever he wants, but he uses his controlled folly to be unconcerned about it. The opposite of what you are doing now. To like people or to be liked by people is not all one can do as a man."

He stared at me for a moment with his head tilted a little to one side.

"Think about that," he said.

"There is one more thing I want to ask, don Juan. You said that we need to look with our eyes to laugh, but I believe we laugh because we think. Take a blind man, he also laughs."

"No," he said. "Blind men don't laugh. Their bodies jerk a little with the ripple of laughter. They have never looked at the funny edge of the world and have to imagine it. Their laughter is not roaring."

We did not speak any more. I had a sensation of well-being, of happiness. We ate in silence; then don Juan began to laugh. I was using a dry twig to spoon the vegetables into my mouth.

"How does a man of knowledge exercise controlled folly when it comes to the death of a person he loves?" I asked.

Don Juan was taken aback by my question and looked at me quizzically.

"Take your grandson Lucio," I said. "Would your acts be controlled folly at the time of his death?"

"Take my son Eulalio, that's a better example," don Juan replied calmly. "He was crushed by rocks while working in the construction of the Pan-American Highway. My acts toward him at the moment of his death were controlled folly. When I came down to the blasting area he was almost dead, but his body was so strong that it kept on moving and kicking. I stood in front of him and told the boys in the road crew not to move him any more; they obeyed me and stood there surrounding my son, looking at his mangled body. I stood there too, but I did not look. I shifted my eyes so I would see his personal life disintegrating, expanding uncontrollably beyond its limits, like a fog of crystals, because that is the way life and death mix and expand. That is what I did at the time of my son's death. That's all one could ever do, and that is controlled folly. Had I looked at him I would have watched him becoming immobile and I would have felt a cry inside of me, because never again would I look at his fine figure pacing the earth. I saw his death instead, and there was no sadness, no feeling. His death was equal to everything else." Don Juan was quiet for a moment. He seemed to be sad, but then he smiled and tapped my head.

"So you may say that when it comes to the death of a person I love, my controlled folly is to shift my eyes."

I thought about the people I love myself and a terribly oppressive wave of self-pity enveloped me.

"Lucky you, don Juan," I said. "You can shift your eyes, while I can only look."

He found my statement funny and laughed.

"Lucky, bull!" he said. "It's hard work."

We both laughed. After a long silence I began probing him again, perhaps only to dispel my own sadness.

"If I have understood you correctly then, don Juan," I said, "the only acts in the life of a man of knowledge which are not controlled folly are those he performs with his ally or with Mescalito. Isn't that right?"

"That's right," he said, chuckling. "My ally and Mescalito are not on a par with us human beings. My controlled folly applies only to myself and to the acts I perform while in the company of my fellow men."

"However, it is a logical possibility," I said, "to think that a man of knowledge may also regard his acts with his ally or with Mescalito as controlled folly, true?"

He stared at me for a moment.

"You're thinking again," he said. "A man of knowledge doesn't think, therefore he cannot encounter that possibility. Take me, for example. I say that my controlled folly applies to the acts I performed while in the company of my fellow men; I say that because I can see my fellow men. However, I cannot see through my ally and that makes it incomprehensible to me, so how could I control my folly if I don't see through it? With my ally or with Mescalito I am only a man who knows how to see and finds that he's baffled by what he sees; a man who knows that he'll never understand all that is around him.”

To be continued...

The Crack Between The Worlds

The Crack Between The Worlds is the new name for this blog. I've changed it many times so stick with me. :-) So, what does 'crack between the worlds' mean? I'll quote from my favorite author, Carlos Castaneda, on the meaning, listed below. Understand that these are quotes snipped from different books and they may not flow together very well. I tried to just get the 'gist' of the meaning in regards to the crack between the worlds. 

Perhaps I will add my own comments, but not at this time. 

"The twilight is the crack between the worlds," he said softly.

"The particular thing to learn is how to get to the crack between the worlds and how to enter the other world. There is a crack between the two worlds, the world of the diableros and the world of living men. There is a place where the two worlds overlap. The crack is there. It opens and closes like a door in the wind. To get there a man must exercise his will. He must, I should say, develop an indomitable desire for it, a single-minded dedication. But he must do it without the help of any power or any man. The man by himself must ponder and wish up to a moment in which his body is ready to undergo the journey.

"It is the door to the unknown."

Don Juan had also talked to me at great length about the crack between the worlds. I had always believed that he was talking in a metaphorical sense about a subtle division between the world that the average man perceives and the world that sorcerers perceive.

La Gorda and the little sisters had shown me that the crack between the worlds was more than a metaphor. It was rather the capacity to change levels of attention. One part of me understood la Gorda perfectly, while another part of me was more frightened than ever.

"You have been asking where the Nagual and Genaro went," la Gorda said. "Soledad was very blunt and told you that they went to the other world; Lidia told you they left this area; the Genaros were stupid and scared you. The truth is that the Nagual and Genaro went through that crack."

But the worst thing happened to you in Mexico City; there he pushed you one day and you went into an office and in that office you went through the crack between the worlds. He intended only to dispel your attention of the tonal; you were worried sick over some stupid thing. But when he shoved you, your whole tonal shrunk and your entire being went through the crack. He had a hellish time finding you. He told me that for a moment he thought you had gone farther than he could reach. But then he saw you roaming around aimlessly and he brought you back. He told me that you went through the crack around ten in the morning. So, on that day, ten in the morning became your new time."

"My new time for what?"

"For everything. If you remain a man you will die around that time. If you become a sorcerer you will leave this world around that time.

"Did he disappear like that, over a bridge?"

"Not over a bridge. But you witnessed how he and Genaro stepped into the crack between the worlds in front of your very eyes. Nestor said that only Genaro waved his hand to say good-bye the last time you saw them; the Nagual did not wave because he was opening the crack. The Nagual told me that when the second attention has to be called upon to assemble itself, all that is needed is the motion of opening that door. That's the secret of the Toltec dreamers once they are formless."

TMMK

The Warrior's Discipline - Conclusion

The Warrior's Discipline - Conclusion Part 5

I wrote the three parts of this thread with a considerable time span in between them. The purpose of these brief notes is the rendering of some philosophical/pragmatical results that have arisen after thirty years of work on the field of exploring awareness. During this period, some other persons were involved in my own learning. Some of those persons took separate roads at one time or another. A few of us still remain in the same line of work.

Here are the previous articles on this topic:

The Warrior's Discipline Part 1

The Warrior's Discipline Part 2

The Warrior's Discipline Part 3

The Warrior's Discipline Part 4

The Warrior's Discipline Part 5

Exploring awareness, or the Art of Freedom, is, as far as I can tell, an ever-changing field. Mutation, or perhaps evolution, seems to be its main component.

The idea of forums, message boards and Facebook groups have always appealed to me as a very interesting and fruitful option for the observation and discussion of topics in which we all share an interest. Furthermore, I find it very useful to find references in other people that could be sharing the same path.

During most of the 30-year period that I mentioned, my partners and I were not only alone, but isolated in some way.

We had very serious disadvantages in relation to our learning processes, disadvantages that proved to be, in time, too heavy a burden for some of us.

The most poignant dissonance between the object of our interest and our real possibilities was the absence of continuity. I am fully convinced now that a Nagual, or a man of knowledge, brings about this continuity to those that he/she leads into the unknown. The only problem is that a Nagual only works as such within the context of shamanistic lineages. The term "Nagual" itself is referred exclusively to this context.

We knew that we couldn't volunteer into that world from the beginning. The only abstract and logical possibility was, as far-fetched and absurd as it may seem, to create a sorceric unit among ourselves.

Thus, we opted for that very uncertain and dangerous way. One of us even acted as sort of an advocated "Nagual". The others, willingly or not, were forced to follow his steps.

This created a scenario in which the most dramatic and funny circumstances arose. Some of the members of this brave and sorry-looking "party" actually went into the unknown in one way or another several times, using any tool available that served this purpose.

The outcome was twofold. On one hand, we managed to create a living inferno that crushed our old continuity. On the other hand, we were forced to acquire at all costs and in quite a hurry, an unending sobriety. The practical results, in terms of enhancing our awareness, were however too insignificant in relation to the effort exerted in this regard.

At the end, some of us decided to continue on the same path for the sake of impeccability. Our bet was placed upon our intimate conviction that things would be solved by themselves, whatever the outcome.

Others took quite a separate road.

I can only account for those of us who decided to walk to the end of that path.

Our efforts in this sense were rewarded with a complete victory. Abstract forces beyond our understanding arranged events so that we could finally enter a true shamanistic realm. Only, this time, we did it from a lateral gateway. The timing in which the first seminar that I attended in Mexico City was held in relation to our energetic environment was, simply and plainly, magical.

The previous period and exercise was dissolved into a distant mist. We now behold it as an amateur shamanistic play, in which we handled very real and professional forces, so to speak. We emerged, by the skin of our teeth, alive and with a bonus. We did gather knowledge and sobriety. We learned many things. We are also certain, on the other hand, that the decision of our survival was taken in another realm, by abstract and impersonal forces.

The bonus is our absolute conviction of what we're doing now. We are absolutely convinced, even beyond death, that we will not return to the social order under any of its manifestations, whether they are disguised under a cloak of social or "shamanistic" syntax. To us, these out-of-context manifestations are but masks under which self-importance hides its face.

So, in this sense, the concept of shamanism has suffered a profound change in our view. We don't recognize the linear activity of Carlos Castaneda's reports anymore as a feasible option for us. We firmly believe that, if one were somehow subscribed to that stream of old shamanism, one would not have to ask the question of being there or not. In other words, we take very seriously the statement of Carlos Castaneda and his party regarding their position as the end of Don Juan's lineage. We also take very seriously his statement regarding himself as being the last Nagual of such lineage.

We don't know of any other lineages of sorcerers but from hearsay. We have read and discussed the written works of other self-appointed sorcerers.

And we haven't found anything that rings a bell in us.

When I say, "ring a bell" I am referring to pragmatical issues. We have, to the best of our possibilities, put to the practice some techniques or practical suggestions provided by these persons. The results have been very poor, to say the least.

Therefore, we don't recognize, at least for the moment, any other group of active Shamanism in the traditional sense. And, of course, we don't recognize the existence of "Naguals", other than Carlos Castaneda and Carol Tiggs, for any practical purpose. Nor do we view ourselves as a traditional part of their lineage in any sense whatsoever.

I already told you that we were involved in an attempt to enhance our awareness via traditional shamanism. I can assure you that we gave our very best effort. The results, I repeat, were not satisfactory in terms of the enhancement of our awareness.

Therefore, I find it very hard to believe that we all stand on significantly different battlefields. In the best of cases, we are a mass of very serious people with a dead-serious interest in freedom, whatever freedom means.

But we are NOT shamans.

Why should we be?

"Shaman" is a term that denotes a being of exception; it denotes alienation. I don't know, but it seems to me that, in a world of shamans, there are no more shamans. And the world is based upon the mass. The world is a consensus, a description. The power of that description is provided by its relative mass.

What I'm saying, in other words, is that the end of shamanism isn't necessarily a loss, but it could also mean an evolutionary step. And, if someone offers me a very healthy and delicious cake, I would be a complete fool if I insisted in eating it uncooked.

Again, we believe that shamanism has suffered a very powerful and definite mutation. To us, shamanism has evolved into something else, far richer and even more intriguing. To us, the gates of freedom are open now to anyone who wants to walk through them.

We have changed.

It IS possible.

Draw your own conclusions.

With a Warrior’s affection,

TMMK

P.S. - Here are the others posts in this thread:

The Warrior's Discipline Part 1

The Warrior's Discipline Part 2

The Warrior's Discipline Part 3

The Warrior's Discipline Part 4

The Warrior's Discipline Part 5

TMMK

The Issue of Continuity

 THE ISSUE OF CONTINUITY - The Warrior's Discipline Part 4

The Warrior's Discipline Part 1

The Warrior's Discipline Part 2

The Warrior's Discipline Part 3

The Warrior's Discipline Part 4

The Warrior's Discipline Part 5

The social order is an energetic phenomenon. It is something-in-itself. As such, it has its own set of rules and its own dynamics. To understand the social order, we must first scrutinize its gears, the tools that it uses to reproduce itself. 

We possess, as members of the social order, a continuity based upon three-time units and two space units. Past, Present and Future are the time units. Here and There are the spatial units. Around these five basic elements we build our world. 

They form an apparently dynamic unit that keeps all things in place for the purposes of what is known to man, also referred to as the "tonal". The only problem with this unit is that it leaves the issue of awareness out of the picture. Awareness, being a purely energetic phenomenon, deals with energetic issues, which are intimately related to a very different type of continuity in the case of human beings. 

The issues of death and life fit into this category. Our relationship with the universe at large and its deepest mysteries can only be upheld from the perspective of this other type of continuity. Death occurs always in a here/now environment. Death is never related to our ideas of the future, present and past. Nor is it to our idea of here and there. Death, as an energetic phenomenon, compresses all of our five measuring units into one. The energetic shock brought about by this is of such magnitude that our life force is dissolved, unable to keep our energetic fields together anymore. Such is death, as we know it, proven by the fact that, in spite of all our wishful thinking, the dead never return. We are composed of such a huge number of energetic fields that the probabilities for them to reunite again to form the exact same combination, the exact same being, amidst an infinite number of other possibilities, are simply and plainly inexistent. Therefore, it could be said that the phenomenon of Death is, in itself, a proposition to find a new continuity, related to its mystery and that of life. 

This continuity begins with acquiescing to the notion of a force that binds everything in the universe. A third, impersonal force that allows us as individuals to develop awareness. This binding force, the force of life, is Intent. After acquiescing to the existence of this impersonal force, or rather while doing it, we physically incorporate our role as aware beings. This is given in the form of a corporeal conviction that has to do with our perception. We are, first and last, perceivers. And what we perceive is the infinite, independent and eternal motion of Intent. Thus, the awareness of the ultimate phenomena, such as Death, brings about this new type of continuity to our lives. Continuity based in one single, dynamic space/time unit: The Here/Now. 

It must be noted that, although the first kind of continuity discussed, that of the social order, appears to be dynamic, it really is not. The circular motion that it adopts creates the illusion of movement, when in fact it is a very static whirl of events that repeat themselves under the surface. It's like the case of the Maelstrom, which possesses a rotator motion, but not translation. On the other hand, as long as we are able to recognize the independent existence of this abstract and impersonal force, the Here/Now continuity is, although apparently static, completely dynamic. It is this external force the one that plays, ever changing, like a river, its own abstract games and combinations. We are, then, just perceivers of this infinite, eternal and unfathomably mysterious motion. We are, in essence, unprejudiced witnesses. 

We are here, as Don Juan said to Carlos, to See and feel awe. A human being cannot survive without continuity. But we have to understand at all costs, if we are interested in these essential issues, that there is, in fact, another possibility for us in this regard. Anyone that fully adopts this type of essential continuity is, by definition, a man or woman of knowledge, a being who is going to die, a warrior, someone who walks the path with heart. Ultimately, and beyond all labels, this is the only legitimate human being. 

THE STRATEGIST 

The warrior's strategy is to become a strategist. This may sound truly idiotic, but in its simplicity lies the key that opens all doors. The social order's continuity, based upon five measuring units, creates a concrete world. In fact, concreteness could be defined as all those phenomena that deal with this type of continuity. On the other hand, the Here/Now continuity that defines a warrior, or a sorcerer, or whatever we want to call a complete human being, has to do with the abstract. Again, the abstract could be defined as all those phenomena that deal with a Here/Now continuity. So, in short, a warrior is an abstractionist. He/she reduces every single little event of his/her life to the last possible reduction. And, at this point, we always find one thing: energy. 

We live in a universe of energy, a universe that, first and last, is based upon an abstract continuity. Sobriety is, to a warrior, the exercise of abstracting. And when a warrior is confronted with the results of his abstractions, an infinite feeling of awe immediately replaces the remaining of the old continuity. The way we deal with our world in the social order could be defined as a circular, inefficient attempt of strategy. The highest peak of this attempt to deal with a concrete world is always the same: defeat. 

We appear to follow three basic steps in our interactions with the world as social beings. First, we plan; second, we fight for victory; third, whether we win or lose, we lose. The problem with this pattern of behavior is that none of its three elements bear a shred of efficiency for a being who's going to die. All they succeed in creating is an insurmountable feeling of boredom. This boredom reaches such levels, in time, that it has to come out in the form of absurd violence, which we exert upon our whole environment and ourselves. And the failure, as it was explained, has to do with leaving out essential elements of our existence, such as death. To a being who is going to die, concrete victories have no value whatsoever. Not in themselves, at least, for he knows that death will take all that is concrete away, dissolving it into utter nothingness. This is why, being our goal as concretely biased beings and the concrete victory, we are ultimately losers. The social order is defeat. 

The Here/Now continuity that defines a warrior is a quite different affair. First of all, a warrior includes abstract issues every time. One of these abstract elements is the awareness of death. As a being who's going to die, a warrior simply cannot seek concrete gaining. From the start, he aims at something else. The only issue of interest to a sorcerer, like Miles Reid said during the last seminar, is awareness. From awareness stems everything else. Therefore, since our awareness is intimately related to the feeling of abstract awe, a warrior aims at awe, and at the feeling of impeccability and elegance that also comes with it. This derives into a very peculiar inversion of things in the warrior's strategy. 

It turns out that, to a warrior, victory comes first. In other words, a being who is going to die has nothing to lose. Thus, whatever he does, victory is ensured even before the fight begins. Impeccability, within an everyday context, means exactly what Don Juan said: doing everything the best you can, no matter what. Here/Now. Stalking is the other side of the coin to being impeccable. An impeccable behavior, for some mysterious reason, liberates streams of awareness that fixate our perception of the world, providing clarity and efficiency. And this is precisely what is called "Stalking", to fixate our perception of the world in order to emulate the universe's perception of itself, which is clear and efficient beyond imagination. 

Then, after victory, comes the strategy. A warrior, through his impeccable behavior, stalks his whole world, starting with himself. He does this in order to recognize himself on the abstract mirror of Intent, which is the first stalker. In doing this, he finds the essential nature of his being. And finally, after victory and strategy, a warrior finds knowledge and awe. 

It could be said, therefore, that the only active part of a warrior's life is his impeccability. The strategy is to become a strategist, to be impeccable. Victory cannot be taken away from a warrior, since he simply cannot lose as a being who is going to die. And the reverent awe that knowledge brings to a warrior has to do with the interaction of the universe at large with his/her individual awareness. 

The warrior's discipline is, then, impeccability.

Here are the others posts in this thread:

The Warrior's Discipline Part 1

The Warrior's Discipline Part 2

The Warrior's Discipline Part 3

The Warrior's Discipline Part 4

The Warrior's Discipline Part 5

TMMK

Heart, Spirit and Solitude

HEART, SPIRIT AND SOLITUDE - The Warrior's Discipline Part 3

The Warrior's Discipline Part 1

The Warrior's Discipline Part 2

The Warrior's Discipline Part 3

The Warrior's Discipline Part 4

The Warrior's Discipline Part 5

I have the intimate conviction that a human being has an energetic frame designed to last united for millions of years. In other words, our natural and individual life-span is that of several million years of evolving awareness. To a warrior, the suggestion of human life as a fistful of decades of suffering and decay is an aberration. Fighting the forces that siege us means going back to our true nature. It's the way back home. Sorcery is not alien knowledge, rituals, strange practices. Life as we know it is, ironically and precisely, alien knowledge, rituals and strange practices.

Our mind is not ours; our routines are empty rituals designed to drain us of all our resources, and our ways of dealing with the world are, consequently, based upon the strangest practices. The heart is, simply and plainly, our connection with intent, the binding force that relates everything in the universe. Sorcerers also call this force Spirit. It is only natural that if we become aware of what we should have been aware in the first place, if those alien forces hadn't seized us; we will access our true nature and rightful knowledge. This is to say, if I become conscious of the very force that binds and relates everything together, I will know everything. I will always be at the right place at the right time. Why shouldn't I? Self-destruction only operates within the limits of the conspiracy of fear and pain. 

So, if all that takes is the unceasing use of our true nature, of our heart, to access total knowledge and freedom, why the hell don't we do it? Why do we stop and stumble once and once again? Yes, the forces that keep us under siege certainly don't give up. But this explains nothing, since its predatory nature is but the foundation of the conspiracy. They are not going away if we call them names or curse them. It is the conspiracy in itself that must be attacked. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. As humans subscribed to the social order, we are those forces' accomplices. All of us are sick, remember? So, every sick person is an accomplice. Complicity will be measured by the intensity of the person's disease. 

A warrior on the other hand, is basically, someone involved in a true healing process. The dementia of the social order's disease tends to diminish in a warrior. He or she has reversed the inertia of events, the direction of his/her life. Sorcerers refer to this as "facing a new direction", facing time as it comes towards us, not as it goes away.

We are forced by the social order to behave in a certain manner and following certain patterns. Many of these patterns are just too strong for us to break. The point is to find the weakest link, a pattern that we can disassemble with the minimum possible effort. This is not laziness. Death is extremely, terrifyingly quick. So, a warrior must be very quick too if he/she wants to regain completeness before death gets him or her. 

Humanity is a feeling. It is imperative to understand this. Humanity is an idea, a sentiment, something-in-itself. It is a conviction that each one of us treasures, and which could be referred to with these words: "We are together, I belong with you". It is the compulsive necessity of worshiping the human inventory in order to feel like a part of something bigger than oneself, of a confraternity. This feeling, this compulsive need to belong is incredibly strong. It is not just a thought, but also an energetic phenomenon in itself of the most devastating force. This feeling is the social order. It is so powerful that we are ready to sacrifice anything, absolutely anything, to keep it going. In fact, we as a race are submitted to terrible pain every day in our blind effort to perpetuate this state of things. And when pain goes too far in an individual, we put him in a hospital, bury him, forget him as a being who died, and keep going. The human capability for suffering is both astounding and disgusting. 

However, this is the weakest link. And it is so because, even if we cannot escape the inventory of the social order, we can indeed escape the need to worship it. This worshiping represents our main energetic leak, the one that will eventually kill us, the one that keeps us in a perpetual slumber of saddening and unnecessary pain; the one that deprives us of our natural legacy: the awareness of those who navigate infinity. The antidote is, of course, the opposed feeling. We must breed a sense of loneliness, of not belonging, of solitude. To face infinity, you must turn your back on the social order, on your human fellowship. It is almost funny, a terrible irony that we refuse to do this in order to honor a sense of belonging, to avoid betrayal. And, in doing it, we betray the only possible thing that results honorable for a conscious being, the claim of his/her natural awareness. We betray our fellow humans in the very act of trying not to betray them, in betraying ourselves. 

Only from solitude does the heart operate. The warrior's discipline is solitude, because solitude is necessary in order to become aware of the binding force that holds the universe together. Solitude is not the goal, but the means to an end. And at the end, our rightful legacy, our nature, lies up there, in the sky. And the goal is awe, awe before infinity, before the unfathomable mystery. Look at your fellow humans, at the social order, at yourself. And then look up. Man is the only creature that looks up, searching for what is beyond the stars. We lost it, but we can take it back. It's up to us. Did you look? Now, choose.

Here are the other posts in this thread: 

The Warrior's Discipline Part 1

The Warrior's Discipline Part 2

The Warrior's Discipline Part 3

The Warrior's Discipline Part 4

The Warrior's Discipline Part 5

TMMK

The Conspiracy of Pain

THE CONSPIRACY OF PAIN - The Warrior's Discipline Part 2

The Warrior's Discipline Part 1

The Warrior's Discipline Part 2

The Warrior's Discipline Part 3

The Warrior's Discipline Part 4

The Warrior's Discipline Part 5

Many children, if not all, have had the feeling of being the object of a conspiracy. This feeling could be expressed by the words: "What if everybody is conspiring against me? What if everybody knows something I don't, and tell me that things are what they want me to believe they are?” This is seeing. 

There is, in fact, a conspiracy around us. We are all subjects and objects of it. Executioners and victims. Furthermore, the conspiracy involves, by definition, conscious and deliberate forces that put it together. The leitmotif of this conspiracy is pain. The draining of our energy, which would be its ultimate goal, is attained by this means. 

There is no spiritual pain. There is only physical pain. The social order's last line of defense is sustained on weapons that cause physical pain and death. The only interest of "spiritual" or mental pain, in terms of this conspiracy, is that it eventually develops into physical pain. Aaron Niemzovitch, a chess master, once said that the threat is stronger than the execution. This is a basic principle, which has been corroborated by centuries of practice. Extrapolating this to the everyday world, it could be said that fear of pain is stronger than pain itself. 

There are two kinds of pain. The natural one, felt by the body through the nervous system as a cold abstract feeling, and the one composed by the sum of this natural pain and fear. This type of pain we call "disease", and we also have a very thorough taxonomy for its diverse manifestations. The fact remains, however, that there is only one disease. Again, illness is composed by the sum of natural pain as a physical sensation and fear. Within the many manifestations of illness or disease, fear and pain acquire diverse characteristics. But this does not make any difference. The basic structure of illness is the same notwithstanding the diversity of its symptoms. 

Pain does not kill. Pain is a sensation, as cold and abstract as the sensation of hunger, thirst, sexual arousal, sneezing, itching and practically an infinite number of physical and sensorial possibilities. Pain plus fear, however, do kill. This combination is lethal. It's like the case of two gasses that are completely harmless when isolated, but highly explosive if mixed. Pain and fear create a vicious cycle of the most energy-draining patterns. They build a mutual feedback that compromises all of the physical body's resources until they are no longer sufficient to stop death. This loss of energy is manifested as an uprising depression which is common to all people affected with disease. Fear of upcoming pain increases pain, since it compromises new energetic resources of the body in order to attack this fear. Fear of death as an unknown, alien factor increases the speed of the vicious cycle of illness. 

There are no accidents. Everything in the universe is inter-related. If a man happens to be at the middle of the street when a roaring truck suddenly occupies the very same physical spot at the very same moment in time, this man's physical body will obviously respond to the physical laws of mass, weight, inertia and gravity at the time of the impact. But this does not make it an "accident". It is, by all means, rather an "incident", an event. It could even be called a culminant disease, with a very short and intense destructive duration. To the obvious question regarding the absence of fear and/or pain during accidents, the answer is that fear and pain are having an accumulative effect. This man felt so much fear and pain for decades, bred these vicious circles for so long, that all death needed to do to call him was a tiny insinuation. The man, for example, obviously perceived signs, since everything is inter-related, of not crossing that street at that time. Fear, in this case, concerns the man not minding those signs, those omens. He feared that heeding them would shatter his vision of a solid, concrete world. His vision of himself as an immortal being. 

The forced conclusion to all this is a very disturbing one. We are all sick. All of us. Each one of us carries his/her own little or big vicious circle of disease where ever we go. Our saddening main hope is to keep it little for as long as we can before it turns bigger. We call this pathetic state of being "health", and rely upon medics to sustain it. The taxonomy changes, but the feeling is basically the same. We carry fear and pain, biting each other's tail like the ouroboros, the mythical snake that devours itself. This guy is depressed, the other one "hasn't found himself"; she was left by her husband, he has tooth cavities; she has cancer, he has AIDS, they are mad at each other, he is not giving his best effort, she is giving her best effort, but to no avail; he was sexually abused, he is definitely going to lose his job; he has TB, she has the flu; he had a car crash, she is very sad. The outcome is energetic depletion and death. 

This check is being collected by alien forces that keep us under siege. They are conscious, deliberate forces, not "accidents" or fate. And, as such, they can be presented with battle; they can be defeated. Any person that presents battle to them is, by definition, called a "warrior".

Here are the posts that relate to this thread:

The Warrior's Discipline Part 1

The Warrior's Discipline Part 2

The Warrior's Discipline Part 3

The Warrior's Discipline Part 4

The Warrior's Discipline Part 5

TMMK

The Warrior's Discipline

 THE WARRIOR'S DISCIPLINE - PART 1

The Warrior's Discipline Part 1

The Warrior's Discipline Part 2

The Warrior's Discipline Part 3

The Warrior's Discipline Part 4

The Warrior's Discipline Part 5

"... by discipline, I don't mean harsh routines. Sorcerers understand discipline as the capacity to face with serenity odds that are not included in our expectations. For them, discipline is a volitional act that enables them to intake anything that comes their way without regrets or expectations. For sorcerers, discipline is an art: the art of facing infinity without flinching; not because they are filled with toughness, but because they are filled with awe. Summing it all up, I would say that discipline is the art of feeling awe." Juan Matus (from Carlos Castaneda's book: "Tensegrity...", p.8.) 

I fear, and my fear comes from the conviction that we don't stand a chance of freeing ourselves without discipline. Therefore, this fear implies by force understanding the true meaning of the warrior's discipline. 

Before that, one only feels a strange numbness, common to all human race. A blind indifference interrupted at times by states of empty euphoria or ill-being. This ill-being goes from a mild discomfort and boredom to grave illnesses or accidents. 

What is discipline? How can one achieve continuity not knowing which is the right thread of discipline? How does one become a full-time ‘warrior’, a man or woman of knowledge? How does one fly gently into total freedom? Perhaps we could move backwards on this subject so that discipline unveils before us simply, naturally and by itself as what it really is. To begin with, we can see what discipline is not. 

THE DIALECTICAL APE 

Don Juan called us crazy, schizophrenic apes. Perhaps we could also be called dialectical apes. Every single element of our world relates to all the others by means of dialectical chains. For some mysterious reason, we form pairs out of everything, and everything has an attached, immutable dialectical value. Something is either good or bad, colored or uncolored, hard or soft, beautiful or ugly, medium or extreme, God-like or Devil-like. And when one disagrees with a certain dialectical value, he or she poses an opposite dialectical-dialectical immutable value. And, now, he or she is RIGHT and the other guy is WRONG. We are, indeed, astonishingly insane. Our attention is trapped amidst a whirlwind of bipolar, arbitrary values. 

HOW TO LOSE YOUR BATTLES 

This is not difficult to see at all, since we are losers par excellence. The description of how to lose battles equals the description of how we handle our bouts in the everyday world. We always face our challenges directly and dialectically. We isolate one element and juggle its bipolar values. Thus, we either accept its presence directly and do nothing about it, or we deny it directly by confronting it in a straightforward fashion. 

We either smoke and not mobilize lateral, surreptitious forces to attack smoking, or we deny to ourselves lighting a cigarette. Both maneuvers are in fact the same. It is as if we were facing a two-headed dragon, which anticipates both of our dialectical alternatives. When things are running more or less smoothly in our daily lives, we tend to use the first alternative. When they tighten up, we tend to use the second, which is even a little bit worse, because by denying things to ourselves we fall prey to the dangerous illusion that we have actually changed something in us. 

The fact remains that this dragon is too strong for us. Facing it directly means certain defeat. The habit of facing it like this and being defeated is called surrendering, indulging. And this is the normal way of life for humans. We will be limited dialectical apes for as long as we keep confronting the dialectical dragon on its own turf and with its own weapons. Therefore, true discipline begins by absolutely refraining from the urge to keep facing it in this insane manner. To me, this is the warrior's way of life. 

THE SUSTAINMENT OF DISCIPLINE 

Once the above is achieved, you will find yourself in the position of being able to focus your unbending intent on an abstract purpose. The attention that you had lent to the direct confrontation with the dialectical dragon will be freed for you to use, slowly rendering an arsenal of true, efficient perceptual weapons. They will be given to you by the Spirit itself. 

All you will have to do, from then on, is to keep the whole of your unbending intent, allowing no distraction whatsoever in the direction of this dragon, hooked to the Warrior's Way, to freedom. You must do this regardless of the obstacles that may appear on your way. And then you will automatically find yourself feeling reverent awe, because doors will open that you never imagined existed. The rest is between you and the spirit. Discipline is, indeed, the supreme joy of feeling reverent awe; of watching, with your mouth open, whatever is behind those secret doors. 

An arrow of freedom from the fierce bow of the heart, TMMK

P.S. - Here are links to the rest of the posts in this thread. 

The Warrior's Discipline Part 1

The Warrior's Discipline Part 2

The Warrior's Discipline Part 3

The Warrior's Discipline Part 4

The Warrior's Discipline Part 5

TMMK

The Double

"I have to know about the double," I said. 

"There's no way of knowing whether he's flesh and blood," don Juan said. "Because he is not as real as you. Genaro's double is as real as Genaro. Do you see what I mean?" 

"But you have to admit, don Juan, that there must be a way to know." 

"The double is the self; that explanation should suffice. If you would see, however, you'd know that there is a great difference between Genaro and his double. For a sorcerer who sees, the double is brighter." 

After their laughter subsided, I asked don Genaro what a double did, or what a sorcerer did with the double. Don Juan answered. He said that the double had power, and that it was used to accomplish feats that would be unimaginable under ordinary terms. 

"I've told you time and time again that the world is unfathomable," he said to me. "And so are we, and so is every being that exists in this world. It is impossible, therefore, to reason out the double. You've been allowed to witness it, though, and that should be more than enough."  

"But there must be a way to talk about it," I said. "You yourself have told me that you explained your conversation with the deer in order to talk about it. Can't you do the same with the double?"  

He was quiet for a moment. I pleaded with him. The anxiety I was experiencing was beyond anything I had ever gone through.  

"Well, a sorcerer can double up," don Juan said. "That's all one can say." 

"But is he aware that he is doubled?" 

"Of course he's aware of it." 

"Does he know that he is in two places at once?" 

Both of them looked at me and then they exchanged a glance. 

"Where is the other don Genaro?" I asked. 

Don Genaro leaned towards me and stared into my eyes. 

"I don't know," he said softly. "No sorcerer knows where his other is." 

"Genaro is right," don Juan said. "A sorcerer has no notion that he is in two places at once. To be aware of that would be the equivalent of facing his double, and the sorcerer that finds himself face to face with himself is a dead sorcerer. That is the rule. That is the way power has set things up. No one knows why."

Don Juan explained that by the time a warrior had conquered dreaming and seeing and had developed a double, he must have also succeeded in erasing personal history, self-importance, and routines. He said that all the techniques which he had taught me and which I had considered to be empty talk were, in essence, means for removing the impracticality of having a double in the ordinary world, by making the self and the world fluid, and by placing them outside the bounds of prediction. 

"A fluid warrior can no longer make the world chronological," don Juan explained. "And for him, the world and himself are no longer objects. He's a luminous being existing in a luminous world. The double is a simple affair for a sorcerer because he knows what he's doing. To take notes is a simple affair for you, but you still scare Genaro with your pencil." 

"Can an outsider, looking at a sorcerer, see that he is in two places at once?" I asked don Juan. 

"Certainly. That would be the only way to know it." 

"But can't one logically assume that the sorcerer would also notice that he has been in two places?" 

"Aha!" don Juan exclaimed. "For once you've got it right. A sorcerer may certainly notice afterwards that he has been in two places at once. But this is only bookkeeping and has no bearing on the fact that while he's acting he has no notion of his duality." 

My mind boggled. I felt that if I did not keep on writing I would explode. 

"Think of this," he went on. "The world doesn't yield to us directly; the description of the world stands in between. So, properly speaking, we are always one step removed and our experience of the world is always a recollection of the experience. We are perennially recollecting the instant that has just happened, just passed. We recollect, recollect, recollect." 

He turned his hand over and over to give me the feeling of what he meant. 

"If our entire experience of the world is recollection, then it's not so outlandish to conclude that a sorcerer can be in two places at once. This is not the case from the point of view of his own perception, because in order to experience the world, a sorcerer, like every other man, has to recollect the act he has just performed, the event he has just witnessed, the experience he has just lived. In his awareness there is only a single recollection. But for an outsider looking at the sorcerer it may appear as if the sorcerer is acting two different episodes at once. The sorcerer, however, recollects two separate single instants, because the glue of the description of time is no longer binding him."  

"Is the double solid?" I asked don Juan after a long silence. 

They looked at me. 

"Does the double have corporealness?" I asked. 

"Certainly," don Juan said. "Solidity, corporealness are memories. Therefore, like everything else we feel about the world, they are memories we accumulate. Memories of the description. You have the memory of my solidity, the same way you have the memory of communicating through words. Thus, you talked with a coyote and you feel me as being solid."

To be continued…

TMMK

Recapitulation as Described by Carlos Castaneda

The Recapitulation as described by Carlos Castaneda. 

The recapitulation, according to what don Juan taught his disciples, was a technique discovered by the sorcerers of ancient Mexico, and used by every shaman practitioner from then on, to view and relive all the experiences of their lives, in order to achieve two transcendental goals: one, the abstract goal of fulfilling a universal code that demands that awareness must he relinquished at the moment of death; and two, the extremely pragmatic goal of acquiring perceptual fluidity.

He said that the formulation of their first goal was the result of observations that those sorcerers made by means of their capacity to see energy directly as it flows in the universe. They had seen that there exists in the universe a gigantic force, an immense conglomerate of energy fields which they called the Eagle, or the dark sea of awareness. They observed that the dark sea of awareness is the force that lends awareness to all living beings, from viruses to men. They believed that it lends awareness to a newborn being, and that this being enhances that awareness by means of its life experiences until a moment in which the force demands its return.

In the understanding of those sorcerers, all living beings die because they are forced to return the awareness lent to them. Sorcerers through out the ages have understood that there is no way for what modern man calls our linear mode of thinking to explain such a phenomenon, because there is no room for a cause-and-effect line of reasoning as to why and how awareness is lent and then taken back. The sorcerers of ancient Mexico viewed it as an energetic fact of the universe, a fact that can't be explained in terms of cause and effect, or in terms of a purpose which can be determined a priori.

The sorcerers of don Juan's lineage believed that to recapitulate meant to give the dark sea of awareness what it was seeking: their life experiences. They believed that by means of the recapitulation, however, they could acquire a degree of control that could permit them to separate their life experiences from their life force. For them, the two were not inextricably intertwined; they were joined only circumstantially.

Those sorcerers affirmed that the dark sea of awareness doesn't want to take the lives of human beings; it wants only their life experiences. Lack of discipline in human beings prevents them from separating the two forces, and in the end, they lose their lives, when it is meant that they lose only the force of their life experiences. Those sorcerers viewed the recapitulation as the procedure by which they could give the dark sea of awareness a substitute for their lives. They gave up their life experiences by recounting them, but they retained their life force.

The perceptual claims of sorcerers, when examined in terms of the lin­ear concepts of our Western world, make no sense whatsoever. Western civilization has been in contact with the shamans of the New World for five hundred years, and there has never been a genuine attempt on the part of scholars to formulate a serious philosophical discourse based on statements made by those shamans. For instance, the recapitulation may seem to any member of the Western world to be congruous with psychoanalysis, something in the line of a psychological procedure, a sort of self-help technique. Nothing could be further from the truth.

According to don Juan Matus, man always loses by default. In the case of the premises of sorcery, he believed that Western man is missing a tremendous opportunity for the enhancement of his awareness, and that the way in which Western man relates himself to the universe, life, and awareness is only one of a multiplicity of options.

To recapitulate, for shaman practitioners, means to give to an incompre­hensible force-the dark sea of awareness-the very thing it seems to be looking for: their life experiences, that is to say, the awareness that they have enhanced through those very life experiences. Since don Juan could not possibly explain these phenomena to me in terms of standard logic, he said that all that sorcerers could aspire to do was to accomplish the feat of retaining their life force without knowing how it was done. He also said that there were thousands of sorcerers who had achieved this. They had retained their life force after they had given the dark sea of awareness the force of their life experiences. This meant to don Juan that those sorcerers didn't die in the usual sense in which we understand death, but that they transcended it by retaining their life force and vanishing from the face of the earth, embarked on a definitive journey of perception.

The belief of the shamans of don Juan's lineage was that when death takes place in this fashion, all of our being is turned into energy, a special kind of energy that retains the mark of our individuality. Don Juan tried to explain this in a metaphorical sense, saying that we are composed of a number of single nations: the nation of the lungs, the nation of the heart, the nation of the stomach, the nation of the kidneys, and so on. Each of these nations sometimes works independently of the others, but at the moment of death, all of them are unified into one single entity. The sorcerers of don Juan's lineage called this state total freedom. For those sorcerers, death is a unifier, and not an annihilator, as it is for the average man.

"Is this state immortality, don Juan?" I asked.

"This is in no way immortality," he replied. "It is merely the entrance into an evolutionary process, using the only medium for evolution that man has at his disposal: awareness. The sorcerers of my lineage were convinced that man could not evolve biologically any further; there­fore, they considered man's awareness to be the only medium for evolu­tion. At the moment of dying, sorcerers are not annihilated by death, but are transformed into inorganic beings: beings that have awareness, but not an organism. To be transformed into an inorganic being was evolution for them, and it meant that a new, indescribable type of awareness was lent to them, an awareness that would last for veritably millions of years, but which would also someday have to be returned to the giver: the dark sea of awareness."

One of the most important findings of the shamans of don Juan's lin­eage was that, like everything else in the universe, our world is a combi­nation of two opposing, and at the same time complementary, forces. One of those forces is the world we know, which those sorcerers called the world of organic beings. The other force is something they called the world of inorganic beings.

"The world of inorganic beings," don Juan said, "is populated by beings that possess awareness, but not an organism. They are conglom­erates of energy fields, just like we are. To the eye of a seer, instead of being luminous, as human beings are, they are rather opaque. They are not round, but long, candle like energetic configurations. They are, in essence, conglomerates of energy fields which have cohesion and boundaries just like we do. They are held together by the same agglutinating force that holds our energy fields together."

"Where is this inorganic world, don Juan?" I asked.

"It is our twin world," he replied. "It occupies the same time and space as our world, but the type of awareness of our world is so different from the type of awareness of the inorganic world that we never notice the presence of inorganic beings, although they do notice ours."

"Are those inorganic beings’ human beings that have evolved?" I asked.

"Not at all!" he exclaimed. "The inorganic beings of our twin world have been intrinsically inorganic from the start, the same way that we have always been intrinsically organic beings, also from the start. They are beings whose consciousness can evolve just like ours, and it doubtlessly does, but I have no firsthand knowledge of how this happens. What I do know, however, is that a human being whose awareness has evolved is a bright, luminescent, round inorganic being of a special kind."

Don Juan gave me a series of descriptions of this evolutionary process, which I always took to be poetic metaphors. I singled out the one that pleased me the most, which was total freedom. I fancied a human being that enters into total freedom to be the most courageous, the most imagi­native being possible. Don Juan said that I was not fancying anything at all-that to enter into total freedom, a human being must call on his or her sublime side, which, he said, human beings have, but which it never occurs to them to use.

Don Juan described the second, the pragmatic goal of the recapitulation as the acquisition of fluidity. The sorcerers' rationale behind this had to do with one of the most elusive subjects of sorcery: the assemblage point, a point of intense luminosity the size of a tennis ball, perceivable when sorcerers see a human being as a conglomerate of energy fields.

Sorcerers like don Juan see that trillions of energy fields in the form of filaments of light from the universe at large converge on the assemblage point and go through it. This confluence of filaments gives the assemblage point its brilliancy. The assemblage point makes it possible for a human being to per­ceive those trillions of energy filaments by turning them into sensorial data. The assemblage point then interprets this data as the world of everyday life, that is to say, in terms of human socialization and human potential.

To recapitulate is to relive every, or nearly every, experience that we have had, and in doing so to displace the assemblage point, ever so slightly or a great deal, propelling it by the force of memory to adopt the position that it had when the event being recapitulated took place. This act of going back and forth from previous positions to the current one gives the shaman practitioners the necessary fluidity to withstand extraordinary odds in their journeys into infinity. To the Tensegrity practi­tioners, the recapitulation gives the necessary fluidity to withstand odds which are not in any way part of their habitual cognition.

The recapitulation as a formal procedure was done in ancient times by recollecting every person the practitioners knew and every experience in which they had taken part. Don Juan suggested that in my case, which is the case of modern man, I make a written list of all the persons that I had met in my life, as a mnemonic device. Once I had written that list, he proceeded to tell me how to use it. I had to take the first person on the list, which went backwards in time from the present to the time of my very first life experience, and set up, in my memory, my last interaction with that first person on my list. This act is called arranging the event to be recapitulated.

A detailed recollection of minutiae is required as the proper means to hone one's capacity to remember. This recollection entails getting all the pertinent physical details, such as the surroundings where the event being recollected took place. Once the event is arranged, one should enter into the locale itself, as if actually going into it, paying special attention to any relevant physical configurations. If, for instance, the interaction took place in an office, what should be remembered is the floor, the doors, the walls, the pictures, the windows, the desks, and the objects on the desks, every­thing that could have been observed in a glance and then forgotten.

The recapitulation as a formal procedure must begin by the recounting of events that have just taken place. In this fashion, the primacy of the experience takes precedence. Something that has just happened is something that one can remember with great accuracy. Sorcerers always count on the fact that human beings are capable of storing detailed information that they are not aware of, and that that detail is what the dark sea of awareness is after.

The actual recapitulation of the event requires that one breathe deeply, fanning the head, so to speak, very slowly and gently from side to side, beginning on one side, left or right, whichever. This fanning of the head was done as many times as needed, while remembering all the details accessible. Don Juan said that sorcerers talked about this act as breathing in all of one's own feelings spent in the event being recol­lected, and expelling all the unwanted moods and extraneous feelings that were left with us.

Sorcerers believe that the mystery of the recapitulation lies in the act of inhaling and exhaling. Since breathing is a life-sustaining function, sor­cerers are certain that by means of it, one can also deliver to the dark sea of awareness the facsimile of one's life experiences. When I pressed don Juan for a rational explanation of this idea, his position was that things like the recapitulation could only be experienced, not explained. He said that in the act of doing, one can find liberation, and that to explain it was to dissipate our energy in fruitless efforts. His invitation was congruous with every­thing related to his knowledge: the invitation to take action.

The list of names is used in the recapitulation as a mnemonic device that propels memory into an inconceivable journey. Sorcerers' position in this respect is that remembering events that have just taken place prepares the ground for remembering events more distant in time with the same clarity and immediacy. To recollect experiences in this way is to relive them, and to draw from this recollection an extraordinary impetus that is capable of stirring energy dispersed from our centers of vitality, and returning it to them. Sorcerers refer to this redeployment of energy that the recapitulation causes as gaining fluidity after giving the dark sea of awareness what it is looking for.

On a more mundane level, the recapitulation gives practitioners the capacity to examine the repetition in their lives. Recapitulating can con­vince them, beyond the shadow of a doubt, that all of us are at the mercy of forces which ultimately make no sense, although at first sight they seem perfectly reasonable; such as being at the mercy of courtship. It seems that for some people, courtship is the pursuit of a lifetime. I have personally heard from people of advanced age that the only ideal that they had was to find a perfect companion, and that their aspiration was to have perhaps one year of happiness in love.

Don Juan Matus used to say to me, over my vehement protests, that the problem was that nobody really wanted to love anybody, but that every one of us wanted to be loved. He said that this obsession with courtship, taken at face value, was the most natural thing in the world to us. To hear a seventy-five-year-old man or woman say that they are still in search of a perfect companion is an affirmation of something idealistic, romantic, beautiful. However, to examine this obsession in the context of the endless repetitions of a lifetime makes it appear as it really is: something grotesque.

Don Juan assured me that if any behavioral change is going to be accom­plished, it has to be done through the recapitulation, since it is the only vehi­cle that can enhance awareness by liberating one from the unvoiced demands of socialization, which are so automatic, so taken for granted, that they are not even noticed under normal conditions, much less examined.

The actual act of recapitulating is a lifetime endeavor. It takes years to exhaust the list of people, especially for those who have made the acquaintance of and have interacted with thousands of individuals. This list is augmented by the memory of impersonal events in which no people are involved, but which have to be examined because they are somehow related to the person being recapitulated.

Don Juan asserted that what the sorcerers of ancient Mexico sought avidly in recapitulating was the memory of interaction, because in inter action lie the deep effects of socialization, which they struggled to over­come by any means available. 

The Magical Passes for The Recapitulation 

The recapitulation affects something that don Juan called the energy body. He formally explained the energy body as a conglomerate of energy fields that are the mirror image of the energy fields that make up the human body when it is seen directly as energy. He said that in the case of sorcerers, the physical body and the energy body are one single unit. The magical passes for the recapitulation bring the energy body to the physical body, which are essential for navigating into the unknown.

To be continued...

TMMK

Motivation and The Trackless Path

In most forms of training, whether in The Warrior’s Way, sports, the military, the arts, medicine or spiritual practice, the first task of the teacher or benefactor is to clarify and intensify motivation. "Increase the urgency," they tell us. 

When I look back on my own training, Kalu Rinpoche returned again and again to the infamous Four Thoughts: The precious human existence, death and impermanence, the workings of karma and the shortcomings of samsara. All these motivational meditations centered on self-interest, and in that respect, except for the time-scale (lifetimes vs. this life) they are not that different from the endless encomiums to happiness, emotional and physical well-being, and family and career success that are often used to motivate people to practice today.

People start practice for different reasons. Milarepa sought a reconciliation with his murdering of thirty-seven people. Gampopa sought solace from devastating grief when his wife died. Many of us start practice because we are looking (or think we are looking) for some kind of benefit. And our teachers happily oblige. They wave a carrot or two in front of our noses. Or, they say, "You don't want that carrot. You want THIS carrot," and they tell you about a much bigger, brighter, juicier carrot.

For others, however, the motivation is in a different category. For Kongtrul the Great, it was an indefinable yearning. For Urgyen Tulku, it was something that he took to like a duck to water. For Dilgo Khyentse and others, it was just a sheer love for the Dharma. For them, it was more of a calling. That calling may take expression in traditional terms. My own teacher was deeply motivated by the bodhisattva ideal, when he was a young man and constantly seeking ways to form connections with people, animals and beings of all kinds.

At some point, and it may be one or two years down the road, or ten years, or maybe twenty, you realize that you aren't that interested in the carrot. You tried to love practice on those terms, but it just has not worked out that way. You can't make yourself love something that you don't, as a long-term (40+ years) practitioner wrote in commenting on a pre-publication copy of A Trackless Path.

Personally I'm deeply grateful for this book. It has pointed me back to the 'Trackless Path', to the yearning for 'this knowing' which originally started my quest in my teens. I left it decades ago for the fool's errand of a constant search for somebody or something to show me the path. Now I am looking again for myself.

Wherever you are in your life, whether you are at the beginning, middle or end, be clear, as clear as you can be, about why you are practicing. You may or may not be able to put your motivation into words. That does not matter. What matters is that you feel it – you feel it in your heart. That feeling may be warm, it may raw, it may be a relief to touch, it may be painful to touch. It doesn't matter. All that is important is that this is where your motivation, your calling, lies.

This is a different way of increasing the urgency, a way that is not based in possible benefits or achievements. Instead, it is based in what you experience right now.

Each day, when you sit to practice, take a few minutes and feel your motivation. That, essentially, is the purpose of the prayers that are used to begin meditation sessions in the Tibetan tradition-honoring the lineage of teachers, taking refuge and fostering awakening mind. These prayers express the traditional motivations, but if they don't speak to you, then write and use your own.

Then do your practice. Try this, and see if it makes a difference.

When your practice arises directly from your heart, you are setting out on a different path, a trackless path. As Wendell Berry wrote in Poetry and Marriage: The Use of Old Forms:

“A certain awesome futurity, then, is the inescapable condition of word-giving - as it is, in fact, of all speech - for we speak into no future that we know, much less into one that we desire, but into one that is unknown. But that it is unknown requires us to be generous toward it, and requires our generosity to be full and unconditional.”

There are many ways to give your word. Not all of them are spoken. And sometimes you only realize you have given your word long after it has, in fact, been given.

TMMK