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