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