Someone recently said to me that Don Juan advised Castaneda to put a great deal of importance on listening to the “sounds of the world” thus achieving inner silence through them and then asked what my opinion or experience is on this aspect of the Toltec path.
I think the sounds of the world was discussed in Castaneda’s book A Separate Reality. Daniel Quinn, author of Ishmael and whom I have referred to in other posts said: “Once you learn to discern the voice of Mother Culture humming in the background, telling her story over and over again to the people of your culture, you’ll never stop being conscious of it. Wherever you go for the rest of your life, you’ll be tempted to say to the people around you, “how can you listen to this stuff and not recognize it for what it is?”
There are many sounds of the world to which we can listen. When we listen to the sounds/words of people we can, as warriors, become aware of the patternistic behaviors that bind them to the mold of man. Those who live their lives as “ordinary men” listen to the age-old stories being told over and over again and they carve out their own place in which to live within that story while upholding and maintaining that story.
Warriors listen to the story and recognize it for what it is, a story; often lacking in creativity, originality, insight, perception, and energetic power.
Listening to the sounds of the world allow us to hear the patterns and once we recognize them we are able to see straight into the root of the story, where it came from, what may have necessitated that particular story and then, the reason why the story has perpetuated and remained, even when it was/is no longer needed. The warrior recognizes the stories as patterns that fuel out-moded ideas, social systems and structures, religions, politics, compliance and complacency. The warrior recapitulates the patterns and thus, becomes free of that particular piece of the mold of man.
I like to listen to the sounds of the earth. The earth, itself, pulsates and has a natural rhythm to which we are more aligned that most people know. If you look into the Schumann Resonance you will find that the Earth and our own brainwaves vibrate on the same frequency of approximately 7.83 Hz.
Beyond the sounds of the Earth are the sounds of water, birds, wind, animals, leaves, and the many magical sounds that are produced by the world, often stopping the world and coming to us as omens. All we have to do is pay attention.
The sounds of the earth have the tendency to usher us into a state of wakeful meditation and allows us to shift the position of our assemblage point. We are able to enter into states of heightened awareness and inner-stillness and align with intent. This allows us to perceive the world as pure energy and not in the limited way that we’ve been told it exists.
Keep dancing!
Female Warrior - The Toltec Path 
Awesome insight! My experience is that even among the so-called warrior community, most only talk the talk. You walk baby! You walk!
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Just dancing…
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The sounds of the world, the voice of the mother culture, the unexamined assumptions underpinning the story we inherit from our parents and our dominant culture… It’s taken me so long to start to dis-entangle myself from them. They feed the fear and block the love so well.
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Indeed. Keep recapitulating. All of it.
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Dear Female Warrior,
Appreciate your artistic view. Don Juan was clear why he advised Castaneda to listen to sound. Through the practice of listening to sound we can learn to overcome our fixation with the eyes. I don’t shy for a little artistic perspective, yet the perspective of pragmatic sobriety serves the warrior most is my understanding of the words of Don Juan and my deep personal experience. It helps us at least with steering away from the grandiose egotistical patterns that are truly a part of our cultural story to compensate for the beating our simplified egos gets from that same story adopted in personal life.
So listening to sound helps to move our assemblage point in the sense of the practice of a stalker.
Another aspect is the difference between listening to sound or listening to sounds. Essentially sounds are created by the doing of our every day awareness. To overcome the concreteness of the human form and to escape into the abstract while living, it is a great tool to start listening to sound, abstract, as opposed to sounds, which are concrete doings of our conditioning.
My personal favorite however is sensing with the whole body. One of the most favorable aspects of this practice is that our minds can not easily integrate the offerings of the body as concrete events and will allow for a sensation of connectedness and of being a part of all. But there we also have the difficulty of sensing with the body. It is virtually impossible as long as the dreaming body has not been woken up, because it is actually sensing with the dream body while being awake. However we all sense with the body occasionally and as warriors on the paths knowledge more and more. The tendency to try and understand these perceptions as concrete, although sometimes valid, will limit drastically the amount of information that can come from these perceptions. Similar to limiting our vision to its d focal center.
The beauty of real knowledge lies in its paradoxale nature. Nothing can be conceived as absolute and unchanging truth that comes through any of our senses. Our reasoning minds prefer dualistic dichotomiies, as it cuts sharply through the world to create it’s own contrasted version. But knowledge is only begotten beyond reasoning and thus surpasses each paradox. Therefore the warrior knows there is no battle yet he is prepared and alert as if there is.
Love, Albert
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Thank you Albert, for sharing your insights and deepening the conversation!
Keep dancing…
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I find these words which FW is sharing to be absolutely concrete. It seems that you are discounting the artistic which is absolutely founded on the concrete and pragmatic. If not it would not shift the assemblage point as it does. Ultimately Don Juan noted that the warrior, traveler who becomes a seer is the artist of their lives because they can truly understand the movements of power, alignment and fluidity… thus choice (freedom) becomes all the more critical in a very concrete abstract manner.
Your distinctions between sound and sounds, is in my mind unnecessary for the seer just sees, and nowhere is it said that seeing is a visual, auditory, feeling or any of the other 15-25 senses our bodies have created to interact with the lines of intent.
Listen to the sounds of our life and through recapitulation we understand the contracts which the world is always attempting to foist on us. Untangling them, the pulse of the earth, life and freedom is detached from the rolling force of the predator, death and consumption.
Peace,
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Hmm…, I am deeply artistic by nature as creating is what we do and we better not fool ourselves that at anytime we can see the world directly wiwithout our creative mind integrating for us. Yet, the sobriety that is advised by the Toltec seers is very helpful in clearing the mind from clutter, like rinsing your brushes.
As to the understanding of concrete and abstract, I would like to ask that you read again, as I would hope you see what I mean instead of bumping into a conflict with your prevailing view of the world.
Peace
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Sensing with the hands is my way of unplugging from the stories of the mind in wakeful states.
Sensing with the heart is my way of feeling this beautiful creature we call home.
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🙂
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Carlos describes the Toltec Sorcerers as masters of awareness – creator beings.
creation…vibration…sensation…perception
When we align with the energy of the earth we are perceiving the creative energetic vibrations of the universe and thus we do, as seers, become sensate with our entire body and not just through a specific sense organ.
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Reblogged this on syndax vuzz.
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Thanks for reblogging!
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I intuit three concepts that help me to see. The Creative, generator of this and all universes, from the infinitely small sub atomic to the endless and eternal extension of trillions of galaxies, and all beings and things. The Sustaining nourisher of beings.
And the Transformer of all beings and things. This is the energy of Consciousness which gives us the gift of awareness. It creates us in order to experience, the action of the Eagle, and we are the witnesses of its actions, while it remains within, acting to create, sustain and transform our being at all times, while participating in all our experience. Our potential is to unite our awareness with the Creative. This is what the Tibetan Buddhists call the blooming of the lotus. Seas of mud, a few thousand lotus flowers bloom, and in a very few of those flowers, appears the wish fulfilling gem. Listen to the sound within, in the temples of the mind, to awaken the white light that liberates, concentrate on the peripheral vision while walking to waken the awareness of transcending the cultural mind. Good fortune is entirely within the range of extended awareness through sense, feeling, thought, and intuition. Some of us call it the Goddess, some call it God, some call it Alla, some call it the poetry of Rumi, or Tagore, but really it does not matter what you call it, as long as you connect with it, or even if one just makes the effort to connect with it hey? Dance on you dreamers, you stalkers, you glorious beings at play in the fields of creation.
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Beautiful said, Jack.
Keep dancing!
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mastery of awareness is here now, we have mastery of intent and mastery of stalking mostly. a Toltec knows all three art forms, and more art forms besides the eagles they just learn them in there lives while flying high and from knowing the real time lines, time is ours to explore to fulfill the divine intent of intent of the awareness of the 3rd attention.
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Aligning with intent ushers in the awareness of all.
Keep dancing 🙂
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