Author Archives: Female Warrior

All Time is Here. This Moment. Now.

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Sorcery makes us aware of different realities; different possibilities, not only about the world but also about ourselves, to the extent that we no longer are able to believe in even the most solid assumptions about ourselves and our surroundings. ~ Carlos Castaneda, Being in Dreaming

Don Juan used to take Carlos out into the desert chaparral for numerous reasons but most importantly to have what he called an appointment with knowledge. For many years I have visited such a place in the Sonoran desert of the greater Phoenix area that is affectionately known to us as the place of intent. It is an amazing place, a power place of great magnitude that unerringly alters ones perception and provides a heightened state of awareness just by sitting there.

Last weekend a fellow warrior and I hiked in one evening as the moon was waxing towards full. We brought no flashlights with us, the moon in the desert provides sufficient light and we were able to see quite clearly as we walked deeper into the illuminated darkness. That sounds paradoxical but it isn’t when you are in the desert at night with the light of the moon. Once the eyes adjust you can see everything just as well as you can during the day, everything is just bluer.

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Aligning with the Energy of the Trees

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The feeling I had developed for the trees was beyond words. I had the certainty that I was able to absorb their moods, know their age, their insights and what they sensed. I could communicate with a tree directly through a sensation that came out from the inside of my body. And I also knew that once communication is engaged, tree pour themselves out in affection. ~ Taisha Abelar, The Sorcerers’ Crossing

I’m a tree hugger. I don’t live in California and I don’t wear Birkenstocks with socks but I love a good tree hug. They have so much to tell us if we pay attention and align with their energy, their intent. Last Sunday I was hiking through an old growth forest in Northern Arizona and when approaching a gigantic old ponderosa pine I just had to embrace it.

I couldn’t wrap my arms around even half of her, she was so big. I pressed my ear against her rugged bark and listened. And then she spoke. She told me that we have to become “conduits” like them so we can bridge the energy of the earth as it moves up through our bodies and into the warmth and light of the sun. This allows us to merge with the abysmal void of infinity. Emptiness is form, form is emptiness.

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Humility, Impeccability and Freedom

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A warrior acknowledges his pain but he doesn’t indulge in it. Thus the mood of a warrior who enters into the unknown is not one of sadness; on the contrary, he’s joyful because he feels humbled by his great fortune, confident that his spirit is impeccable, and above all, fully aware of his efficiency. A warrior’s joyfulness comes from having accepted his fate, and from having truthfully assessed what lies ahead of him. ~ Don Juan, Tales of Power

We learn to free ourselves from old patterns when we recapitulate them with finality. Yeah, that’s what happened last week when I allowed my impeccability to slip and descend into the nightmare of the predator, feeling the pain of that particular reality and then indulging in it. A long-ingrained pattern of reacting to the atrocities that occur with regularity in a dream that doesn’t belong to me. I didn’t create it, I don’t participate in it, I don’t maintain it and I certainly cannot, under any circumstances, feed it by reacting to it. I must treat it as though it doesn’t exist.  As warriors we have no choice but to be impeccable with our energy.

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Time to Evolve

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To move the fixation of the planet is the only way out from the dramatic state of slavery to which we have been reduced. The course of our civilization has no exit, because we are isolated in a remote location of the cosmos. If we don’t learn how to travel along the avenues of awareness, we will come to such a state of frustration and despair that humanity will end up destroying itself. Our options are the way of the warrior, or extinction. ~ Carlos Castaneda, Encounters with the Nagual

Recapitulating Knowledge

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There are lots of things that you do now which would have seemed insane to you ten years ago. Those things themselves did not change, but your idea of yourself changed; what was impossible before is perfectly possible now and perhaps your total success in changing yourself is only a matter of time. In this affair the only possible course that a warrior has is to act consistently and without reservations. You know enough of the warrior’s way to act accordingly, but your old habits and routines stand in your way. Everything we do, everything we are, rests on our personal power. ~ Don Juan, Tales of Power

Personal power is what we gain through recapitulating. A couple of years ago I posted an article called Freedom through Recapitulation that had to do with recapitulating the personal. After we recapitulate those stories we begin to move into fluidity where we live in the moment and thus, we recapitulate in the moment. Holding on to nothing, we are free; mindful of the things that could potentially back us up and so, we let them go.

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Utter Awareness

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Therefore, the Rule for the seers of the new era is preparation; that is their distinctive stamp. They should cultivate their minds in order to know and understand everything. The intellect is the comfort of today’s Toltec, just as in the past, it was the affection for rituals. ~ Carlos Castaneda, Encounters with the Nagual

When I recently read this quote from Carlos it struck a chord deep within me. It appears to me that people who are truly beginning to prepare for some monumental shift in awareness through awareness. This shift is not limited to humanity, it also includes the earth. First suffice it to say that the Toltec are, according to don Juan, men and women of knowledge. There are now, more than ever before, warriors and people of awareness walking on the earth. They are from every ethnic background, every level of education, and represent every age group.

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Don’t Chase the Bird of Freedom

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The moment ideologies – including nagualism – become widespread, they become cultural mafias, schools to make people sleepy. No matter how subtle their postulates are, and no matter how much they try to validate them with personal corroboration, they end up conditioning our actions according to some form of reward or punishment, and by doing that, they pervert the very essence of the search. If the pillar of my faith is a salary, what merit does it have? ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Toltec Mastery” has become one such school to make people sleepy and this is evident in the work of those who pretend to bring this important knowledge of the Toltec forward. I am diligent in my efforts to disengage from the Toltec label since it is becoming a cult-like, dogmatic structure that has more to do with outmoded and repetitious patterns that are found in predominant worldwide religions and less than freedom.

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The Bird of Freedom

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The nagual Mariano Aureliano had once told me that sorcerers, when they talk among themselves, speak of sorcery as a bird: They call it the bird of freedom. They say that the bird of freedom only flies in a straight line and never comes around twice. They also say that it is the nagual who lures the bird of freedom. It is he who entices the bird to shed its shadow on the warrior’s path. Without that shadow, there is no direction. ~ Florinda Donner, Being-in-Dreaming

But it was night and there was no shadow. The three of us were standing on the cool Saltillo tile looking up towards the northeast at the Andromeda Galaxy through a high-powered telescope. It was a mild evening and since we were in the phase of the new moon last weekend it was very dark and the millions of stars in the Milky Way were brilliant. There wasn’t any sound at all except the gentle lapping of the waves from the Sea of Cortez. We were in the Sonoran Desert, donde el desierto y el mar se encuentran; where the desert meets the sea.

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Vanquishing the Self

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In order to be a dreamer I had to vanquish the self. Nothing, but nothing, is as hard as that. The sorcerers understand freedom as the capacity to do the impossible, the unexpected – to dream a dream that has no basis, no reality in everyday life. The knowledge of sorcerers is what is exciting and new. Imagination is what a woman needs to change the self and become a dreamer. ~ Florinda Donner, Being-in-Dreaming

At some point on the path of the committed warrior it becomes necessary to deepen by shifting the assemblage point as thoroughly as possible to align with the unfathomable sea of awareness. This is more than a decision to change a routine, recapitulate a thing or break a pattern. It is a commitment to align with intent as much as possible and jump into the abyss, feet first, without looking back. In order to jump it is necessary to prepare by pooling all accessible energy and engage in the act of not-doing as much as possible.

The warrior strives to become capable of what don Juan refers to as stupendous maneuvers of perception, and in preparing for this it is necessary to vanquish the self and gain deeper access to dreaming. In order to begin to explore from a new point of perception everything has to change. The hardest decision for me was letting go of the blog and recapitulating all of it because the lines within the internet began to overwhelm me and it felt as though the lines of information I was putting forth were gathering up other lines and coming right back through the screen, through my fingertips and into me. This subtle and nearly imperceptible occurrence was beginning to fixate my assemblage point and it was time to unplug and focus on fluidity.

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Why Do I Always Say “Keep Dancing”?

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I fidgeted nervously, changing sitting positions, and he smiled.

“I will have to come with you over and over to this hilltop,” he said. “And then you will have to come by yourself until you’re saturated with it, until the hilltop is oozing you. You will know the time when you are filled with it. This hilltop, as it is now, will then be the place of your last dance.”

“What do you mean by my last dance, don Juan?”

“This is the site of your last stand,” he said. “You will die here no matter where you are. Every warrior has a place to die. A place of his predilection which is soaked with unforgettable memories, where powerful events left their mark, a place where he has witnessed marvels, where secrets have been revealed to him, a place where he has stored his personal power. “A warrior has the obligation to go back to that place of his predilection every time he taps power in order to store it there. He either goes there by means of walking or by means of dreaming.

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