Flower of Life
Human beings are unable to enter and remain for any extended length of time inside the realm of cosmic awareness – the state which Don Juan called ‘the third attention’. Either we leave it and forget, or we stay and melt into that unfathomable sea. But the power that governs us has found the way to get around this limitation, by creating organisms in which individual entities work as members. – Carlos Castaneda, Encounters with the Nagual
It is, in my experience, extremely difficult to put the abstract into words because in seeking words to describe an abstract experience we potentially dilute it as well as create the fixation of the assemblage point. The Eagle’s emanations, as written by Carlos Castaneda, are Fluid, forever in motion, and yet unchanged, eternal.
It is said that the Eagle bestows awareness and also devours awareness by making sentient beings relinquish it at the moment of death. In The Fire from Within Don Juan describes the eagle’s emanations as, A presence, almost a mass of sorts, a pressure that creates a dazzling sensation. One can catch only a glimpse of them, as one can catch only a glimpse of the Eagle itself and, there is nothing visual about the Eagle. The entire body of a seer senses the Eagle.
At the end of his journey of learning, and almost without warning he will come upon the last of his enemies: old age! This enemy is the cruelest of all, the one he won’t be able to defeat completely, but only fight away. This is the time when a man has no more fears, no more impatient clarity of mind – a time when all his power is in check, but also the time when he has an unyielding desire to rest. If he gives in totally to his desire to lie down and forget, if he soothes himself in tiredness, he will have lost his last round, and his enemy will cut him down into a feeble old creature. His desire to retreat will overrule all his clarity, his power, and his knowledge. – Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan
For a warrior, to be harmonious is to flow, not to stop in the middle of the current and try to make a space of artificial and impossible peace. He knows that he can only give the very best of himself under conditions of maximum tension. For that reason, he seeks out his opponent the way a fighting rooster does – with avidity, with delight, knowing that the next step is decisive. His opponent is not his fellow man, but his own attachments and weaknesses, and his grand challenge is to compress the layers of his energy until they won’t expand when his life ceases, so that his awareness does not die.– Carlos Castaneda, Encounters with the Nagual
“The word free still existed in Newspeak, but it could only be used in such statements as ‘This dog is free from lice’ or ‘This field is free from weeds’. It could not be used in its old sense of ‘politically free’ or ‘intellectually free’ since political and intellectual freedom no longer existed even as concepts, and were therefore of necessity nameless. Quite apart from the suppression of definitely heretical words, reduction of vocabulary was regarded as an end in itself, and no word that could be dispensed with was allowed to survive. Newspeak was designed not to extend but to diminish the range of thought, and this purpose was indirectly assisted by cutting the choice of words down to a minimum.” – George Orwell
The spirit of a warrior is not geared to indulging and complaining, nor is it geared to winning or losing. The spirit of a warrior is geared only to struggle, and every struggle is a warrior’s last battle on earth. Thus the outcome matters very little to him. In his last battle on earth a warrior lets his spirit flow free and clear. And as he wages his battle, knowing that his intent is impeccable, a warrior laughs and laughs. – Don Juan, A Separate Reality
Hope. It is the only thing stronger than fear. A little hope is effective. A lot of hope is dangerous. A spark is fine, as long as it’s contained. – President Snow, The Hunger Games
Female Warrior - The Toltec Path 