Third Attention

An ordinary man sees the world as it is, as he’s been taught, conditioned and instructed to see it. A warrior sees the lines of the universe and knows the interconnectedness of all things. ~ Don Juan

The first attention basically consists of everything that ordinary man considers what it means to be human. It is the reality that has been constructed and developed in order to deal with the daily world and encompasses an awareness restricted to the physical body.

In second attention, one operates on an energetic level and the second attention is largely developed through deliberate training or accidental trauma which puts one back in touch with the energetic essence with which they were born. Sorcerers can see from second attention. This seeing includes the ability to hold the awareness of inorganic beings, to perceive energy directly and the capacity to connect with silent knowledge and intent.

Continue reading

Freedom from the Foreign Installation

The foreign installation comes back, I assure you, but not as strong, and a process begins until one day it flees permanently. A sad day indeed! That’s the day when you have to rely on your own devices, which are nearly zero. There’s no one to tell you what to do. There’s no mind of foreign origin to dictate the imbecilities you’re accustomed to. ~ Don Juan, The Active Side of Infinity

The Foreign Installation is huge, enormous in fact and all encompassing. It is because of the Foreign Installation that so many healing modalities have been created in every culture, in every part of the world since the beginning of time. Think about it. Why do people enter into healing in the first place? To become free.

Most modern day healers take the form of psychologists, physiatrists and psychotherapists. Other current modalities that have been brought forward from the past include the practices of shamanism, medicine men and women, reiki practitioners, energy workers, bodhisattvas, light-workers, along with a wide range of other labels that help to define them and the work that they do. Some are phony, some are real but they all have the same purpose. Freedom from the voices in your head.

Continue reading

Inorganic Beings

Shamans like don Juan Matus defined their quest as the quest of becoming, in the end, an inorganic being, meaning energy aware of itself, action as a cohesive unit, but without an organism. They called this aspect of their cognition total freedom, a state in which awareness exists, free from the impositions of socialization and syntax. ~ Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge

Don Miguel Ruiz calls them parasites, Susan Gregg calls them angels, fairies and gnomes, Ekhardt Tolle calls them “the pain body”, and others call them walk-ins, manifestations of dreams or fears, abstract forces or spirits.

They can be all of the above, except angels, fairies and gnomes which is merely an attempt at fixating the attention on something that cannot be labeled, only experienced. They reside in a realm, according to Castaneda, that exists outside of our own. They are only interested in energy.

Continue reading

Loneliness on the Warrior’s Path

People often ask about the loneliness they experience on this path of awareness and express that it seems difficult to maintain awareness on a path of freedom in a world where the majority of people are not aware or free.

Sometimes the greatest role a warrior can play is the part of the observer. It is through detached observation that we can truly appreciate the foibles of man and when we recognize this, there really is no other choice except to laugh and laugh and laugh! Don Juan laughed at Carlos all the time. Carlos was a struggling warrior apprentice in the beginning of his association with don Juan, with a lot of self-importance and attachment to the world at large. (Carlos was not, in my opinion, the idiot he made himself out to be but he wrote his books in a way that allowed each person to see themselves, regardless of their individual struggles as warriors on the path to freedom and he deftly outlined the obstacles that we may allow to get in our way.)

Continue reading

The Mold of Man

In Carlos Castaneda’s book, The Fire from Within, Don Juan talks about how human beings are pure energy or “an amorphous blob of biological matter” and that a particular pattern of energy serves to stamp the qualities of humanness upon it. He explains it “like a gigantic die that stamps out human beings endlessly as if they were coming to it on a mass-production conveyor belt”.

A lot of people find this term offensive but this mass production of people is what I refer to as sheeple (sheep/people). They are predominantly part of a flock whose most every action relies on the acceptance and validation of others or subservience and acquiescence to others and, sometimes, having power over them. In becoming enmeshed within the energetic structure of “the mold of man”, people become robotic, stepford people who often delude themselves into living appropriately as dictated by the dominant paradigm.

Continue reading

Ocean of Awareness

t’s not the people around you who are at fault, don Juan said. They cannot help themselves. The fault is with you, because you can help yourself, but you are bent on judging them, at a deep level of silence. Any idiot can judge. If you judge them, you will only get the worst out of them. All of us human beings are prisoners, and it is that prison that makes us act in such a miserable way. Your challenge is to take people as they are! Leave people alone. ~ Don Juan, The Active Side of Infinity

In response to my outburst in my previous post a fellow warrior sent me the above quote that immediately put things back into perspective. Thank you for that. Yeah, I know. I over-reacted. The reason I go to Mexico has nothing to do with the scope of how things are assembled and arranged on a physical level, the reason I go is to immerse myself in the energy of the area and to connect with intent.

Continue reading