Avatar – That World is Our World

A warrior’s love is the world. He embraces this enormous earth. The earth knows that he loves it and it bestows on him its care. That’s why his life is filled to the brim and his state, wherever he’ll be, will be plentiful. He roams on the paths of his love and, wherever he is, he is complete. ~ don Juan, Tales of Power

One of my favorite quotes, previously used, will be used again. I go to the movies about once a year. I usually fall asleep. After seeing the previews for Avatar I knew that this would be my once a year theatre experience. I donned my 3-D glasses, was mesmerized for the entire three hours and never nodded off.

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Question the Answers!

I am already given to the power that rules my fate. And I cling to nothing, so I will have nothing to defend. I have no thoughts, so I will see. I fear nothing, so I will remember myself. Detached and at ease, I will dart past the eagle to be free. ~ The Eagle’s Gift

This quote spun through my mind all night. It has been one of my favorite quotes for many years. My thoughts, last night, encompassed the meaning of karma, the beliefs surrounding it, its effects and the illusion of it.

The Buddhists say that everything is an illusion. If this is so then karma must be an illusion as well. For most Americans, karma functions like fate, i.e. bad karma/good karma and is far too often associated with punishment/reward. In the true Buddhist sense, however, the word karma is more aligned with the sorcerers meaning of the word intent. The basic meaning of karma is action and the best definition for intent is the movable force.

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Magically Connecting with Intent

Intent in the Castaneda sense is to surrender and to be in the flow, to be connected with the greater force or the Indescribable Force that surrounds us at all times. To softly touch upon infinity with barely a ripple.

My own experience with manifesting has strengthened my ability to manifest. Each time I “put it out there” and manifest something serves to further validate the endless possibilities and potential that we each have to fully construct and create our reality. It has become clear to have no attachment to outcome and to be careful what you ask for.

While in the Yucatan this month, my traveling companion and partnered warrior on this path of knowledge and awareness joined me in simultaneous connection with intent and we walked an amazing tale of power into existence. Months ago, in the early planning stages of our journey to the Yucatan we created the intention of sharing in sacred ceremony with a Mayan shaman to further open the gateways to higher levels of awareness. We had asked several people if they knew of anyone and did some research on the internet to no avail.

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Warrior Activism

The flaw with words is that they always make us feel enlightened, but when we turn around to face the world they always fail us and we end up facing the world as we always have, without enlightenment. For this reason, a warrior seeks to act rather than to talk, and to this effect, he gets a new description of the world – a new description where talking is not that important, and where new acts have new reflections. ~ Carlos Castaneda, The Wheel of Time

The short version of this quote is shut-up and walk your talk. Are you listening to all of the people who are saying that they are going to do things differently in order to help the environment, save the oceans, and become more sustainable? Are you aware of how many people talking with their friends about “going green” are only providing lip service? A warrior seeks to take action and through unbending intent accomplishes her feat.

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Structure in the Nagual’s World?

Man has a dark side. It’s called stupidity. In the same measure that ritual forced the average man to construct huge churches that were monuments to self-importance, ritual also forced sorcerers to construct edifices of morbidity and obsession. As a result, it is the duty of every nagual to guide awareness so it will fly toward the abstract, free of liens and mortgages. ~ The Power of Silence

Someone recently emailed me asking why they are having difficulty finding meeting places for “Castaneda enthusiasts” or Toltec Warriors. To them it seemed that this was an insurmountable task and they even suggested the possibility of forming an organization of sorts to accommodate others in their pursuit to congregate with like-minded warriors.

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The Predator

The sorcerers of ancient Mexico saw the predator. They called it the flyer because it leaps through the air. It is not a pretty sight. It is a big shadow, impenetrably dark, a black shadow that jumps through the air. Then, it lands flat on the ground. The sorcerers of ancient Mexico reasoned that man must have been a complete being at one point, with stupendous insights, feats of awareness that are mythological legends nowadays. And then everything seems to disappear, and we have now a sedated man. ~ Don Juan, The Active Side of Infinity

Carlos and don Juan discuss a predator that exists in the depths of the cosmos and rules the lives of humans, holding them as their prisoners. Though the word predator would not necessarily be my word of choice to describe this particular energy, we’ll use it for the time being to remain consistent with the label keeping in mind that it energetically infuses humans with the foreign installation.

This predator not only feeds off of human awareness; it also manipulates humans. Don Juan said that there are a lot of outside forces controlling people in every moment and that this control is something that exists outside of the domain of language because these experiences lie so far beyond syntax.

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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.

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Vision Quest

Inner silence works from the moment you begin to accrue it. The desired result is what the old sorcerers called “stopping the world”, the moment when everything around us ceases to be what it’s always been. This is the moment when sorcerers return to the true nature of man. The old sorcerers called it total freedom. ~ Carlos Castaneda ~ The Active Side of Infinity

The vision quest is an amazing commitment that gently guides one outside of their comfort zone and effectively shifts the assemblage point. Vision quest pushes one to move beyond themselves to connect intimately and deeply with Mother Earth and the Infinite Mystery. Every indigenous culture has performed some type of vision quest from Jesus and Buddha, Shaman and Medicine People, Indigenous Peoples and American Indians up to modern day men and women from all countries and all walks of life. The vision quest is an opportunity to connect with profound silent knowledge, including heartfelt inner truth and insight, typically done alone, in a remote natural setting and has been practiced for many thousands of years.

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Ritual Habitual

Ritual can trap our attention better than anything I can think of. But it also demands a very high price. That high price is morbidity; and morbidity could have the heaviest liens and mortgages on our awareness. ~ The Power of Silence

Don Juan said, in The Fire from Within, that rituals are necessary at one time in every warrior’s life but only for purposes of luring one’s first attention away from the power of self-absorption, which keeps his assemblage point rigidly fixed. The obsessive entanglement of the first attention in self-absorption or reason is a powerful binding force, and ritual behavior, because it is repetitive, forces the first attention to free some energy from watching the inventory, as a consequence of which the assemblage point loses its rigidity.

The downside of ritual, however, is that it can trap the attention and over time the assemblage point becomes fixated on the ritual instead of seeing the ritual as, perhaps, a means of shifting the assemblage point. As a result, the ritual becomes empty and meaningless and freedom is further hindered as a result of the amount of energy spent performing the habitual ritual.

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Freedom

Freedom is an adventure with no end, in which we risk our lives and much more for a few moments of something beyond words, beyond thoughts or feelings. To seek freedom is the only driving force I know. Freedom to fly off into that infinity out there. Freedom to dissolve; to lift off; to be like the flame of a candle, which, in spite of being up against the light of a billion stars, remains intact, because it never pretended to be more than what it is: a mere candle. ~ The Art of Dreaming

Allow your assemblage point to move from its habitual position and don’t get lost in perceiving the familiar. Better yet, don’t insist that others identify with your perception.

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