Tag Archives: awareness

Shifting the Assemblage Point

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Any movement of the assemblage point means a movement away from excessive concern with the individual self. Shamans believe it is the position of the assemblage point which makes modern man a homicidal egotist; a being totally involved with his self-image. Having lost hope of ever returning to the source of everything, the average man seeks solace in his selfishness. ~ Don Juan, The Power of Silence

It is the assemblage point where reality is constructed. The assemblage point is not as complex as Castaneda had made it out to be. You don’t need to find a nagual, or take loads of entheogens, or have a near death experience in order to move the assemblage point from its fixated position. Although these are methods that can assist, all you really have to do is have enough energy to move it on your own through the use of a strong will and unbending intention.

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Perception

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The core of our being is the act of perceiving, and the magic of our being is the act of awareness. Perception and awareness can be a single, functional, inextricable unit with two domains. The first one is the attention of the tonal; that is to say, the capacity of average people to perceive and place their awareness on the ordinary world of everyday life: our first ring of power; our awesome but taken-for-granted ability to impart order to our perception of our daily world. ~ don Juan, The Second Ring of Power

I once read a quote that said “there is no truth, there is only perception” yet so many people hunger for the truth. They sit around and wait for a truth to be declared and when it is they either buy into it or reject it. Stopping the internal dialogue is the key to the sorcerers’ world, the mystery. The mystery, or the secret of the sorcerers’ explanation is that it deals with unfolding the wings of perception. The nagual by itself is of no use, it has to be tempered by the tonal. The sorcerers’ secret in using the nagual is in our perception.

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Mother Earth – Our Ultimate Ally

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We are children of the Earth, it is our ultimate source. The option of sorcerers is to unite with the awareness of the Earth, for as long as the Earth will live. ~ Carlos Castaneda, Encounters with the Nagual

Don Juan described an ally as being “a power capable of transporting a man beyond the boundaries of himself”; that is, an ally was a power that allowed one to transcend the realm of ordinary reality. Consequently, to have an ally implied having power; and the fact that a man of knowledge had an ally was by itself proof that the operational goal of the teachings had been fulfilled. Since that goal was to show how to become a person of knowledge, and since a person of knowledge was one who had an ally, another way of describing the operational goal of don Juan’s teachings was to say that they also showed how to obtain an ally. The concept “man of knowledge,” as a sorcerer’s philosophical frame, has meaning for anyone who wants to live within that frame only insofar as he had an ally.

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Magically Connecting with Intent

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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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Life out of Balance

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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

This quote has been on my mind daily for about a year and will not leave. It has become a type of mantra that plays over and over as I am witness to situations, occurrences and incidents that are harmful to the environment and the beautiful animal creatures that inhabit her, including us. Most of my free time is spent outdoors, in the garden, camping in the remote wilderness, walking through the desert or forest enjoying the smells, sounds and wildlife that accompanies me.

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The Indescribable Force’s Emanations

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There is no way to describe in words what the Indescribable Force’s emanations really are. A seer must witness them. They are 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 Indescribable Force itself. ~ Carlos Castaneda

Think of yourself just as you are at this moment, nothing more, nothing less. Now think about the things that you have created in your life such as the home that you live in, a partner, children perhaps, a job, friends, pets. Now think about the stories that surround each of those creations to include a yard, a street, your partner’s job and friends, your kids school and friends, relationship with pets, your job related duties, contacts, acquaintances, your friend’s family and friends. Now consider that all of those people maintain their realities, their families, their friends and the stories connected to them.

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Third Attention

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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.

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The Predator

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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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Inorganic Beings

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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.

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Ritual Habitual

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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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