Tag Archives: don juan

The Mystery of it All

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We went for a hike today, we talked, because the mystery of sorcery must be cushioned in the mundane. It must stem from nothing, and go back again to nothing. That’s the art of warrior travelers: to go through the eye of a needle unnoticed. ~ Don Juan, The Active Side of Infinity

So simple. So easy. So ordinary. And yet! Everyday, more mystery. Everyday, no words to explain it.

Live fully within each of your own precious moments. The mystery is different for everyone and cannot be explained or described. To explain anything only serves to fixate the location of the assemblage point for both the explainer and the person to whom you are explaining your experience to. And the person who receives the explanation may begin to desire to know the mystery you are explaining in order to justify the position of their assemblage point that you unwittingly helped to fixate in the first place! Then they will not live fully in each of their own precious moments, instead becoming fixated to their desired outcome to “have” your experience (unless they are already walking in freedom). Ah, the power of silence! Keep dancing in the mystery and passing through the eye of the needle unnoticed!!!

This silent knowledge, which you cannot describe, is, of course, intent –the spirit, the abstract. Man’s error was to want to know it directly, the way he knew everyday life. The more he wanted, the more ephemeral it became. Man gave up silent knowledge for the world of reason. The more he clings to the world of reason, the more ephemeral intent becomes. ~ Don Juan, The Power of Silence

Freedom from Perception; The Third Point of Reference

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In order to reach the third point of reference one must perceive two places at once. The third point of reference is freedom of perception; it is intent; it is the spirit; the somersault of thought into the miraculous; the act of reaching beyond our boundaries and touching the inconceivable. ~ Don Juan, The Power of Silence

The reference points of sorcerers are not the reference points of ordinary man. For ordinary man, points of reference are typically personal, what they’ve done and what they plan to do; a form of self-reflection and a way to justify present or future behaviors based on the past which ultimately leads to nothing more than repetitive patterns usually based on their own patterns, someone else’s patterns or interpretations of patterns complete with justification to those patterns.

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Busting Through Patterns

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If the world is saved, it will not be saved by old minds with new programs but by new minds with no programs at all. ~ Daniel Quinn, Ishmael

A lot of people are talking about breaking patterns. My own walk on the Toltec Path is all about breaking patterns through erasing personal history, breaking the mold of man and recapitulation. These methods have been quite successful for many and assist one in heightening awareness, shifting the assemblage point and in providing the energy necessary to see.

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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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Inorganic Beings – A Lesson Learned

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The Nagual said that it (the pyramid) was a guide to the second attention, Pablito went on, but that it was ransacked and everything destroyed. He told me that some of the pyramids were gigantic ‘not-doings’. They were not lodgings but places for warriors to do their ‘dreaming’ and exercise their second attention. Whatever they did was recorded in drawings and figures that were put on the walls. He stressed to me that all archaeological ruins in Mexico, especially the pyramids, were harmful to modern man. He depicted the pyramids as foreign expressions of thought and action. He said that every item, every design in them, was a calculated effort to record aspects of attention which were thoroughly alien to us. For don Juan it was not only ruins of past cultures that held a dangerous element in them; anything which was the object of an obsessive concern had a harmful potential. ~ The Eagle’s Gift

Since writing my post on 2012 – The Dream and Organic Beings I found myself becoming somewhat obsessed to find out more. In addition, spoken words were starting to leave my lips in my expressions to have a few others understand what I saw. I am not an obsessive person and the behavior was puzzling to me. I spent hours googling information, attempting to determine or understand what I was perceiving since my awakening as the result of my visit to the pyramids.

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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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Ephemeral Warriors

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The word “ephemeral” is such a beautiful word to me. It basically means something that leaves no permanent trace, something that is transitory and without lasting significance, something random, transient, brief, lasting a very short time.

In Journey to Ixtlan don Juan said, For a warrior, to be inaccessible means that he touches the world around him sparingly. And above all, he deliberately avoids exhausting himself and others. He doesn’t use and squeeze people until they have shriveled to nothing, especially the people he loves.

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The Power of Silence

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You must reach the point where you understand what intent is. And, above all, you must understand that that knowledge cannot be turned into words. That knowledge is there for everyone. It is there to be felt, to be used, but not to be explained. One can come into it by changing levels of awareness, therefore, heightened awareness is an entrance. But even the entrance cannot be explained. One can only make use of it. ~  Carlos Castaneda, The Power of Silence

This quote, from the book The Power of Silence is one of my favorite quotes. So many people hunger for the words, as if by hearing them they could have the ultimate experience or make sense of why such and such is so and so. My journey has provided me with the ability to discern that which can be talked about and that which cannot. And as each day passes it gets more and more difficult to discuss anything.

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