Seers maintain, naturally, that awareness always comes from outside ourselves, that the real mystery is not inside us. Since by nature the emanations at large are made to fixate what is inside the cocoon, the trick of awareness is to let the fixating emanations merge with what is inside us. Seers believe that if we let that happen we become what we really are – fluid, forever in motion, eternal. ~ Carlos Castaneda, The Fire from Within

The degree of awareness of every individual sentient being depends on the degree to which it is capable of letting the pressure of the emanations at large carry it.

As human beings accumulate experience, the band of emanations inside their cocoon begins to glow. In some instances, the glow of this band of emanations increases so dramatically that it fuses with the emanations from the outside. Seers, witnessing an enhancement of this kind, had to surmise that awareness is the raw material, and attention, the end product of maturation.

Attention is the harnessing and enhancing of awareness through the process of being alive. To examine what seers see in the first attention is essential for the warrior-traveler dedicated to freedom. It allows the first attention the only opportunity it will ever have to realize its own workings as well as the machinations of the mold of man.

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