Tag Archives: nagual

The Flaw with Words

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Those of us attempting to access the essence of nagualism must accept an outrageous premise; even though the teachings of don Juan are now available in print, the silent knowledge that underlies those teachings remains completely beyond the power of the written word. The Toltecs insist that anything truly “of the spirit” must be actualized as a personal experience rather than simply written or talked about as an intellectual concept. – Tomas, Creative Victory

For years I have included in my blog posts, “Don’t believe a word I say, have your own experience!” Having spent the past couple of weeks contemplating my decade’s long journey in awareness on the Toltec path got me to thinking about – once again – recapitulating these teachings; it seems as though most of them have become superfluous for me. While there was a time when much of these practices were necessary, it is now time to actualize the fact that power is and power moves.

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Presence After Recapitulation

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As pure conscious awareness I could perceive and observe everything on the earth that I had recapitulated. There, before me, was a beautiful and diverse array of creation. The world, I realized, will go on with or without me. The patterns and man-made stories of the world will continue, only as long as there are people who are willing to uphold them. ~ Becoming Awareness

A couple of my long-time blog fans have asked me where my “fight” went. They seem to be puzzled, almost offended, at my lack of activism or radical engagement in fending off the predator, or the government, or the inorganic beings that feed off of humanity. It’s not that my get-up-and-go-got-up-and-went, there is just nothing to struggle against. The position of the assemblage point cannot remain fixated or we will not evolve. It boils down to unplugging, a surrender that comes not from weakness, but from strength, the strength that allows the seer to see power as it moves through the universe while bearing witness to what people choose to do with that power.

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Losing Form

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…a profound recapitulation is the most expedient means to lose the human form. Thus it is easier for stalkers, after recapitulating their lives, to make use of all the not-doings of the self, such as erasing personal history, losing self-importance, breaking routines and so forth. ~ Carlos Castaneda, The Eagle’s Gift

The Nagual told me that when the second attention has to be called upon to assemble itself, all that is needed is the motion of opening that door. That’s the secret of the Toltec dreamers once they are formless. ~ Carlos Castaneda, The Second Ring of Power

Throughout his books, Castaneda discusses sweeping the island of the tonal or liberating oneself from the mundane details of first attention. This basically has to do with recognizing the mold of man for what it is and freeing ourselves from the mold. Doing so allows us to view the world from a new state of perception; choosing to go beyond states of conscious awareness of the first attention and entering into the realm of dream, second attention, or the unconscious. When we connect with second attention we are able to bring ourselves into a state of natural balance. When we integrate the first and second attentions, the second attention accesses new energetic frequencies, and the first attention then organizes the new information. This integration provides heightened awareness and acute perception.

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life outside the box

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A warrior cannot have the luxury of following people’s ways, nor can he be a reactionary, because his freedom means to exercise other alternatives. ~ Carlos Castaneda, Encounters with the Nagual

This is a great quote. Our freedom is contingent upon our ability to remain awake and fluid, to not become bound by ideas, stories, and patterns. All of the paths in the world have the potential to enslave us, to turn us into followers of specific protocols, doctrines, or dogmata. It is when we decide to belong to a specific membership that we adopt the ideas of another which carries the danger, for a warrior, to act from a point of reason. This ultimately leads one to inadvertently employ or uphold bastions of judgements against those outside of their chosen and often structured beliefs; as though they have something to defend.

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Creative Conscious Evolution

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For don Juan, sorcery was the act of embodying some specialized theoretical and practical premises about the nature and role of perception in molding the universe around us. ~ Carlos Castaneda, The Art of Dreaming

Evolution begins with inner silence. When we take the time to sit in stillness and connect with the earth we begin to connect to the intricate energetic web of the universe of which we are all a part; of which we emerged! To evolve, one must have command over the totality of oneself. This means that you encounter power by removing yourself from the concerns of the “group mind” and replace them with decisions of power and strategies that bring you to awareness. It involves practicing silence to overcome the domestic condition of having membership in a social group and removing yourself as a hostage in another person’s inventory with an obligation to uphold an image before others. You are an autonomous, individual who has come to realize that your next step is to liberate and evolve your consciousness. If you choose not to, you may remain stuck within a loop of repeating patterns over and over again.

Those of you who place a higher value on your own perceptions than on the interpretations of others have access to more informational awareness that is interconnected with the true alignment of intent than the mostly faulty descriptions of reality that have been provided to you.

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What is Your Warrior’s Task?

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A warrior is devoted to his task, he doesn’t waste his energy on following anybody. He doesn’t care about social customs, whether they may be contemporary or represent millennia of tradition. ~  Carlos Castaneda, Encounters with the Nagual

The last post was a reminder as to the knock of the spirit that brought you to this path or to the principles of the warrior’s journey. In reading your responses I got to thinking about a warrior’s task and wanted to quote some of the warrior’s tasks here.

“Don Juan explained that by using heightened awareness over thousands of years of painful struggle, sorcerers had gained specific insights into intent; and that they had passed these nuggets of direct knowledge on from generation to generation to the present. He said that the task of sorcery is to take this seemingly incomprehensible knowledge and make it understandable by the standards of awareness of everyday life.” ~ The Power of Silence

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Aligned with Intent

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He told me that, from the moment when the explosion which gave us origin occurred, until the moment of our death, we live within a flow. Those two episodes are unique, because they prepare us for the encounter of what lies further ahead. And what aligns us with that flow? An incessant battle, which only a warrior will attempt. Because of that, he lives in profound harmony with everything. For a warrior, to be harmonious is to flow, not to stop in the middle of the current and try to make a space of artificial and impossible peace. He knows that he can only give the very best of himself under conditions of maximum tension. ~ Carlos Castaneda, Encounters with the Nagual

Aligning with intent eventually becomes an action, not a goal. It is difficult to find the words to describe it. Aligning with intent differs vastly from connecting with intent or creating intent. While we can will ourselves to connect with intent (to see) and create with intent (to know), in order to align with intent one must arduously recapitulate (in the moment), erase even more personal history (the stuff we thought was “knowledge”) and zealously unplug from the foreign installation. In order to align with intent, we must have tons of energy and personal power. The foreign installation is so generationally ingrained that it seems as though we are stripping away the very cornerstone of our reality. And we are. Herein lies the incessant battle of the warrior.

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Aligning with the Energy of the Trees

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The feeling I had developed for the trees was beyond words. I had the certainty that I was able to absorb their moods, know their age, their insights and what they sensed. I could communicate with a tree directly through a sensation that came out from the inside of my body. And I also knew that once communication is engaged, tree pour themselves out in affection. ~ Taisha Abelar, The Sorcerers’ Crossing

I’m a tree hugger. I don’t live in California and I don’t wear Birkenstocks with socks but I love a good tree hug. They have so much to tell us if we pay attention and align with their energy, their intent. Last Sunday I was hiking through an old growth forest in Northern Arizona and when approaching a gigantic old ponderosa pine I just had to embrace it.

I couldn’t wrap my arms around even half of her, she was so big. I pressed my ear against her rugged bark and listened. And then she spoke. She told me that we have to become “conduits” like them so we can bridge the energy of the earth as it moves up through our bodies and into the warmth and light of the sun. This allows us to merge with the abysmal void of infinity. Emptiness is form, form is emptiness.

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The Bird of Freedom

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The nagual Mariano Aureliano had once told me that sorcerers, when they talk among themselves, speak of sorcery as a bird: They call it the bird of freedom. They say that the bird of freedom only flies in a straight line and never comes around twice. They also say that it is the nagual who lures the bird of freedom. It is he who entices the bird to shed its shadow on the warrior’s path. Without that shadow, there is no direction. ~ Florinda Donner, Being-in-Dreaming

But it was night and there was no shadow. The three of us were standing on the cool Saltillo tile looking up towards the northeast at the Andromeda Galaxy through a high-powered telescope. It was a mild evening and since we were in the phase of the new moon last weekend it was very dark and the millions of stars in the Milky Way were brilliant. There wasn’t any sound at all except the gentle lapping of the waves from the Sea of Cortez. We were in the Sonoran Desert, donde el desierto y el mar se encuentran; where the desert meets the sea.

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Sonoran Desert Magic

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Buddha Rock, Sonoran Desert ~ Photo by FW

It is a sublime feeling,” he said, “to be in this marvelous desert, to see those ragged peaks of pseudo-mountains that were really made by the flow of lava of long-gone volcanoes. It is a glorious feeling to find that some of those nuggets of obsidian were created at such high temperatures that they still retain the mark of their origin. They have power galore. To wander aimlessly in those ragged peaks and actually find a piece of quartz that picks up radio waves is extraordinary. The only drawback to this marvelous picture is that to enter into the marvels of this world, or into the marvels of another world, a man needs to be a warrior: calm, collected, indifferent, seasoned by the onslaughts of the unknown. ~ Don Juan, speaking about the Sonoran Desert, The Wheel of Time

While driving through the Sonoran Desert last weekend I snapped this photo of the Buddha rock. I’ve driven past this natural monument countless times and never stopped to take a photo of it before.  Towering above everything else, the Buddha is an example of the constant magic unfolding in this extraordinary desert.

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