Just Keep Dancing!

And thus you will dance to your death here, on this hilltop, at the end of the day. And in your last dance you will tell of your struggle, of the battles you have won and of those you have lost; you will tell of your joys and bewilderments upon encountering personal power. Your dance will tell about the secrets and about the marvels you have stored. And your death will sit here and watch you. The dying sun will glow on you without burning, as it has done today. The wind will be soft and mellow and your hilltop will tremble. As you reach the end of your dance you will look at the sun, for you will never see it again in waking or in dreaming, and then your death will point to the south. To the vastness. – Journey to Ixtlan

To me keep dancing means dancing along all the lines of awareness that come into my periphery. When we dance with this perception, if we do not resonate with a particular line or if it depletes our energy, we can discontinue that particular dance. Sometimes, the story that has culminated into a specific line of awareness may bring us great joy so we dance along that line for a long time, maybe a lifetime, or for just a while until we’ve attained the knowledge the line offers or until it becomes worn out or draining. On the other hand, if we do not resonate with a particular line of awareness we can reject it immediately or we may sometimes find ourselves dancing to the end of it anyway, in order to come into a deeper understanding of why that line of awareness even exists. And we may discover that some of those lines are very, very dark. When we dance upon all the lines of awareness we get to see the entire mold of man. The mold of man, as described by don Juan, is not a creator, but the pattern of every human attribute we can think of and some we cannot even conceive.

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Aligning with the Energy of the Trees

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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A New Band of Awareness

They (sorcerers) don’t look for definitions, but for results. If a practice is able to elevate our level of awareness, what does it matter how we explain it to ourselves! The means by which we will start acting to save and increase our energy are not important, because once we are in possession of our totality, we enter a new field of attention where we don’t care about concepts anymore, and things demonstrate themselves. ~ Carlos Castaneda, Encounters with the Nagual

When we can perceive from the perspective of “double vision” we are able to flow effortlessly among the various states of awareness, no longer clinging to this or that or the words that define them, i.e. tonal, nagual, 1st, 2nd or 3rd attention, stalking, dreaming, etc. The ability to have “double vision” allows us to merge multiple points of reference from which a new point of reference emerges. We align with intent and through that alignment we have no choice but to see things as they constantly unfold and then to participate in that creation or simply be a witness to it. From here we can, indeed, begin to navigate from a state of pure perception.

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