A Place Called “Home”

A warrior knows that Obsession is a debilitating condition which ultimately leads to deleterious effects on the luminous being of the warrior man or woman. Obsessional behavior is becoming fixated, on a specific position of assemblage point. If the warrior has been successful in dropping the customary position; and in finding the second attention, obsession provides a new point of fixation. This can become the ‘new’ customary position within the second attention – “a place to call Home”.

Don Juan referred to this as the “First Face of the Second Attention”. Instead of becoming light and fluid in their perception of the world, the warrior will become fixated again on the Tonal. The warrior knows that it takes personal power/ energy to hold to any new position of the assemblage point, so in the event of holding on to this new point of fixation the experience will become debilitating.

Why is this done? From an energetic point of view – the behaviour gives comfort in the familiar. The person doing the obsessing will then experience blockages in the energetic field. This is further reinforced by external stimuli of the items being obsessed upon. This obsessive manipulation of the known, diverts the attention from the real task at hand; that being dealing with intent.

Don Juan – was clear about his feelings on “Obsessional behaviour” – He asked Castaneda once if he collected anything, and Castaneda responded, that he collected military paraphernalia from the Second World War. Don Juan called this:

"Eccentricities and aberrations"

They were talking about the archive of memorable events at the time, memories that made up the warrior’s life. He said that to collect was not a bad thing in itself, but acquiring ‘junk’ was to imprison oneself. Instead what Don Juan suggested was to create: “an album that reveals the warrior’s personality, an album that attests to the circumstances of his life.”

As Don Juan spoke of Tales of Power, being stories that held a deeper significance to the warrior, than simply being about themselves, this album of memorable events was to reflect the circumstances of their life, things which had a much more profound meaning. As with all cases of stalking the album was to be an exercise in ‘discipline and impartiality’. He said to, “Consider this album to be an act of war.”

The purpose of all this was to move the focus of the warrior away from self-absorption and morbidity onto the ‘Abstract’. The actual task that Don Juan charged Castaneda with was to practice recalling significant memories of his life; the points which were utterly unforgettable.

The answer to this clinging, to items and people or anything else, which will have a devastating effect on the warrior, is to ‘Stalk Oneself’. This breaks the power of the behaviour of holding on to the world – the not being able to let go of the tonal. This releases the warrior from the self-absorption, morbidity and the obsession. Otherwise a warrior is destined to become simply a petty tyrant.