Living helter-skelter
“All I can say to you is that a warrior is never available; never is he standing in the road waiting to be clobbered. Thus he cuts to a minimum his chances of the unforeseen. What you call accidents are, most of the time, very easy to avoid, except for fools who are living helter-skelter.”
~ Don Juan Matus
Being inaccessible
“Therein lies the secret of great hunters. To be available and unavailable at the precise turn of the road.
You must learn to become deliberately available and unavailable. As your life goes now, you are unwittingly available at all times. To be unavailable does not mean to hide or to be secretive but to be inaccessible. It makes no difference to hide if everyone knows that you are hiding.
We are fools, all of us, and you cannot be different. At one time in my life I, like you, made myself available over and over again until there was nothing of me left for anything except perhaps crying. And that I did, just like yourself.
You must take yourself away. You must retrieve yourself from the middle of the road. Your whole being is there, thus it is of no use to hide; you would only imagine that you are hidden. Being in the middle of the road means that everyone passing by watches your comings and goings.
The art of a hunter is to become inaccessible. To be inaccessible means that you touch the world around you sparingly. You don’t expose yourself to the power of the wind unless it is mandatory. You don’t use and squeeze people until they have shriveled to nothing, especially the people you love.
To be unavailable means that you deliberately avoid exhausting yourself and others. It means that you are not hungry and desperate.
A hunter knows he will lure game into his traps over and over again, so he doesn’t worry. To worry is to become accessible, unwittingly accessible. And once you worry you cling to anything out of desperation; and once you cling you are bound to get exhausted or to exhaust whoever or whatever you are clinging to.
I’ve told you already that to be inaccessible does not mean to hide or to be secretive. It doesn’t mean that you cannot deal with people either. A hunter uses his world sparingly and with tenderness regardless of whether the world might be things, or plants, or animals, or people, or power. A hunter deals intimately with his world and yet he is inaccessible to that same world. He is inaccessible because he’s not squeezing his world out of shape. He taps it lightly, stays for as long as he needs to, and then swiftly moves away leaving hardly a mark.”
‘Journey to Ixtlan’ by Carlos Castaneda
The Eagle’s gift
It is time now to tell you the “rule” as it pertains to the Nagual and his role, exactly as it was told to me. Being involved with the rule may be described as living a myth. In my case, a myth that caught me and made me the Nagual.
The power that governs the destiny of all living beings is called the Eagle, not because it is an eagle or has anything to do with an eagle, but because it appears to the seer as an immeasurable jet-black eagle, standing erect as an eagle stands, its height reaching to infinity.
As the seer gazes on the blackness that the Eagle is, four blazes of light reveal what the Eagle is like, The first blaze, which is like a bolt of lightning, helps the seer make out the contours of the Eagle’s body. There are patches of whiteness that look like an eagle’s feathers and talons. A second blaze of lightning reveals the flapping, wind-creating blackness that looks like an eagle’s wings. With the third blaze of lightning the seer beholds a piercing, inhuman eye. And the fourth and last blaze discloses what the Eagle is doing.
The Eagle is devouring the awareness of all the creatures that, alive on earth a moment before and now dead, have floated to the Eagle’s beak, like a ceaseless swarm of fireflies, to meet their owner, their reason for having had life. The Eagle disentangles these tiny flames, lays them flat, as a tanner stretches out a hide, and then consumes them; for awareness is the Eagle’s food.
The Eagle, that power that governs the destinies of all living things, reflects equally and at once all those living things. There is no way, therefore, for man to pray to the Eagle, to ask favors, to hope for grace. The human part of the Eagle is too insignificant to move the whole.
It is only from the Eagle’s actions that a seer can tell what it wants. The Eagle, although it is not moved by the circumstances of any living thing, has granted a gift to each of those beings. In its own way and right, any one of them, if it so desires, has the power to keep the flame of awareness, the power to disobey the summons to die and be consumed. Every living thing has been granted the power, if it so desires, to seek an opening to freedom and to go through it. It is evident to the seer who sees the opening, and to the creatures that go through it, that the Eagle has granted that gift in order to perpetuate awareness.
For the purpose of guiding living things to that opening, the Eagle created the Nagual. The Nagual is a double being to whom the rule has been revealed. Whether it be in the form of a human being, an animal, a plant, or anything else that lives, the Nagual by virtue of its doubleness is drawn to seek that hidden passageway.
The Nagual comes in pairs, male and female, A double man and a double woman become the Nagual only after the rule has been told to each of them, and each of them has understood it and accepted it in full.
To the eye of the seer, a Nagual man or Nagual woman appears as a luminous egg with four compartments. Unlike the average human being, who has two sides only, a left and a right, the Nagual has a left side divided into two long sections, and a right side equally divided in two.
The Eagle created the first Nagual man and Nagual woman as seers and immediately put them in the world to see. It provided them with four female warriors who were stalkers, three male warriors, and one male courier, whom they were to nourish, enhance, and lead to freedom.
The female warriors are called the four directions, the four corners of a square, the four moods, the four winds, the four different female personalities that exist in the human race.
The first is the east. She is called order. She is optimistic, lighthearted, smooth, persistent like a steady breeze.
The second is the north. She is called strength. She is resourceful, blunt, direct, tenacious like a hard wind.
The third is the west. She is called feeling. She is introspective, remorseful, cunning, sly, like a cold gust of wind.
The fourth is the south. She is called growth. She is nurturing, loud, shy, warm, like a hot wind.
The three male warriors and the courier are representative of the four types of male activity and temperament.
The first type is the knowledgeable man, the scholar; a noble, dependable, serene man, fully dedicated to accomplishing his task, whatever it may be.
The second type is the man of action, highly volatile, a great humorous fickle companion.
The third type is the organizer behind the scenes, the mysterious, unknowable man. Nothing can be said about him because he allows nothing about himself to slip out.
The courier is the fourth type. He is the assistant, a taciturn, somber man who does very well if properly directed but who cannot stand on his own.
In order to make things easier, the Eagle showed the Nagual man and Nagual woman that each of these types among men and woman of the earth has specific features in its luminous body.
The scholar has a sort of shallow dent, a bright depression at his solar plexus. In some men it appears as a pool of intense luminosity, sometimes smooth and shiny like a mirror without a reflection.
The Eagle’s Gift ~ Carlos Castaneda
Losing human form
Our self reflection is literally a mirror through which we observe the soul; while we stare at our own reflection finding wonderment or disappointment with ourselves, the world is there just slightly out of our grasp….. Self reflection is our interpretation of world, it is our description of reality, but seeing the world as through a prism… With the light broken and the image distorted! When we learn to quieten our minds and stop the chattering, we will eventually learn to by-pass this self-reflective process and see the world for what it is, or rather for ‘how’ it is! The truths we find so solid and immovable are rooted in our perception which are in turn informed by our self-reflection!
Losing human form is the term for stepping beyond the bounds of one’s self importance. To be focused upon the self makes one heavy, clumsy, and vain. We always have self interest at the heart of every matter while we consider ourselves to be the most important “person” in the Universe, we will always be hurt, disappointed and abused. Self importance is easily damaged. And then we have to rush to re-establish our status. It’s like a balloon with a slow leak that you must constantly re-inflate and repeat (ad infinitum). It is possible to burst the balloon completely however. The means of eradicating it permanently is possible; but cannot be rushed. The warrior’s act of recapitulation is part of what is involved in eroding self importance. A warrior through the art of not-doing builds up personal power over the course of their lives. As personal power builds gradually throughout the life of the warrior, they will eventually reach one day a tipping point. Don Juan stated that the only resource available for gaining the extra energy needed to reach this escape velocity was through inorganic beings. This is why a warrior stalks his dreams, and the reason he scales the heights of altered consciousness. Dreaming is a gateway for the sorcerer, a place of higher meeting. The inorganic beings are capable of reaching into our dreams. They crave contact with those who choose impeccability. Heightened states of awareness through shamanic practices and the use of power plants; which are of course allies to the man of knowledge, are another means of making contact with the inorganic beings. So a man of knowledge occupies himself with these concepts during his lifetime and heads towards the show down that will ultimately mean the vanquishing of his self importance.
The shift is always a different matter for everyone depending on their predilection. It is rather like trying to crack a rock with water. Ice will do it, it gets into the cracks of the rock, freezes and expands, shattering the rocks solidity. Rushing water will do it, depending on how fast the river is. And dripping water will eventually erode the rock, it is just a matter of time. In the same way self importance holds out and will only be relinquished after a fight. So there are many factors that determine how a warrior will be able to deal self-importance the fatal blow.
It comes down to a moment of transcendence; if you will. A place where personal power has build to such an extent that to all intensive purposes, a warrior is no longer human – hence losing human form! The inorganic energy that a warrior builds up gradually throughout their life, tips the scales. He possess more inorganic energy than human energy, making him something other than human. The luminous cocoon cracks for the third time and he becomes a formless man. Entering into silent knowledge. This term means ultimately having outrun his habits, routines and personal history. At this moment the internal dialogue takes on a different shape. The bias changes. Away from constantly having to work to shut down the internal dialogue to instead internal silence becoming predominate. The internal dialogue collapses, as does the sorcerer’s explanation. At this point – everything will go. The weight of ones Self importance is too great to sustain the description of the world and it collapses.
When this happened to me, I was in a hotel room in Istanbul. Having taken flight across Europe. Through Holland, France, Austria, Hungary, Romania, Greece and then finally via a train to Turkey, I arrived at a ‘fait accompli’. I had no more options left! All the struggles i had endured for a decade had mounted upon me, I felt heavy. I was caught between a rock and a hard place. I could no longer fight. No longer could I go forward and nowhere to go back. All the things I was running from at that time seemed a million miles away and yet there I was on the brink of death once again. Ready to put myself out on the boarder between Syria and Turkey – a badlands where terrorists hide out from the security forces. My fate was sealed!
I had no alternative, no more options left. Then suddenly I ‘saw‘. It is always better to be alive than dead, once your dead you have no options left at all. But what could I do? And then it came to me like upon on a wave. I realised there was nothing left I could do but “surrender“. On the train coming into Istanbul I had been held up in a carriage with several other people. I had heard the ally, he spoke to me and said: “you do still consider me an ally don’t you?” and that was all he said. But from this moment I knew something tumultuous was coming. The event descended upon me as I sat in this hotel room several thousand miles away from all my problems…. And yet there it was – everything still haunting me. But the distance had given me insight, I suddenly saw again that it gave me a chance, a cubic square of opportunity. Which seemed to hover in front of my eyes. I Seized the opportunity. I gave into the moment “ I Surrendered to everything“. I broke into floods of tears, and then I was immediately comforted by a gentle invisible golden rain. I could clearly see falling all around me like a shower of golden speckles.
I sobbed for almost an hour and a half until all my tears seemed to have all been cried. With a renewed vigor, I left the hotel room and set out for the airport. I got my money back off the coach ticket for the journey to Damascus, that I had bought without being able afford the visa ….. this played an important role in the decision I was able to make. So I caught a tram with the money I now had from the ticket and went to the airport with the hope of contacting someone who might be able to assist me with a flight home to face the music. I had a Divorce to go through, I had abandoned my flat and I had a court case pending. But I had transcended everything. Surrendered. I had accepted my fate. I was released from the self importance, that had plagued me for so long. Once this Moment occurs there is no turning back. My integrity returned to me and I was reconstructed. My luminous being for the first time in years was en-tact. I thought I had done all the crying I was going to do, but instead I would uncontrollably burst into tears at the drop of a hat. This was pretty awkward for me as I had to stay four days in the airport, till I summoned up the courage to phone someone, I knew to beg for money for the flight home. I cried much of the plane ride home as well, staring out the windows as to not attract attention to my self. To remain unavailable, you understand.
“Knowledge comes to a warrior, floating, like specks of gold dust, the same dust that covers the wings of moths. So for a warrior, knowledge is like taking a shower, or being rained on by specks of dark gold dust.” Don Juan Matus
The Path With Heart
“Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if you feel you should not follow it, you must not stay with it under any conditions. To have such clarity you must lead a disciplined life. Only then will you know that any path is only a path, and there is not affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you to do. But your decision to keep on the path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition.
I warn you. Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and yourself alone, one question. This question is one that only a very old person asks. My benefactor told me about it once when I was young, and my blood was too vigorous for me to understand it. Now I do understand it.
I will tell you what it is: Does this path have a heart?
All paths are the same, they lead nowhere. They are paths going through the bush, or into the bush. In my own life I could say I have traversed long, long paths, but I am not anywhere. My benefactor’s question has meaning now. “Does this path have a heart?” One makes you strong; the other weakens you.
The trouble is nobody asks the question: and when a person finally realizes that they have taken a path without heart, the path is ready to kill them. At that point very few people stop to deliberate and leave the path.
A path without a heart is never enjoyable. You have to work hard even to take it. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy; it does not make you work at liking it.
For my part there is only the travelling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length.
And there I travel looking, looking, breathlessly.”
– Don Juan
The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge
The way back to serenity
Derangement in my opinion is the worst thing that can be set a warrior. A man of knowledge is only such for a fleeting moment then he must return again to the world of ordinary affairs ~ knowledge is a crashing wave and as it breaks upon the shores of knowing – Only then does a warrior understand and perhaps see
The spirit tests us in order to learn…. The teaching of the spirit is hard but forces us to bring forth the understanding that will counter-act the derangement we experience at that moment
The spirit is inescapable and on the path with heart there is no turning back from the lessons that are taught. It is only through our ability to acquiesce to the spirit, that we can overcome the concepts and ideas that plague us while we are deranged….
…. these are aspects of human form are what Don Juan described as illusory ~ they are what has been taught to us through the description of the world… This anxiety will fade over time as personal power grows and awareness becomes sharper and with a greater ability to handle the gift which is given.
It is important to have a perspective then ~ only through seeing the world is it possible to transcend ideas such as the Flyers, and other aberrant thought forms. With ruthlessness, cunning patience and sweetness, it can be cracked ~
To arrive at intent is the greatest achievement of the warrior ~ to have recapitulated to such a degree that none of these things any longer matter ~ To have the power in themselves to handle intent ~ this is the NAGUAL the true SEER!!
Artwork : http://almanegra.deviantart.com/
Breaking the ties with Perception
In the first place to see beyond the illusion, is to not trust perception. To understand that the world is a description; a form of language created by the thought of self-reflection. And knowing that by ending this internal dialogue, in order to enter into inner silence and create a shift in awareness, that gives rise to a new perspective and an altered consciousness is to break the ties with perception.
While I am capable of dreaming, stalking is my predilection. I have probably dreamed to the sixth gate of dreaming, in as much as I have woken up in a place I did not go to sleep. Waking up in broad day light some where you did not go to bed is a surprising act to say the least.
Within dreaming we learn much about ourselves and the world – the message as it is received is metaphorical, a reflection of our waking experience; a prognostication. The same being said of our waking experience of course. But only by bringing these worlds together can we hope to understand the message that nature sends…
..seeing energy as it flows through the universe
with the techniques that Don Juan taught this is all possible,
Don Juan stated that man exists within just one world; foolish to believe otherwise. And yet this world is constructed of many layers like an onion each layer an entirely separate world within itself. The “whole” is fragmented and broken down into myriad layers creating separate worlds of perception. And everything we experience is polar opposites – light and dark, night and day, male and female, waking and dreaming and so on.
This is the unravelling – the questioning of reality: are we experiencing duality or non-duality in actual fact? Well the trickster mind sees only a separation.
Everything is in reality is “ONE PARTICLE”- The original thought – the particle splits creating the infinite whole. Creation is a convergence and the splitting of the aspect of the ONE – ONE CONSCIOUSNESS so to speak, the ONE AWARENESS – broken down and fractured into myriad of layers – where ever you look the divergence occurs – the light is sent through a prism and we no longer experience everything as it is.
INTENT is the driving force of evolution, the unfolding of reality and the nature of the UNIVERSE/MULTI-VERSE
Once we start tapping into intent – we are twirled – picked up by the force of the Spirit and flung into entirely new worlds – a difference attention then with a changed awareness – this is the shift; the movement into the 2nd attention. For me the world of the “tonal” or 1st attention as it is called ceased at this point. It fell away became unfamiliar, no longer home. With this shift, I was then in the world of the ‘unknown’ the 2nd attention or the “nagual.” And this is the place one must make your stand! We are confronted with the thought – of arrival and no way back. Only by realizing this can we make a viable experience of our existence. And knowing this we must continue into the unknowable with a chance at freedom – the ultimate goal. So relentlessly we press on. Until there is another break and shift in reality – I found myself in the 3rd attention, the place of “silent knowledge” through stalking in the waking moment – as is my predilection.
But we occupy only one world. Dreaming then is an extension of the waking reality and only by merging these experiencing into ONE is there a way to continue back into the light of being. Reversing the prism, working back through to the beginning – sending the dreaming double the other way!
It is in dreaming that we discover our potential – and so in dreaming we realize the infinite nature of our being. But waking reality is the place where we stop the world – through a repeated breaking down and reconstituting of our existence. By collapsing the world – stopping the internal dialogue – smashing the mirror of our self-reflection and a great deal of recapitulation – we break the ties with perception. With detachment and sobriety we push on; personal power lending the force required to bring ourselves back together again. The waking and dreaming experience merge as we remember – recapitulating the whole of our being into the one. Creating an existence in both places. And bringing back integrity to the self.
The road is long and hard, and as with any long journey the only way is to put your head down and keep going. Perhaps with an initial burst of energy in the beginning – a blessing from the earth; a wishing you well and on your way to the place of infinity.
