The Silver Bullet Talk

The Silver Bullet Talk

It is tradition that with the coming of a New Year we create in our minds a cross-road of introspection between the past and the future.  

It is therefore common that we reflect upon the unaccomplished resolutions to which we committed last year, and without greater self-analysis call ourselves `flakey' and `undisciplined' and continue to declare new resolutions for the following year, resolutions that will similarly remain unattained.  

It seems we can thus pass an entire lifetime without losing the weight we want to lose, without learning the new ‘latest and greatest’ we wish to learn, without playing the instrument of our dreams, without spending more time with our families, etc. 

As an existential strategist, father and friend I often find myself engaging individuals who, year after year, have seen their lives go by and (now desperate) wish me (or anyone) to rescue them with a few chosen words of solace or inspiration.  Now-a-days I dare not post about any ‘personal’ matters due to the fact that I’m asked a ton of questions looking for instant solutions. This is frequently when I offer my ‘Silver Bullet’ talk, which goes something like this: 

The European Medieval tradition relates that a gunshot with a silver bullet is the most certain and reliable method of killing a lycanthrope, that is, a `werewolf,' that diabolic figure that for centuries terrorized the existence of a superstitious people who believed in supernatural beings and therefore in magical solutions that would end the same. 

For most of us the days have passed in which we feared werewolves, placed gargoyles on our rooftops to ward off evil spirits, and lined the entrances of our homes with rings of garlic to fend off vampires.  Nonetheless, the concept of a `silver bullet' as a metaphor for a quick, effective, and effortless solution to a challenging and resilient problem remains.  

Logically the expression is often applied with skepticism, sarcasm, and irony:  although it is common that problems manifest that are as gloomy and overwhelming as werewolves,' rarely do they present with `silver bullets' as solutions. 

Nevertheless, in today's world this is what people seek most: an immediate solution with a minimum amount of inconvenience.  

We want to lose weight but continue eating sweets, drinking beer, ingesting fats, and only exercising from the couch to the bed, from the bed to the table, from the table to the car, from the car to the office, and from the office to the couch.  

We want our relationships with our significant others to improve, but without self-compromise and only as a result of indicating the improprieties and defects our partner exhibits as prerequisites to our relational bliss.  

We want our youth to stop taking drugs, but without our having to stop consuming alcohol or nicotine, which constitute, by far, the two drugs that cause the most social and economic damage.  

We want our societies to be safer, cleaner, more prosperous, even more beautiful, but we continue to delegate our civic duty to a class of professional politicians who year after year deceive us with words only to later disappoint us with deeds.  

We want to understand the self, personal power, ego, personal history and self importance, yet provide only a fleeting ‘goings over’ of attention to The Work that assists in this understanding.  

In short: We want the silver bullet that kills the `werewolves' of our existence and that changes our lives, our relationships, and our circumstances but without the effort of changing our own perspectives, attitudes, and behaviors. 

During these days of festivities, celebrations, promises and reflections, take a few moments to contemplate upon your lives, your families, your neighborhoods, your societies and countries, and if you find defects and problems therein, think about the following:  If you are not part of the solution you are the problem; and when you search for `silver bullets' to solve your problems know that you do not have to look beyond yourself to find the werewolves that terrorize your own existence. 

Wishing you all a Happy and Prosperous Holiday Season and New Year, 

TMMK

Power Plants and Allies

The basic rule for this power plant (cannabis/marijuana) and the ally.

The basics of the rule were taught to me by grandfather Crowfoot (Blackfoot medicine man) when I was 14. The teacher instructs the apprentice in the basic rule, and then the ally continues to instruct the apprentice over the future years.

Read this completely before starting (start date is Oct. 15), and have all sacred items, containers, trowel, shovel, red cloth, large garbage bags, place of power for plants, fertilizer and white leather string, etc. to carry out the rule ready by this date. I will share with you the basics of the rule that I was provided with.

From that point on, after your first plants have been planted, grown, pick and cured, the ally in marijuana will instruct you directly. If you are first nations, most of what I write will make sense. If you are first nations, try and find a medicine man that has this plant as an ally, and see if he will teach you. If you are white, like me, then totally rely on intent, because it will all unfold if this ally is for you, and the ally will become another guardian and teacher for you.

All plants have allies. I have allies in tobacco, sage, cedar, sweet grass, marijuana, swamp mint and red willow. Each plant is unique and has its own rule. Although each rule when written out it seems long, to observe the rule will come naturally, just like breathing.

The first part of the rule is to "gain a home" for your plants. To "gain a home" for your plants requires the use of tobacco, cedar, sage and sweet grass, and must occur on the first nice day on or after Oct 15. To get tobacco, cedar, sage and a braid of sweet grass is accomplished in two ways. 

The traditional way - Take a few pouches of tobacco (its O.K. to buy pouch tobacco in a store) to a nearby first nations reservation. Go to the band office, explain that you are looking for a braid of sweet grass, cedar and sage for ceremonial purposes and could they direct you to an elder that would have these items. Offer a pouch of tobacco for being directed to said elder.

Don’t worry, nobody will ask you what you want these sacred items for. If somebody does get nosy, just tell them you have been instructed by a first nation friend to do this. When you meet the elder, give him/her a pouch of tobacco and explain you need a braid of sweet grass, a bundle of sage, and some cedar. Ask if you may come back when these sacred items are used up.

The non-traditional way - find a store that deals with first nation items. These stores usually carry braids of sweet grass, bundles of sage, and cedar. Pay for the items, but make it clear that you are viewing payment as donations and are not buying these sacred items since sacred items cannot be bought or sold. Tell them to keep the bill and give a pouch of tobacco to the person at the till. After receiving the sacred items, next buy yourself a small frying pan, cast iron skillet type. Then get a bag of BBQ briquettes and BBQ fluid starter.

During the summer, find a place out in the country that is private and out of sight. It should be a place of power for you. Usually, a relatives place out in the country is fine, (tell them that you have an interest in communing with nature, and use your stalking abilities). Find a place that makes you feel good. Go to this place over the summer and visit it over a period of time to make sure it is indeed a place of power for you. This is called "testing your place of power".

Once you are certain of the fact that you have "gained a home" for your plants, take the iron frying pan, BBQ briquettes, BBQ fluid starter, tobacco, cedar, sage and sweet grass to your place of power. This should be done on Sept. 21 or the first nice day after that date. Go to this place and smudge exactly at the rising of the sun. Rising of the sun can be obtained from the local newspaper.

If you already know how to smudge then follow the direct knowledge you have from these plants. If you do not know how to smudge, I will teach you what has been given to me, then the allies in these plants will teach you from that point on. Your body will know the right way.

To smudge, place BBQ briquette in frying pan and soak with BBQ fluid starter. Light briquette. While briquette is getting hot, take a bit of tobacco, same amount of cedar, the same amount of sage and same amount of sweet grass and mix together. To take the sweet grass from the braid, place top (skinniest) part of braid between thumb and finger. With other thumb and finger just below top thumb and finger, rotate braid until skinniest portion is detaches from main braid. It may take a vigorous rotating.

Once all power plants are thoroughly mixed, place contents in your hand and face west. This is my direction, the direction of courage and power. Your starting direction will be revealed to you during your first smudge. From that point on you start in that direction. The west is the direction of the thunder beings. I am a thunderstorm gazer. In this direction say a pray for your place of power, your future plants and ally! And anything else that pertains to courage and power. Then face north, this is the direction of cleansing, the giant beings. Say another prayer pertaining to this direction. Then face east, this is the direction of wisdom and knowledge. Say another prayer pertaining to this direction. Then face south, this is the direction of warmth and love, the direction you plant ally requires. Next, lower your head and the mixture in your hands and give thanks to mother earth and pray that she will bless your efforts. Then look up (45-degree angle) to the sky, raise mixture to 45-degree angle and ask the eagles to guard your place of power, ask father sky to send rains, give thanks to grandmother moon. You will need her help later once the plants are full grown, and ask grandfather sun to help nourish your plants. Then look straight up and raise mixture above your head and give thanks to tune-can-Sheila (the Great Spirit’s helper) and wakan tune-ca (the Great Spirit) for your life, the life of all plants, and ask that the ally be kind and gentle with you.

Once your prayers are finished, take a little bit of tobacco and sprinkle it on the mother earth as a cleansing for your smudging area. Once the BBQ briquette is hot (a grey color) take the mixture you prayed with and place it on the BBQ briquette. The sacred plants will begin to smoke immediately. while on your knees facing your direction, bath yourself with the smoke by cupping your hands and directing the smoke to your hair, then your head, then your shoulders, then each arm, then your torso. Breathe in a tiny bit of the smoke and exhale it. Stay there and continue to place the unburnt portion of the mixture on the briquette until all the mixture is burnt. After smudging and while unburnt portion is smoking, sit back, relax and let the allies in these power plants take you away. It is sort of like daydreaming, or shifting your assemblage point. It is different for every person. Once the mixture is finished smoking, place used mixture on the ground in a clockwise direction, starting with the direction you started your pray with. You are now clean and your power plants home is now clean. You are ready for Oct 15.

On Oct 15, or the first nice day after, you are going to "start building a home" for your power plants. Why Oct. 15? On Oct 14, mother earth moves into her cleansing phase (winter), and for this plant you cannot "start building a home" for it until mother earth is in the cleansing phase.

To "start building a home" you will need one small cardboard box per plant site, lined with plastic inside, a shovel, and red cotton cloth (1 square yard per box). Before sunrise you must have completed the following. Do a smudge ceremony for yourself, as per earlier smudge ceremony, also smudge the box(es), shovel and pieces of red cloth. To smudge items, pass items through the smoke first west to east, then south to north. After this smudging is completed go to the specific place where you plan on planting your plants. Sprinkle tobacco around the area you are going to take soil from for your plant. Sprinkle in a clockwise fashion. All directional movement must be in a clockwise fashion. While you are sprinkling the tobacco, give thanks to mother earth and ask her to bless your plant. Then dig enough dirt for a medium size planter.

Number each dig site and box so you can return each plant to its specific site. I make a map and number my boxes, and place a numbered stake at each site. For each site you dig, you place tobacco, say your pray and number. After each digging, close the box and then wrap it up in the red cloth and place in the car. nothing rides in the trunk. you don't ask your friends to ride in the trunk; the allies neither.

When you get home place boxes in a private place, where wife, daughters, or other females cannot see boxes. The reason you do this is because females who are "on their moon" (monthly period) will take the spirit from the ceremonial dirt. Keep each box wrapped in the red cloth. If the gals should find the boxes it is not a big deal, as long as they are not having their period. If they find the boxes during their period, forget it and start over next year. Leave over the winter.

Feb. 15 is "introducing plant to new home" day. Take Feb. 15 off from work. This is a magical and mysterious day. Why Feb. 15? Because mother earth moves into her wisdom and knowledge phase. Plants start to grow on this day because the sun is high enough in the sky to give energy to plants started on this day.

For this day you will need smudge materials, medium size planters, seeds, and a small trowel. How you get the seeds is your business. Do not smoke mixture you get seeds from if seeds come from street purchase. If you have a friend or acquaintance, have them save you seeds. I usually plant 9 growing sites, as each plant produces around 1-2 pounds of smoke and around 50 seeds for the following grow times. This is your smoke with your ally and is not for sale or for you to give away!

You can smoke with other warriors after a smudging ceremony for both of you. Everything must be completed by sunrise on Feb. 15. To start the day, you smudge exactly as before, except you start the BBQ briquette outside! Once fire is out and briquette grey, you can bring the iron skillet in and place on top of a large metal tin, or something that will not transmit heat. You smudge indoors this time in the room you will be starting your plants in. This room must be facing south or southwest. The smudging will consist of you, each box (still wrapped in red cloth), medium size planters, small trowel and seeds.

After you and all items have been smudged remove red cloth from the specific box and number each cloth and each medium size planter (each will match each dig site). You only need to smudge once. Each box is smudged, each planter is smudge and the trowel is smudged. Remove red cloth and place on floor. Then the box is opened, using the red cloth as an altar, the dirt is removed from the box into the planter. Plant seeds about ½ to 3/4 inch below compressed soil surface and place each planter on top of its respective red cloth so it can have sunlight as long as possible... I usually plant 2 seeds per planter, about a thumb length apart. Use water and outdoor plant fertilizer to nourish plants until "taking plant home" day. "Taking plant home" day occurs on May 24, or first nice day after. Why May 24, because father frost goes away on May 23 and does not return until Oct. 14.

On May 24, or first nice day after, before sunrise, all plants and ceremony must be completed. This means getting out of bed really early. On this day take out to your place of power your smudging materials, potted plants (they should be 1-2 feet high by now), small trowel, shovel and respective red cloths, water and fertilizer mixture. Light up BBQ briquette in iron skillet and prepare smudging material. Remember everything must be completed by sunrise. Smudge yourself, the plants, small trowel, shovel, water fertilizer mixture, and red cloths. Once you and items are smudged then take each respective plant to its home (site). Sprinkle tobacco around each specific site, say a prayer to mother earth and each plant then plant each planter (soil and all) as a one whole plant in the hole dug in the ground the previous fall. Each plant and soil must return to its specific hole. Do one plant at a time in the same order that you dug the holes. Clean material out of hole, pour in a generous amount of water/fertilizer mixture, and then place complete contents of planter into hole. I usually have two plants per hole. Number each respective cloths again and save at home for "vacate the house" day.

During the "growing in house" period, go to see your plants as needed. This is usually when they need the watering/fertilizer mixture. Each time you go to see your plants is after sunset. After the sunsets, during twilight, smudge yourself, and the water/fertilizer mixture. Water plants in the same order you planted them. Before watering them, sprinkle tobacco and say a prayer to mother earth and your plant. Remember sprinkle tobacco in clockwise fashion.

Each plant has a name just like you and me. The plant will give its name as direct knowledge. Once you know each plants name then you know you and the ally are starting to bond. On or before Oct. 14, it is time to "vacate the house". Watch the weather reports. The day before the first predicted frost is when your plants want to "vacate the house". It is this frost date or Oct. 14. No later than Oct. 14.

On "vacate the house" day, get smudge material ready, large plastic bags, and red cloths. After sunset, smudge yourself, the plastic bags, and red cloths. Then go to each plant in order of planting, and sprinkle tobacco around plant, giving thanks to mother earth, and offering a prayer to your plant and ally. If you start to feel a presence at your place of power, or you see your ally, do not die of fright < evil grin>. Take the plant by the stem, right near the ground and pull up gently. Immediately turn the plant upside down. The plant must stay in this position from now on. Place each plant(s) in a respective garbage bag. Around each root cover with its respective red cloth. Take plant in garbage bag back home. Plants do not ride in the trunk.

When you get home place plants where no female on her moon can take the spirit of your plant away. Once per week, on “vacating the house" day, smudging yourself and each plant (each plant remains in the garbage bag), in the order that you picked them. Do this four times. On the fifth week after smudging, (remember all these parts of the ceremonies are conducted after sunset), unfold the red cloth from the root system, and place on the floor. Sprinkle tobacco around each red cloth. Do one plant at a time. Take plant out of garbage bag, above red cloth and take leaves and small stems off of plant stem and branches. Large branches and main stem are not used for smoking. All leaves and small stems should fall on red cloth. Next take material out of garbage bag and place on red cloth. Place used branches and main stem back in respective garbage bag. Tie up each red cloth with a white leather string. This is the new home for the ally of your plant. With the remaining plant parts in respective garbage bags, take this out next time you go to the Oct. 15 ceremony "gain a home". Following the smudging part of the ceremony, return these parts to their respective site, after sprinkling tobacco and saying a thanks giving prayer. The new holes to be dug will be in the same area, but do not use the same hole twice.

Thus, you can see the full circle nature of the ally involved with this power plant. With the amount you have grown, you shouldn't need to plant every year unless you need to. Depends on how often you and the ally want to get together. After thirty years I do not even need to smoke to reach my ally. I usually only smoke if I need a major shift in my assemblage point to a very deep level. This is just the basic rule involved with marijuana. It will teach you much more as you become more acquainted.

It is so much easier just to buy it from a dealer, but you will never meet the ally contained in this plant smoking store bought stuff. Before smoking this ally, smudge, as it is very particular about cleanliness as you can gather with all the smudging involved. Believe me it is worth it. It is a gentle ally, ready to teach and impart knowledge. It will also allow you to dream or divine on any subject or person. Caught my first wife cheating and "saw" it was with my best friend. Heard them say when their next meeting would be, told my lawyer and we nabbed her and him cold. As for your previous use who can say. Give this a try, if you can, and see what the ally says. Once the rule has been provided the ally will decide what is in your heart. Remember path with a heart.

Search terms: ally, allies, ally in cannabis, ally in marijuana, ally and power plants, allies and power plants, allies in cannabis, allies in marijuana, allies in power plants. 

TMMK

The Art of Stalking by Carlos Castaneda

The Art of Stalking as described by Carlos Castaneda. 

The art of stalking was introduced to me as a set of procedures and attitudes that enabled one to get the best out of any conceivable situation. 

The stalkers are the ones who take the brunt of the daily world. They are the business managers, the ones who deal with people. Everything that has to do with the world of ordinary affairs goes through them. The stalkers are the practitioners of controlled folly, just as the dreamers are the practitioners of dreaming. In other words, controlled folly is the basis for stalking, as dreams are the basis for dreaming. Don Juan said that, generally speaking, a warrior's greatest accomplishment in the second attention is dreaming, and in the first attention his greatest accomplishment is stalking.

Don Juan said that his benefactor had taken extra time and care with him and his warriors in everything that pertained to their mastering the art of stalking. He used complex ploys to create an appropriate context for a counterpoint between the dictums of the rule and the behavior of the warriors in the daily world as they interacted with people. He believed that that was the way to convince them that, in the absence of self-importance, a warrior's only way of dealing with the social milieu is in terms of controlled folly. 

Don Juan said that the force with which his benefactor carried out his designs originated from his knowledge that the Eagle is real and final, and that what people do is utter folly. The two together gave rise to controlled folly, which don Juan's benefactor described as the only bridge between the folly of people and the finality of the Eagle's dictums. 

I asked her how she expected me to address her.  "Just Florinda will do," she said.  "Insofar as to who I am, I can tell you right off that I am a woman warrior who knows the secrets of stalking. And insofar as that I am supposed to do for you, I can tell you that I am going to teach you the first seven principles of stalking, the first three principles of the rule for stalkers, and the first three maneuvers of stalking." 

"The first principle of the art of stalking is that warriors choose their battleground," she said.  "A warrior never goes into battle without knowing what the surroundings are”. 

"To discard everything that is unnecessary is the second principle of the art of stalking”. 

Florinda said that Celestino's anger had also permitted the curer to point out, not to her reason, but to her body, the first three precepts of the rule for stalkers. Although her mind was focused entirely on herself, since nothing else existed for her outside her physical pain and the anguish of losing her beauty, still her body had acknowledged what had happened, and needed later on only a reminder in order to put everything in place. 

"Warriors don't have the world to cushion them, so they must have the rule," she went on.  "Yet the rule of stalkers applies to everyone. 

"Celestino's arrogance was his undoing and the beginning of my instruction and liberation. His self-importance, which was also mine, forced us both to believe that we were above practically everybody. The curer brought us down to what we really are - nothing. 

"The first precept of the rule is that everything that surrounds us is an unfathomable mystery. 

"The second precept of the rule is that we must try to unravel these mysteries, but without ever hoping to accomplish this. 

"The third, that a warrior, aware of the unfathomable mystery that surrounds him and aware of his duty to try to unravel it, takes his rightful place among mysteries and regards himself as one. 

Consequently, for a warrior there is no end to the mystery of being, whether being means being a pebble, or an ant, or oneself. That is a warrior's humbleness. One is equal to everything." 

"Don't complicate things," she said in a tone of command. "Aim at being simple. Apply all the concentration you have to decide whether or not to enter into battle, for any battle is a battle for one's life. 

This is the third principle of the art of stalking; A warrior must be willing and ready to make his last stand here and now. But not in a helter-skelter way." 

Without knowing I had used the third principle of the art of stalking. I had put my life, or what was left of it, on the line. I was willing and ready to die. It wasn't such a great decision for me, I was dying anyway. It is a fact that when one is half dead, as in my case, not with great pain but with great discomfort, the tendency is to get so lazy and weak that no effort is possible. 

"Good," Florinda said. "I see that you're applying the fourth principle of the art of stalking. 

Relax, abandon yourself, fear nothing. Only then will the powers that guide us open the road and aid us. Only then." 

"You've correctly applied the fifth principle of the art of stalking" she said. "Don't let yourself wander away." 

"What is the fifth principle?" I asked. 

"When faced with odds that cannot be dealt with, warriors retreat for a moment," she said.  "They let their minds meander. They occupy their time with something else. Anything would do. 

"You've done just that. But now that you've accomplished it, you must apply the sixth principle: Warriors compress time; even an instant counts. In a battle for your life, a second is an eternity; an eternity that may decide the outcome. Warriors aim at succeeding, therefore they compress time. Warriors don't waste an instant." 

She explained that a recapitulation is the forte of stalkers as the dreaming body is the forte of dreamers. It consisted of recollecting one's life down to the most insignificant detail. Thus her benefactor had given her that crate as a tool and a symbol. It was a tool that would permit her to learn concentration, for she would have to sit in there for years, until all of her life had passed in front of her eyes. And it was a symbol of the narrow boundaries of our person. Her benefactor told her that whenever she had finished her recapitulation, she would break the crate to symbolize that she no longer abided by the limitations of her person. 

She said that stalkers use crates or earth coffins in order to seal themselves in while they are reliving, more than merely recollecting, every moment of their lives. The reason why stalkers must recapitulate their lives in such a thorough manner is that the Eagle's gift to man includes its willingness to accept a surrogate instead of genuine awareness, if such a surrogate be a perfect replica. Florinda explained that since awareness is the Eagle's food, the Eagle can be satisfied with a perfect recapitulation in place of consciousness. 

Florinda gave me then the fundamentals of recapitulating. She said that the first stage is a brief recounting of all the incidents in our lives that in an obvious manner stand out for examination. 

The second stage is a more detailed recollection, which starts systematically at a point that could be the moment prior to the stalker sitting in the crate, and theoretically could extend to the moment of birth. 

She assured me that a perfect recapitulation could change a warrior as much, if not more, than the total control of the dreaming body. In this respect, dreaming and stalking led to the same end, the entering into the third attention. It was important for a warrior, however, to know and practice both. She said that for women it took different configurations in the luminous body to master one or the other. Men, on the other hand, could do both with a degree of ease, yet they could never get to the level of proficiency that the women attained in each art. 

Florinda explained that the key element in recapitulating was breathing. Breath for her was magical, because it was a life-giving function. She said that recollecting was easy if one could reduce the area of stimulation around the body. This was the reason for the crate; then breathing would foster deeper and deeper memories. Theoretically, stalkers have to remember every feeling that they have had in their lives, and this process begins with a breath. She warned me that the things she was teaching me were only preliminaries, that at a later time, in a different setting she would teach me the intricacies. 

Florinda said that her benefactor directed her to write down a list of the events to be relived. 

He told her that the procedure starts with an initial breath. Stalkers begin with their chin on the right shoulder and slowly inhale as they move their head over a hundred and eighty degree arc. 

The breath terminates on the left shoulder. Once the inhalation ends, the head goes back to a relaxed position. They exhale looking straight ahead. The stalker then takes the event at the top of the list and remains with it until all the feelings expended in it have been recounted. As stalkers remember the feelings they invested in whatever it is that they are remembering, they inhale slowly, moving their heads from the right shoulder to the left. The function of this breathing is to restore energy. Florinda claimed that the luminous body is constantly creating cob-weblike filaments, which are projected out of the luminous mass, propelled by emotions of any sort. Therefore, every situation of interaction, or every situation where feelings are involved, is potentially draining to the luminous body. By breathing from right to left while remembering a feeling, stalkers, through the magic of breathing, pick up the filaments they left behind. The next immediate breath is from left to right and it is an exhalation. With it stalkers eject filaments left in them by other luminous bodies involved in the event being recollected. 

She stated that these were the mandatory preliminaries of stalking, which all the members of her party went through as an introduction to the more demanding exercises of the art. Unless stalkers have gone through the preliminaries in order to retrieve the filaments they have left in the world, and particularly in order to reject those that others have left in them, there is no possibility of handling controlled folly, because those foreign filaments are the basis of one's limitless capacity for self-importance. 

In order to practice controlled folly, since it is not a way to fool or chastise people or feel superior to them, one has to be capable of laughing at oneself. Florinda said that one of the results of a detailed recapitulation is genuine laughter upon coming face to face with the boring repetition of one's self-esteem, which is at the core of all human interaction. 

Florinda emphasized that the rule defined stalking and dreaming as arts; therefore they are something that one performs. She said that the life-giving nature of breath is what also gives it its cleansing capacity. It is this capacity that makes a recapitulation into a practical matter. 

Florinda said that her benefactor considered the three basic techniques of stalking - the crate, the list of events to be recapitulated, and the stalker's breath - to be about the most important tasks a warrior can fulfill. Her benefactor thought that 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. 

Florinda said that her benefactor gave all of them the example of what he meant, first by acting out his premises, and then by giving them the warrior's rationales for his actions. 

In her own case, he, being a master of the art of stalking, acted out the ploy of her disease and cure which not only was congruous with the warrior's way, but was a masterful introduction to the seven basic principles of the art of stalking. He first drew Florinda to his own battleground where she was at his mercy; he forced her to discard what was not essential; he taught her to put her life on the line with a decision; he taught her how to relax; in order to help her regroup her resources, he made her enter into a new arid different mood of optimism and self-confidence; he taught her to compress time; and finally he showed her that a stalker never pushes himself to the front. 

Florinda was most impressed by the last principle. To her it summarized everything she wanted to tell me in her last-minute instructions. 

"My benefactor was the chief," Florinda said. "And yet, looking at him, no one would've ever believed it. He always had one of his female warriors as a front, while he freely mingled with the patients, pretending to be one of them, or he posed as an old fool who was constantly sweeping dry leaves with a handmade broom." 

Florinda explained that in order to apply the seventh principle of the art of stalking, one has to apply the other six. Thus her benefactor was always looking on from behind the scenes. Thanks to that he was capable of avoiding or parrying conflicts. If there was strife, it was never directed toward him, but towards his front, the female warrior. 

"I hope that you have realized by now," she went on, "that only a master stalker can be a master of controlled folly. Controlled folly doesn't mean to con people. It means, as my benefactor explained it, that warriors apply the seven basic principles of the art of stalking to whatever they do, from the most trivial acts to life and death situations. 

"Applying these principles brings about three results. The first is that stalkers learn never to take themselves seriously; they learn to laugh at themselves. If they're not afraid of being a fool, they can fool anyone. The second is that stalkers learn to have endless patience. Stalkers are never in a hurry; they never fret. And the third is that stalkers learn to have an endless capacity to improvise." 

She explained that stalkers are inherently different than dreamers in the way they use the world around them, and that what dona Soledad was doing was trying to help me to turn my head. 

When don Juan had described the concept of turning a warrior's head to face a new direction, I had understood it as a metaphor that depicted a change in attitude. Florinda said that that description was true, but it was no metaphor. It was true that stalkers turn their heads; however, they do not turn them to face a new direction, but to face time in a different way. 

Stalkers face the oncoming time. Normally we face time as it recedes from us. Only stalkers can change that and face time as it advances on them. 

He said that the most effective strategy was worked out by the seers of the Conquest, the unquestionable masters of stalking. It consists of six elements that interplay with one another. 

Five of them are called the attributes of warriorship: control, discipline, forbearance, timing, and will. They pertain to the world of the warrior who is fighting to lose self-importance. The sixth element, which is perhaps the most important of all, pertains to the outside world and is called the petty tyrant. 

Don Juan stopped talking and stared at me fixedly. There was an awkward silence; then he started to talk about stalking. He said that it had very humble and fortuitous origins. It started from an observation the new seers made that when warriors steadily behave in ways not customary for them, the unused emanations inside their cocoons begin to glow. And their assemblage points shift in a mild, harmonious, barely noticeable fashion. 

Stimulated by this observation, the new seers began to practice the systematic control of their behavior. They called this practice the art of stalking. Don Juan remarked that the name, although objectionable, was appropriate, because stalking entailed a specific kind of behavior with people, behavior that could be categorized as surreptitious. 

The new seers, armed with this technique, tackled the known in a sober and fruitful way. 

By continual practice, they made their assemblage points move steadily. 

"Stalking is one of the two greatest accomplishments of the new seers." he said. "The new seers decided that it should be taught to a modern-day nagual when his assemblage point has moved quite deep into the left side. The reason for this decision is that a nagual must learn the principles of stalking without the encumbrance of the human inventory. After all, the nagual is the leader of a group, and to lead them he has to act quickly without first having to think about it. 

"Other warriors can learn stalking in their normal awareness, although it is advisable that they do it in heightened awareness - not so much because of the value of heightened awareness, but because it imbues stalking with a mystery that it doesn't really have; stalking is merely behavior with people." 

He said that I could now understand that shifting the assemblage point was the reason why the new seers placed such a high value on the interaction with petty tyrants. Petty tyrants forced seers to use the principles of stalking and, in doing so, helped seers to move their assemblage points. 

I asked him if the old seers knew anything at all about the principles of stalking. 

"Stalking belongs exclusively to the new seers," he said, smiling. "They are the only seers who had to deal with people. The old ones were so wrapped up in their sense of power that they didn't even know that people existed, until people started clobbering them on the head. But you already know all this." 

He said that as time passed and the new seers established their practices, they realized that under the prevailing conditions of life, stalking only moved the assemblage points minimally. For maximum effect, stalking needed an ideal setting; it needed petty tyrants in positions of great authority and power.  It became increasingly difficult for the new seers to place themselves in such situations; the task of improvising them or seeking them out became an unbearable burden. 

He explained that stalking practices are not something one can rejoice in; in fact, they are downright objectionable. Knowing this, the new seers realize that it would be against everybody's interest to discuss or practice the principles of stalking in normal awareness. 

I pointed out to him an incongruity. He had said that there is no way for warriors to act in the world while they are in heightened awareness, and he had also said that stalking is simply behaving with people in specific ways. The two statements contradicted each other. 

"By not teaching it in normal awareness I was referring only to teaching it to a nagual," he said. "The purpose of stalking is twofold: first, to move the assemblage point as steadily and safely as possible, and nothing can do the job as well as stalking: second, to imprint its principles at such a deep level that the human inventory is bypassed, as is the natural reaction of refusing and judging something that may be offensive to reason." 

The art of stalking is the riddle of the heart; the puzzlement sorcerers feel upon becoming aware of two things: first that the world appears to us to be unalterably objective and factual, because of peculiarities of our awareness and perception; second, that if different peculiarities of perception come into play, the very things about the world that seem so unalterably objective and factual change. 

"We are going to talk now about the third abstract core," don Juan said. "It is called the trickery of the spirit, or the trickery of the abstract, or stalking oneself, or dusting the link." 

"The art of stalking is learning all the quirks of your disguise," Belisario said, paying no attention to what don Juan was telling him. "And it is to learn them so well no one will know you are disguised. For that you need to be ruthless, cunning, patient, and sweet." 

He made don Juan practice his womanly behavior skills in every town they passed through. 

And don Juan honestly believed he was teaching him to be an actor. But Belisario insisted that he was teaching him the art of stalking. He told don Juan that stalking was an art applicable to everything, and that there were four steps to learning it: ruthlessness, cunning, patience, and sweetness. 

I felt compelled to interrupt his account once more. 

"But isn't stalking taught in deep, heightened awareness?" I asked. 

"Of course," he replied with a grin. "But you have to understand that for some men wearing women's clothes is the door into heightened awareness. In fact, such means are more effective than pushing the assemblage point, but are very difficult to arrange." 

Don Juan said that his benefactor drilled him daily in the four moods of stalking and insisted that don Juan understand that ruthlessness should not be harshness, cunning should not be cruelty, patience should not be negligence, and sweetness should not be foolishness. 

He taught him that these four steps had to be practiced and perfected until they were so smooth they were unnoticeable. He believed women to be natural stalkers. And his conviction was so strong he maintained that only in a woman's disguise could any man really learn the art of stalking. 

"I went with him to every market in every town we passed and haggled with everyone," don Juan went on. "My benefactor used to stay to one side watching me. 'Be ruthless but charming,' he used to say. 'Be cunning but nice. Be patient but active. Be sweet but lethal. Only women can do it. If a man acts this way he's being prissy.' " 

Don Juan explained to me that ruthlessness, cunning, patience, and sweetness were the essence of stalking. They were the basics that with all their ramifications had to be taught in careful, meticulous steps. 

He stressed repeatedly that teaching stalking was one of the most difficult things sorcerers did.  And he insisted that no matter what they themselves did to teach me stalking, and no matter what I believed to the contrary, it was impeccability which dictated their acts. 

He asserted that stalking was the beginning, and that before anything could be attempted on the warrior's path, warriors must learn to stalk; next they must learn to intend, and only then could they move their assemblage point at will. 

"The very first principle of stalking is that a warrior stalks himself," he said. "He stalks himself ruthlessly, cunningly, patiently, and sweetly." 

I wanted to laugh, but he did not give me time. Very succinctly he defined stalking as the art of using behavior in novel ways for specific purposes. He said that normal human behavior in the world of everyday life was routine. Any behavior that broke from routine caused an unusual effect on our total being. That unusual effect was what sorcerers sought, because it was cumulative. 

"The real challenge for those sorcerer seers," don Juan went on, "was finding a system of behavior that was neither petty nor capricious, but that combined the morality and the sense of beauty which differentiates sorcerer seers from plain witches." 

He said that for sorcerers stalking was the foundation on which everything else they did was built. 

"Some sorcerers object to the term stalking," he went on, "but the name came about because it entails surreptitious behavior. 

"It's also called the art of stealth, but that term is equally unfortunate. We ourselves, because of our nonmilitant temperament, call it the art of controlled folly. You can call it anything you wish. We, however, will continue with the term stalking since it's so easy to say stalker and, as my benefactor used to say, so awkward to say controlled folly maker." 

"When the pressure of their connecting link is too great, sorcerers relieve it by stalking themselves." 

"I still don't think I understand what you mean by stalking" I said. "But at a certain level I think I know exactly what you mean." 

"I'll try to help you clarify what you know, then," he said. "Stalking is a procedure, a very simple one. Stalking is special behavior that follows certain principles. It is secretive, furtive, deceptive behavior designed to deliver a jolt. And, when you stalk yourself you jolt yourself, using your own behavior in a ruthless, cunning way." 

He explained that when a sorcerer's awareness became bogged down with the weight of his perceptual input, which was what was happening to me, the best, or even perhaps the only remedy was to use the idea of death to deliver that stalking jolt. 

"Your problem is very simple," he said. "You become easily obsessed. I have been telling you that sorcerers stalk themselves in order to break the power of their obsessions. There are many ways of stalking oneself. If you don't want to use the idea of your death, use the poems you read me to stalk yourself." 

"As I hear the words," don Juan said when I had finished reading, "I feel that that man is seeing the essence of things and I can see with him. I don't care what the poem is about. I care only about the feeling the poet's longing brings me. I borrow his longing, and with it I borrow the beauty. And marvel at the fact that he, like a true warrior, lavishes it on the recipients, the beholders, retaining for himself only his longing. This jolt, this shock of beauty, is stalking." 

"In order to protect themselves from that immensity," don Juan said, "sorcerers learn to maintain a perfect blend of ruthlessness, cunning, patience, and sweetness. These four bases are inextricably bound together. Sorcerers cultivate them by intending them. These bases are, naturally, positions of the assemblage point." 

He went on to say that every act performed by any sorcerer was by definition governed by these four principles. So, properly speaking, every sorcerer's every action is deliberate in thought and realization, and has the specific blend of the four foundations of stalking. 

"Sorcerers use the four moods of stalking as guides," he continued. "These are four different frames of mind, four different brands of intensity that sorcerers can use to induce their assemblage points to move to specific positions." 

He smiled, his eyes shining like two spots of light. He said that sorcerers, in an effort to protect themselves from the overwhelming effect of silent knowledge, developed the art of stalking. Stalking moves the assemblage point minutely but steadily, thus giving sorcerers time and therefore the possibility of buttressing themselves. 

"Within the art of stalking," don Juan continued, "there is a technique which sorcerers use a great deal: controlled folly. Sorcerers claim that controlled folly is the only way they have of dealing with themselves - in their state of expanded awareness and perception - and with everybody and everything in the world of daily affairs." 

Don Juan had explained controlled folly as the art of controlled deception or the art of pretending to be thoroughly immersed in the action at hand - pretending so well no one could tell it from the real thing. Controlled folly is not an outright deception, he had told me, but a sophisticated, artistic way of being separated from everything while remaining an integral part of everything. 

"Controlled folly is an art," don Juan continued. "A very bothersome art, and a difficult one to learn. Many sorcerers don't have the stomach for it, not because there is anything inherently wrong with the art, but because it takes a lot of energy to exercise it." 

Don Juan admitted that he practiced it conscientiously, although he was not particularly fond of doing so, perhaps because his benefactor had been so adept at it. Or, perhaps it was because his personality - which he said was basically devious and petty - simply did not have the agility needed to practice controlled folly. 

"What was the nagual Elias's reason for training the Tulios as he did?" I asked. 

Don Juan peered at me and laughed loudly. At that instant the lights of the plaza were turned on. He got up from his favorite bench and rubbed it with the palm of his hand, as if it were a pet. 

"Freedom," he said. "He wanted their freedom from perceptual convention. And he taught them to be artists. Stalking is an art. For a sorcerer, since he's not a patron or a seller of art, the only thing of importance about a work of art is that it can be accomplished." 

Don Juan expressed his bewilderment at the fact that out of all the marvelous things the old sorcerers learned exploring those thousands of positions, only the art of dreaming and the art of stalking remain. 

He reiterated that the art of dreaming is concerned with the displacement of the assemblage point. Then he defined stalking as the art that deals with the fixation of the assemblage point on any location to which it is displaced. 

"To fixate the assemblage point on any new spot means to acquire cohesion," he said. "You have been doing just that in your dreaming practices." 

The old sorcerers called the entire act of acquiring uniformity and cohesion outside the normal world stalking perception. 

"The art of stalking," he continued, "as I have already said, deals with the fixation of the assemblage point. The old sorcerers discovered, through practice, that important as it is to displace the assemblage point, it is even more important to make it stay fixed on its new position, wherever that new position might be." 

He explained that if the assemblage point does not become stationary, there is no way that we can perceive coherently. We would experience then a kaleidoscope of disassociated images. This is the reason the old sorcerers put as much emphasis on dreaming as they did on stalking. 

One art cannot exist without the other, especially for the kinds of activities in which the old sorcerers were involved. 

"Let your energy body intend to reach the optimum dreaming position," he explained. 

"Then, let your energy body intend to stay at that position and you will be stalking." 

"We can't have dealings with them [IB’s]," he answered, "and yet we can't stay away from them. My solution has been to take their energy but not give in to their influence. This is known as the ultimate stalking. 

"I'm going to propose a line of action for you," he said in a curt tone when we had finished our lunch. "It's the last task of the third gate of dreaming, and it consists of stalking the stalkers, a most mysterious maneuver. To stalk the stalkers means to deliberately draw energy from the inorganic beings' realm in order to perform a sorcery feat." 

"I want you two to break the boundaries of the normal world and, using awareness as an energetic element, enter into another," he said. "This breaking and entering amounts to stalking the stalkers. Using awareness as an element of the environment bypasses the influence of the inorganic beings, but it still uses their energy." 

"Your total physical mass has to be added to your energy body," don Juan replied, looking into her eyes. "The great difficulty of this maneuver is to discipline the energy body, a thing the two of you have already done. Lack of discipline is the only reason the two of you may fail in performing this feat of ultimate stalking. Sometimes, as a fluke, an average person ends up performing it and entering into another world. But this is immediately explained away as insanity or hallucination."

To be continued...

TMMK

Death is an Advisor

"A warrior thinks of his death when things become unclear."  

"That's even harder, don Juan. For most people death is very vague and remote.  We never think of it."  

"Why not?"  

"Why should we?"  

"Very simple," he said.  "Because the idea of death is the only thing that tempers our spirit."  

"By the time knowledge becomes a frightening affair the man also realizes that death is the irreplaceable partner that sits next to him on the mat.  Every bit of knowledge that becomes power has death as its central force.  Death lends the ultimate touch, and whatever is touched by death indeed becomes power.  

"A man who follows the paths of sorcery is confronted with imminent annihilation every turn of the way, and unavoidably he becomes keenly aware of his death.  Without the awareness of death he would be only an ordinary man involved in ordinary acts.  He would lack the necessary potency, the necessary concentration that transforms one's ordinary time on earth into magical power.”  

"Thus to be a warrior a man has to be, first of all, and rightfully so, keenly aware of his own death.  But to be concerned with death would force any one of us to focus on the self and that would be debilitating.  So the next thing one needs to be a warrior is detachment.  The idea of imminent death, instead of becoming an obsession, becomes an indifference."  

Don Juan stopped talking and looked at me.  He seemed to be waiting for a comment.  

"Do you understand?" he asked.  

I understood what he had said but I personally could not see how anyone could arrive at a sense of detachment.  I said that from the point of view of my own apprenticeship I had already experienced the moment when knowledge became such a frightening affair.  I could also truthfully say that I no longer found support in the ordinary premises of my daily life.  And I wanted, or perhaps even more than wanted, I needed, to live like a warrior.  

"Now you must detach yourself," he said.  

"From what?"  

"Detach yourself from everything."  

"That's impossible.  I don't want to be a hermit."  

"To be a hermit is an indulgence and I never meant that.  A hermit is not detached, for he willfully abandons himself to being a hermit.  

"Only the idea of death makes a man sufficiently detached so he is incapable of abandoning himself to anything.  Only the idea of death makes a man sufficiently detached so he can't deny himself anything.  A man of that sort, however, does not crave, for he has acquired a silent lust for life and for all things of life.  He knows his death is stalking him and won't give him time to cling to anything, so he tries, without craving, all of everything.  

"A detached man, who knows he has no possibility of fencing off his death, has only one thing to back himself with: the power of his decisions.  He has to be, so to speak, the master of his choices.  He must fully understand that his choice is his responsibility and once he makes it there is no longer time for regrets or recriminations.  His decisions are final, simply because his death does not permit him time to cling to anything.  

"And thus with an awareness of his death, with his detachment, and with the power of his decisions a warrior sets his life in a strategical manner.  The knowledge of his death guides him and makes him detached and silently lusty; the power of his final decisions makes him able to choose without regrets and what he chooses is always strategically the best; and so he performs everything he has to with gusto and lusty efficiency. 

"When a man behaves in such a manner one may rightfully say that he is a warrior and has acquired patience!"  

"When a warrior has acquired patience he is on his way to will.  He knows how to wait.  His death sits with him on his mat, they are friends.  His death advises him, in mysterious ways, how to choose, how to live strategically.  And the warrior waits!  I would say that the warrior learns without any hurry because he knows he is waiting for his will; and one day he succeeds in performing something ordinarily quite impossible to accomplish. 

He may not even notice his extraordinary deed.  But as he keeps on performing impossible acts, or as impossible things keep on happening to him, he becomes aware that a sort of power is emerging.  A power that conies out of his body as he progresses on the path of knowledge.  At first it is like an itching on the belly, or a warm spot that cannot be soothed; then it becomes a pain, a great discomfort.  Sometimes the pain and discomfort are so great that the warrior has convulsions for months, the more severe the convulsions the better for him. A fine power is always heralded by great pain.  

"Death is the only wise adviser that we have.  Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so.  Your death will tell you that you're wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch.  Your death will tell you, "I haven't touched you yet".  

"One of us here has to change, and fast.  One of us here has to learn again that death is the hunter, and that it is always to one's left.  One of us here has to ask death's advice and drop the cursed pettiness that belongs to men that live their lives as if death will never tap them."  

"You, on the other hand, feel that you are immortal, and the decisions of an immortal man can be cancelled or regretted or doubted. In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets or doubts.  There is only time for decisions."  

"It doesn't matter what the decision is," he said.  "Nothing could be more or less serious than anything else.  Don't you see?  In a world where death is the hunter there are no small or big decisions.  There are only decisions that we make in the face of our inevitable death."  

"You always feel compelled to explain your acts, as if you were the only man on earth who's wrong," he said.  "It's your old feeling of importance.  You have too much of it; you also have too much personal history.  On the other hand, you don't assume responsibility for your acts; you're not using your death as an adviser, and above all, you are too accessible.  In other words, your life is as messy as it was before I met you."  

"Use it. Focus your attention on the link between you and your death, without remorse or sadness or worrying.  Focus your attention on the fact you don't have time and let your acts flow accordingly.  Let each of your acts be your last battle on earth.  Only under those conditions will your acts have their rightful power.  Otherwise they will be, for as long as you live, the acts of a timid man."  

"What an exquisite omen this is!" he went on.  "And all for you.  Power is showing you that death is the indispensable ingredient in having to believe.  Without the awareness of death everything is ordinary, trivial.  It is only because death is stalking us that the world is an unfathomable mystery.  Power has shown you that.  All I have done myself is to round up the details of the omen, so the direction would be clear to you; but in rounding up the details, I have also shown you that everything I have said to you today is what I have to believe myself, because that is the predilection of my spirit."

To be continued...

TMMK

Introduction to The Crack Between the Worlds

Notice is hereby given: 

BY CONTINUING BEYOND THIS POINT, the reader acknowledges and agrees that the state of discussion herein conveys upon the seeker-aspirant-victim no benefits, boons, blessings, or special powers and bears little or no resemblance to assorted New Age, Toltec or Eastern varieties widely dispensed under the same name. Dreaming, third attention, becoming a Nagual, orgasmic euphoria, orgiastic bliss, obscene wealth, perfect health, eternal peace, angelic ascension, cosmic consciousness, purified aura, astral projection, pan dimensional travel, extra-sensory perception, access to akashic records, profound wisdom, sagely demeanor, radiant countenance, omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence and opening of the third eye are not likely to result. Tuning, harmonizing, balancing, energizing, reversing or opening of the chakras should not be expected. The kundalini serpent dwelling at the base of the spine will not be awakened, poked, prodded, raised, or otherwise molested.  Flyers will continue to nibble away at your awareness and your mind is still not your own after participating on this Crack Between the Worlds blog.  

NO PROMISE OF SELF-ADVANCEMENT, self-esteem, self-aggrandizement, self-gratification, self-satisfaction or self-improvement is made or implied. Likewise, self-indulgent, self-involved, self-centered, self-absorbed, and self-serving persons will not find satisfaction herein. The reader should construe no assurance of reward, rapture, empowerment, deliverance, salvation, enrichment, forgiveness, or eternal rest in a heavenly abode or the third attention. No raising, altering, transforming, transferring, transposing, transfiguring, transmuting, transcending or transmigrating of consciousness is to be expected. 

POSTING COMMENTS ON THIS BLOG does not grant admittance to idyllic or mythical realms including but not limited to: Atlantis, Elysium, Garden of Eden, Heaven, Never-Never-Land, Nirvana, Paradise, Promised Land, Shambhala, Shangri-la, Utopia or the Third, Fourth and Fifth Attentions.  

THIS DISCUSSION BOARD MAKES EXTENSIVE USE of analogy and symbolism. The terms ego, self- importance, personal history, recapitulation, dreaming, dream-state, Maya, tonal, nagual, Nagual, third attention, flyers and others are used metaphorically. Likewise, any suggestion that the reader should leap from a cliff, step into a blazing inferno, fantasize about hot Nagual women, perform ritual self-disembowelment, dip mirrors in rivers or bathe in a vat of corrosive acids are not to be taken literally. The reader is advised that cutting off his or her hand, plucking out his or her eye, or chopping off his or her head, may result in bodily injury. 

THE PURSUIT AND ATTAINMENT of Spiritual Enlightenment or Nagualism may entail loss of ego, identity, humanity, mind, friends, relatives, job, home, children, car, money, jewelry, respect, specificity in time, solidity in space, strict adherence to accepted physical laws, and reason for living.  

THE SPIRITUAL ENLIGHTENMENT AND NAGUALISM REFERRED TO herein is a process and product of Will and self-determination. It requires no reliance on or cooperation with Old Seers, New Seers, Self Proclaimed Naguals, Lineage Naguals, God, Goddess, Satan, discorporate entities (angelic or demonic), gurus, swamis, seers, sages, holy men, priests, teachers, philosophers, faeries, gnomes, pixies, sprites, (wee folk of any sort), or any other agent or agency of non-self-authority. 

HEART-CENTERED APPROACHES AND QUALITIES generally considered to be of the essence of Spiritual Enlightenment, such as love, compassion, tolerance, grace, tranquility, and pacifism, will be viewed herein as antithetical, misleading, and irrelevant.  Self-importance isn’t fought with above mentioned.  

THE SEEKER-ASPIRANT- VICTIM has no need of any spiritual practices or belief systems including but not limited to Nagualism, Toltecism, Buddhism, Kabbalah, Hinduism, Sufism, Taoism, Gnosticism, Mohammadism, Judaism, Christism, Paganism, Occultism, Zoroastrianism, Wicca, Yoga, Tai Chi, Feng Shui, Martial Arts, Magick, or Necromancy. 

THE SEEKER-ASPIRANT-VICTIM has no need of any so-called spiritual or New Age or Toltec paraphernalia, trinkets or amulets including but not limited to spirit callers, crystals, gems, stones, mirrors, seeds, bewitched corn kernels, beads, shells, incense, candles, aromas, bells, gongs, chimes, altars, images, idols or don Juan’s pipe. No special clothing, jewelry, adornments, tattoos of Carlos Castaneda on your ass, or fashion accessories are necessary to this endeavor. 

THE SEEKER-ASPIRANT-VICTIM need not avail him or herself of any of the myriad enlightenment or nagualistic inducing procedures and techniques including but not limited to meditation, gazing, candle-gazing, mantra intoning, subjugation to guru, standing on one leg, pilgrimage on belly, unaided flight off a cliff, drugs, breathing techniques, fasting, wandering in deserts, self-flagellation, vows of silence, sexual indulgence or sexual continence. 

THE SEEKER-ASPIRANT-VICTIM has no need or use for any spiritual powers, arts or sciences including but not limited to astrology, numerology, divination, tarot or rune reading, mandala making, fire-walking, psychic surgery, automatic writing, channeling, pyramid power, telepathy, clairvoyance, lucid dreaming, dream interpretation, ESP, levitation, bi-location, psycho kinesis, or remote viewing. Furthermore, tricks, stunts or feats such as recapitulation in a cave, allowing allies to manifest out of mirrors, dreaming with the Death Defier, endurance of cold, live burial in Mother Earth, cloud gazing, leaf gazing, $%+$ gazing, materializing your warrior buddies from fire ash, walking on fire or glass, laying on glass or nails, piercing of face or arms, conjuring and rope tricks, have no bearing or merit as regards the Spiritual Enlightenment and Nagualism discussed herein. 

CONFRONTATION WITH PERSONAL DEMONS, the facing of deep-seated fears, and the step-by-step dismantling of personal history may result in elevated pulse, high blood pressure, loss of equilibrium, loss of motor control, loss of pallor and skin tone, loss of hair and teeth, loss of appetite, loss of sleep, loss of bowel and bladder control, tremors, fatigue, shortness of breath, dry-heaves, acid reflux, dyspepsia, halitosis, diarrhea, seborrhea, psoriasis, sweating, swelling, and swooning. The emotional upheaval attendant upon the discovery that one is oneself a fictional character in a staged drama may result in forlornness, intolerance, anger, hostility, resentment, hopelessness, despondency, suicidal despair, morbid depression, and a suffocating awareness of life's meaninglessness. 

THE SEEKER-ASPIRANT-VICTIM is hereby advised that study of ancient cultures, travel to distant lands, or learning of foreign languages avails not in the least, and that, for the purposes of understanding and attaining Nagualism and Spiritual Enlightenment discussed herein, there is no better place than here and no better time than now. 

ALL CHARACTERS, PLACES AND EVENTS depicted on this message board are entirely fictional insofar as this discussion board and the universe in which it exists are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual people, places and events is purely the result of resemblance to actual people, places and events. 

NO DOLPHINS WERE SWUM WITH in the creation of this discussion board.  Batteries not included. Be careful what you wish for.  Life is but a Dream.  

Nagual action figures sold separately.

The Art of Dreaming by Carlos Castaneda

Now it's time for you to become accessible to power, and you are going to begin by tackling dreaming.  A warrior seeks power, and one of the avenues to power is dreaming.  

What you call dreams are real for a warrior. You must understand that a warrior is not a fool. A warrior is an immaculate hunter who hunts power; he's not drunk, or crazed, and he has neither the time nor the disposition to bluff, or to lie to himself, or to make a wrong move. The stakes are too high for that. The stakes are his trimmed orderly life which he has taken so long to tighten and perfect. He is not going to throw that away by making some stupid miscalculation, by taking something for being something else.  

Dreaming is real for a warrior because in it he can act deliberately, he can choose and reject, he can select from a variety of items those which lead to power, and then he can manipulate them and use them, while in an ordinary dream he cannot act deliberately.  

In dreaming you have power; you can change things; you may find out countless concealed facts; you can control whatever you want. You’re going to learn how to make yourself accessible to power.  Power is something a warrior deals with. At first it's an incredible, far-fetched affair; it is hard to even think about it. Then power becomes a serious matter; one may not have it, or one may not even fully realize that it exists, yet one knows that something is there, something which was not noticeable before. Next power is manifested as something uncontrollable that comes to oneself. It is not possible for me to say how it comes or what it really is. It is nothing and yet it makes marvels appear before your very eyes. And finally power is something in oneself, something that controls one's acts and yet obeys one's command.  I am going to teach you right here the first step to power. I am going to teach you how to set up dreaming.  

To set up dreaming means to have a concise and pragmatic control over the general situation of a dream, comparable to the control one has over any choice in the desert for instance, such as climbing up a hill or remaining in the shade of a water canyon. You must start by doing something very simple. Tonight in your dreams you must look at your hands.  

Don't think it's a joke. Dreaming is as serious as seeing or dying or any other thing in this awesome, mysterious world. Think of it as something entertaining and don't get discouraged or stop trying if you don't succeed right away. Imagine all the inconceivable things you could accomplish. A man hunting for power has almost no limits in his dreaming.  

The trick in learning to set up dreaming is obviously not just to look at things but to sustain the sight of them. Dreaming is real when one has succeeded in bringing everything into focus. Then there is no difference between what you do when you sleep and what you do when you are not sleeping.  

A warrior has to be perfect in order to deal with the powers he hunts. Look at your hands. When they begin to change shape you must move your sight away from them and pick something else, and then look at your hands again. It takes a long time to perfect this technique.  Ordinary dreams get very vivid as soon as you begin to set up dreaming. That vividness and clarity is a formidable barrier. Don't be distracted from the purpose of dreaming, which is control and power.  

I'm going to remind you of all the techniques you must practice. First you must focus your gaze on your hands as the starting point. Then shift your gaze to other items and look at them in brief glances. Focus your gaze on as many things as you can. Remember that if you only glance briefly the images do not shift. Then go back to your hands.  Every time you look at your hands you renew the power needed for dreaming, so in the beginning don't look at too many things. Four items will suffice every time. Later on you may enlarge the scope until you can cover all you want, but as soon as the images begin to shift and you feel you are losing control go back to your hands.  

When you feel you can gaze at things indefinitely you will be ready for a new technique. I'm going to teach you this new technique now, but I expect you to put it to use only when you are ready.  

The next step in setting up dreaming is to learn to travel. The same way you have learned to look at your hands you can will yourself to move, to go places. First you have to establish a place you want to go to. Pick a well-known spot--perhaps your school, or a park, a friend's house--then, will yourself to go there.  This technique is very difficult. You must perform two tasks: you must will yourself to go to the specific locale; and then, when you have mastered that technique, you have to learn to control the exact time of your traveling. You are making yourself accessible to power; you're hunting it and I'm just guiding you.  

You should try willing yourself to go to a specific place in dreaming while you take a nap during the daytime and find out if you can actually visualize the chosen place as it is at the time you are dreaming. Otherwise the visions you might have are not dreaming but ordinary dreams.  

In order to help yourself you should pick a specific object that belongs to the place you want to go and focus your attention on it. It is easier to travel in dreaming when you can focus on a place of power. Perhaps the school where you go is a place of power for you. Use it. Focus your attention on any object there and then find it in dreaming. From the specific object you recall, you must go back to your hands and then to another object and so on.  

Dreaming is the not-doing of dreams, and as you progress in your not-doing you will also progress in dreaming. The trick is not to stop looking for your hands, even if you don't believe that what you are doing has any meaning. In fact, as I have told you before, a warrior doesn't need do believe, because as long as he keeps on acting without believing he is not-doing.  

Dreaming entails cultivating a peculiar control over one's dreams to the extent that the experiences undergone in them and those lived in one's waking hours acquire the same pragmatic valence. The sorcerers' allegation is that under the impact of dreaming the ordinary criteria to differentiate a dream from reality becomes inoperative.  

The early stage of the preparatory facet, called setting up dreaming, consists of a deadly game that one's mind plays with itself. Some part of yourself is going to do everything it can to prevent the fulfillment of your task.  

As soon as the sight of your hands begins to dissolve or change into something else, you have to shift your view from your hands to any other element in the surroundings of your dream.  

Something in us is threatened by our activities in dreaming. Each warrior has his own way of dreaming. Each way is different. The only thing which we all have in common is that we play tricks in order to force ourselves to abandon the quest. The counter-measure is to persist in spite of all the barriers and disappointments.  

The sorcerers' explanation of how to select a topic for dreaming, is that a warrior chooses the topic by deliberately holding an image in his mind while he shuts off his internal dialogue. If he is capable of not talking to himself for a moment and then holds the image or the thought of what he wants in dreaming , even if only for an instant, then the desired topic will come to him.  

I'm going to begin telling you about the "double" or the "Other." The double is the sorcerer himself developed thru his dreaming . The double is an act of power to a sorcerer but only a tale of power to you. The double is the self; that explanation should suffice. For a sorcerer who sees , the double is brighter.  

Don't take things so seriously. I've told you time and time again that the world is unfathomable, and so are we, and so is every being that exists in this world. It is impossible, therefore, to reason out the double.  

A sorcerer can double up, that's all one can say. No sorcerer knows where his Other is. A sorcerer has no notion that he is in two places at once. To be aware of that would be the equivalent of facing his double, and the sorcerer that finds himself face to face with himself is a dead sorcerer. That is the rule. That is the way power has set things up. No one knows why.  

By the time a warrior has conquered dreaming and seeing and has developed a double, he must have also succeeded in erasing personal history, self-importance, and routines. So doing is the means for removing the impracticality of having a double in the ordinary world, by making the self and the world fluid, and by placing them outside the bounds of prediction.  

A fluid warrior can no longer make the world chronological, and for him, the world and himself are no longer objects. He's a luminous being existing in a luminous world. The double is a simple affair for a sorcerer because he knows what he's doing.  

A sorcerer may certainly notice afterwards that he has been in two places at once. But this is only bookkeeping and has no bearing on the fact that while he's acting he has no notion of his duality.  

Think of this, the world doesn't yield to us directly, the description of the world stands in between. So, properly speaking, we are always one step removed and our experience of the world is always a recollection of the experience. We are perennially recollecting the instant that has just happened, just passed. We recollect, recollect, recollect.  

If our entire experience of the world is recollection, then it's not so outlandish to conclude that a sorcerer can be in two places at once. This is not the case from the point of view of his own perception, because in order to experience the world, a sorcerer, like every other man, has to recollect the act he has just performed, the event he has just witnessed, the experience he has just lived. In his awareness there is only a single recollection. The sorcerer, however, recollects two separate single instants, because the glue of the description of time is no longer binding him. We're always one jump behind.  

Does the double have corporealness? Certainly. Solidity, corporealness are memories. Therefore, like everything else we feel about the world, they are memories we accumulate, memories of the description.  

No one develops a double. That's only a way of talking about it. All of us luminous beings have a double. All of us! A warrior learns to be aware of it, that's all. There are seemingly insurmountable barriers protecting that awareness. But that's expected; those barriers are what makes arriving at that awareness such a unique challenge. You are afraid of it because you're thinking that the double is what the word says. A double, or another you. I chose those words in order to describe it. The double is oneself and cannot be faced in any other way.  

The double is not a matter of personal choice. Neither is it a matter of personal choice who is selected to learn the sorcerers' knowledge that leads to that awareness. Have you ever asked yourself, why you in particular? I don't mean that you should ask it as a question that begs an answer, but in the sense of a warrior's pondering on his great fortune, the fortune of having found a challenge.  

To make it into an ordinary question is the device of a conceited ordinary man who wants to be either admired or pitied for it. I have no interest in that kind of question, because there is no way of answering it. The decision of picking you was a design of power; no one can discern the designs of power. Now that you've been selected, there is nothing that you can do to stop the fulfillment of that design.  

A warrior is in the hands of power and his only freedom is to choose an impeccable life.  

You're in a terrible spot. It's too late for you to retreat but too soon to act. All you can do is witness. For you there is only witnessing acts of power and listening to tales, tales of power.  The double is one of those tales. You know that, and that's why your reason is so taken by it. You are beating your head against a wall if you pretend to understand. All that I can say about it, by way of explanation, is that the double, although it is arrived at through dreaming , is as real as it can be. It is the self. It is the awareness of our state as luminous beings. It can do anything, and yet it chooses to be unobtrusive and gentle.  

I'm going to tell you about the dreamer and the dreamed. The double begins in dreaming . The double is a dream. I am referring to the first emergence of the awareness that we are luminous beings. Each one of us is different, and thus the details of our struggles are different.  

The steps that we follow to arrive at the double are the same, though. Especially the beginning steps, which are muddled and uncertain. A dream in which one is watching oneself asleep is the time of the double. Rather than wasting power in wondering and asking questions, one should use the opportunity to act. When you have the chance you should be prepared.  

A warrior never lets his guard down. What matters is what can you use as a shield? A warrior must use everything available to him to close his mortal gap once it opens. So, it's of no importance that you really don't like to be suspicious or ask questions. That's your only shield now.  

There is no flaw it the warrior's way. Question without fear, without suspicion and without draining yourself. Assemble what you learn, without presumptuousness and without piousness.  

The self dreams the double. Once it has learned to dream the double, the self arrives at this weird crossroad and a moment comes when one realizes that it is the double who dreams the self. Your double is dreaming you. No one knows how it happens. We only know that it does happen. That's the mystery of us as luminous beings. You can awaken in either one.  

Stopping the internal dialogue is, however, the key to the sorcerers' world. The rest of the activities are only props; all they do is accelerate the effect of stopping the internal dialogue. There are two major activities or techniques used to accelerate the stopping of the internal dialogue: erasing personal history and dreaming.  

The secret of all this is one's attention. All of this exists only because of our attention. This very rock where we're sitting is a rock because we have been forced to give our attention to it as a rock.  

Erasing personal history and dreaming should only be a help. What any apprentice needs to buffer him is temperance and strength. That's why a teacher introduces the warrior's way, or living like a warrior. This is the glue that joins together everything in a sorcerer's world. Bit by bit a teacher must forge and develop it. Without the sturdiness and levelheadedness of the warrior's way there is no possibility of withstanding the path of knowledge.  

I've taught you the three techniques that help dreaming : disrupting the routines of life, the gait of power, and not-doing . Disrupting routines, the gait of power, and not-doing are avenues for learning new ways of perceiving the world, and they give a warrior an inkling of incredible possibilities of action. The knowledge of a separate and pragmatic world of dreaming is made possible through the use of those three techniques.  

Dreaming is a practical aid devised by sorcerers. They were not fools; they knew what they were doing and sought the usefulness of the nagual by training their tonal to let go for a moment, so to speak, and then grab again. This statement may not make sense to you. But that's what you're doing: training yourself to let go without losing your marbles.  

Dreaming, of course, is the crown of the sorcerers' efforts, the ultimate use of the nagual.  

We're at the end of our review. All in all, then, you have been being led into the nagual . But here we have a strange question. What is being led into the nagual ? Not reason . Reason is meaningless there. Reason craps out in an instant when it is out of its safe narrow bounds. Your tonal ? No, the tonal and the nagual are the two inherent parts of ourselves. They cannot be led into each other. Your perception!  

Everything has a particular mold. Plants have molds, animals have molds, worms have molds. Sorcerers have the avenue of their dreaming to lead them to the mold. The mold of men is definitely an entity, an entity which can be seen by some of us at certain times when we are imbued with power, and by all of us for sure at the moment of our death. The mold is the source, the origin of man, since, without the mold to group together the force of life, there is no way for that force to assemble itself into the shape of man.  

The only thing that makes you think you are yourself is the form. Once it leaves, you are nothing. A warrior without form begins to see an eye. The formless warrior uses that eye to start dreaming . If you don't have a form, you don't have to go to sleep to do dreaming . The eye in front of you pulls you every time you want to go.  

Everything has to be sifted through our human form. When we have no form, then nothing has form and yet everything is present.  

The art of the dreamer is to hold the image of his dream. Our art as ordinary people is that we know how to hold the image of what we are looking at. We just do it; that is, our bodies do it. In dreaming we have to do the same thing, except that in dreaming we have to learn how to do it. We have to struggle not to look but merely to glance and yet hold the image.  

With our attention we can hold the images of a dream in the same way we hold the images of the world. The art of the dreamer is the art of attention.  

Our first ring of power is engaged very early in our lives and we live under the impression that that is all there is to us. Our second ring of power , the attention of the nagual, remains hidden for the immense majority of us, and only at the moment of our death is it revealed to us. There is a pathway to reach it, however, which is available to every one of us, but which only sorcerers take, and that pathway is through dreaming . Dreaming is in essence the transformation of ordinary dreams into affairs involving volition. Dreamers, by engaging their attention of the nagual and focusing it on the items and events of their ordinary dreams, change those dreams into dreaming.  

There are no procedures to arrive at the attention of the nagual , only pointers. Finding your hands in your dreams is the first pointer; then the exercise of paying attention is elongated to finding objects, looking for specific features, such as buildings, streets and so on. From there the jump is to dream about specific places at specific times of the day. The final stage is drawing the attention of the nagual to focus on the total self.  

The attention under the table is the key to everything sorcerers do. In order to reach that attention I have taught you dreaming.  

Another way to learn how to do dreaming is by learning gazing. If you gaze at a pile of leaves for hours your thoughts get quiet. Without thoughts the attention of the tonal wanes and suddenly your second attention hooks onto the leaves and the leaves become something else. The moment when the second attention hooks onto something is called stopping the world.  

The difficulty in gazing is to learn to quiet down the thoughts. Once you can stop the world you are a gazer. And the only way of stopping the world is by trying. Combine gazing at dry leaves and looking for our hands in dreaming . Once you have trapped your second attention with dry leaves, you do gazing and dreaming to enlarge it. And that's all there is to gazing. All we need to do in order to trap our second attention is to try and try.  Once dreamers know how to stop the world by gazing at leaves, they can gaze at other things; and finally when the dreamers lose their form altogether, they can gaze at anything.  

First after leaves, gaze at small plants. Small plants are very dangerous. Their power is concentrated; they have a very intense light and they feel when dreamers are gazing at them; they immediately move their light and shoot it at the gazer. Dreamers have to choose one kind of plant to gaze at.  

Next gaze at trees. Dreamers also have a particular kind of tree to gaze at. Next gaze at moving, living creatures. Small insects are by far the best subject. Their mobility makes them innocuous to the gazer, the opposite of plants which draw their light directly from the earth.  

The next step is to gaze at rocks. Rocks are very old and powerful and have a specific light which is rather greenish in contrast with the white light of plants and the yellowish light of mobile, living beings. Rocks do not open up easily to gazers, but it is worthwhile for gazers to persist because rocks have special secrets concealed in their core, secrets that can aid sorcerers in their dreaming.  

Dreamers can gaze in order to do dreaming and then they can look for their dreams in their gazing. For example you can gaze at the shadows of rocks and then, in your dreaming , you might find out that those shadows have light. You can then, while gazing, look for the light in the shadows until you find it. Gazing and dreaming go together. 

One of the most important goals of sorcery is to reach the luminous cocoon; a goal which is fulfilled through the sophisticated use of dreaming and through a rigorous, systematic exertion called not-doing. I've defined not-doing as an unfamiliar act which engages our total being by forcing it to become conscious of its luminous segment.  

The compulsion to possess and hold on to things is not unique. Everyone who wants to follow the warrior's path has to rid himself of this fixation in order not to focus our dreaming body on the weak face of the second attention.  

The dreaming body, sometimes called the "double" or the "Other," because it is a perfect replica of the dreamer 's body, is inherently the energy of a luminous being, a whitish, phantomlike emanation, which is projected by the fixation of the second attention into a three-dimensional image of the body.  

The dreaming body is as real as anything we deal with in the world. The second attention is unavoidably drawn to focus on our total being as a field of energy, and transforms that energy into anything suitable. The easiest thing is of course the image of the physical body, with which we are already thoroughly familiar from our daily lives and the use of our first attention. What channels the energy of our total being to produce anything that might be within the boundaries of possibility is known as will.  

If you have the same vision in dreaming three times, pay extraordinary attention to it. When a dreamer dreams that he sees himself asleep he must avoid sudden jolts or surprises, and take everything with a grain of salt. The dreamer has to get involved in dispassionate experimentations. Rather than examining his sleeping body, the dreamer walks out of the room.  

In dreaming what matters is volition, the corporeality of the body has no significance. It is simply a memory that slows down the dreamer . If you do not stare at things but only glance at them, just as you do in the daily world, you can arrange your perception. That is, by taking your dreaming for granted, you then can use the perceptual biases of your everyday life.  

In the final analysis every dreamer is different. There are, however, general states.  

Restful vigil is the preliminary state, a state in which the senses become dormant and yet one is aware.  

The second state is dynamic vigil. In this state one is left looking at a scene, a tableau of sorts, which is static. One sees a three-dimensional picture, a frozen bit of something--a landscape, a street, a house, a person, a face, anything.  

The third state is passive witnessing. In it the dreamer is no longer viewing a frozen bit of the world but is observing, eye-witnessing, an event as it occurs. It is as if the primacy of the visual and auditory senses makes this state of dreaming mainly an affair of the eyes and ears.  

The fourth state is the one in which you are drawn to act. In it one is compelled to enterprise, to take steps, to make the most of one's time. This state is called dynamic initiative.  

Dreaming begins as a unique state of awareness arrived at by focusing the residue of consciousness, which one still has when asleep, on the elements, or the features, of one's dreams.  

The residue of consciousness, called the second attention, is brought into action, or is harnessed, through exercises of not-doing . The essential aid to dreaming is a state of mental quietness, called "stopping the internal dialogue," or the "not-doing of talking to oneself." To teach you how to master it, I've made you walk for miles with your eyes held fixed and out of focus at a level just above the horizon so as to emphasize the peripheral view. This method is effective on two counts. It allows you to stop your internal dialogue, and it trains your attention. By forcing you to concentrate on the peripheral view, I reinforced your capacity to concentrate for long periods of time on one single activity.  

The best way to enter into dreaming is to concentrate on the area just at the tip of the sternum, at the top of the belly. The attention needed for dreaming stems from that area. The energy needed in order to move and to seek in dreaming stems from the area an inch or two below the belly button. That energy is the will , or the power to select, to assemble. In a woman both the attention and the energy for dreaming originate from the womb.  

Anything may suffice as a not-doing to help dreaming , providing that it forces the attention to remain fixed. The attention one needs in the beginning of dreaming has to be forcibly made to stay on any given item in a dream. Only through immobilizing our attention can one turn an ordinary dream into dreaming.  

In dreaming one has to use the same mechanisms of attention as in everyday life. Our first attention has been taught to focus on the items of the world with great force in order to turn the amorphous and chaotic realm of perception into the orderly world of awareness.  

The second attention serves the function of a beckoner, a caller of chances. The more it is exercised, the greater the possibility of getting the desired result. But that is also the function of attention in general, a function so taken for granted in our daily life that it has become unnoticeable; if we encounter a fortuitous occurrence we talk about it in terms of accident or coincidence, rather than in terms of our attention having beckoned the event. 

The only thing that really counts in making the shift into the dreaming body is anchoring the second attention. Attention is what makes the world. What is important is to store attention in dreaming.  

The first attention, the attention that makes the world, can never be completely overcome; it can only be turned off for a moment and replaced with the second attention, providing that the body had stored enough of it. Dreaming is naturally a way of storing the second attention. In order to shift into your dreaming body when awake you have to practice dreaming until it comes out your ears.  

I have given you three tasks to train your second attention. First, to find your hands in dreaming . Next, to choose a locale, focus your attention on it, and then do daytime dreaming and find out if you can really go there. I've suggested that you place someone you know at the site in order to do two things: first to check subtle changes that might indicate that you were there in dreaming , and second, to isolate unobtrusive detail, which would be precisely what your second attention would zero in on.  

The most serious problem the dreamer has in this respect is the unbending fixation of the second attention on detail that would be thoroughly undetected by the attention of everyday life, creating in this manner a nearly insurmountable obstacle to validation.  

What one seeks in dreaming is not what one would pay attention to in everyday life.  One strives to immobilize the second attention only in the learning period. After that, one has to fight the almost invincible pull of the second attention and give only cursory glances at everything. In dreaming one has to be satisfied with the briefest possible views of everything. As soon as one focuses on anything, one loses control.  

The last generalized task I gave you to train your second attention was to get out of your body. This task begins with a dream in which you find yourself looking at yourself asleep.  

To elucidate the control of the second attention, I've presented the idea of will . Will can be described as the maximum control of the luminosity of the body as a field of energy; or it can be described as a level of proficiency, as a state of being that comes abruptly into the daily life of a warrior at any given time. It is experienced as a force that radiates out of the middle part of the body following a moment of the most absolute silence, or a moment of sheer terror, or profound sadness. Those things afford the warrior the concentration needed to use the luminosity of the body and turn it into silence.  

For a human being sadness is as powerful as terror. Both can bring the moment of silence. Or the silence comes of itself, because the warrior tries for it throughout his life. It is a moment of blackness, a moment still more silent than the moment of shutting off the internal dialogue. That blackness, that silence, gives rise to the intent to direct the second attention, to command it, to make it do things. This is why it's called will . The intent and the effect are will ; they are tied together.  

We don't feel our will because we think that it should be something we know for sure that we are doing or feeling, like getting angry, for instance. Will is very quiet, unnoticeable. Will belongs to the other self. We are in our other selves when we do dreaming.  

Will is such a complete control of the second attention that it is called the other self.  

Stalkers deal with people, with the world of ordinary affairs. Stalkers are the practitioners of controlled folly as the dreamers are the practitioners of dreaming . Controlled folly is the basis for stalking , as dreams are the basis for dreaming . Generally speaking, a warrior's greatest accomplishment in the second attention is dreaming , and in the first attention his greatest accomplishment is stalking.  

In the absence of self-importance, a warrior's only way of dealing with the social milieu is in terms of controlled folly.  

The second attention belongs to the luminous body, as the first attention belongs to the physical body.  

Dreaming is in fact a rational state. In dreaming , the right side, the rational awareness, is wrapped up inside the left side awareness in order to give the dreamer a sense of sobriety and rationality; but the influence of rationality has to be minimal and used only as an inhibiting mechanism to protect the dreamer from excesses and bizarre undertakings.  

Our first attention is hooked to the emanations of the earth, while our second attention is hooked to the emanations of the universe. A dreamer by definition is outside the boundaries of the concerns of everyday life.  

The dreamers ' power to focus on their second attention makes them into living slingshots. The stronger and the more impeccable the dreamers are, the farther they can project their second attention into the unknown and the longer their dreaming projection will last.  

Dreaming is no illusion. It's a step toward the control of the second attention; in other words, you are learning the perceptual bias of that other realm.  

A recapitulation is the forte of stalkers as the dreaming body is the forte of dreamers . It consists of recollecting one's life down to the most insignificant detail.  

The first stage is a brief recounting of all the incidents in our lives that in an obvious manner stand out for examination.  

The second stage is a more detailed recollection, which starts systematically at a point that could be the moment prior to the stalker sitting, and theoretically could extend to the moment of birth.  

A perfect recapitulation can change a warrior as much, if not more, than the total control of the dreaming body . In this respect, dreaming and stalking lead to the same end, the entering into the third attention. It is important for a warrior, however, to know and practice both.  

What the new seers saw in the glow of awareness resulted in the sequence in which they arranged the old seers' truths about awareness. This is known as the mastery of awareness. From that, they developed the three sets of techniques. The first is the mastery of stalking , the second is the mastery of intent , and the third is the mastery of dreaming . I taught you these three sets from the very first day we met.  

The new seers deemed it imperative to see the Indescribable Force 's emanations in order to find a more suitable way to move the assemblage point. As they tried to see the emanations they were faced with a very serious problem. They found out that there is no way to see them without running a mortal risk, and yet they had to see them. That was the time when they used the old seers' technique of dreaming as a shield to protect themselves from the deadly blow of the Indescribable Force 's emanations. And in doing so, they realized that dreaming was in itself the most effective way to move the assemblage point.  

One of the strictest commands of the new seers was that warriors have to learn dreaming while they are in their normal state of awareness. Following that command, I began teaching you dreaming almost from the first day we met.  

Dreaming has to be taught in normal awareness because dreaming is so dangerous and dreamers so vulnerable. It is dangerous became it has inconceivable power; it makes dreamers vulnerable because it leaves them at the mercy of the incomprehensible force of alignment.  

The new seers realized that in our normal state of awareness, we have countless defenses that can safeguard us against the force of unused emanations that suddenly become aligned in dreaming.  

Dreaming, like stalking, began with a simple observation. The old seers became aware that in dreams the assemblage point shifts slightly to the left side in a most natural manner. That point indeed relaxes when man sleeps and all kinds of unused emanations begin to glow.  

The old seers became immediately intrigued with that observation and began to work with that natural shift until they were able to control it. They called that control dreaming, or the art of handling the dreaming body.  

There is hardly a way of describing the immensity of their knowledge about dreaming. Very little of it, however, was of any use to the new seers. So when the time of reconstruction came, the new seers took for themselves only the bare essentials of dreaming to aid them in seeing the Indescribable Force 's emanations and to help them move their assemblage points.  

Seers, old and new, understand dreaming as being the control of the natural shift that the assemblage point undergoes in sleep. To control that shift does not mean in any way to direct it, but to keep the assemblage point fixed at the position where it naturally moves in sleep, a most difficult maneuver that took the old seers' enormous effort and concentration to accomplish.  

Dreamers have to strike a very subtle balance, for dreams cannot be interfered with, nor can they be commanded by the conscious effort of the dreamer , and yet the shift of the assemblage point must obey the dreamer 's command--a contradiction that cannot be rationalized but must be resolved in practice.  

After observing dreamers while they slept, the old seers hit upon the solution of letting dreams follow their natural course. They have seen that in some dreams, the assemblage point of the dreamer would drift considerably deeper into the left side than in other dreams. This observation posed to them the question of whether the content of the dream makes the assemblage point move, or the movement of the assemblage point by itself produces the content of the dream by activating unused emanations.  

They soon realized that the shifting of the assemblage point into the left side is what produces dreams. The farther the movement, the more vivid and bizarre the dream.  

Inevitably, they attempted to command their dreams, aiming to make their assemblage points move deeply into the left side. Upon trying it, they discovered that when dreams are consciously or semiconsciously manipulated, the assemblage point immediately returns to its usual place. Since what they wanted was for that point to move, they reached the unavoidable conclusion that interfering with dreams was interfering with the natural shift of the assemblage point.  

From there the old seers went on to develop their astounding knowledge on the subject--a knowledge which had a tremendous bearing on what the new seers aspired to do with dreaming, but was of little use to them in its original form.  

Thus far you have understood dreaming as being the control of dreams, and every one of the exercised I have given you to perform, such as finding your hands in your dreams, was not, although it might seem to be, aimed at teaching you to command your dreams. Those exercises were designed to keep your assemblage point fixed at the place where it had moved in your sleep. It is here that the dreamers have to strike a subtle balance. All they can direct is the fixation of their assemblage points. Seers are like fishermen equipped with a line that casts itself wherever it may; the only thing they can do is keep the line anchored at the place where it sinks.  

Wherever the assemblage point moves in dreams is called the dreaming position. The old seers became so expert at keeping their dreaming position that they were even able to wake up while their assemblage points were anchored there.  

The old seers called that state the dreaming body , because they controlled it to the extreme of creating a temporary new body every time they woke up at a new dreaming position. I have to make it clear to you that dreaming has a terrible drawback. It belongs to the old seers. It's tainted with their mood. I've been very careful in guiding you through it, but still there is no way to make sure.  

I'm warning you about the pitfalls of dreaming, which are truly stupendous. In dreaming, there is really no way of directing the movement of the assemblage point; the only thing that dictates that shift is the inner strength or weakness of dreamers. Right there we have the first pitfall.  

At first the new seers were hesitant to use dreaming. It was their belief that dreaming , instead of fortifying, made warriors weak, compulsive, capricious. The old seers were all like that. In order to offset the nefarious effect of dreaming, since they had no other option but to use it, the new seers developed a complex and rich system of behavior called the warrior's way, or the warrior's path.  

The name dreaming body means a feeling, a surge of energy that is transported by the movement of the assemblage point to any place in this world, or to any place in the seven worlds available to man.  

The procedure for getting to the dreaming body starts with an initial act which by the fact of being sustained breeds unbending intent . Unbending intent leads to internal silence, and internal silence to the inner strength needed to make the assemblage point shift in dreams to suitable positions.  

This sequence is the groundwork. The development of control comes after the groundwork has been completed; it consists of systematically maintaining the dreaming position by doggedly holding on to the vision of the dream. Steady practice results in a great facility to hold new dreaming positions with new dreams, not so much because one gains deliberate control with practice, but because every time this control is exercised the inner strength gets fortified. Fortified inner strength in turn makes the assemblage point shift into dreaming positions which are more and more suitable to fostering sobriety; in other words, dreams by themselves become more and more manageable, even orderly.  

The development of dreamers is indirect. That's why the new seers believed we can do dreaming by ourselves, alone. Since dreaming uses a natural, built-in shift of the assemblage point, we should need no one to help us.  

What we badly need is sobriety, and no one can give it to us or help us get it except ourselves. Without it, the shift of the assemblage point is chaotic, as our ordinary dreams are chaotic. So, all in all, the procedure to get to the dreaming body is impeccability in our daily life.  

Once sobriety is acquired and the dreaming positions become increasingly stronger, the next step is to wake up at any dreaming position . That maneuver, although made to sound simple, is really a very complex affair--so complex that it requires not only sobriety but all the attributes of warriorship as well, especially intent.  

Intent, being the most sophisticated control of the force of alignment, is what maintains, through the dreamer's sobriety, the alignment of whatever emanations have been lit up by the movement of the assemblage point.  

There is one more formidable pitfall of dreaming: the very strength of the dreaming body. For example, it is very easy for the dreaming body to gaze at the Indescribable Force's emanations uninterruptedly for long periods of time, but it is also very easy in the end for the dreaming body to be totally consumed by them. Seers who gazed at the Indescribable Force's emanations without their dreaming bodies died, and those who gazed at them with their dreaming bodies burned with the fire from within. The new seers solved the problem by seeing in teams. While one seer gazed at the emanations, others stood by ready to end the seeing.  

It's perfectly possible for a group of seers to activate the same unused emanations. And in this case also, there are no known steps, it just happens; there is no technique to follow.  

In dreaming together, something in us takes the lead and suddenly we find ourselves sharing the same view with other dreamers. What happens is that our human condition makes us focus the glow of awareness automatically on the same emanations that other human beings are using; we adjust the position of our assemblage points to fit the others around us. We do that on the right side, in our ordinary perception, and we also do it on the left side, while dreaming together.  

Alignment is a unique force because it either helps the assemblage point shift, or it keeps it glued to its customary position. The aspect of alignment that keeps the point stationary is will; and the aspect that makes it shift is intent. One of the most haunting mysteries is how will, the impersonal force of alignment, changes into intent, the personalized force, which is at the service of each individual.  

The strangest part of this mystery is that the change is so easy to accomplish. But what is not so easy is to convince ourselves that it is possible. There, right there, is our safety catch. We have to be convinced. And none of us wants to be.  

It is possible for you to intend your assemblage point to shift deeper into your left side, to a dreaming position. Warriors should never attempt seeing unless they are aided by dreaming.  

To move the assemblage point away from its natural setting and to keep it fixed at a new location is to be asleep; with practice, seers learn to be asleep and yet behave as if nothing is happening to them.  

Technically, as soon as the assemblage point shifts, we are asleep. You are absolutely asleep without having to be stretched out.  

During normal sleep, the shift of the assemblage point runs along either edge of man's band. Such shifts are always coupled with slumber. Shifts that are induced by practice occur along the midsection of man's band and are not coupled with slumber, yet a dreamer is asleep.  

The new seers maintain their assemblage points along the midsection of man's band. If the shift is a shallow one, like the shift into heightened awareness, the dreamer is almost like anyone else in the street, except for a slight vulnerability to emotions, such as fear and doubt. But at a certain degree of depth, the dreamer who is shifting along the midsection becomes a blob of light. A blob of light is the dreaming body of the new seers. Such an impersonal dreaming body is conducive to understanding and examination, which are the basis of all that the new seers do.  

The position where one sees the mold of man is very close to that where the dreaming body and the barrier of perception appear. That is the reason the new seers recommend that the mold of man be seen and understood.  

The dreaming body and the barrier of perception are positions of the assemblage point, and that knowledge is as vital to seers as knowing how to read and write is to modern man. Both are accomplishments attained after years of practice.  

The dreaming body is known by different names. The name I like the best is, the Other. We can be in two places at once, we can experience a sort of perceptual dualism. There is no end to the mystery of man and to the mystery of the world.  

The only thing that soothes those who journey into the unknown, is oblivion. What a relief to be in the ordinary world!  

For warriors, there are two positions of the assemblage point where there are no more doubts. In one you have no more doubts because you know everything. In the other, which is normal awareness, you have no doubts because you don't know anything.  

No rational assumptions should interfere with the actions of a seer. Rationality is a condition of alignment, merely the result of the position of the assemblage point. You have to understand this when you are in a state of great vulnerability. To understand it when your assemblage point has reached the position where there are no doubts is useless, because realizations of that nature are commonplace in that position. It is equally useless to understand it in a state of normal awareness; in that state, such realizations are emotional outbursts that are valid only for as long as the emotion lasts.  

You can travel by waking up at a distant dreaming position. By moving your assemblage point from normal awareness all the way to the position where the dreaming body appears, your dreaming body can actually fly over incredible distances in the blink of an eyelid. The mystery is in the dreaming position. If it is strong enough to pull you, you can go to the ends of this world or beyond it, just as the old seers did. They disappeared from this world because they woke up at a dreaming position beyond the limits of the known.  

There is no way of knowing how it is done. Strong emotion or unbending intent, or great interest serves as a guide; then the assemblage point gets powerfully fixed at the dreaming position, long enough to drag there all the emanations that are inside the cocoon.  

The fact that such a maneuver is possible is something of the most singular importance to seers. It means escaping the Indescribable Force by moving their assemblage points to a particular dreaming position called total freedom.

To be continued...

TMMK