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From these observations, the rest of the wisdom of the naguals is derived. They teach that
dreams are a doorway to power because, ultimately, what sustains us is the dark energy, to
which we go periodically to be renewed. Consequently, they directed all their power towards
perfecting the art of becoming conscious while in the state of dreaming. They called that
special kind of attention
'dreaming', and they used it to deliberately explore the dark energy and come into contact with
the source of the universe. In that way, the initial observation of the wise Toltecs became a
practical knowledge.
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One of Carlos' more frequent statements was that the opinions that we form about everything
transform our world into something more and more predictable, until the possibility of
visiting other worlds becomes a fairy tale.
"For modern man", he said on one occasion, "absolutely everything that exists is put into
definite categories. We are labeling machines. We classify the world, and the world classifies
us. If once you killed a dog, you are the dog-killer for the rest of your life, even if you never
touched another one. And those classifications are inherited!"
He mentioned a series of funny and expressive last names that were related to the
characteristics of a particular person, but then the names were bequeathed as an imposition on
their descendants. It went to show that, energetically, people are marked.
He asserted that the greatest example of that absurd propensity to classify us is what believers
call 'original sin', the sin of Adam and Eve, which-makes us all forever sinful and also, makes
us all behave as sinners.
"We have become perceptual jailers of each other. The chain of human thought is powerful.
"Even our deepest feelings are classified and ordered so that nothing can escape. One example
is the way we alienate ourselves from the actual time we are living in, in order to mindlessly
go around repeating stereotypes. We have a collection of preset days: Mother's Day, All
Saints' Day, Valentine Day, birthday anniversaries and weddings... They are like stakes we tie
our life to so we won't get lost, and thus we walk the Earth, revolving around our descriptions
like beasts tied by the neck."
He told us about when he and Don Juan once traveled to a small town in the north of Mexico,
and sat down to rest on a bench in the church square. Suddenly, ten or twelve youths came
carrying a Judas figure made of cloth and canes. It was dressed in a blanket and sandals, like
an Indian. They installed it in the town square, and that night there was a public burning.
Everybody drank, and everybody took turns insulting the puppet as part of the ritual.
"With customs like that, people keep Judas alive. They remember him, they sustain him, they
keep him in a true hell with their memories. And, after burning him, next year they resuscitate
him, and kill him again. The rigidity of human behavior is revealed in those routines."
A person in the audience requested permission to speak and asked him whether his statement
regarding how, by remembering him, the town keeps Judas alive, was meant literally or was
just a metaphor.
He answered:
"Sorcerers affirm that as long as there is memory, there is awareness of being, since the
current of thought is an injection of life. True death is oblivion.
"The idea that time moves in a straight line from past to future is completely primitive,
something that goes against the experience of sorcerers and even of modern science. Due to
that limited interpretation, most of humanity is kept prisoner in a tunnel of time, where their
destiny becomes an infinite repetition of the same.
"The reality of our condition is that we are energetically blocked, due to what sorcerers call
'the collective fixation of the assemblage point.'
"A remarkable consequence of that fixation is the way we specialize. When preparing for a
profession, for example, instead of widening our scope, we usually end up becoming
sedentary, boring individuals, without creativity and without motivation. In a few years, our
life becomes tedious, but, far from taking responsibility and changing ourselves, we blame
our circumstances.
"One of the most serious habits that shape our inventory, is the habit of telling others
everything we do, or stop doing. It is an important part of socialization. We want to generate
an exclusive image of ourselves, but the image ends up molding itself to other people's
expectations, and we become imitations of what we could be. Once they consider us as facts,
we have to follow certain behavioral patterns, even when we are sick of them or even if we
don't believe in them, because any intent to change puts us up against the wall.
"Most people feel empty when they don't have love or friends, because they have built their
life on a superficial base of relationships and they don't have any time left to ponder their
destiny. Unfortunately, friendship is generally based on an exchange of intimacies, while a
basic premise of mundane relationships is that everything we say some day will be used
against us. It's a sad fact that the ones we care about the most, are also our worst headaches!
"Sorcerers maintain that talking about ourselves makes us accessible and weak, while learning
how to be quiet fills us with power. A principle of the path of knowledge is to turn your own
life into something so unpredictable that not even you yourself knows what's going to happen.
"The only way of leaving the collective inventory is moving away from those who know us
well. After a time, mental walls that trap us become a little softer and they start to give in.
That's when genuine opportunities for change appear and we can take control of our lives.
"If we were able to transcend interpretation and face pure perception without prejudice, the
impression of a world of objects would vanish. In its place, we would witness energy as it
flows in the universe. Under such conditions, the chain of other people's thoughts would no
longer have the smallest effect on us and we would not feel obliged to be or do anything.
Then our senses would have no limits. That's seeing."
He defined it further:
"The sorcerer's objective is to break the fixation of social interpretations, and to see energy
directly. To see is a total perceptual experience."
"Seeing energy as it flows is an imperious need on the path of knowledge. Ultimately, all the
effort of sorcerers is guided to that end. It is not enough for a warrior to know that the
universe is energy; he has to verify it for himself." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]