The teachings of Don Juan Matus

Carlos Castanedas's books where the first that came to me at the onset of my spiritual awakening
when I was still a teenager in the 70's.
They completely changed my way of perceiving this world and pulled the trigger to clearly
show me where my path was and get me moving on it.
Between then and now nearly 40 years have gone by .
There has'nt been a single day ever after where I have'nt opened myself to the
realm of Spirit .
The message was clear : there is more to this world that what our 5 senses perceive
and I wanted to know all about it .
This thread is a tribute to what set me on the road and in a way helped me to found my way back to
you ... my soul family .
I recently found a site dedicated to Don Juan Matus 's teachings with key points on
all of Castaneda's books . I'll post them here for those that are interested .
As I was going through them I realized my present understanding is so much different than the one
I had then . This is what is fascinating about spiritual books that they adapt to our consciousness level
and that going through them over time is like discovering them anew and even completely different.

Castaneda's books narrate his experiences under the tutelage of a Yaqui shaman named Don Juan Matus
whom he met in 1960.He claimed to have inherited from don Juan the position of nagual, or leader of a party of seers.
He also used the term "nagual" to signify that part of perception which is in the realm of the unknown yet still reachable
by man, implying that, for his party of seers, don Juan was a connection in some way to that unknown.
Castaneda often referred to this unknown realm as nonordinary reality, which indicated that this realm was indeed a reality,
but radically different from the ordinary reality experienced by human beings.

Love Always
mudra

" For a sorcerer, reality, or the world we all know, is only a description that has been pounded into you from the moment you were born.
The reality of our day-to-day life, then, consists of an endless flow of perceptual interpretations which we have learned to make in common.

I am teaching you how to see as opposed to merely looking, and stopping the world is the first step to seeing.
The sorcerer's description of the world is perceivable. But our insistence on holding on to our standard version of reality renders us almost deaf and blind to it.
When you begin this teaching, there is another reality, that is to say, there is a sorcery description of the world, which you do not know. As a sorcerer and a teacher, I am teaching you that description. What I am doing with you consists, therefore, in setting up that unknown reality by unfolding its description, adding increasingly more complex parts as you go along.
In order to arrive at seeing one first has to stop the world. Stopping the world is indeed an appropriate rendition of certain states of awareness in which the reality of everyday life is altered because the flow of interpretation, which ordinarily runs uninterruptedly, has been stopped by a set of circumstances alien to that flow. In this case the set of circumstances alien to our normal flow of interpretations is the sorcery description of the world. The precondition for stopping the world is that one has to be convinced; in other words, one has to learn the new description in a total sense, for the purpose of pitting it against the old one, and in that way break the dogmatic certainty, which we all share, that the validity of our perceptions, or our reality of the world, is not to be questioned.
After stopping the world the next step is seeing. By that I mean what could be categorized as responding to the perceptual solicitations of a world outside the description we have learned to call reality."


Love Always
mudra

The Teachings of Don Juan

Link to the full PDF of the book
http://thetoltecpath.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/the_teachings_of_don_juan_a_yaqui_way_of_knowledge.pdf


A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war, wide awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance. Going to knowledge or going to war in any other manner is a mistake, and whoever makes it will live to regret his steps.
When a man has fulfilled those four requisites there are no mistakes for which he will have to account; under such conditions his acts lose the blundering quality of a fool's acts. If such a man fails, or suffers a defeat, he will have lost only a battle, and there will be no pitiful regrets over that.
* * *

A man of knowledge is one who has followed truthfully the hardships of learning, a man who has, without rushing or without faltering, gone as far as he can in unraveling the secrets of power and knowledge. To become a man of knowledge one must challenge and defeat his four natural enemies.
When a man starts to learn, he is never clear about his objectives. His purpose is faulty; his intent is vague. He hopes for rewards that will never materialize for he knows nothing of the hardships of learning.
He slowly begins to learn--bit by bit at first, then in big chunks. And his thoughts soon clash. What he learns is never what he pictured, or imagined, and so he begins to be afraid. Learning is never what one expects. Every step of learning is a new task, and the fear the man is experiencing begins to mount mercilessly, unyieldingly. His purpose becomes a battlefield.
And thus he has stumbled upon the first of his natural enemies: fear! A terrible enemy--treacherous, and difficult to overcome. It remains concealed at every turn of the way, prowling, waiting. And if the man, terrified in its presence, runs away, his enemy will have put an end to his quest and he will never learn. He will never become a man of knowledge. He will perhaps be a bully, or a harmless, scared man; at any rate, he will be a defeated man. His first enemy will have put an end to his cravings.

It is not possible for a man to abandon himself to fear for years, then finally conquer it. If he gives in to fear he will never conquer it, because he will shy away from learning and never try again. But if he tries to learn for years in the midst of his fear, he will eventually conquer it because he will never have really abandoned himself to it.

Therefore he must not run away. He must defy his fear, and in spite of it he must take the next step in learning, and the next, and the next. He must be fully afraid, and yet he must not stop. That is the rule! And a moment will come when his first enemy retreats. The man begins to feel sure of himself. His intent becomes stronger. Learning is no longer a terrifying task.

When this joyful moment comes, the man can say without hesitation that he has defeated his first natural enemy. It happens little by little, and yet the fear is vanquished suddenly and fast. Once a man has vanquished fear, he is free from it for the rest of his life because, instead of fear, he has acquired clarity--a clarity of mind which erases fear. By then a man knows his desires; he knows how to satisfy those desires. He can anticipate the new steps of learning and a sharp clarity surrounds everything. The man feels that nothing is concealed.

And thus he has encountered his second enemy: Clarity! That clarity of mind, which is so hard to obtain, dispels fear, but also blinds. It forces the man never to doubt himself. It gives him the assurance he can do anything he pleases, for he sees clearly into everything. And he is courageous because he is clear, and he stops at nothing because he is clear. But all that is a mistake; it is like something incomplete. If the man yields to this make-believe power, he has succumbed to his second enemy and will be patient when he should rush. And he will fumble with learning until he winds up incapable of learning anything more. His second enemy has just stopped him cold from trying to become a man of knowledge. Instead, the man may turn into a buoyant warrior, or a clown. Yet the clarity for which he has paid so dearly will never change to darkness and fear again. He will be clear as long as he lives, but he will no longer learn, or yearn for, anything.

He must do what he did with fear: he must defy his clarity and use it only to see, and wait patiently and measure carefully before taking new steps; he must think, above all, that his clarity is almost a mistake. And a moment will come when he will understand that his clarity was only a point before his eyes. And thus he will have overcome his second enemy, and will arrive at a position where nothing can harm him anymore. This will not be a mistake. It will not be only a point before his eyes. It will be true power.

He will know at this point that the power he has been pursuing for so long is finally his. He can do with it whatever he pleases. His ally is at his command. His wish is the rule. He sees all that is around him. But he has also come across his third enemy: Power!

Power is the strongest of all enemies. And naturally the easiest thing to do is to give in; after all, the man is truly invincible. He commands; he begins by taking calculated risks, and ends in making rules, because he is a master.
A man at this stage hardly notices his third enemy closing in on him. And suddenly, without knowing, he will certainly have lost the battle. His enemy will have turned him into a cruel, capricious man, but he will never lose his clarity or his power.

A man who is defeated by power dies without really knowing how to handle it. Power is only a burden upon his fate. Such a man has no command over himself, and cannot tell when or how to use his power.

Once one of these enemies overpowers a man there is nothing he can do. It is not possible, for instance, that a man who is defeated by power may see his error and mend his ways. Once a man gives in he is through. If, however, he is temporarily blinded by power, and then refuses it, his battle is still on. That means he is still trying to become a man of knowledge. A man is defeated only when he no longer tries, and abandons himself.

He has to come to realize that the power he has seemingly conquered is in reality never his. He must keep himself in line at all times, handling carefully and faithfully all that he has learned. If he can see that clarity and power, without his control over himself, are worse than mistakes, he will reach a point where everything is held in check. He will know then when and how to use his power. And thus he will have defeated his third enemy.

The man will be, by then, at the end of his journey of learning, and almost without warning he will come upon the last of his enemies: Old age! This enemy is the cruelest of all, the one he won't be able to defeat completely, but only fight away.

This is the time when a man has no more fears, no more impatient clarity of mind--a time when all his power is in check, but also the time when he has an unyielding desire to rest. If he gives in totally to his desire to lie down and forget, if he soothes himself in tiredness, he will have lost his last round, and his enemy will cut him down into a feeble old creature. His desire to retreat will overrule all his clarity, his power, and his knowledge.
But if the man sloughs off his tiredness, and lives his fate though, he can then be called a man of knowledge, if only for the brief moment when he succeeds in fighting off his last, invincible enemy. That moment of clarity, power, and knowledge is enough.

Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if you feel you should not follow it, you must not stay with it under any conditions. To have such clarity you must lead a disciplined life. Only then will you know that any path is only a path and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you to do. But your decision to keep on the path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition. I warn you. Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary.

This question is one that only a very old man asks. Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. They are paths going through the bush, or into the bush. In my own life I could say I have traversed long long paths, but I am not anywhere. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn't. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.

Before you embark on any path ask the question: Does this path have a heart? If the answer is no, you will know it, and then you must choose another path. The trouble is nobody asks the question; and when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart, the path is ready to kill him. At that point very few men can stop to deliberate, and leave the path. A path without a heart is never enjoyable. You have to work hard even to take it. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy; it does not make you work at liking it.

I have told you that to choose a path you must be free from fear and ambition. The desire to learn is not ambition. It is our lot as men to want to know.
The path without a heart will turn against men and destroy them. It does not take much to die, and to seek death is to seek nothing.

For me there is only the traveling on the paths that have a heart, on any path that may have a heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge for me is to traverse its full length. And there I travel--looking, looking, breathlessly.

Love Always
mudra

A Separate Reality


Link to the full PDF of the book

Part 1: the preliminaries of Seeing
Part 2: the task of Seeing

http://thetoltecpath.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/a_separate_reality.pdf


You think about yourself too much and that gives you a strange fatigue that makes you shut off the world around you and cling to your arguments.

A light and amenable disposition is needed in order to withstand the impact and the strangeness of the knowledge I am teaching you. Feeling important makes one heavy, clumsy, and vain. To be a man of knowledge one needs to be light and fluid.

One has to reduce to a minimum all that is unnecessary in one's life.

Once you decide something put all your petty fears away. Your decision should vanquish them. I will tell you time and time again, the most effective way to live is as a warrior. Worry and think before you make any decision, but once you make it, be on your way free from worries or thoughts; there will be a million other decisions still awaiting you. That's the warrior's way.

A warrior thinks of his death when things become unclear. The idea of death is the only thing that tempers our spirit.

To be a warrior you have to be crystal clear.

My acts are sincere but they are only the acts of an actor because everything I do is controlled folly. Everything I do in regard to myself and my fellow men is folly, because nothing matters.

Certain things in your life matter to you because they're important; your acts are certainly important to you, but for me, not a single thing is important any longer, neither my acts nor the acts of any of my fellow men. I go on living though, because I have my will . Because I have tempered my will throughout my life until it's neat and wholesome and now it doesn't matter to me that nothing matters. My will controls the folly of my life.

Once a man learns to see he finds himself alone in the world with nothing but folly. Your acts, as well as the acts of your fellow men in general, appear to be important to you because you have learned to think they are important.

We learn to think about everything, and then we train our eyes to look as we think about the things we look at. We look at ourselves already thinking that we are important. And therefore we've got to feel important! But then when a man learns to see , he realizes that he can no longer think about the things he looks at, and if he cannot think about what he looks at everything becomes unimportant. Everything is equal and therefore unimportant.

We need to look with our eyes to laugh. When our eyes see , everything is so equal that nothing is funny. My laughter, as well as everything I do is real but it also is controlled folly because it is useless; it changes nothing and yet I still do it.

One must always choose the path with heart in order to be at one's best, perhaps so one can always laugh.

You don't understand me now because of your habit of thinking as you look and thinking as you think. By "thinking" I mean the constant idea that we have of everything in the world. Seeing dispels that habit and until you learn to see you will not really understand what I mean.

Our lot as men is to learn. I have learned to see and I tell you that nothing really matters. A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting. A man of knowledge chooses a path with heart and follows it; and then he looks and rejoices and laughs; and then he sees and knows. He knows that his life will be over altogether too soon; he knows that he, as well as everybody else, is not going anywhere; he knows, because he sees , that nothing is more important than anything else. In other words, a man of knowledge has no honor, no dignity, no family, no name, no country, but only life to be lived, and under these circumstances his only tie to his fellow men is his controlled folly. Thus a man of knowledge endeavors, and sweats, and puffs, and if one looks at him he is just like any ordinary man, except that the folly of his life is under control. Nothing being more important than anything else, a man of knowledge chooses any act, and acts it out as if it matters to him. His controlled folly makes him say that what he does matters and makes him act as if it did, and yet he knows that it doesn't; so when he fulfills his acts he retreats in peace, and whether his acts were good or bad, or worked or didn't, is in no way part of his concern.

You think about your acts, therefore you have to believe your acts are as important as you think they are, when in reality nothing of what one does is important. Nothing! But then if nothing really matters, as you ask me, how can I go on living? It would be simple to die; that's what you say and believe, because you're thinking about life, just as you're thinking now what seeing would be like. You want me to describe it to you so you can begin to think about it, the way you do with everything else. In the case of seeing , however, thinking is not the issue at all, so I cannot tell you what it is like to see . Now you want me to describe the reasons for my controlled folly and I can only tell you that controlled folly is very much like seeing ; it is something you cannot think about.

Our lot as men is to learn and, as I've said, one goes to knowledge as one goes to war; with fear, with respect, aware that one is going to war, and with absolute confidence in oneself. Put your trust in yourself. There's no emptiness in the life of a man of knowledge, everything is filled to the brim and everything is equal. For me there is no victory, or defeat, or emptiness. Everything is filled to the brim and everything is equal and my struggle is worth my while.

In order to become a man of knowledge one must be a warrior. One must strive without giving up, without a complaint, without flinching, until one sees , only to realize then that nothing matters. You're too concerned with liking people or with being liked yourself. A man of knowledge likes, that's all. He likes whatever or whoever he wants, but he uses his controlled folly to be unconcerned about it.

My controlled folly applies only to myself and to the acts I perform while in the company of my fellow men.

You must talk to the plants you're going to pick before you pick them. In order to see the plants you must talk to them personally, you must get to know them individually; then the plants can tell you anything you care to know about them.

You fail to understand that I am not joking. When a sorcerer attempts to see , he attempts to gain power.

You think everything in the world is simple to understand because everything you do is a routine that is simple to understand.



You have to have an unbending intent in order to become a man of knowledge.

A warrior takes responsibility for his acts; for the most trivial of his acts. He waits patiently, knowing that he is waiting, and knowing what he is waiting for. That is the warrior's way.

What makes us unhappy is to want. Yet if we would learn to cut our wants to nothing, the smallest thing we'd get would be a true gift. To be poor or wanting is only a thought; and so is to hate, or to be hungry, or to be in pain. They are only thoughts for me now, I have accomplished that feat. The power to do that is all we have, mind you, to oppose the forces of our lives; without that power we are dregs, dust in the wind.
It is up to us as single individuals to oppose the forces of our lives. Only a warrior can survive. A warrior knows that he is waiting and what he is waiting for; and while he waits he wants nothing and thus whatever little thing he gets is more than he can take. If he needs to eat he finds a way, because he is not hungry; if something hurts his body he finds a way to stop it, because he is not in pain. To be hungry or to be in pain means that the man has abandoned himself and is no longer a warrior; and the forces of his hunger and pain will destroy him.



The countless paths one traverses in one's life are all equal. Oppressors and oppressed meet at the end, and the only thing that prevails is that life was altogether too short for both.

You must act like a warrior. One learns to act like a warrior by acting, not by talking. A warrior has only his will and his patience and with them he builds anything he wants. You have no more time for retreats or for regrets. You only have time to live like a warrior and work for patience and will .

Will is something very special. It happens mysteriously. There is no real way of telling how one uses it, except that the results of using the will are astounding. Perhaps the first thing that one should do is to know that one can develop the will . A warrior knows that and proceeds to wait for it.

A warrior knows that he is waiting and knows what he is waiting for. It is very difficult, if not impossible, for the average man to know what he is waiting for. A warrior, however, has no problems; he knows that he is waiting for his will .

Will is something very clear and powerful which can direct our acts. Will is something a man uses, for instance, to win a battle which he, by all calculations, should lose. It is not what we call courage.

Courage is something else. Men of courage are dependable men, noble men perennially surrounded by people who flock around them and admire them; yet very few men of courage have will . Usually they are fearless men who are given to performing daring common-sense acts; most of the time a courageous man is also fearsome and feared. Will , on the other hand, has to do with astonishing feats that defy our common sense. You may say that it is a kind of control.

Will is not what one calls "will power." Denying oneself certain things with "will power," is an indulgence and I don't recommend anything of the kind. The indulgence of denying is by far the worst; it forces us to believe we are doing great things, when in effect we are only fixed within ourselves.

Will is a power. And since it is a power it has to be controlled and tuned and that takes time. When I was your age I was as impulsive as you. Yet I have changed. Our will operates in spite of our indulgence. For example your will is already opening your gap, little by little.

There is a gap in us; like the soft spot on the head of a child which closes with age, this gap opens as one develops one's will . It's an opening. It allows a space for the will to shoot out, like an arrow. What a sorcerer calls will is a power within ourselves. It is not a thought, or an object, or a wish. An act of "will power" is not will because such an act needs thinking and wishing. Will is what can make you succeed when your thoughts tell you that you're defeated. Will is a force which is the true link between men and the world.

The world is whatever we perceive, in any manner we may choose to perceive. Perceiving the world entails a process of apprehending whatever presents itself to us. This particular perceiving is done with our senses and with our will . Will is a relation between ourselves and the perceived world.

What the average man calls will is character and strong disposition. What a sorcerer calls will is a force that comes from within and attaches itself to the world out there. One can perceive the world with the senses as well as with the will .

An average man can "grab" the things of the world only with his hands, or his senses, but a sorcerer can grab them also with his will . I cannot really describe how it is done, but you yourself, for instance, cannot describe to me how you hear. It happens that I am also capable of hearing, so we can talk about what we hear, but not about how we hear. A sorcerer uses his will to perceive the world. That perceiving, however, is not like hearing. When we look at the world or when we hear it, we have the impression that it is out there and that it is real. When we perceive the world with our will we know that the world is not as "out there" or as "real" as we think.

Will is a force, a power. Seeing is not a force, but rather a way of getting through things. A sorcerer may have a very strong will and yet he may not see ; which means that only a man of knowledge perceives the world with his senses and with his will and also with his seeing .

Now you know you are waiting for your will . You still don't know what it is, or how it could happen to you. So watch carefully everything you do. The very thing that could help you develop your will is amidst all the little things you do.


Love Always
mudra

Journey to Ixtlan

Link to the full PDF of the book

http://thetoltecpath.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/journey_to_ixtlan.pdf

Part 1: STOPPING THE WORLD
Part 2: JOURNEY TO IXTLAN

There is no need for us to say anything about others. There is no need for you or for me to regard other's actions in our thoughts one way or another. The worst thing we can do is to force people to agree with us. I mean that we shouldn't try to impose our will when people don't behave the way we want them to. The worst thing one can do is to confront human beings bluntly. A warrior proceeds strategically. If one wants to stop our fellow men one must always be outside the circle that presses them. That way one can always direct the pressure.



Fright never injures anyone.


What injures the spirit is having someone always on your back, beating you, telling you what to do and what not to do.

People hardly ever realize that we can cut anything from our lives, any time, just like that. For example, smoking and drinking are nothing. Nothing at all if we want to drop them. Only one thing is indispensable for anything we do; the spirit. One can't do without the spirit.

I have no routines or personal history. One day I found out that they were no longer necessary for me and, like drinking, I dropped them. One must have the desire to drop them and then one must proceed harmoniously to chop them off, little by little. If you have no personal history, no explanations are needed; nobody is angry or disillusioned with your acts. And above all no one pins you down with their thoughts. It is best to erase all personal history because that makes us free from the encumbering thoughts of other people. I have, little by little, created a fog around me and my life. And now nobody knows for sure who I am or what I do. Not even I. How can I know who I am, when I am all this?

Little by little you must create a fog around yourself; you must erase everything around you until nothing can be taken for granted, until nothing is any longer for sure, or real. Your problem now is that you're too real. Your endeavors are too real; your moods are too real. Don't take things so for granted. You must begin to erase yourself.

You've said that you want to learn about plants. Let's put it this way then. If you want to learn about plants, since there is really nothing to say about them, you must, among other things, erase your personal history.

Begin with simple things, such as not revealing what you really do. What's wrong is that once people know you, you are an affair taken for granted and from that moment on you won't be able to break the tie of their thoughts. I personally like the ultimate freedom of being unknown. No one knows me with steadfast certainty, the way people know you, for instance.

From now on you must simply show people whatever you care to show them, but without ever telling exactly how you've done it. You see, we only have two alternatives; we either take everything for sure and real, or we don't. If we follow the first, we end up bored to death with ourselves and with the world. If we follow the second and erase personal history, we create a fog around us, a very exciting and mysterious state in which nobody knows where the rabbit will pop out, not even ourselves.

When nothing is for sure we remain alert, perennially on our toes. It is more exciting not to know which bush the rabbit is hiding behind than to behave as though we know everything.


Love Always
mudra

Journey to Ixtlan

Link to the full PDF of the book

http://thetoltecpath.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/journey_to_ixtlan.pdf

You have to curl your fingers gently as you walk in order to keep your attention on the trail and the surroundings. Your ordinary way of walking is debilitating and you should never carry anything in your hands. If things have to be carried one should use a knapsack or any sort of carrying net or shoulder bag. By forcing the hands into a specific position one is capable of greater stamina and greater awareness.
If you really want to learn, you have to remodel most of your behavior. You take yourself too seriously. You are too damn important in your own mind. That must be changed! You are so goddamn important that you feel justified to be annoyed with everything. You're so damn important that you can afford to leave if things don't go your way. I suppose you think that shows you have character. That's nonsense! You're weak, and conceited! In the course of your life you have not ever finished anything because of that sense of disproportionate importance that you attach to yourself.
Self-importance is another thing that must be dropped, just like personal history. The world around us is very mysterious. It doesn't yield its secrets easily. Now we are concerned with losing self-importance. As long as you feel that you are the most important thing in the world you cannot really appreciate the world around you. You are like a horse with blinders, all you see is yourself apart from everything else.
To help you lose self-importance talk to little plants. It doesn't matter what you say to a plant, what's important is the feeling of liking it, and treating it as an equal.
A man who gathers plants must apologize every time for taking them and must assure them that someday his own body will serve as food for them. So, all in all, the plants and ourselves are even. Neither we nor they are more or less important. From now on talk to the little plants, talk until you lose all sense of importance. Talk to them until you can do it in front of others. You must talk to them in a loud and clear voice if you want them to answer you.
The world around us is a mystery, and men are no better than anything else. If a little plant is generous with us we must thank her, or perhaps she will not let us go.

You have to be aware of the uselessness of your self-importance and of your personal history.
Your death can give you a little warning, it always comes as a chill. Death is our eternal companion, it is always to our left, at an arm's length.
How can anyone feel so important when we know that death is stalking us. The thing to do when you're impatient is to turn to your left and ask advice from your death. An immense amount of pettiness is dropped if your death makes a gesture to you, or if you catch a glimpse of it, or if you just have the feeling that your companion is there watching you.
The issue of our death is never pressed far enough. 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 deaths advice and drop the cursed pettiness that belongs to men that live their lives as if death will never tap them.

Think of your death now. It is at arm's length. It may tap you any moment, so really you have no time for crappy thoughts and moods. None of us have time for that. The only thing that counts is action, acting instead of talking.

Love Always
mudra

Journey to Ixtlan

Link to the full PDF of the book

http://thetoltecpath.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/journey_to_ixtlan.pdf

When a man decides to do something he must go all the way, but he must take responsibility for what he does. No matter what he does, he must know first why he is doing it, and then he must proceed with his actions without having doubts or remorse about them.
Look at me, I have no doubts or remorse. Everything I do is my decision and my responsibility. The simplest thing I do, to take you for a walk in the desert for instance, may very well mean my death. Death is stalking me. Therefore, I have no room for doubts or remorse. If I have to die as a result of taking you for a walk, then I must die.
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 not time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for decisions.
When you get angry you always feel righteous. You have been complaining all your life because you don't assume responsibility for your decisions. To assume the responsibility of one's decisions means that one is ready to die for them. It doesn't matter what the decision is. Nothing could be more or less serious than anything else. 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.

In order to find the proper place to rest all one has to do is to cross the eyes. The technique takes years to perfect. It consists of gradually forcing your eyes to see separately the same image. The lack of image conversion entails a double perception of the world; this double perception allows one the opportunity of judging changes in the surroundings, which the eyes are ordinarily incapable of perceiving.
Looking in short glances allows the eyes to pick out unusual sights. They are not sights proper, they are more like feelings. If you look at a bush or a tree or a rock where you may like to rest, your eyes can make you feel whether or not that's the best resting place. I don't care what you see. How you feel is the important issue. It takes a long time to train the eyes properly. The trick is to feel with your eyes. Your problem now is that you don't know what to feel. It'll come to you, though, with practice.
No one can tell you what you are supposed to feel. It is not heat, or light, or glare, or color. It is something else. Once you learn to separate the images and see two of everything you must focus your attention in the area between the two images. Any change worthy of notice would take place there, in that area. The feeling that you get is what counts. I can't tell you how to feel. You must learn that yourself.
I hunt in order to live. I can live off the land, anywhere. To be a hunter means that one can see the world in different ways. In order to be a hunter one must be in perfect balance with everything else, otherwise hunting would become a meaningless chore.
Today we took a little snake. I had to apologize to her for cutting her life off so suddenly and so definitely; I did what I did knowing that my own life will also be cut off someday in very much the same fashion, suddenly and definitely. So, all in all, we and the snakes are on a par. One of them fed us today.
Hunters must be exceptionally tight individuals. A hunter leaves very little to chance. For your purposes it doesn't really matter whether you learn about plants or about hunting. I am a hunter. I leave very little to chance. Perhaps I should explain to you that I learned to be a hunter. I have not always lived the way I do now. At one point in my life I had to change. Now I'm pointing the direction to you. I'm guiding you. I know what I'm talking about; someone taught me all this. I didn't figure it out for myself.
I'm having a gesture with you. Other people have had a similar gesture with you; someday you yourself will have the same gesture with others. Let's say that it is my turn. One day I found out that if I wanted to be a hunter worthy of self-respect I had to change my way of life. I used to whine and complain a great deal. I had good reasons to feel shortchanged. I am an Indian and Indians are treated like dogs. There was nothing I could do to remedy that, so all I was left with was my sorrow. But then my good fortune spared me and someone taught me to hunt. And I realized that the way I lived was not worth living ... so I changed it.



I laugh a great deal because I like to laugh, yet everything I say is deadly serious.




Love Always
mudra

Journey to Ixtlan

Link to the full PDF of the book

http://thetoltecpath.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/journey_to_ixtlan.pdf

It is getting dark. The world is very strange at this time of the day. We are very noticeable here and something is coming to us. It may seem to be wind to you, because wind is all you know. Here it comes. Look how it is searching for us. It's something that hides in the wind and looks like a whorl, a cloud, a mist, a face that twirls around. It moves in a specific direction. It either tumbles or it twirls. A hunter must know all that in order to move correctly.
To believe that the world is only as you think it is, is stupid. The world is a mysterious place. Especially in the twilight. This can follow us. It can make us tired or it might even kill us. At this time of the day, in the twilight, there is no wind. At this time there is only power.
If you would live out here in the wilderness you would know that during the twilight the wind becomes power. A hunter that is worth his salt knows that, and acts accordingly. He uses the twilight and that power hidden in the wind. If it is convenient to him, the hunter hides from the power by covering himself and remaining motionless until the twilight is gone and the power has sealed him into its protection.
The protection of the power seals you like in a cocoon. A hunter can stay out in the open and no puma or coyote or slimy bug could bother him. A mountain lion could come up to the hunters nose and sniff him, and if the hunter does not move, the lion would leave. I can guarantee you that.
If the hunter, on the other hand, wants to be noticed all he has to do is to stand on a hilltop at the time of the twilight and the power will nag him and seek him all night. Therefore, if a hunter wants to travel at night or if he wants to be kept awake he must make himself available to the wind.
Therein lies the secret of great hunters. To be available and unavailable at the precise turn of the road.
You must learn to become deliberately available and unavailable. As your life goes now, you are unwittingly available at all times. To be unavailable does not mean to hide or to be secretive but to be inaccessible. It makes no difference to hide if everyone knows that you are hiding.
We are fools, all of us, and you cannot be different. At one time in my life I, like you, made myself available over and over again until there was nothing of me left for anything except perhaps crying. And that I did, just like yourself.
You must take yourself away. You must retrieve yourself from the middle of the road. Your whole being is there, thus it is of no use to hide; you would only imagine that you are hidden. Being in the middle of the road means that everyone passing by watches your comings and goings.
The art of a hunter is to become inaccessible. To be inaccessible means that you touch the world around you sparingly. You don't expose yourself to the power of the wind unless it is mandatory. You don't use and squeeze people until they have shriveled to nothing, especially the people you love.
To be unavailable means that you deliberately avoid exhausting yourself and others. It means that you are not hungry and desperate.
A hunter knows he will lure game into his traps over and over again, so he doesn't worry. To worry is to become accessible, unwittingly accessible. And once you worry you cling to anything out of desperation; and once you cling you are bound to get exhausted or to exhaust whoever or whatever you are clinging to.
I've told you already that to be inaccessible does not mean to hide or to be secretive. It doesn't mean that you cannot deal with people either. A hunter uses his world sparingly and with tenderness regardless of whether the world might be things, or plants, or animals, or people, or power. A hunter deals intimately with his world and yet he is inaccessible to that same world. He is inaccessible because he's not squeezing his world out of shape. He taps it lightly, stays for as long as he needs to, and then swiftly moves away leaving hardly a mark.



A good hunter knows one thing above all--he knows the routines of his prey. That's what makes him a good hunter. A hunter that is worth his salt does not catch game because he sets his traps, or because he knows the routines of his prey, but because he himself has no routines. He is free, fluid, unpredictable.
In order to be a hunter you must disrupt the routines of your life. I am concerned with the things animals do; the places they eat; the place, the manner, the time they sleep; where they nest; how they walk. These are the routines I am pointing out to you so you can become aware of them in your own being.
All of us behave like the prey we are after. That, of course, also makes us prey for something or someone else. Now, the concern of a hunter, who knows all this, is to stop being a prey himself. It takes time. You could begin by not eating lunch every single day at twelve o'clock.

A good hunter changes his ways as often as he needs. A hunter must not only know about the habits of his prey, he also must know that there are powers on this earth that guide men and animals and everything that is living. Powers that guide our lives and our deaths.
All of us are fools. You always feel compelled to explain your acts, as if you were the only man on earth who's wrong. 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.
One must assume responsibility for being in a weird world. For you the world is weird because if you're not bored with it you're at odds with it. For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must assume responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous desert, in this marvelous time. I want to convince you that you must learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it.
Change! If you do not respond to that challenge you are as good as dead. You have never taken the responsibility for being in this unfathomable world. Therefore, you were never an artist, and perhaps you'll never be a hunter. There is one simple thing wrong with you--you think you have plenty of time. You think your life is going to last forever.
Now you're vehemently asserting some non-sense. You don't have time for this display. This, whatever you're doing now, may be your last act on earth. It may very well be your last battle. There is no power which could guarantee that you are going to live one more minute. If this were your last battle on earth, I would say that you are an idiot. You are wasting your last act on earth in some stupid mood.
You have no time, my friend, no time. None of us have time. Don't just agree with me. Act upon it. What I recommend you to do is to notice that we do not have any assurance that our lives will go on indefinitely. Change comes suddenly and unexpectedly, and so does death. There are some people who are very careful about the nature of their acts. Their happiness is to act with the full knowledge that they don't have time; therefore, their acts have a peculiar power.
Acts have power. Especially when the person acting knows that those acts are his last battle. There is a strange consuming happiness in acting with the full knowledge that whatever one is doing may very well be one's last act on earth. I recommend that you reconsider your life and bring your acts into that light.
You don't have time, my friend. That is the misfortune of human beings. None of us have sufficient time. Your acts cannot possibly have the flair, the power, the compelling force of the acts performed by a man who knows that he is fighting his last battle on earth.
We are all going to die. There is something out there waiting for me, for sure; and I will join it, also for sure. 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. There is no time for timidity, simply because timidity makes you cling to something that exists only in your thoughts. It soothes you while everything is at a lull, but then the awesome, mysterious world will open its mouth for you, as it will open for every one of us, and then you will realize that your sure ways were not sure at all. Being timid prevents us from examining and exploiting our lot as men.
Our death is waiting and this very act we're performing now may well be our last battle on earth. I call it a battle because it is a struggle. Most people move from act to act without any struggle or thought. A hunter, on the contrary, assesses every act; and since he has an intimate knowledge of his death, he proceeds judiciously, as if every act were his last battle. Only a fool would fail to notice the advantage a hunter has over his fellow men. A hunter gives his last battle its due respect. It's only natural that his last act on earth should be the best of himself. It's pleasurable that way. It dulls the edge of his fright.
I've told you, this is a weird world. The forces that guide men are unpredictable, awesome, yet their splendor is something to witness. Call them forces, spirits, airs, winds, or anything like that.

At moments of power, the world of ordinary affairs does not exist and nothing can be taken for granted.



I've told you never to carry anything in your hands when you walk. Get a knapsack.



Love Always
mudra

Journey to Ixtlan

Link to the full PDF of the book

http://thetoltecpath.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/journey_to_ixtlan.pdf

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 are 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.

Any warrior could become a man of knowledge. As I told you, a warrior is an impeccable hunter that hunts power. If he succeeds in his hunting he can be a man of knowledge.
You are a man and like any man you deserve everything that is a man's lot--joy, pain, sadness and struggle. The nature of one's acts is unimportant as long as one acts as a warrior. If you really feel that your spirit is distorted you should simply fix it--purge it, make it perfect--because there is no other task in our entire lives which is more worthwhile. Not to fix the spirit is to seek death, and that is the same as to seek nothing, since death is going to overtake us regardless of anything. To seek the perfection of the warrior's spirit is the only task worthy of our manhood.
No matter how much you like to feel sorry for yourself, you have to change that. It doesn't jibe with the life of a warrior.
The hardest thing in the world is to assume the mood of a warrior. It is of no use to be sad and complain and feel justified in doing so, believing that someone is always doing something to us. Nobody is doing anything to anybody, much less to a warrior.
You are here, with me, because you want to be here. You should have assumed full responsibility by now, so the idea that you are at the mercy of the wind would be inadmissible.
Self-pity doesn't jibe with power. The mood of a warrior calls for control over himself and at the same time it calls for abandoning himself.


Love Always
mudra

Journey to Ixtlan

Link to the full PDF of the book

http://thetoltecpath.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/journey_to_ixtlan.pdf

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 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.

Love Always
mudra

Journey to Ixtlan

Link to the full PDF of the book

http://thetoltecpath.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/journey_to_ixtlan.pdf

Today you must be perfectly calm and restored, because you are going to learn not-doing in spite of the fact that there is no way to talk about it, because it is the body that does it.

That rock over there is a rock because of doing. You say that you don't understand what I mean. Your saying that is doing. Doing is what makes that rock a rock and that bush a bush. Doing is what makes you yourself and me myself. Take that rock for instance. To look at it is doing , but to see it is not-doing. You say my words are not making sense to you. Oh yes they do. But you are convinced that they don't because that is your doing. That is the way you act towards me and the world.

That rock is a rock because of all the things you know how to do to it. I call that doing. A man of knowledge, for instance, knows that the rock is a rock only because of doing , so if he doesn't want the rock to be a rock all he has to do is not-doing.
The world is the world because you know the doing involved in making it so. If you didn't know its doing , the world would be different. Without that certain doing there would be nothing familiar in the surroundings. This is a pebble because you know the doing involved in making it into a pebble. Now, in order to stop the world you must stop doing. In the case of this little rock, the first thing which doing does to it is to shrink it to this size. So the proper thing to do, which a warrior does if he wants to stop the world , is to enlarge a little rock, or any other thing, by not-doing.

Look at the holes and depressions in the pebble and try to pick out the minute detail in them. If you can pick out the detail, the holes and depressions will disappear and you will understand what not-doing means.
Doing makes you separate the pebble from the larger boulder. If you want to learn not-doing , let's say that you have to join them. See the small shadow that the pebble cast on the boulder. It is not a shadow but a glue which binds them together. A warrior can tell all kinds of things from the shadows.

A warrior always tries to affect the force of doing by changing it into not-doing . Doing would be to leave the pebble lying around because it is merely a small rock. Not-doing would be to proceed with that pebble as if it were something far beyond a mere rock.

Is all this true? To say yes or no to that question is doing. But since you are learning not-doing I have to tell you that it really doesn't matter whether or not all this is true. It is here that a warrior has a point of advantage over the average man.

An average man cares that things are either true or false, but a warrior doesn't. An average man proceeds in a specific way with things that he knows are true, and in a different way with things that he knows are not true. If things are said to be true, he acts and believes in what he does. But if things are said to be untrue, he doesn't care to act, or he doesn't believe in what he does. A warrior, on the other hand, acts in both instances. If things are said to be true, he would act in order to do doing . If things are said to be untrue, he still would act in order to do not-doing

Love Always
mudra

Journey to Ixtlan

Link to the full PDF of the book

http://thetoltecpath.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/journey_to_ixtlan.pdf

There are infinite numbers of lines that join us to things. They are real lines. You can feel them. The most difficult part about the warrior's way is to realize that the world is a feeling. When one is not-doing , one is feeling the world, and one feels the world through its lines.

Not-doing is very simple but very difficult. It is not a matter of understanding but of mastering it. Seeing , of course, is the final accomplishment of a man of knowledge, and seeing is attained only when one has stopped the world through the technique of not-doing .

Shadows are peculiar affairs. Look at the shadow of that boulder. The shadow is the boulder, and yet it isn't. To observe the boulder in order to know what the boulder is, is doing , but to observe its shadow is not-doing .

Shadows are like doors, the doors of not-doing . A man of knowledge, for example, can tell the innermost feelings of men by watching their shadows. You may say that there is movement in them, or you may say that the lines of the world are shown in them, or you may say that feelings come from them. To believe that shadows are just shadows is doing. That belief is somehow stupid. Think about it this way: there is so much more to everything in the world that obviously there must be more to shadows too. After all, what makes them shadows is merely our doing.

When searching for a resting place one has to look without focusing but in observing shadows one has to cross the eyes and yet keep a sharp image in focus. The idea is to let one shadow be superimposed on the other by crossing the eyes. Through this process one can ascertain a certain feeling which emanates from shadows.

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 .
If you tackle not-doing directly, you yourself will know what to do in dreaming .

During the day shadows are the doors of not-doing , but at night, since very little doing prevails in the dark, everything is a shadow. I've already told you about this when I taught you the gait of power.

Everything I have taught you so far has been an aspect of not-doing . A warrior applies not-doing to everything in the world, and yet I can't tell you more about it than what I have said today. You must let your own body discover the power and the feeling of not-doing The only thing that is real is the being in you that is going to die. To arrive at that being is the not-doing of the self.



When every one of us is born we bring with us a little ring of power. That little ring is almost immediately put to use. So every one of us is already hooked from birth and our rings of power are joined to everyone else's. In other words, our rings of power are hooked to the doing of the world in order to make the world.

For instance, our rings of power, yours and mine, are hooked right now to the doing in this room. We are making this room. Our rings of power are spinning this room into being at this very moment.

A man of knowledge develops another ring of power. I would call it the ring of not-doing , because it is hooked to not-doing . With that ring, therefore, he can spin another world.

Your difficulty is that you haven't yet developed your extra ring of power and your body doesn't know not-doing . We all have been taught to agree about doing . You don't have any idea of the power that that agreement brings with it. But, fortunately, not-doing is equally miraculous, and powerful.

There is no way to escape the doing of our world, so what a warrior does is to turn his world into his hunting ground. As a hunter, a warrior knows that the world is made to be used. So he uses every bit of it. A warrior is like a pirate that has no qualms in taking and using anything he wants, except that the warrior doesn't mind or he doesn't feel insulted when he is used and taken himself.

The instant one begins to live like a warrior, one is no longer ordinary. It is meaningless to complain. What's important from this point on is the strategy of your life.

You may go any place you wish, but if you do, you must assume the full responsibility for that act. A warrior lives his life strategically. When he has to act with his fellow men, a warrior follows the doing of strategy, and in that doing there are no victories or defeats. In that doing there are only actions. The doing of strategy entails that one is not at the mercy of people.

There is something you ought to be aware of by now. I call it the cubic centimeter of chance. All of us, whether or not we are warriors, have a cubic centimeter of chance that pops out in front of our eyes from time to time. The difference between an average man and a warrior is that the warrior is aware of this, and one of his tasks is to be alert, deliberately waiting, so that when his cubic centimeter pops out he has the necessary speed, the prowess to pick it up.

Chance, good luck, personal power, or whatever you may call it, is a peculiar state of affairs. It is like a very small stick that comes out in front of us and invites us to pluck it. Usually we are too busy, or too preoccupied, or just too stupid and lazy to realize that that is our cubic centimeter of luck. A warrior, on the other hand, is always alert and tight and has the spring, the gumption necessary to grab it.

You maintain that your insistence on finding explanations for everything is something so deeply ingrained in you that it overrules every other consideration, that it's like a disease. There are no diseases, there is only indulging. And you indulge yourself in trying to explain everything.

We both are beings who are going to die. There is no more time for what we used to do. Now you must employ all the not-doing I have taught you and stop the world.



People tell us from the time we are born that the world is such and such and so and so, and naturally we have no choice but to see the world the way people have been telling us it is. Seeing happens only when one sneaks between the worlds; the world of ordinary people and the world of sorcerers.
The real thing is when the body realizes that it can see. Only then is one capable of knowing that the world we look at every day is only a description. My intent has been to show you that.

Only as a warrior can one survive the path of knowledge, because the art of a warrior is to balance the terror of being a man with the wonder of being a man.



Love Always
mudra

Tales of Power

Link to the full PDF of the Book

http://thetoltecpath.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/tales_of_power.pdf

Part 1: A witness to acts of power
Part 2: The Tonal and the Nagual
Part 3: The Sorcerers' explanation

The self-confidence of a warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man. The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence. The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness. The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to himself. You're after the self-confidence of the average man, when you should be after the humbleness of a warrior. The difference between the two is remarkable. Self-confidence entails knowing something for sure; humbleness entails being impeccable in one's actions and feelings.



You must push yourself beyond your limits, all the time. The only possible course that a warrior has is to act consistently and without reservations. You know enough of the warrior's way to act accordingly, but your old habits and routines stand in your way.



You say you've heard that the masters of Eastern esoteric doctrines demand absolute secrecy about their teachings. Perhaps those masters are just indulging in being masters. I'm not a master, I'm only a warrior. So I really don't know what a master feels like.

It doesn't matter what one reveals or what one keeps to oneself. Everything we do, everything we are, rests on our personal power. If we have enough of it, one word uttered to us might be sufficient to change the course of our lives. But if we don't have enough personal power, the most magnificent piece of wisdom can be revealed to us and that revelation won't make a damn bit of difference.

I'm going to utter perhaps the greatest piece of knowledge anyone can voice. Let me see what you can do with it.

Do you know that at this very moment you are surrounded by eternity? And do you know that you can use that eternity, if you so desire?

There! Eternity is there! All around! Do you know that you can extend yourself forever in any of the directions I have pointed to? Do you know that one moment can be eternity? This is not a riddle; it's a fact, but only if you mount that moment and use it to take the totality of yourself forever in any direction.

You didn't have this knowledge before, now you do. I have revealed it to you, but it doesn't make a bit of difference, because you don't have enough personal power to utilize my revelation. Yet if you did have enough power, my words alone would serve as the means for you to round up the totality of yourself and to get the crucial part of it out of the boundaries in which it is contained.

Your body is the boundary I'm talking about. One can get out of it. We are a feeling, an awareness encased here. We are luminous beings and for a luminous being only personal power matters.


Love Always
mudra

Tales of Power

Link to the full PDF of the Book

http://thetoltecpath.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/tales_of_power.pdf

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.



If one is to succeed in anything, the success must come gently, with a great deal of effort but with no stress or obsession.



You must learn how to stop your internal dialogue at will. At the beginning of our association I delineated another procedure: walking for long stretches without focusing the eyes on anything. My recommendation was to not look at anything directly but, by slightly crossing the eyes, to keep a peripheral view of everything that presented itself to the eyes. If one keeps one's unfocused eyes fixed at a point just above the horizon, it is possible to notice, at once, everything in almost the total 180-degree range in front of one's eyes. That exercise is the only way of shutting off the internal dialogue.

The internal dialogue is what grounds us. The world is such and such or so and so, only because we talk to ourselves about its being such and such or so and so. The passageway into the world of sorcerers opens up after the warrior has learned to shut off the internal dialogue.

To change our idea of the world is the crux of sorcery, and stopping the internal dialogue is the only way to accomplish it. The rest is just padding. Nothing of what we do, with the exception of stopping the internal dialogue, can by itself change anything in us, or in our idea of the world. The provision is, of course, that that change should not be deranged. Therefore a teacher doesn't clamp down on his apprentice. That would only breed obsession and morbidity.



A warrior takes his lot, whatever it may be, and accepts it in ultimate humbleness. He accepts in humbleness what he is, not as grounds for regret but as a living challenge.

The humbleness of a warrior is not the humbleness of a beggar. The warrior lowers his head to no one, but at the same time, he doesn't permit anyone to lower his head to him. I know only the humbleness of a warrior, and that will never permit me to be anyone's master.


Love Always
mudra

Tales of Power

Link to the full PDF of the Book

http://thetoltecpath.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/tales_of_power.pdf

Seeing is a special capacity that one can develop which allows one to apprehend the ultimate nature of things.
Seeing happens only when the warrior is capable of stopping the internal dialogue.



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.


The only way to counteract the devastating effect of the sorcerers' world is to laugh at it. It's your duty to put your mind at ease. Warriors do not win victories by beating their heads against walls but by overtaking the walls. Warriors jump over the walls; they don't demolish them.

There are three kinds of bad habits which we use over and over when confronted with unusual life situations. First, we may disregard what's happening or has happened and feel as if it had never occurred. That one is the bigot's way. Second, we may accept everything at its face value and feel as if we know what's going on. That's the pious man's way. Third, we may become obsessed with an event because either we cannot disregard it or we cannot accept it wholeheartedly. That's the fool's way. There is a fourth, the correct one, the warrior's way. A warrior acts as if nothing had ever happened, because he doesn't believe in anything, yet he accepts everything at its face value. He accepts without accepting and disregards without disregarding. He never feels as if he knows, neither does he feel as if nothing had ever happened. He acts as if he is in control, even though he might be shaking in his boots. To act in such a manner dissipates obsession.

You must cultivate the feeling that a warrior needs nothing. You have everything needed for the extravagant journey that is your life. I have tried to teach you that the real experience is to be a man, and that what counts is being alive; life is the little detour that we are taking now. Life in itself is sufficient, self-explanatory and complete. A warrior understands this and lives accordingly; therefore, one may say without being presumptuous that the experience of experiences is being a warrior.

If a warrior needs solace, he simply chooses anyone and expresses to that person every detail of his turmoil. After all, the warrior is not seeking to be understood or helped; by talking he's merely relieving himself of his pressure. That is, providing that the warrior is given to talking; if he's not, he tells no one.
You indulge. You feel that indulging in doubts and tribulations is the sign of a sensitive man. Well, the truth of the matter is that you're the farthest thing from being sensitive. So why pretend? I've told you, a warrior accepts in humbleness what he is.

We confuse ourselves deliberately. All of us are aware of our doings. Our puny reason deliberately makes itself into the monster it fancies itself to be. It's too little for such a big mold, though.

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.



A man of knowledge cannot possibly act towards his fellow men in injurious terms.



A warrior is always ready for anything. To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives. Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born a reasonable being. We make ourselves into one or the other.


Love Always
mudra

Tales of Power

Link to the full PDF of the Book

http://thetoltecpath.files.wordpress.com/2010/03/tales_of_power.pdf

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.



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.

Storing sufficient personal power will enable you to turn your will into a functioning unit. As I've said, will is a force that emanates from the umbilical region through an unseen opening below the navel, an opening called the gap . Will is cultivated only by sorcerers and gives them the capacity to perform extraordinary acts.
The will develops in a warrior in spite of every opposition of the reason. You are the one who's learning, therefore you yourself must claim knowledge as power. You must find out whether or not your will works. You must prove to yourself that you are in the position to claim knowledge as power. In other words, you yourself have to be convinced that you can exercise your will .
The body must be perfection before the will is a functioning unit.



Our reason is petty and it is always at odds with our body. This, of course, is only a way of talking, but the triumph of a man of knowledge is that he has joined the two together.
The ally is waiting for you, that's for sure. It is right here, or there, or in any other place. The ally is waiting for you, just like death is waiting for you, everywhere and nowhere. It's waiting for the same reason that death waits for you, because you were born. There is no possibility of explaining at this point what is meant by that. You must first experience the ally. You must perceive it in its full force.
The way one understands the ally is a personal matter. There's no need to be confused. Confusion is a mood one enters into, but one can also get out of it. At this point there is no way of clarifying anything. Later we'll consider these matters in detail. It's up to your personal power, so work for impeccability.
I've told you that the true art of a warrior is to balance terror and wonder. Power can be met only with power. The crux of sorcery is the internal dialogue; that is the key to everything. When a warrior learns to stop it, everything becomes possible; the most farfetched schemes become attainable. We are a feeling and what we call our body is a cluster of luminous fibers that have awareness. As long as you think that you are a solid body you cannot conceive what I am talking about.
Warriors keep controlled and aloof. They don't believe anything, but still act efficiently.
We are luminous beings. We are perceivers. We are an awareness; we are not objects; we have no solidity. We are boundless. The world of objects and solidity is a way of making our passage on earth convenient. It is only a description that was created to help us. We, or rather our reason , forget that the description is only a description and thus we entrap the totality of ourselves in a vicious circle from which we rarely emerge in our lifetime.
We are perceivers. The world that we perceive, though, was created by a description that was told to us since the moment we were born.
We, the luminous beings, are born with two rings of power, but we use only one to create the world. That ring, which is hooked very soon after we are born, is reason , and its companion is talking. Between the two they concoct and maintain the world. So, in essence, the world that your reason wants to sustain is the world created by a description and its dogmatic and inviolable rules, which the reason learns to accept and defend.
The secret of the luminous beings is that they have another ring of power which is never used, the will . The trick of the sorcerer is the same trick of the average man. Both have a description; one, the average man, upholds it with his reason ; the other, the sorcerer, upholds it with his will . Both descriptions have their rules and the rules are perceivable, but the advantage of the sorcerer is that will is more engulfing than reason . You must learn to let yourself perceive whether the description is upheld by your reason or by your will . That is the only way for you to use your daily world as a challenge and a vehicle to accumulate enough personal power in order to get to the totality of yourself.

Never dwell on past events except in reference. To emphasize them would mean to take away from the importance of what's taking place now. A warrior cannot possibly afford to do that.
Only as a warrior can one withstand the path of knowledge. A warrior cannot complain about, or regret, anything. His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges. As is always the case in the doings and not-doings of warriors, personal power is the only thing that matters. The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge, while an ordinary man takes everything either as a blessing or as a curse.
A warrior must be fluid and must shift harmoniously with the world around him, whether it is the world of reason , or the world of will . The most dangerous aspect of that shifting comes forth every time the warrior finds that the world is neither one nor the other. I was told that the only way to succeed in that crucial shifting was by proceeding in one's actions as if one believed. In other words, the secret of a warrior is that he believes without believing. But obviously a warrior cannot just say he believes and let it go at that. That would be too easy. To just believe would exonerate him from examining his situation. A warrior, whenever he has to involve himself with believing, does it as a choice, as an expression of his innermost predilection. A warrior doesn't believe, a warrior has to believe.



It is not so difficult to let the spirit of man flow and take over; to sustain it, however, is something that only a warrior can do.



Having to believe means that you accept the facts of something, consider all possibilities and possible outcomes, and then choose to believe in accordance with your innermost predilection. Believing is a cinch. Having to believe is something else. If you have to believe, you must use all of an event, account for all possibilities, and consider everything. Before deciding that you believe one way you must consider that it may well be another way.


Love Always
mudra