The teachings of Don Juan Matus

Silence is a passageway between worlds.
When our mind stays silent, incredible aspects of our being emerge.
Starting from that moment, a person becomes a vehicle of intent, and all his acts begin to ooze power.

Love Always
mudra

Love Always
mudra

The characteristic of miserable seers is that they are willing to forget the wonder of the world. They become overwhelmed by the fact that they see and believe that it’s their genius that counts. A seer must be a paragon in order to override the nearly invincible laxness of our human condition. More important than seeing itself is what seers do with what they see. ~ Don Juan, The Fire from Within

Warriors marvel at the wonder of the world. They marvel at the beauty and they marvel at the insanity. They do what they do for the love of doing it. They cry, they laugh, they know compassion, forgiveness, love, wonder, awe, fear, and sadness. They sense with every ounce of their being every single sensation or feeling that arises. It is all of these wonders and feelings that bring total awareness to a warrior. To deny yourself of that which arises is avoidance; to become attached to it is foolishness.

Power is as power moves. How we react to what arises makes all the difference for a warrior. We love without expectations. We cry without pity. We experience pain, grief, sadness, and fear without allowing it to consume us. We forgive with compassion. And sometimes, just like everyone else, we walk away. Doing these things is not a sign of weakness for a warrior, it’s a sign of strength. In that strength is sobriety and in that sobriety is freedom. Sobriety used through Castaneda’s books refers to restraint; to be free from the pitfalls of overdramatizing an event or energizing another through excessive emotion.

The warriors that I know are fully human, not some kind of automatons who are sitting around waiting for their opportunity to dart past the eagle in order to be free. The point is to be free here and now and in that knowing comes the carefree abandon of living life to its fullest without regret while recapitulating the attachment to the concepts and the mold of man that hold many people prisoner.

In the above quote don Juan says, A seer must be a paragon in order to override the nearly invincible laxness of our human condition. Essentially he is saying that a seer must be the example of what it means to be a warrior in order to succeed in helping to restore humanity to a state of awareness free from the social order; to afford them the opportunity to awaken from their slumber.

I am already given to the power that rules my fate. And I cling to nothing, so I will have nothing to defend. I have no thoughts so I will see. I fear nothing, so I will remember myself. Detached and at ease, I will dart past the eagle to be free. ~ The Eagle’s Gift

To have no points to defend is a defining moment for a warrior; to be able to sit in complete silence in the face of extraneous circumstance no matter how big or small is what it means to be impeccable with your energy. To observe the indescribable force blowing through and around you and the decisions that people choose to make within it is art in motion – constant acts of creation. And more and more often there is nothing to do but laugh.

To defend is to act from a point of self-importance which can cause imbalance and create anger and ill-will. Many people, basically fundamentalists of any belief, will defend the fixated position of their assemblage point in order to preserve and maintain the patterns and stories as they perceive them and even attempt to impose those patterns upon others no matter how superfluous their stored data has become. For a warrior, it is a waste of energy to defend the position of an assemblage point when the point is to keep the assemblage point fluid.

Don Juan went on to say, when challenged by Carlos about the description of the Eagle, Those truths are not something to defend passionately. If you think that I’m trying to defend them, you are mistaken. Those truths were put together for the delight and enlightenment of warriors, not to engage any proprietary sentiments. When I told you that a nagual has no points to defend, I meant, among other things, that a nagual has no obsessions.

There is no truth, there is only perception.

Nearly all of the nuggets of information within the volumes of Castaneda’s work were put together for the delight and enlightenment of warriors. When the Buddha was asked to declare a truth, the Buddha remained silent because he knew that everyone had to arrive at their own truth based on one’s perceptions gained through their own experience. The gift of being a warrior of freedom is to be able to stand fully in the creation of your own truth with integrity, detachment, and no points to defend.

http://femalewarrior.net/2015/09/25/no-points-to-defend/#more-3594

Love Always
mudra

Yes, yes, yes Mudra.  Thank you for posting this.  

All of Castaneda's books through "The Active Side of Infinity" free in PDF format: https://moonmetaphysics.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/carlos-castaneda-all-books-in-one.pdf

And here some pearls that fell off from those books: The wisdom of Don Juan http://peacefulrivers.homestead.com/donJuan.html

Love Always
mudra

Life outside the box

by Female Warrior

A warrior cannot have the luxury of following people’s ways, nor can he be a reactionary, because his freedom means to exercise other alternatives. ~ Carlos Castaneda, Encounters with the Nagual


This is a great quote. Our freedom is contingent upon our ability to remain awake and fluid, to not become bound by ideas, stories, and patterns. All of the paths in the world have the potential to enslave us, to turn us into followers of specific protocols, doctrines, or dogmata. It is when we decide to belong to a specific membership that we adopt the ideas of another which carries the danger, for a warrior, to act from a point of reason. This ultimately leads one to inadvertently employ or uphold bastions of judgements against those outside of their chosen and often structured beliefs; as though they have something to defend.

I try to be careful and mindful when I write, to ensure that I am not unwittingly fixating the position of someone’s assemblage point. But then I must remind myself that through my writing I am merely offering tools for awareness, stories from my own experience, and that if someone allows their assemblage point to become fixated upon my words then it is they who must work on fluidity and freedom from the patterns.

We must recognize that it is our aim, as warriors of freedom, to go against the grain, to free ourselves from the preconceived ideas and patterns of how to live in the world. To, as Carlos said, exercise other alternatives.

So what are the alternatives? They are many and all come from a point of creation. When we do what others do we are emulating them, but when we do what we do out of our love for doing it then we are creating our own experience moment by moment.

Is it a challenge? Yes – we live in a world that nearly demands that we comply with the arduous task of upholding patterns, living within the confines of authoritative control, and accomplishing things in the so-called “right” way.

Is it possible? Not only is it possible, it is fun and fulfilling. To exist in extraordinary states of awareness is not only part of our birthright but as warriors of freedom it becomes evidence, to a world lost in patterns, that there is another way in which to exist.

Life outside the box is an innovative, imaginative, and inspiring way of living that will encourage others to reconnect to their own visions, dreams, inspiration, and creativeness. As I’ve said before, don’t believe a word I say, test it for yourself. Keep dancing!

Love Always
mudra

`
Don Juan reminded me that he had talked a great deal about one of the most sturdy aspects of our inventory: our idea of God. That aspect, he said, was like a powerful glue that bound the assemblage point to its original position. If I were going to assemble another true world with another great band of emanations, I had to take an obligatory step in order to release all ties from my assemblage point.
„That step is to see the mold of man,” he said.

„You must do that today unaided.”
„What’s the mold of man?” I asked.
„I’ve helped you see it many times,” he replied.
„You know what I’m talking about.”

I refrained from saying that I did not know what he was talking about. If he said that I had seen the mold of man, I must have done that, although I did not have the foggiest idea what it was like.
He knew what was going through my mind. He gave me a knowing smile and slowly shook his head from side to side.

„The mold of man is a huge cluster of emanations in the great band of organic life,” he said. „It is called the mold of man because the cluster appears only inside the cocoon of man.
„The mold of man is the portion of the Eagle’s emanations that seers can see directly without any danger to themselves.”

There was a long pause before he spoke again.
„To break the barrier of perception is the last task of the mastery of awareness,” he said. „In order to move your assemblage point to that position you must gather enough energy. Make a journey of recovery. Remember what you’ve done!”

I tried unsuccessfully to recall what was the mold of man. I felt an excruciating frustration that soon turned into real anger. I was furious with myself, with Don Juan, with everybody.
Don Juan was untouched by my fury. He said matteroffactly that anger was a natural reaction to the hesitation of the assemblage point to move on command.
„It will be a long time before you can apply the principle that your command is the Eagle’s command,” he said. „That’s the essence of the mastery of intent. In the meantime, make a command now not to fret, not even at the worst moments of doubt. It will be a slow process until that command is heard and obeyed as if it were the Eagle’s command.”

He also said that there was an unmeasurable area of awareness in between the customary position of the assemblage point and the position where there are no more doubts, which is almost the place where the barrier of perception makes its appearance. In that unmeasurable area, warriors fall prey to every conceivable misdeed. He warned me to be on the lockout and not lose confidence, for I would unavoidably be struck at one time or another by gripping feelings of defeat.
„The new seers recommend a very simple act when impatience, or despair, or anger, or sadness comes their way,” he continued. „They recommend that warriors roll their eyes. Any direction will do; I prefer to roll mine clockwise.
„The movement of the eyes makes the assemblage point shift momentarily. In that movement, you will find relief. This is in lieu of true mastery of intent.”’

I complained that there was not enough time for him to tell me more about intent.
„It will all come back to you someday,” he assured me. „One thing will trigger another. One key word and all of it will tumble out of you as if the door of an overstuffed closet had given way.”
He went back then to discussing the mold of man. He said that to see it on my own, unaided by anyone, was an important step, because all of us have certain ideas that must be broken before we are free; the seer who travels into the unknown to see the unknowable must be in an impeccable state of being.

He winked at me and said that to be in an impeccable state of being is to be free of rational assumptions and rational fears. He added that both my rational assumptions and my rational fears were preventing me at that moment from realigning the emanations that would make me remember seeing the mold of man. He urged me to relax and move my eyes in order to make my assemblage point shift. He repeated over and over that it was really important to remember having seen the mold before I see it again. And since he was pressed for time there was no room for my usual slowness.
I moved my eyes as he suggested. Almost immediately I forgot my discomfort and then a sudden flash of memory came to me and I remembered that I had seen the mold of man. It had happened years earlier on an occasion that had been quite memorable to me, because from the point of view of my Catholic upbringing, Don Juan had made the most sacrilegious statements I had ever heard.
It had all started as a casual conversation while we hiked in the foothills of the Sonoran desert. He was explaining to me the implications of what he was doing to me with his teachings. We had stopped to rest and had sat down on some large boulders. He had continued explaining his teaching procedure, and this had encouraged me to try for the hundredth time to give him an account of how I felt about it. It was evident that he did not want to hear about it anymore. He made me change levels of awareness and told me that if I would see the mold of man, I might understand everything he was doing and thus save us both years of toil.

He gave me a detailed explanation of what the mold of man was. He did not talk about it in terms of the Eagle’s emanations, but in terms of a pattern of energy that serves to stamp the qualities of humanness on an amorphous blob of biological matter. At least, I understood it that way, especially after he further described the mold of man using a mechanical analogy. He said that it was like a gigantic die that stamps out human beings endlessly as if they were coming to it on a massproduction conveyor belt. He vividly mimed the process by bringing the palms of his hands together with great force, as if the die molded a human being each time its two halves were clapped.
He also said that every species has a mold of its own, and every individual of every species molded by the process shows characteristics particular to its own kind.

He began then an extremely disturbing elucidation about the mold of man. He said that the old seers as well as the mystics of our world have one thing in common?they have been able to see the mold of man but not understand what it is. Mystics, throughout the centuries, have given us moving accounts of their experiences. But these accounts, however beautiful, are flawed by the gross and despairing mistake of believing the mold of man to be an omnipotent, omniscient creator; and so is the interpretation of the old seers, who called the mold of man a friendly spirit, a protector of man.
He said that the new seers are the only ones who have the sobriety to see the mold of man and understand what it is. What they have come to realize is that the mold of man is not a creator, but the pattern of every human attribute we can think of and some we cannot even conceive. The mold is our God because we are what it stamps us with and not because it has created us from nothing and made us in its image and likeness. Don Juan said that in his opinion to fall on our knees in the presence of the mold of man reeks of arrogance and human selfcenteredness.

As I heard Don Juan’s explanation I got terribly worried. Even though I had never considered my self to be a practicing Catholic, I was shocked by his blasphemous implications. I had been politely listening to him, yet I had been yearning for a pause in his barrage of sacrilegious judgments in order to change the subject. But he went on drumming his point in a merciless way. I finally interrupted him and told him that I believed that God exists.

He retorted that my belief was based on faith and, as such, was a secondhand conviction that did not amount to anything; my belief in the existence of God was, like everyone else’s, based on hearsay and not on the act of seeing, he said.
He assured me that even if I was able to see, I was bound to make the same misjudgment that mystics have made. Anyone who sees the mold of man automatically assumes that it is God.
He called the mystical experience a chance seeing, a oneshot affair that has no significance whatsoever because it is the result of a random movement of the assemblage point. He asserted that the new seers are indeed the only ones who can pass a fair judgment on this matter, because they have ruled out chance seeings and are capable of seeing the mold of man as often as they please.
They have seen, therefore, that what we call God is a static prototype of humanness without any power. For the mold of man cannot under any circumstances help us by intervening in our behalf, or punish our wrongdoings, or reward us in any way. We are simply the product of its stamp; we are its impression. The mold of man is exactly what its name tells us it is, a pattern, a form, a cast that groups together a particular bunch of fiberlike elements, which we call man.

What he had said put me in a state of great distress.
But he seemed unconcerned with my genuine turmoil. He kept on needling me with what he called the unforgivable crime of the chance seers, which makes us focus our irreplaceable energy on something that has no power whatsoever to do anything. The more he talked, the greater my annoyance. When I became so annoyed that I was about to shout at him, he had me change into yet a deeper state of heightened awareness. He hit me on my right side, between my hipbone and my rib cage. That blow sent me soaring into a radiant light, into a diaphanous source of the most peaceful and exquisite beatitude. That light was a haven, an oasis in the blackness around me.

From my subjective point of view, I saw that light for an immeasurable length of time. The splendor of the sight was beyond anything I can say, and yet I could not figure out what it was that made it so beautiful. Then the idea came to me that its beauty grew out of a sense of harmony, a sense of peace and rest, of having arrived, of being safe at long last. I felt myself inhaling and exhaling in quietude and relief. What a gorgeous sense of plenitude! I knew beyond a shadow of doubt that I had come face to face with God, the source of everything. And I knew that God loved me. God was love and forgiveness. The light bathed me, and I felt clean, delivered. I wept uncontrollably, mainly for myself. The sight of that resplendent light made me feel unworthy, villainous.

Suddenly, I heard Don Juan’s voice in my ear. He said that I had to go beyond the mold, that the mold was merely a stage, a stopover that brought temporary peace and serenity to those who journey into the unknown, but that it was sterile, static. It was at the same time a flat reflected image in a mirror and the mirror itself. And the image was man’s image.

I passionately resented what Don Juan was saying; I rebelled against his blasphemous, sacrilegious words. I wanted to tell him off, but I could not break the binding power of my seeing. I was caught in it. Don Juan seemed to know exactly how I felt and what I wanted to tell him.
„You can’t tell the Nagual off,” he said in my ear. „It is the Nagual who’s enabling you to see. It is the Nagual’s technique, the Nagual’s power. The Nagual is the guide.”
It was at that point that I realized something about the voice in my ear. It was not Don Juan’s, although it sounded very much like his voice. Also, the voice was right. The instigator of that seeing was the Nagual Juan Matus. It was his technique and his power that was making me see God. He said it was not God, but the mold of man; I knew that he was right. Yet I could not admit that, not out of annoyance or stubbornness, but simply out of a sense of ultimate loyalty to and love for the divinity that was in front of me.

As I gazed into the light with all the passion I was capable of, the light seemed to condense and I saw a man. A shiny man that exuded charisma, love, understanding, sincerity, truth. A man that was the sum total of all that is good.
The fervor I felt on seeing that man was well beyond anything I had ever felt in my life. I did fall on my knees. I wanted to worship God personified, but Don Juan intervened and whacked me on my left upper chest, close to my clavicle, and I lost sight of God.
I was left with a tantalizing feeling, a mixture of remorse, elation, certainties, and doubts. Don Juan made fun of me. He called me pious and careless and said I would make a great priest; now I could even pass for a spiritual leader who had had a chance seeing of God. He urged me, in ajocular way, to start preaching and describe what I had seen to everyone.
In a very casual but seemingly interested manner he made a statement that was part question, part assertion.

„And the man?” he asked. „You can’t forget that God is a male.”
The immensity of something indefinable began to dawn on me as I entered into a state of great clarity.
„Very cozy, eh?” Don Juan added, smiling. „God
is a male. What a relief”

After recounting to Don Juan what I had remembered, I asked him about something that had just struck me as being terribly odd. To see the mold of man, I had obviously gone through a shift of my assemblage point. The recollection of the feelings and realizations I had had then was so vivid that it gave me a sense of utter futility. Everything I had done and felt at that time I was feeling now. I asked him how it was possible that having had such a clear comprehension, I could have forgotten it so completely. It was as if nothing of what had happened to me had mattered, for I always had to start from point one regardless of how much I might have advanced in the past.

„That’s only an emotional impression,” he said. „A total misapprehension. Whatever you did years ago is solidly enclosed in some unused emanations. That day when I made you see the mold of man, for instance, I had a true misapprehension myself. I thought that if you saw it, you would be able to understand it. It was a true misunderstanding on my part.”

Don Juan explained that he had always regarded himself as being very slow to understand. He had never had any chance of testing his belief, because he did not have a point of reference. When I came along and he became a teacher, which was something totally new to him, he realized that there is no way to speed up understanding and that to dislodge the assemblage point is not enough. He had thought that it would be sufficient. Soon he became aware that since the assemblage point normally shifts during dreams, sometimes to extraordinarily distant positions, whenever we undergo an induced shift we are all experts at immediately compensating for it. We rebalance ourselves constantly and activity goes on as if nothing has happened to us.

He remarked that the value of the new seers’ conclusions does not become evident until one tries to move someone else’s assemblage point. The new seers said that what counts in this respect is the effort to reinforce the stability of the assemblage point in its new position. They considered this to be the only teaching procedure worth discussing. And they knew that it is a long process that has to be carried out little by little at a snail’s pace.

Don Juan said then that he had used power plants at the beginning of my apprenticeship in accordance with a recommendation of the new seers. They knew by experience and by seeing that power plants shake the assemblage point way out of its normal setting. The effect of power plants on the assemblage point is in principle very much like that of dreams: dreams make it move; but power plants manage the shift on a greater and more engulfing scale. A teacher then uses the disorienting effects of such a shift to reinforce the notion that the perception of the world is never final.

I remembered then that I had seen the mold of man five more times over the years. With each new time I had become less passionate about it. I could never get over the fact, however, that I always saw God as a male. At the end it stopped being God for me and became the mold of man, not because of what Don Juan had said, but because the position of a male God became untenable. I could then understand Don Juan’s statements about it. They had not been blasphemous or sacrilegious in the least; he had not made them from within the context of the daily world. He was right in saying that the new seers have an edge in being capable of seeing the mold of man as often as they want. But what was more important to me was that they had sobriety in order to examine what they saw.

I asked him why it was that I always saw the mold of man as a male. He said that it was because my assemblage point did not have the stability then to remain completely glued to its new position and shifted laterally in man’s band. It was the same case as seeing the barrier of perception as a wall of fog. What made the assemblage point move laterally was a nearly unavoidable desire, or necessity, to render the incomprehensible in terms of what is most familiar to us: a barrier is a wall and the mold of man cannot be anything else but a man. He thought that if I were a woman I would see the mold as a woman.

Don Juan stood up then and said that it was time for us to take a stroll in town, that I should see the mold of man among people. We walked in silence to the square, but before we got there I had an uncontainable surge of energy and ran down the street to the outskirts of town. I came to a bridge, and right there, as if it had been waiting for me, I saw the mold of man as a resplendent, warm, amber light.

I fell on my knees, not so much out of piety, but as physical reaction to awe. The sight of the mold of man was more astonishing than ever. I felt, without any arrogance, that I had gone through an enormous change since the first time I had seen it. However, all the things I had seen and learned had only given me a greater, more profound appreciation for the miracle that I had in front of my eyes.
The mold of man was superimposed on the bridge at first, then I refocused my eyes and saw that the mold of man extended up and down into infinity; the bridge was but a meager shell, a tiny sketch superimposed on the eternal. And so were the minute figures of people who moved around me, looking at me with unabashed curiosity. But I was beyond their touch, although at that moment I was as vulnerable as I could be. The mold of man had no power to protect me or spare me, yet I loved it with a passion that knew no limits.

I thought that I understood then something that Don Juan had told me repeatedly, that real affection cannot be an investment. I would have gladly remained the servant of the mold of man, not for what it could give me, for it has nothing to give, but for the sheer affection I felt for it.
I had the sensation of something pulling me away, and before I disappeared from its presence I shouted a promise to the mold of man, but a great force whisked me away before I could finish staling what I meant. I was suddenly kneeling at the bridge while a group of peasants looked at me and laughed.

Don Juan got to my side and helped me up and walked me back to the house.
„There are two ways of seeing the mold of man,” Don Juan began as soon as we sat down. „You can see it as a man or you can see it as a light. That depends on the shift of the assemblage point. If the shift is lateral, the mold is a human being; if the shift is in the midsection of man’s band, the mold is a light. The only value of what you’ve done today is that your assemblage point shifted in the midsection.”

He said that the position where one sees the mold of man is very close to that where the dreaming body and the barrier of perception appear. That was the reason the new seers recommend that the mold of man be seen and understood.
„Are you sure you understand what the mold of man really is?” he asked with a smile.
„I assure you, Don Juan, that I’m perfectly aware of what the mold of man is,” I said.
„I heard you shouting inanities to the mold of man when I got to the bridge,” he said with a most malicious smile.
I told him that I had felt like a worthless servant worshiping a worthless master, and yet I was moved out of sheer affection to promise undying love.
He found it all hilarious and laughed until he was choking.
„The promise of a worthless servant to a worthless master is worthless,” he said and choked again with laughter.
I did not feel like defending my position. My affection for the mold of man was offered freely without thought of recompense. It did not matter to me that my promise was worthless.

(The Fire From Within)

Love Always
mudra