Tag: Carlos Castaneda

paradigm, Quotations, Toltec Teachings

Encounters With the Nagual – Armando Torres

Three-Pronged Naguals

“The Rule is final, but its design and configuration are in constant evolution. But unlike evolutionists, who view the adaptations of life as a haphazard accumulation of genetic mutations, seers know there is nothing random about the Rule. They see how a command of the Eagle, in the form of a wave of energy, shakes the lineages of power from time to time, producing new stages in sorcery.

“A more exact way of describing it, is to assume that all possible variations of the Rule are contained in a womb of potential, and what changes over time is the degree of knowledge the sorcerers have of that totality, and what emphasis they put on particular portions of it. Such periods of change are recurrent, and they are represented by the number three.”

“Why three?”

“Because the old Toltecs associated the number three with dynamics and renewal. They discovered that ternary formations – formations based on the number three – announce unexpected changes.

“The Rule dictates that, from time to time, a special kind of nagual will appear in the lineages; a nagual whose energy is not divided into four parts, but instead has only three compartments. Seers call them ‘three-pronged naguals.”

I asked him how they were different from the others. He answered:

“Their energy is volatile, they are always moving, and because of that they find it difficult to accumulate power. From the point of view of the lineage, their composition is faulty; they will never be true naguals. In compensation, they lack the timidity and reservation that characterize the classic naguals, and they possess an unusual capacity to improvise and communicate.

“We can say that three-pronged naguals are like the cuckoo birds incubated in other birds’ nests. They are opportunists, but they are necessary. Unlike the naguals of four points, whose freedom it is to pass unnoticed, those of three points are public personalities. They disclose secrets and cause fragmentation of the teachings, but without them, the lineages of power would have been extinguished a long time ago.

“Among the new seers, the Rule is that a nagual leaves a new party as a descendant. Some, due to their enormous energy surpluses, are able to help organizing a second or third generation of seers. For example, the nagual Elias Ulloa lived long enough to create his successor’s party and to have an influence on the following one. But this does not mean a fork in the lineage; all those groups were part of the same transmission line.

“On the other hand, the three-pronged nagual is authorized to transmit his knowledge radially, which does lead to a diversification of lineages. His luminous cocoon has a disintegrating effect on the group, which breaks the lineal structure of transmission and foments a desire for change and action in warriors, and an active disposition to be involved with their fellow men.”

“Was that what happened to you?”

“That’s what happened. Due to my luminous disposition, I don’t have any qualms about leaving kernels of knowledge behind, wherever I go. I know that I need an enormous quantity of energy to fulfill my task, and that I can only obtain it from masses. For that reason I am willing to broadcast the knowledge far and wide, and transform and redefine its paradigms.”

The Portion of the Rule for the Three-Pronged Nagual

The Three-Pronged Nagual

“As you know, my teacher became aware of the Rule for the three- pronged nagual when he tried to analyze certain anomalies in the new group. Apparently, I could not get in tune with the rest of the apprentices. Then he paid me sufficient attention to see that I masked my energy configuration.”

“Do you mean that Don Juan’s seeing had been mistaken?”

“Of course not! What was mistaken was his looking. To see is the final form of perception; there are no appearances, so it is not possible to be deceived. However, due to the pressure that he had exerted on me for years, my energy struggled to mold itself to his. That is common among apprentices. Since he was divided into four compartments, I also began to manifest a similar energetic weight in my actions.

“Once I was able to shake off his influence (it took me almost ten years of arduous work), we discovered something astonishing: My luminosity only had three compartments; it didn’t correspond to an ordinary, modern person, who only has two, nor to a nagual. This discovery caused a great commotion in the group of seers, since they all saw it as a portent of profound change for the lineage.

“Then Don Juan went back to the tradition of his predecessors, and dusted off a forgotten aspect of the Rule. He told me that the election of a nagual cannot in any way be considered as a personal whim, since it is the spirit who chooses the successor of a lineage at all times. Therefore, my energetic anomaly was part of a command. Faced with my urgent questioning, he assured me that a messenger would appear in due time and explain to me the function of my presence as a three-pronged nagual.

“Years later, during a visit to one of the rooms in the National Museum of Anthropology and History, I observed a native dressed in the old-fashioned Tarahumara costume, who seemed to have the most absorbing interest in one of the exhibition pieces. He examined it from all sides and demonstrated such a total concentration that it made me curious, and I went closer to look.

“When he saw me, the man spoke to me and began to explain the meaning of a group of excellent, painstaking drawings sculpted into the stone. Then, while I meditated on what he had told me, I remembered Don Juan’s promise, and realized that this man had been an envoy from the spirit, who had passed on to me the portion of the Rule concerning the three-pronged nagual.”

“And what does that portion say?”

“It affirms that, just as the party has an energy matrix of the number seventeen (two naguals, four female dreamers, four female stalkers, four male warriors, and three scouts), a lineage, which is formed by a succession of parties, also has a structure of power, of the number fifty-two. The Eagle’s command is that every fifty-two generations of four-pointed naguals, there will appear a three- pronged nagual who serves as a cathartic action for the propagation of new four-point lineages.

“The Rule also says that the three-pronged naguals are destructive to the established order, because their nature is neither creative nor nurturing, and they have the tendency to enslave all those who surround them. It adds that, to achieve freedom, these naguals should do it alone, because their energy is not tuned to guide groups of warriors.

“Like everything in the world of energy, the block of fifty-two generations is divided into two parts; the first twenty-six concerning themselves with expansion and the creation of new lines, the rest oriented towards conservation and isolation. This pattern of behavior has been repeating itself millennium after millennium, so sorcerers know that it is part of the Rule. “As a result of the activities of a three-pronged nagual, the knowledge becomes widely known, and new cells of four-point naguals are formed. From that starting point, lineages recapture the tradition of transmitting the teachings in a lineal form.”

“How often do three-point naguals appear?”

“Approximately once per millennium. That is the age of my lineage.”

The Task Of The Seers Of Today

“Upon verifying the Rule of the three-pronged nagual, Don Juan deduced that, inevitably, the time of a new breed of warriors was at hand; I have called them the modern seers.”

“Are there any peculiarities in the luminous composition of those warriors?”

“No. In every era, man’s energy pattern has been very homogeneous, so the organization of the party is the same. However, the warriors of today are experiencing a slide towards green in their luminosity, which means that they are recovering characteristics of the old seers. This is something unforeseen, although it is for sure covered by the Rule.

“The true difference between seers of the past and those of today is in their behavior. At the moment, we are not subjected to the same repressions as in previous eras, and therefore sorcerers have fewer restrictions. Clearly, this has a purpose: Popularization of the teaching.

“I have lived a moment of renewal. My task is to close the lineage of Don Juan with a golden key, and to open up possibilities for those who come later. That is why I have said that I am the last nagual of my lineage, not in an absolute sense, but in the sense of radical change.”

At this point, Carlos took a break in his presentation and reminded me of a conversation we had when we first met.

At that time, I had asked him to tell me tales of power. He replied that he could not refuse what I was asking, but to hand over those stories without any directions would have been to trivialize them.

“I hope what you have seen during these years fulfills your expectations. I did what I could, considering your limitations as well as mine. I know you have already begun to train your dreaming double, and that guarantees that you can continue by yourself; your double won’t leave you alone until you arrive at your totality. The theoretical part is finished, and it is time to give you a last gift.”

Mental Health, Musings, Personal Development, Questions, Quotations

Self-Obsession – The New Pandemic

I think it accurate to say that the phenomenon of self-obsession is reaching dizzying new heights in this century. It is pandemic in that it can be found on all sides and in all nations. Never before in human history has there been so many terabytes of self-images recorded either with or without filters or photoshopping. People are obsessed by and with image. The imaginary illusion of image holds great power over the human psyche and causes untold self-induced mental angst and suffering. The obsession with self-promotion and having a blurb to sell to others about our wonderful “self” is a cul-de-sac, which leads nowhere other than our own lower posterior sphincters. It causes myopia and blindness, whereby we imagine that the entire universe rotates around our own wants, needs, desires and things that we imagine we deserve.

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If we do not engage in this pictorial and presentational folly, we are to an extent excluded from the lunacy of the herd.

People can go to extraordinary lengths to protect this “image” without acknowledging the specificity of language implied. They can even imagine that their image is real!! They defend an illusion and feel thoroughly justified is so doing.

They do not suspect that they are blinkered or blinded. They cannot see the blinkers of obsession which prevent them from having a wider view with a more comprehensive perspective. They are unaware of their own selective and limited world view.

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Are you blinded by your obsession with your own self-image?

Is your world view almost entirely self-centred?

Are you an important being?

Does the universe revolve around you?

Musings, Quotations

Wasted Potential…

I have a pet theory. This theory suggests that the potential or possibility for an event {or events} to happen exists only during a certain “aperture” in space-time. The aperture opens and the event is possible, the aperture starts to close, and the event gets more difficult. When the aperture is closed that which once was possible and might have manifested no longer can. One might say that the potential for something has been wasted. Only if the event is strongly fated will an echo-aperture return. These echo-apertures are always more transitory.

You might deem these putative apertures as fleeting moments of chance. It is either carpe diem, or goodbye.

I chose to incarnate into a society where “become a teacher or a preacher” was the mantra for avoiding working down the coal pit. Twenty odd years later I found myself doing a Ph.D. at The Royal Institution of Great Britain. Wow, man. I had six papers published from my experimental Ph.D. material. Little did I know, if my dreams are correct, I had already been a teacher and a preacher across a few lifetimes.

This promising start pointed at an academic career and for a while I worked at a prestigious university. I left. I have not spoken with anyone there for well over a decade. Nobody has spoken to me. Nobody has made the effort. I am in sporadic contact with two ex-students and that is it.

Aside from this blog, my days of teaching science one to one and doing personal development workshops are over. There appears little chance that I will ever do these again and the inclination is not really there. There is no way that I could ever teach university grade science again.  You lose what you don’t use.

What has happened in my life, to my life, is irrevocable. One could say that I am an experiment which has failed irretrievably. It is not the fault of the lake…

The question is who wasted my potential, was it me or is it others?

There are many people who I could have taught, various things, but they were already experts and knew best. It is extremely difficult to teach anyone who has self-diagnosed omniscience. The omniscient are prone to professing so eloquently and adamantly from their soap box. Their ability to listen is not so good.

I can think of one relationship of mutual exchange and that has had longevity, it is light and free of ego with a small e.

Given these uncertain times one cannot be certain.

What quirk or quirks of fate remain lies in the unknown future.

Weird shit happens, so who knows.

Likelihood says the next few years involve gardening and hospital visits…with a bit of blogging on the side…that is all…

Hmn…

The fire is starting to catch, and it is time to cook dinner…

The cat will have some pizza leftovers in due course…

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“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.”

― Carlos Castaneda

Quotations

Gateway to the Nagual’s World – South the place of Dreaming

The wind has been from the South all day to day. It has helped keep me cool whilst I have been gardening. All the internal strimming and mowing is finished. My world is tidy. I can shift to weeding for a week.

Down at the local coffee roaster they have had a roast on. The factory is South of here and the smell has been most excellent.

So I thought I might put up an image of Cecilia and Delia as well as a quotation.

In my case, don Juan wanted an omen before he taught me the ritual. That omen came when don Juan and I were driving through a border town in Arizona and a policeman stopped me. The policeman thought I was an illegal alien. Only after I had shown him my passport, which he suspected of being a forgery, and other documents, did he let me go. Don Juan had been in the front seat next to me all the time, and the policeman had not given him a second glance. He had focused solely on me. Don Juan thought the incident was the omen he was waiting for.

His interpretation of it was that it would be very dangerous for me to call attention to myself, and he concluded that my world had to be one of utter simplicity and candor – elaborate ritual and pomp were out of character for me. He conceded, however, that a minimal observance of ritualistic patterns was in order when I made my acquaintance with his warriors. I had to begin by approaching them from the south, because that is the direction that power follows in its ceaseless flux. Life force flows to us from the south, and leaves us flowing toward the north. He said that the only opening to a Nagual’s world was through the south, and that the gate was made by two female warriors, who would have to greet me and would let me go through if they so decided.

He took me to a town in central Mexico, to a house in the countryside. As we approached it on foot from a southerly direction, I saw two massive Indian women standing four feet apart, facing each other. They were about thirty or forty feet away from the main door of the house, in an area where the dirt was hard-packed. The two women were extraordinarily muscular and stern. Both had long, jet-black hair held together in a single thick braid. They looked like sisters. They were about the same height and weight – I figured that they must have been around five feet four, and weighed 150 pounds. One of them was extremely dark, almost black, the other much lighter. They were dressed like typical Indian women from central Mexico – long, full dresses and shawls, homemade sandals.

Don Juan made me stop three feet from them. He turned to the woman on our left and made me face her. He said that her name was Cecilia and that she was a dreamer. He then turned abruptly, without giving me time to say anything, and made me face the darker woman, to our right. He said that her name was Delia and that she was a stalker. The women nodded at me. They did not smile or move to shake hands with me, or make any gesture of welcome. Don Juan walked between them as if they were two columns marking a gate. He took a couple of steps and turned as if waiting for the women to invite me to go through. The women stared at me calmly for a moment. Then Cecilia asked me to come in, as if I were at the threshold of an actual door.

Don Juan led the way to the house. At the front door we found a man. He was very slender. At first sight he looked extremely young, but on closer examination he appeared to be in his late fifties. He gave me the impression of being an old child: small, wiry, with penetrating dark eyes. He was like an elfish apparition, a shadow. Don Juan introduced him to me as Emilito, and said that he was his courier and all-around helper, who would welcome me on his behalf.

It seemed to me that Emilito was indeed the most appropriate being to welcome anyone. His smile was radiant; his small teeth were perfectly even. He shook hands with me, or rather he crossed his forearms and clasped both my hands. He seemed to be exuding enjoyment; anyone would have sworn that he was ecstatic in meeting me. His voice was very soft and his eyes sparkled.

We walked into a large room. There was another woman there. Don Juan said that her name was Teresa and that she was Cecilia’s and Delia’s courier. She was perhaps in her early thirties, and she definitely looked like Cecilia’s daughter. She was very quiet but very friendly. We followed don Juan to the back of the house, where there was a roofed porch.

It was a warm day. We sat there around a table, and after a frugal dinner we talked until after midnight. Emilito was the host. He charmed and delighted everyone with his exotic stories. The women opened up. They were a great audience for him. To hear the women’s laughter was an exquisite pleasure. They were tremendously muscular, bold, and physical. At one point, when Emilito said that Cecilia and Delia were like two mothers to him, and Teresa like a daughter, they picked him up and tossed him in the air like a child.

Of the two women, Delia seemed the more rational, down- to-earth. Cecilia was perhaps more aloof, but appeared to have greater inner strength. She gave me the impression of being more intolerant, or more impatient; she seemed to get annoyed with some of Emilito’s stories. Nonetheless, she was definitely on the edge of her chair when he would tell what he called his “tales of eternity.” He would preface every story with the phrase, ‘Do you, dear friends, know that. . . ?’

The story that impressed me most was about some creatures that he said existed in the universe, who were the closest thing to human beings without being human; creatures who were obsessed with movement and capable of detecting the slightest fluctuation inside themselves or around them. These creatures were so sensitive to motion that it was a curse to them. It gave them such pain that their ultimate ambition was to find quietude. Emilito would intersperse his tales of eternity with the most outrageous dirty jokes. Because of his incredible gifts as a raconteur, I understood every one of his stories as a metaphor, a parable, with which he was teaching us something.

 Don Juan said that Emilito was merely reporting about things he had witnessed in his journeys through eternity. The role of a courier was to travel ahead of the Nagual, like a scout in a military operation. Emilito went to the limits of the second attention, and whatever he witnessed he passed on to the others.

From “The Eagle’s Gift” by Carlos Castaneda, Part Three.