A poorly conducted preparation for accessing sorcerer’s knowledge, one which encourages self-importance instead of increasing wonder and a desire to learn, becomes a near total obstacle for the apprentice. One who comes to the nagual saturated with beliefs on almost everything won’t get the chance to continue. Intent determines an ordinary man’s access to sorcerer’s knowledge. ~ CC

Intent. Nothing more, nothing less.

The sorcerer’s way is not a dogmatic religion that some would have you believe it is. It is not founded on protocol or structure. As Carlos points out, “Sorcerers make a clear distinction between the concepts of ‘spiritual guide’ and ‘nagual teacher’. The first is an individual who specializes in directing flocks, and the other is an impeccable warrior who knows that his role is limited to serving as a connection with the spirit. The first one will tell you what you want to hear and he will give you the miracles that you want to see, because you interest him as an acolyte; while the second will be guided by commands of an impersonal power.”

Anyone claiming to be a nagual is seeking to put themselves into a false position of authority and power and is not an impeccable warrior. There are people all over the internet referring to themselves as naguals or Toltec masters; terms carefully selected by a warrior of freedom whose main purpose was to denounce the absurdity of the monkey mind. You can find these “naguals” selling retreats, spiritual journeys, promises of heightened awareness, reclamation of personal power and the highly sought after and coveted freedom. Yeah, your cash in their pockets makes them free.

Seriously fellow warriors, isn’t the path of freedom really about freedom from everything? Since many people are deviating from the order of religious structure, the flyers are taking on new forms. One only needs to look and you can see them everywhere. Flyers prey on the vulnerable and work through those who are seeking to hold positions of power because the flyer counts on those who have the potential to gather followers. These people claiming to be what they are not are amassing more book knowledge than ever before due to ease of access to information and knowledge over the internet. But, are they walking a path of freedom daily in their lives? Are they truly taking the time to be authentic by having their own experiences or are they simply trying to emulate another?

Replacing the millenia old tradition of priests and ministers are spiritual guides, life-coaches, yogis, and even “nagual teachers” who are training you how to be like them in the same manner that they were taught to be like someone else. And when you “get it right”, their self-importance escalates, the flyer is satiated and the follower becomes a pawn, lost in a game that has been played over and over again. As we watch, many of these paths of freedom and personal expression turn into protocol driven modalities guided by self-importance perpetuating self-importance. Another repetition of a destructive and controlling pattern under the guise of a new name.

For a warrior, freedom is accessible through linking with intent and connecting with silent knowledge. It is the ability to cut through the monkey mind of conditioning and control by recapitulating everything and choosing a life that allows you to be who you are free from the impositions of society, including that of spiritual conditioning. Freedom is a commitment and yet, it’s so simple, it can be done alone and it is an act of creation, just like everything else in the universe. You can choose to recreate someone else’s experience but is that freedom? Hold on to nothing and don’t believe a word I say!

It’s easy to see how even nagualism is becoming a repetition of a pattern complete with rules, protocols and teachings with self-proclaimed “teachers” telling you how to accomplish the tasks. While nagualism isn’t a religion, it’s fast approaching becoming such by those who claim to hold the key, have the answers, and provide the means for “getting there”, wherever there is!

If Carlos is watching I’m sure he’s having a good laugh as so many people attempt to embrace the very thing he was trying so earnestly to become free of. In fact, Don Juan is probably right there with him saying something like, “there are warriors and then there are ordinary men acting like warriors.”

Knowledge is a most peculiar affair, especially for a warrior.  Knowledge for a warrior is something that comes at once, engulfs him, and passes on. ~ Don Juan, Tales of Power

You are confused by the words. When sorcerers speak of dreaming and awakening, the terms don’t have anything to do with the physical states you know. I don’t have any choice but to use your language, because otherwise you would not understand me at all. But if you don’t do your part, and put aside everyday meanings and try to penetrate the meaning of what I’m telling you, you will never get out of this state of mistrust. ~ Don Juan speaking to Carlos

Dreaming is so misunderstood. It is not a state that is separate from wakefulness. Dreaming is about having the energy that is necessary to function in a state of 360 degree total awareness which ultimately transcends both the states of dreaming and wakefulness, the pinnacle of awakening! I have always believed that the word dreaming was inaccurate but then again, most of Castaneda’s nomenclature is designed to present a constant state of misinterpretation to lead adherents through the arduous maze of complete understanding. Absolute brilliance on his part!

Yeah, there are dreaming practices like trying to find your hands and speaking to others in dream but what are these exercises other than to hone awareness in all states of being? Total 360 degree awareness in each and every moment. Not just waking moments, all moments.

So what words can replace dreaming? Well, to put it most simply let’s just say meditation. No, not the lotus seating style with thumb and forefinger touching while resting the wrists on your knees and chanting Om Mani Padme Om. Yeah, that could work but it’s a huge distraction stemming from someone else’s vision. As warriors we can’t afford to copy others and align ourselves with their intent.  That would cause a fixation of our assemblage point onto their fixated location. So what is the goal? Connecting with silent knowledge. Aligning with intent! And when we are aligned with intent we are dreaming all the time.

Some of the dreamers I know have embarked on meditation. And then they tell me that since they began meditating they are no longer able to enter the state of “dreaming” as they were able to in the past. I explain that this is because through meditation they have connected directly with silent knowledge which provides for them the opportunity to be in a state of dream all the time thereby making the “dream state” indistinguishable from meditation because they have integrated their ability to be in the state of dream all the time. 360 degree total awareness.

Dreaming isn’t a task, it is a state of being. We have all, for the most part, done the recapitulation, erased personal history, broken free of the mold of man, made death an advisor and as a result have access to tons of usable energy allowing us to shift our assemblage points at will and constantly perceive a multitude of states of being while aligning with intent. We are just being in a constant state of creation as the constant state of creation unfolds all around us in each and every moment. 360 degree total awareness. Happy dreaming!

Dreaming happens when we achieve a certain balance in our daily life, and only after silencing the internal dialogue. The term ‘dreaming’ is not the most appropriate to describe an exercise of awareness which has nothing to do with the content of the mind. I use it out of respect for the tradition of my lineage, but the ancient seers called it something else. ~ Carlos Castaneda

The idea that time moves in a straight line from past to future is completely primitive, something that goes against the experience of sorcerers and even of modern science. Due to that limited interpretation, most of humanity is kept prisoner in a tunnel of time, where their destiny becomes an infinite repetition of the same. ~ CC, Encounters with the Nagual

Recapitulate the future!  I wonder why Carlos and Don Juan never talked about this? I guess with all the goals laid out to dart past the eagle to be free, make death an advisor and merge with total awareness, it would have somehow lost its punch if it was inferred to recapitulate the future and yet I believe the point is to recapitulate everything, every thought, every action.

To recapitulate is to stalk our routines, subjecting them to a systematic and merciless scrutiny. It is an activity that allows us to visualize our life as a totality, and not just as a succession of moments.*

Think about it. Every spiritual belief system has you preparing for the afterlife in some way, shape or form, the Toltec path is no exception. These preparations are routines. It doesn’t matter if you are darting past eagles or flying with angles or becoming free of the karmic loop or ascending into heaven, these are all goals that ultimately fixate your assemblage point and trap your energy into preparing for the future. RECAPITULATE IT ALL! When you have recapitulated your past and have gained the personal power necessary for living freely in the moment, then, recapitulate the future! Most of the future is borne of past experience/knowledge anyway.

Warriors recapitulate when they are walking down the road, in the bathroom, when working or when eating; whenever it is possible. The important thing is to do it. What counts is the intent. Breathe in when you try to recover something, and blow back all that doesn’t belong to you. If you do that with the totality of your history, you will stop living entangled in a chain of memories and instead, you will be focused in the present. Seers describe that effect as facing facts as they are, or seeing time objectively.*

If warriors are preparing for any outcome, then we are potentially losing energy to the outcome by envisioning how it might be. So how do we recapitulate the future? By aligning with intent. Right here, right now. When we align with intent with fluidity, we dance along the lines of awareness that are unfolding. And we create the present moment however we want to.  

We cannot be warriors of freedom when thoughts of freedom fixate the location of our assemblage point. We amass personal power and energy when we recapitulate the past. We amass personal power and energy when we recapitulate the future. When we do this we are able to live without distractions and in total 360 degree awareness. And in freedom. We return to being the creative force that we were born to be when we sit within silent knowledge, completely aligned with intent.

The immediate effect is that it (recapitulation) stops our internal dialogue. When a warrior is able to stop his dialogue, he tightens the relationship with his energy. It liberates him from the obligation of memory, and from the burden of feelings, and leaves a residual energy that he can invest in enlarging the frontiers of his perception. A warrior begins to appreciate the real thing, not the interpretation of it.*

*Quotes by Carlos Casteneda from Encounters with the Nagual

What is required of a modern warrior is a condition of sustained energy gain, until his attention can flow between reason and silent knowledge. When moving in that way, he is more sane than ever, and yet he is not a rational being. From whichever position he assumes, he will always be sighting the other side, and his vision acquires perspective and depth. Sorcerers describe this condition as ‘being double” or ‘losing the mind’. ~ CC, Encounters with the Nagual

As warriors of awareness, Don Juan says that every day is a battle and that a warrior will fight that battle to the last day. What are warriors battling? Themselves. They fight to break the description of the world which has been injected into their mind, freeing themselves from the mold of man. This allows the assemblage point to shift so new things can be perceived.

Recapitulate. And when you’re done, recapitulate some more. Yeah, you’re all probably sick of hearing me say this but for everything you recapitulate you restore the energy that you’ve lost to people, situations and events and this reclaimed energy assists you in shifting your assemblage point so you may see things in a way you’ve never seen them before. The myth of man becomes clearer and it becomes easier to remove oneself from the lie of collective consent and conformity.

The evolutionary freedom of humans depends on our ability to break free of the repetitive pattern of the conditioning that dictates what it means to be human. We are conditioned to behave in the same manner dogs that are trained. Carlos said, “We can arrive at silent knowledge in exactly the same way as our teachers taught us to arrive at reason: By induction. It is like controlling both sides of a bridge. From one side, you can see reason like a net of agreements, which transforms collective interpretations into common sense through the customs of concern. From the other side, you can sense silent knowledge as an unfathomable, creative darkness which extends beyond the threshold of non-pity. Upon crossing this threshold, the ancient sorcerers arrived at the source of pure understanding.”

It’s great that there are warriors working towards total freedom, to potentially dart past the eagle to be free but it would be magnificent if the entire species were able to evolve out of this destructive pattern of “humanity”, forever eliminating the reign of terror, violence, oppression and confusion we have voluntarily reduced ourselves to. I say voluntarily because if you are reading this blog then you are already aware that you have a choice. Take advantage of your free will. Take responsibility for your life! The ripple effects of your choice to keep dancing and your commitment to freedom will be felt for many generations to come.

Do not attempt to seek a teacher for this work, you must align with intent, with spirit! Most so-called teachers simply address the concerns of the ego and all the student ultimately does is follow and imitate their teacher thereby repeating the patterns in a new way. Freedom is creative and creation is freedom. Create your world. You must make death an advisor. Unbending intent may place other impeccable warriors on your path who can make you aware of new possibilities but if freedom is your intention then it is your responsibility to connect with silent knowledge. This silent knowledge is not somewhere out there, it is inside of you. Think of it as an eternal flame of awareness. You must fan it to keep it alive. Breathe. Connect with silence. Ignite the spirit and just keep dancing.

Sorcery is about returning man to marvel, to power, to what he has dreamt about; to reconnect him with astonishment and the capacity to create. ~ CC

According to Don Juan’s teachings and what he himself (Carlos) had been able to discover, there are two kinds of tradition: The formal, and the energetic. The formal tradition depends on secrets and the preservation of routines, it teaches allegories and produces shepherds and flocks. The energetic tradition deals with concrete achievements, like seeing and moving the assemblage point; its strength is renewal and experimentation, and it produces impeccable warriors. “A warrior is devoted to his task, he doesn’t waste his energy on following anybody. He doesn’t care about social customs, whether they may be contemporary or represent millennia of tradition. ~ Encounters with the Nagual

By now, those of us who grew up watching The Jetson’s thought we’d be traveling in hover craft; cars being a thing of the past. 2012 sounded soooo far away and so futuristic. This year, fellow warriors, is the year for adventure! It’s the year of pursuing and fulfilling your life’s dream. But how do we do that you ask?

The method of sorcerers is the systematic saving of energy. They state that what separates men is not what they know, but how much energy they possess; therefore, the true way to transmit knowledge is in increased states of awareness. The appointment of sorcerers is not with a book or a ceremony, but with dreaming. When a warrior learns how to capture experience through his dreams, it doesn’t matter under which label the teachings are presented, since his perception is pure and he can corroborate it with his seeing. ~ CC

Dreaming. To actualize and get the most out of dreaming we have to recapitulate, erase personal history and further break free of the mold of man. And then, instead of always expending energy, we receive it. We gather it and we amass it. The energy provides us with the energy necessary for shifting our assemblage points, breaking barriers of perception and opening up to allow a new dream to emerge.

This year forget about what the books and the teachers and the ceremonies and rituals and tradition says. Those “teachings” are someone else’s dream, they are visions that came to someone while they were in a state of dream or in vision. And how did they get to those states? They saved energy and connected with silent knowledge. They rejected the formal tradition and connected energetically. They risked everything by stepping out and walking along new lines of awareness.

How do we walk along new lines of awareness??? Just walk! Go to the beach, the mountains, the desert, the jungle, the river; anywhere that is outside of your familiar pattern. See with your ears, hear with your pores, taste with your fingers, feel with your heart and perceive with your eyes the incredible wonder that exists when you allow the location of your assemblage point to shift. Pay attention to your dreams and when something emerges that you resonate with, infuse it with energy and intent. This with patience and over time will make it real. And so, a new dream emerges and you find yourself walking, playing, dancing along new lines of awareness.

The choice is yours. Repeat the patterns or dance awake a new dream! Power is and power moves, you are that power.

~Keep Dancing!!!

Either you choose your belief, or it chooses you. In the first case, it is authentic, it is your ally, it sustains you, and it allows you to manipulate it at will. In the second case, it is an imposition and not worthwhile. ~ Carlos Castaneda

Happy merry whatever you celebrate at this time of year fellow warriors. There is tons of spinning, spiraling, joyous and vibrant energy at this time of the year. Whether you are opposed to compulsory consumption or open to giving from the heart, what’s important is dancing in gratitude for this amazing gift of life and the opportunities we have to experience everything we want or nothing at all if we so choose. Be well, travel safe and thanks for being here. See you in 2012 and keep dancing!

What counts for a warrior is being alive. Life in itself is sufficient, self-explanatory and complete. Therefore, one may say without being presumptuous that the experience of experiences is being alive. ~ Don Juan

I ain’t afraid of your Yahweh, I ain’t afraid of your Allah, I ain’t afraid of your Jesus, I’m afraid of what you do in the name of your god. Rise up to your higher power, free up from fear it will devour you, watch out for the ego of the hour, the ones who say they know it are the ones who will impose it on you. ~ Holly Near (video)

A 60-year old Saudi woman was beheaded on Monday after being convicted of practicing sorcery, which is banned in the ultra-conservative kingdom. I just don’t have words for this ignorance. Thankfully, others do. Please read A Letter to My Fellow Humans.

Aligning with intent has been the primary focus of my work for the past couple of months. It has been difficult trying to find the words to describe it. Aligning with intent differs vastly from connecting with intent or creating intent. While we can will ourselves to connect with intent (to see) and create with intent (to know), in order to align with intent one must arduously recapitulate (in the moment), erase even more personal history (the stuff we thought was “knowledge”) and zealously unplug from the foreign installation. In order to align with intent, we must have tons of energy and personal power. The foreign installation is so generationally ingrained that it seems as though we are stripping away the very cornerstone of our reality. And we are. Herein lies the incessant battle of the warrior.

When warriors align with intent, there we stand looking into and feeling into the unknown, the abyss, the void. Floating in complete surrender. And then something magical beings to occur. The veil has lifted so to speak and the conditioning that prevents one from seeing, feeling, sensing, knowing, intuiting things as they really are is gone and gratitude begins to replace thoughts like doubt, thought, control and confusion.

We begin to have things “happen” synchronistically; not just one cool thing here or there but many things start to manifest. You think of someone you haven’t spoken to in a year and they call; you think about a particular thing you need and it appears in a most unconventional manner. You share an idea with someone and they simultaneously had the same idea or you remember an old song you like and it plays on the radio! It’s as if you are just in a constant act of creation and co-creation. Just walking your thoughts awake and alive. Remember the movie “What Dreams May Come”?

This is creative abundance and it ushers in such a deep sense of gratitude. It’s gratitude that is grounded in humility. It’s not simply a “thank you” for this or that, it’s more like a deep, heartfelt thank you to the very fabric of existence; to intent and the incredible joyfulness and harmony that is felt when one has aligned with it. It’s awe at the awesomeness of what is possible when we get out of our own way and stop trying to make things happen. More than being “in the flow” (whose flow is that anyway?), we instead, by aligning with intent, become the flow, an extension of it, because of it. We become the creator, creation, created. And our humble knowing gratitude makes all things possible. ~ Keep Dancing!

The objective of the Rule of the nagual is to generate parties; that is, self-aware organisms capable of flying into the immensity out there. Such organisms are made up by the sum of a group of warriors who have harmonized their individual intents. The purpose of that design is to perpetuate a non-human dimension of awareness. ~ Carlos Castaneda, Encounters with the Nagual

I’ve been reading this quote and looking at it from multiple perspectives. Not too long ago I said, yes…we must assemble a new band of awareness to ensure that we can leap into freedom when death comes knocking on our door and exist as pure energetic awareness without repeating the patterns by repositioning ourselves, again, in the karmic wheel of life. I said that it is important to create energetic hubs of awareness that will allow us to move completely beyond the fixated assemblage point of reason. I said a lot of things and now I find myself moving beyond those thoughts, ideas and sensate intuitions. For this reason, and I’ve said this before, don’t believe anything I say.

The purpose of that design is to perpetuate a non-human dimension of awareness. Perhaps there is no need to perpetuate a non-human dimension of awareness and this awareness like many other things will need to rest, to become extinct (if it even exists). Or maybe, the non-human dimension of awareness is eternal and our thoughts of perpetuating it are nothing more than the ultimate in self-importance. Maybe the zealousness found in a warrior of freedom is his or her own fear of termination. Make death an advisor and recapitulate your ass off so you are ready to go at any moment and yet…hold on fervently to the awareness that will allow you to dart past the eagle to be free.

Non-human awareness equals inorganic awareness. Inorganic beings are, amongst other things, phantoms. It seems that part of the recapitulation process towards total freedom will be to recapitulate even awareness to avoid becoming an inorganic being. And when you get a group of warriors harmonizing their individual intents do we then create an inorganic party of ghosts? And then, is our “awareness” held captive in an inorganic realm from which we warriors will inevitably seek freedom thereby repeating another patternistic reality?

This is a difficult chapter for me to write, to wrap my mind around. It challenges my core beliefs as a warrior of freedom and presents to me the task of potentially recapitulating awareness. I used to say that when I die I want to have my full conscious awareness with me in whatever realm I’m going to. That I don’t want to “learn” again, I just want to know everything that I’ve already learned. Ha, ha!!! Salvation! And then what I wonder? To have my full awareness would ultimately lead to another repetition, would it not?

If there is a realm beyond this earthly realm of existence I surmise that if our earthly human awareness, (warrior awareness, sorcerer awareness) remains with us then we will have no choice but to recapitulate that as well. And then what? And then we begin again to create order in chaos. Nooo! Suffice it to say that the universe exists as a formless potential that only becomes manifest when observed by conscious beings, sentient beings who collapse formlessness into a space-time reality. I recall reading somewhere that awareness of the quantum self brings about collapse. Perhaps we warriors are potentially collapsing out of space-time reality?

This leaves us with what? Emptiness? Pure conscious awareness? Unconsciousness? Untapped creative potential and I’m not talking exclusively about artwork, writing, building, etc? Unconscious creativity, therefore, becomes an essential modality rooted in pure knowing and it is not our knowing. Quite the paradox, eh? This creation comes from a realm of conscious knowing, silent knowledge, and most importantly, unknowing. Something entirely new that extends far beyond the awareness that we achieve when we recapitulate the totality of all of our awareness. I’m looking forward to continuing my connection with silent knowledge and further exploring the unknown. I have way more questions than answers.

There is an unborn, unoriginated, uncreated, unformed. If there were not this unborn, this unoriginated, this uncreated, this unformed, there would be no escape from the world of the born, the originated, the created, the formed. Since there is an unborn, unoriginated, uncreated and unformed, there is an escape from the born, originated, created and formed. ~ Buddha

It is nearly incomprehensible to realize what the new seers have accomplished. These impeccable warrior-sorcerers have outlined the essence of a path to the threshold of power itself! They have carried the realization of power’s promise beyond the flaw with words, and actualized it as an empirical aspect of the human experience. These soldiers of the third attention have accomplished a miraculous journey that every human being longs to make. They have returned to the abstract in a state of total awareness. They have burned with the fire from within and flown into eternity on the incomprehensible wings of intent. ~

A fellow warrior recently recommended the book Creative Victory; Reflections on the Process of Power from the Collected Works of Carlos Castaneda. It is by an anonymous author called Tomas and I highly recommend it for every warrior who is familiar with Castaneda’s works.  In fact, the forward says that “it will be next to impossible for the reader to make sense of Creative Victory without a perspective on the concepts and terminology contained within Castaneda’s nine books”. I feel certain that this author did his work with the Castaneda party and if not, he is very committed to this magical path of autenticity and freedom.

The book is written by someone who obviously lives his life as a warrior and speaks from his authentic and depthful experience. Tomas is not a Castaneda “talking head” merely reiterating what has already been said; nor is he trying to become a famed teacher with all the answers. He brings his experience from his own commitment to this path and moves the committed warrior to a deeper understanding of their own reach towards total freedom that goes beyond some of the metaphorical concepts in the Castaneda books. 

As warriors committed to total freedom I highly recommend that you read this book and keep dancing along the lines of awareness. Besides, what other choice is there?