Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan’s Teachings

————

R: I’ve had many considerations about how to end emails. I usually end with something like, “thanks,” or “thank you,” or just my name. With this one, (above) however, I found myself writing, “love.” It just came out naturally with this email.

M: Another breakthrough! Another defensive position altered!

R: I see that it is not something mysterious but rather has everything to do with paying attention to who I am being. I’ll write a bit more at the end of the following.

M: In the beginning, we all seem to “experiment” with various personality dramas that take up many roles just in the sense that actors play. Humans tend to emulate characters they observe in roles ranging from super-heros as children to other roles as adults. Sometimes these role-casts are never broken and the human simply moves from one role-character to another almost reflexively. When in a tough situation: become Clint Eastwood’s dirty Harry, for example. Given this tendency in society, locking oneself into these roles eventually becomes a defensive position since there isn’t an alternative of “self”. Comments have been offered in the past about “stripping oneself of labels, positions or titles”. Stripping oneself of “roles” is equally applicable. This process in society starts at a very early age: adults are forever posturing “role models” for children, for example.

————

R: Since then, I’ve been aware of the “solitary bird”-ness of the way of knowledge. Just think, HUMAN FORM DEPENDENCIES … “Solitary bird”-ness — HUMAN FORM DEPENDENCIES.” I guess it’s simple: without human form dependencies (hfd) we are solitary birds (from the don Juan poem).

M: This is a temporary condition. Eventually when humans bind themselves to universal power/forces/allies, one is never isolated although it is still possible to be solitary. When Deepak Chopra, in “The Way of the Wizard” noted that when one evolves to the state of pure being where “unconditional love” prevails, then it becomes facilitated of connecting to others at any moment, at will, and isolation forever disappears.

R: I couldn’t help noticing that damn near every thought I think stems from human form dependency. That realization is very freeing in the way it seems to be the stepping stone, for me at this point, into internal dialogue silence. And from there, it seems only natural to end an email with, “love.” But then a moment later the internal dialogue (human form dependency) come(s) right back in and “love,” as an ending, is back to being a platitude.

M: Still more indication of the transitional state. It is a beginning into the next phase for you.

R: I have a similar problem with, “Peace,” as an ending. I take an ending to be the reported place in, call it, consciousness, that I’m writing from. So, to end with, “Peace,” or “Love,” most always stricks me, when I think of using it, as presumptuous.

M: Since it is YOUR state of perception to consider, it’s not necessary to look beyond yourself.

R: Perhaps it is time to let that go and simply be sure that when I’m writing the ending, that I’ve taken a moment to notice the human form dependency; to be still, to enter inner silence, and quickly write the ending, sign it, and send it (smile-laughing at the absurdity) … I will end with good advise from the Bible. “Be still and know” – Rick

M: It’s worth mentioning that from experience, this indicates a process of what might be considered “oscillation” from one concept (historical) to another (new). Humans, for whatever it’s worth, seem to do this at the threshold of change. Once the oscillations stabilize, then the next ramp of progress can begin.

Love – and peace

Michael

————

NOTE: I’ve cut a personal exchange between Ed and Michael where the two related past hardships. Michael then writes:

M: Yes. There was another effect. Every once in a while, given the decades-long hardship that we have both experienced, there was a tendency to become impatient with “whiners”, as in “what would you do if you had a “REAL” problem … “, but that also passed with the understanding that everyone has limits and that pressing those limits is all anyone can do within their boundaries. We were both historically blessed with these problems because they expanded our bandwidths in many, many ways.

M: A refresher reading might help. There is another book from Ayn Rand, a small book, that is worth reading for it’s first 60-ish pages. The name is “For The New Intellectual”. In the first 60 pages, she discusses a litany of philosophers through history and their concepts that were all pointed to tearing down the individual in deference to society, most in the phony name of “altruism”. The rest of the book is only reprints of various speeches that her characters made in the prior books. The first 60 pages is very much like a speech she made to the graduating class at West Point, wherein the attendees flooded in to the point where there was no room – they overwhelmed the facilities about 1972. Most of what Ayn Rand had projected in the previously noted books published in the 40’s and 50’s had all come true by the mid-70’s.

Ed: Thanks, I will check into it. Warm Regards, and Peace

M: Good. It is believed that there will be a benefit to you to re-read these.

———–

Bob: Now I am wondering about this, and we will be wrapping up all my reincarnation thoughts pretty soon … what about the higher self.

M: First, the “higher self” is an extension of what is already setup to evolve. It’s contained and often unexpressed, and CC might call it even “unknowable” – which is always the case until something is known.

Bob: Is the higher self also just a one shot affair, created with the body and then if you get awareness when you die it continues, if you don’t … then it is gone. This seems like it would be the case.

M: Yes. This is my understanding, based on experience. If one learns to release the self through expansion, then it continues, and it not, it dissipates. In some, who never learn to allow escape from the body or who do not have sufficient energy to expand it even within the body, then it seems to simply “die of containment” within the body. Others, who “sort of” have some ability to project but are too dependent, seem to experience a flash of awareness and then either they can find instantly the intent/will to remain coherent or they dissipate.

Bob: Also then there really is no ” soul” unless you use that as a convenient reference for the part of you that’s in the body … but then it seems that we really are the body … however the body being multi dimensional, i.e. physical and also the energy body … in reincarnation the theory is that you perfect the soul, or spirit, that it comes here to learn, and that over many lives through reincarnation you perfect the physical body do that the true self can ( I am going to use the term dependence for ascendance since it seems it is the higher self that descends into the body, even though it is called ascendance) descend into the body and one evolve into being an ascended master and onward.

M: Hummm. Messy. It’s far more simple than that. Try this to untangle.

M: a. The “higher self”, the luminous cocoon, the soul, the energy being of self, are all the same entity: the sentient consciousness of pure being.

M: b. The “higher self” is “handed down” from generation to generation through the micro-code known as DNA. It is intrinsic and evolving from each generation to generation, and as DNA it is the result of everything that has gone before within your evolutionary process. YOU are the highest form of evolution that this process has experienced to this point.

M: c. The evolution of “you” and therefore all that went before you to cause you “to be” is now “up to you”.

M: d. Within all that is “you” are fields and energies that are evolving through sub-atomic processes into molecular/genetic processes, to allow the fields and energy of sentience to project beyond the body. Without doing so, they are locked in the body of project in some limited low energy manner, also either being trapped in a low energy form, or failing.

M: Simple.

M: If you truly think about it given the intrinsic nature of all that constitutes you, your energy, your fields – everything – why on earth would reincarnation be required? It would be a horribly inefficient use of energy, and nature does not permit that in natural processes. Why would a “soul” return to an inefficient mechanism of “a body” when all that created it in the past is carried forward – efficiently – by DNA. It just does not make sense in anything other than old ideas that scrambled to find explanations for what is really a very natural process of evolution.