We don’t feel our will because we think that it should be something we know for sure that we are doing or feeling, like getting angry, for instance. Will is very quiet, unnoticeable. Will belongs to the other self. We are in our other selves when we do dreaming .
Will is such a complete control of the second attention that it is called the other self.
* * *
Intent is present everywhere. Intent is what makes the world. People, and all other living creatures for that matter, are the slaves of intent . We are in its clutches. It makes us do whatever it wants. It makes us act in the world. It even makes us die. When we become warriors, though, intent becomes our friend. It lets us be free for a moment; at times it even comes to us, as if it had been waiting around for us.
Again, human beings are divided in two. The right side, which is called the tonal , encompasses everything the intellect can conceive of. The left side, called the nagual , is a realm of indescribable features: a realm impossible to contain in words. The left side is perhaps comprehended, if comprehension is what takes place, with the total body; thus its resistance to conceptualization. All the faculties, possibilities, and accomplishments of sorcery, from the simplest to the most astounding, are in the human body itself.
* * *
The power that governs the destiny of all living beings is called the Eagle or the Indescribable Force . Providing the luminous shell that comprises one’s humanness has been broken, it is possible to find in the Indescribable Force the faint reflection of man. The Indescribable Force ‘s irrevocable dictums can then be apprehended by seers, properly interpreted by them, and accumulated in the form of a governing body. Thus the rule was formed.
The rule is not a tale. The rule states that every living thing has been granted the power, if it so desires, to seek an opening to freedom and to go through it.
To cross over to freedom does not mean eternal life as eternity is commonly understood–that is, as living forever. What the rule states is that one can keep the awareness which is ordinarily relinquished at the moment of dying. I cannot explain what it means to keep that awareness. My benefactor told me that at the moment of crossing, one enters into the third attention, and the body in its entirety is kindled with knowledge. Every cell at once becomes aware of itself, and also aware of the totality of the body.
This kind of awareness is meaningless to our compartmentalized minds. Therefore the crux of the warrior’s struggle is not so much to realize that the crossing over stated in the rule means crossing to the third attention, but rather to conceive that there exists such an awareness at all.
There is a common error, that of overestimating the left-side awareness, of becoming dazzled by its clarity and power. To be in the left-side awareness does not mean that one is immediately liberated from one’s folly–it only means an extended capacity for perceiving, and above all, a greater ability to forget.
One has to be utterly humble and carry nothing to defend, not even one’s person. One’s person should be protected, but not defended.
It takes a very long time to clean out the garbage that a luminous being picks up in the world. We are so stiff and feel so self-important.
* * *
Stalkers deal with people, with the world of ordinary affairs. Stalkers are the practitioners of controlled folly as the dreamers are the practitioners of dreaming . Controlled folly is the basis for stalking , as dreams are the basis for dreaming . Generally speaking, a warrior’s greatest accomplishment in the second attention is dreaming , and in the first attention his greatest accomplishment is stalking.
In the absence of self-importance, a warrior’s only way of dealing with the social milieu is in terms of controlled folly.
Deal with the world exclusively in terms of controlled folly.
* * *
A warrior never loses his mind under any circumstances.
* * *
A warrior is never under siege. To be under siege implies that one has personal possessions that could be blockaded. A warrior has nothing in the world except his impeccability, and impeccability cannot be threatened. Nonetheless, in a battle for one’s life a warrior should strategically use every means available.
* * *
We must live our lives impeccably for no other reason than to be impeccable.
* * *
Although human beings appear to a seer as luminous eggs, the egglike shape is an external cocoon, a shell of luminosity that houses a most intriguing, haunting, mesmeric core made up of concentric circles of yellowish luminosity, the color of a candle’s flame.
Losing the human form is the only means of breaking that shell, the only means of liberating that haunting luminous core. To break the shell means remembering the other self, and arriving at the totality of oneself.
* * *
An unconquerable pessimism overtakes a warrior at a certain point on his path. A sense of defeat, or perhaps more accurately, a sense of unworthiness, comes upon him almost unawares. A warrior’s resolution to live impeccably in spite of everything cannot be approached as a strategy to ensure success.
The warrior enters into a state of unsurpassed humility; when the true poverty of his human resources becomes undeniable, the warrior has no recourse but to step back and lower his head.
It is monstrous to think that the world is understandable or that we ourselves are understandable. What we are perceiving is an enigma, a mystery that one can only accept in humbleness and awe. The two sides of a human being are totally separate and it takes great discipline and determination to break that seal and go from one side to the other. We have been put together by forces incomprehensible to our reason. The only thing we do not have is time. Every minute might be our last; therefore, it has to be lived with the spirit.
Perception suffers a profound jolt when we are placed in states of quietude in darkness. Our hearing takes the lead then, and the signals from all the living and existing entities around us can be detected–not with our hearing only, but with a combination of the auditory and visual senses, in that order. In darkness the eyes become subsidiary to the ears.
* * *
Power spots are actual holes in a sort of canopy that prevents the world from losing its shape. A power spot can be utilized as long as one has gathered enough strength in the second attention. The key to withstanding the Indescribable Force ‘s presence is the potency of one’s intent . Without intent there is nothing.
Be impeccable and practice meticulously whatever you learn, and above all, be careful and deliberate in your actions so as not to exhaust your life force in vain.
The prerequisite for entrance into any of the three stages of attention is the possession of life force, because without it warriors cannot have direction and purpose. Upon dying our awareness also enters into the third attention; but only for an instant, as a purging action, just before the Indescribable Force devours it.
* * *
Stalkers become lighthearted and jovial and enjoy their lives.
* * *
The second attention belongs to the luminous body, as the first attention belongs to the physical body.
Dreaming is in fact a rational state. In dreaming , the right side, the rational awareness, is wrapped up inside the left side awareness in order to give the dreamer a sense of sobriety and rationality; but the influence of rationality has to be minimal and used only as an inhibiting mechanism to protect the dreamer from excesses and bizarre undertakings.
Our first attention is hooked to the emanations of the earth, while our second attention is hooked to the emanations of the universe. A dreamer by definition is outside the boundaries of the concerns of everyday life.
The dreamers ‘ power to focus on their second attention makes them into living slingshots. The stronger and the more impeccable the dreamers are, the farther they can project their second attention into the unknown and the longer their dreaming projection will last.
Dreaming is no illusion. It’s a step toward the control of the second attention; in other words, you are learning the perceptual bias of that other realm.
There is no way on earth that we can order anyone or ourselves to rally knowledge. It is rather a slow affair; the body, at the right time and under the proper circumstances of impeccability, rallies its knowledge without the intervention of desire.
* * *
The first principle of the art of stalking is that warriors choose their battleground. A warrior never goes into battle without knowing what the surroundings are.