Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan’s Teachings

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Usually anger is very sobering, or sometimes fear is, or humor.

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Awareness begins with the permanent pressure that the emanations at large exert on the emanations trapped inside the cocoon. This pressure produces the first act of consciousness; it stops the motion of the trapped emanations, which are fighting to break the cocoon, fighting to die.

For a seer, the truth is that all living beings are struggling to die. What stops death is awareness. The new seers were profoundly disturbed by the fact that awareness forestalls death and at the same time induces it by being attracted by the Indescribable Force . Since they could not explain it, for there is no rational way to understand existence, seers realized that their knowledge is composed of contradictory propositions.

For example, seers have to be methodical, rational beings, paragons of sobriety, and at the same time they must shy away from all of those qualities in order to be completely free and open to the wonders and mysteries of existence.

Only a feeling of supreme sobriety can bridge the contradictions. You may call the bridge between contradictions anything you want–art, affection, sobriety, love, or even kindness.

In examining the first attention, the new seers realized that all organic beings, except man, quiet down their agitated trapped emanations so that those emanations can align themselves with their matching ones outside. Human beings do not do that; instead, their first attention takes an inventory of the Indescribable Force ‘s emanations inside their cocoons. Human beings take notice of the emanations they have inside their cocoons, no other creatures do that. The moment the pressure from the emanations at large fixates the emanations inside, the first attention begins to watch itself. It notes everything about itself, or at least it tries to, in whatever aberrant ways it can. This is the process seers call taking an inventory.

I don’t mean to say that human beings choose to take an inventory, or that they can refuse to take it. To take an inventory is the Indescribable Force ‘s command. What is subject to volition, however, is the manner in which the command is obeyed.

Although I dislike calling the emanations commands, that is what they are: commands that no one can disobey. Yet the way out of obeying the commands is in obeying them.

In the case of the inventory of the first attention, seers take it, for they can’t disobey. But once they have taken it they throw it away. The Indescribable Force doesn’t command us to worship our inventory; it commands us to take it, that’s all.

The emanations inside the cocoon of man are not quieted down for purposes of matching them with those outside. This is evident after seeing what other creatures do. On quieting down, some of them actually merge themselves with the emanations at large and move with them.

But human beings quiet down their emanations and then reflect on them. The emanations focus on themselves. Human beings carry the command of taking an inventory to its logical extreme and disregard everything else. Once they are deeply involved in the inventory, two things may happen. They may ignore the impulses of the emanations at large, or they may use them in a very specialized way.

The end result of ignoring those impulses after taking an inventory is a unique state known as reason. The result of using every impulse in a specialized way is known as self-absorption.

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The first attention works very well with the unknown. It blocks it; it denies it so fiercely that in the end, the unknown doesn’t exist for the first attention.

Taking an inventory makes us invulnerable. That is why the inventory came into existence in the first place.

The first attention consumes all the glow of awareness that human beings have, and not an iota of energy is left free. So, the new seers proposed that warriors, since they have to enter into the unknown, have to save their energy. But where are they going to get energy, if all of it is taken? They’ll get it from eradicating unnecessary habits. Eradicating unnecessary habits detaches awareness from self-reflection and allows it the freedom to focus on something else.

The unknown is forever present, but it is outside the possibility of our normal awareness. The unknown is the superfluous part of the average man. And it is superfluous because the average man doesn’t have enough free energy to grasp it.

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Their is a force that is present throughout everything there is. It is called will , the will of the Indescribable Force ‘s emanations, or intent .

One of the most worthwhile findings of the ancient seers was the discovery that organic life is not the only form of life present on this earth.

For seers, to be alive means to be aware. For the average man, to be aware means to be an organism. This is where seers are different. For them, to be aware means that the emanations that cause awareness are encased inside a receptacle.

Organic living beings have a cocoon that encloses the emanations. But there are other creatures whose receptacles don’t look like a cocoon to a seer. Yet they have the emanations of awareness in them and characteristics of life other than reproduction and metabolism; such as emotional dependency, sadness, joy, wrath, and so forth and so on. And the best yet, love; a kind of love man can’t even conceive. If we take as our clue what seers see , life is indeed extraordinary.

Those beings make themselves known to man all the time. And not only to seers but also to the average man. The problem is that all the energy available is consumed by the first attention. Man’s inventory not only takes it all, but it also toughens the cocoon to the point of making it inflexible. Under those circumstances there is no possible interaction.

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In the life of warriors it is extremely natural to be sad for no overt reason. Seers say that the luminous egg, as a field of energy, senses its final destination whenever the boundaries of the known are broken. A mere glimpse of the eternity outside the cocoon is enough to disrupt the coziness of our inventory. The resulting melancholy is sometimes so intense that it can bring about death. The best way to get rid of melancholy is to make fun of it.

There is nothing more lonely than eternity. And nothing is more cozy for us than to be a human being. This indeed is another contradiction–how can man keep the bonds of his humanness and still venture gladly and purposefully into the absolute loneliness of eternity? Whenever you resolve this riddle, you’ll be ready for the definitive journey.

The new seers have found that the only thing that counts is impeccability. That is, freed energy.

Pull yourself together and don’t fight your fear, roll with it. Be afraid without being terrified. Put all your concentration on the midpoint of your body–a true center of energy in all of us. Fear does not exist as soon as the glow of awareness moves beyond a certain threshold inside man’s cocoon.

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I’ll briefly outline the truths about awareness which I have discussed. 1) There is no objective world, but only a universe of energy fields which seers call the Indescribable Force ‘s emanations. 2) Human beings are made of the Indescribable Force ‘s emanations and are in essence bubbles of luminescent energy; each of us is wrapped in a cocoon that encloses a small portion of these emanations. 3) Awareness is achieved by the constant pressure that the emanations outside our cocoon, which are called emanations at large, exert on those inside our cocoon. 4) Awareness gives rise to perception, which happens when the emanations inside our cocoons align themselves with the corresponding emanations at large.

The next truth is that perception takes place because there is in each of us an agent called the assemblage point that selects internal and external emanations for alignment. The particular alignment that we perceive as the world is the product of the specific spot where our assemblage point is located on our cocoon.

In order to corroborate the truths about awareness, you need energy. Dealing with petty tyrants helps seers accomplish a sophisticated maneuver: that maneuver is to move their assemblage points.

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In order for our first attention to bring into focus the world that we perceive, it has to emphasize certain emanations selected from the narrow band of emanations where man’s awareness is located. The discarded emanations are still within our reach but remain dormant, unknown to us for the duration of our lives.

The new seers call the emphasized emanations the right side, normal awareness, the tonal , this world, the known, the first attention. The average man calls it reality, rationality, common sense.