Don Juan joined Belisario’s wife and the smiling muleteers without looking at anybody. They doubled back and took other trails. Nobody spoke for days; then Belisario gave him daily lessons. He told don Juan that Indian women were practical and went directly to the heart of things, but that they were also very shy, and that when challenged they showed the physical signs of fright in shifty eyes, tight mouths, and enlarged nostrils. All these signs were accompanied by a fearful stubbornness, followed by shy laughter.
He made don Juan practice his womanly behavior skills in every town they passed through. And don Juan honestly believed he was teaching him to be an actor. But Belisario insisted that he was teaching him the art of stalking. He told don Juan that stalking was an art applicable to everything, and that there were four steps to learning it: ruthlessness, cunning, patience, and sweetness.
I felt compelled to interrupt his account once more.
“But isn’t stalking taught in deep, heightened awareness?” I asked.
“Of course,” he replied with a grin. “But you have to understand that for some men wearing women’s clothes is the door into heightened awareness. In fact, such means are more effective than pushing the assemblage point, but are very difficult to arrange.”
Don Juan said that his benefactor drilled him daily in the four moods of stalking and insisted that don Juan understand that ruthlessness should not be harshness, cunning should not be cruelty, patience should not be negligence, and sweetness should not be foolishness.
He taught him that these four steps had to be practiced and perfected until they were so smooth they were unnoticeable. He believed women to be natural stalkers. And his conviction was so strong he maintained that only in a woman’s disguise could any man really learn the art of stalking.
“I went with him to every market in every town we passed and haggled with everyone,” don Juan went on. “My benefactor used to stay to one side watching me. ‘Be ruthless but charming,’ he used to say. ‘Be cunning but nice. Be patient but active. Be sweet but lethal. Only women can do it. If a man acts this way he’s being prissy.’
And as if to make sure don Juan stayed in line, the monstrous man appeared from time to time. Don Juan caught sight of him, roaming the countryside. He would see him most often after Belisario gave him a vigorous back massage, supposedly to alleviate a sharp nervous pain in his neck. Don Juan laughed and said that he had no idea he was being manipulated into heightened awareness.
“It took us one month to reach the city of Durango,” don Juan said. “In that month, I had a brief sample of the four moods of stalking. It really didn’t change me much, but it gave me a chance to have an inkling of what being a woman was like.”
THE FOUR MOODS OF STALKING
Don Juan said that I should sit there at that ancient lookout post and use the pull of the earth to move my assemblage point and recall other states of heightened awareness in which he had taught me stalking.
“In the past few days, I have mentioned many times the four moods of stalking,” he went on. “I have mentioned ruthlessness, cunning, patience, and sweetness, with the hope that you might remember what I taught you about them. It would be wonderful if you could use these four moods as the ushers to bring you into a total recollection.”
He kept quiet for what seemed an inordinately long moment. Then he made a statement which should not have surprised me, but did. He said he had taught me the four moods of stalking in northern Mexico with the help of Vicente Medrano and Silvio Manuel. He did not elaborate but let his statement sink in. I tried to remember but finally gave up and wanted to shout that I could not remember something that never happened.
As I was struggling to voice my protest, anxious thoughts began to cross my mind. I knew don Juan had not said what he had just to annoy me. As I always did when asked to remember heightened awareness, I became obsessively conscious that there was really no continuity to the events I had experienced under his guidance. Those events were not strung together as the events in my daily life were, in a linear sequence. It was perfectly possible he was right. In don Juan’s world, I had no business being certain of anything.
I tried to voice my doubts but he refused to listen and urged me to recollect. By then it was quite dark.
It had gotten windy, but I did not feel the cold. Don Juan had given me a flat rock to place on my sternum. My awareness was keenly tuned to everything around. I felt an abrupt pull, which was neither external nor internal, but rather the sensation of a sustained tugging at an unidentifiable part of myself. Suddenly I began to remember with shattering clarity a meeting I had had years before. I remembered events and people so vividly that it frightened me. I felt a chill.
I told all this to don Juan, who did not seem impressed or concerned. He urged me not to give in to mental or physical fear.
My recollection was so phenomenal that it was as if I were reliving the experience. Don Juan kept quiet. He did not even look at me. I felt numbed. The sensation of numbness passed slowly.
I repeated the same things I always said to don Juan when I remembered an event with no linear existence. “How can this be, don Juan? How could I have forgotten all this?”
And he reaffirmed the same things he always did. “This type of remembering or forgetting has nothing to do with normal memory,” he assured me. “It has to do with the movement of the assemblage point.”
He affirmed that although I possessed total knowledge of what intent is, I did not command that knowledge yet. Knowing what intent is means that one can, at any time, explain that knowledge or use it. A nagual by the force of his position is obliged to command his knowledge in this manner. “What did you recollect?” he asked me. “The first time you told me about the four moods of stalking,” I said.
Some process, inexplicable in terms of my usual awareness of the world, had released a memory which a minute before had not existed. And I recollected an entire sequence of events that had happened many years before.
Just as I was leaving don Juan’s house in Sonora, he had asked me to meet him the following week around noon, across the U.S. border, in Nogales, Arizona, in the Greyhound bus depot.
I arrived about an hour early. He was standing by the door. I greeted him. He did not answer but hurriedly pulled me aside and whispered that I should take my hands out of my pockets. I was dumbfounded. He did not give me time to respond, but said that my fly was open, and it was shamefully evident that I was sexually aroused.
The speed with which I rushed to cover myself was phenomenal. By the time I realized it was a crude joke we were on the street. Don Juan was laughing, slapping me on the back repeatedly and forcefully, as if he were just celebrating the joke. Suddenly I found myself in a state of heightened awareness.
We walked into a coffee shop and sat down. My mind was so clear I wanted to look at everything, see the essence of things.
“Don’t waste energy!” don Juan commanded in a stern voice. “I brought you here to discover if you can eat when your assemblage point has moved. Don’t try to do more than that.”
But then a man sat down at the table in front of me, and all my attention became trapped by him.
“Move your eyes in circles,” don Juan commanded. “Don’t look at that man.”
I found it impossible to stop watching the man. I felt irritated by don Juan’s demands.
“What do you see?” I heard don Juan ask.
I was seeing a luminous cocoon made of transparent wings which were folded over the cocoon itself. The wings unfolded, fluttered for an instant, peeled off,
fell, and were replaced by new wings, which repeated the same process.
Don Juan boldly turned my chair until I was facing the wall.
“What a waste,” he said in a loud sigh, after I described what I had seen. “You have exhausted nearly all your energy. Restrain yourself. A warrior needs focus. Who gives a damn about wings on a luminous cocoon?”
He said that heightened awareness was like a springboard. From it one could jump into infinity. He stressed, over and over, that when the assemblage point was dislodged, it either became lodged again at a position very near its customary one or continued moving on into infinity.