Our conversation was interrupted, and I did not see him until he sent for me to come to the back patio a couple of hours later.
He and Genaro were strolling around at the far end of the corridor; I could see them moving their hands in what seemed to be an animated conversation.
It was a clear sunny day. The midafternoon sun shone directly on some of the flower pots that hung from the eaves of the roof around the corridor and projected their shadows on the north and east walls of the patio. The combination of intense yellow sunlight, the massive black shadows of the pots, and the lovely, delicate, bare shadows of the frail flowering plants that grew in them was stunning. Someone with a keen eye for balance and order had pruned those plants to cre-ate such an exquisite effect.
“The nagual woman has done that,” don Juan said as if reading my thoughts. “She gazes at these shadows in the afternoons.”
The thought of her gazing at shadows in the afternoons had a swift and devastating effect on me. The intense yellow light of that hour, the quietness of that town, and the affection that I felt for the nagual woman conjured up for me in one instant all the solitude of the warriors’ endless path.
Don Juan had defined the scope of that path when he said to me that the new seers are the warriors of total freedom, that their only search is the ultimate liberation that comes when they attain total awareness. I understood with unimpaired clarity, as I looked at those haunting shadows on the wall, what it meant to the nagual woman when she said that to read poems out loud was the only release that her spirit had.
I remember that the day before she had read something to me, there in the patio, but I had not quite understood her urgency, her longing. It was a poem by Juan Ramon Jimenez, “Hora Inmensa,” which she told me synthesized for her the solitude of warriors who live to escape to total freedom.
Only a bell and a bird break the stillness… It seems that the two talk with the setting sun. Golden colored silence, the afternoon is made of crystals. A roving purity sways the cool trees, and beyond all that, a transparent river dreams that trampling over pearls it breaks loose and flows into infinity.
Don Juan and Genaro came to my side and looked at me with an expression of surprise.
“What are we really doing, don Juan?” I asked. “Is it possible that warriors are only preparing themselves for death?”
“No way,” he said, gently patting my shoulder. “Warriors prepare themselves to be aware, and full awareness comes to them only when there is no more self-importance left in them. Only when they are nothing do they become everything.”
We were quiet for a moment. Then don Juan asked me if I was in the throes of self-pity. I did not answer because I was not sure.
“You’re not sorry that you’re here, are you?” don Juan asked with a faint smile.
“He’s certainly not,” Genaro assured him. Then he seemed to have a moment of doubt. He scratched his head, then looked at me and arched his brows. “Maybe you are,” he said. “Are you?”
“He’s certainly not,” don Juan assured Genaro this time. He went through the same gestures of scratching his head and arching his brows. “Maybe you are,” he said. “Are you?”
“He’s certainly not!” Genaro boomed, and both of them exploded into uncontrolled laughter.
When they had calmed down, don Juan said that self-importance is the motivating force for every at-tack of melancholy. He added that warriors are enti-tled to have profound states of sadness, but that sadness is there only to make them laugh.
“Genaro has something to show you which is more exciting than all the self-pity you can muster up,” don Juan continued, “it has to do with the position of the assemblage point.”
Genaro immediately began to walk around the corridor, arching his back and lifting his thighs to his chest.
“The nagual Julian showed him how to walk that way,” don Juan said in a whisper, “it’s called the gait of power. Genaro knows several gaits of power. Watch him fixedly.”
Genaro’s movements were indeed mesmeric. I found myself following his gait, first with my eyes and then irresistibly with my feet. I imitated his gait. We walked once around the patio and stopped.
While walking, I had noticed the extraordinary lucidity that each step brought to me. When we stopped, I was in a state of keen alertness. I could hear every sound; I could detect every change in the light or in the shadows around me. I became enthralled with a feeling of urgency, of impending action. I felt extraordinarily aggressive, muscular, daring. At that moment I saw an enormous span of flat land in front of me; right behind me I saw a forest. Huge trees were lined up as straight as a wall. The forest was dark and green; the plain was sunny and yellow.
My breathing was deep and strangely accelerated, but not in an abnormal way. Yet it was the rhythm of my breathing that was forcing me to trot on the spot. I wanted to take off running, or rather my body wanted to, but just as I was taking off something stopped me.
Don Juan and Genaro were suddenly by my side. We walked down the corridor with Genaro to my right. He nudged me with his shoulder. I felt the weight of his body on me. He gently shoved me to the left and we angled off straight for the east wall of the patio. For a moment I had the weird impression that we were going to go through the wall, and I even braced myself for the impact, but we stopped right in front of the wall.
While my face was still against the wall, they both examined me with great care. I knew what they were searching for; they wanted to make sure that I had shifted my assemblage point. I knew that I had because my mood had changed. They obviously knew it too. They gently took me by the arms and walked in silence with me to the other side of the corridor, to a dark passageway, a narrow hall that connected the patio with the rest of the house. We stopped there. Don Juan and Genaro moved a few feet away from me.
I was left facing the side of the house that was in dark shadows. I looked into an empty dark room. I had a sense of physical weariness. I felt languid, indifferent, and yet I experienced a sense of spiritual strength. I realized then that I had lost something. There was no strength in my body. I could hardly stand. My legs finally gave in and I sat down and then I lay down on my side. While I lay there, I had the most wonderful, fulfilling thoughts of love for God, for goodness.
Then all at once I was in front of the main altar of a church. The bas-reliefs covered with gold leaf glittered with the light of thousands of candles. I saw the dark figures of men and women carrying an enormous cru-cifix mounted on a huge palanquin. I moved out of their way and stepped outside the church. I saw a multitude of people, a sea of candles, coming toward me. I felt elated. I ran to join them. I was moved by profound love. I wanted to be with them, to pray to the Lord. I was only a few feet away from the mass of people when something swished me away.
The next instant, I was with don Juan and Genaro. They flanked me as we walked lazily around the patio.
While we were having lunch the next day, don Juan said that Genaro had pushed my assemblage point with his gait of power, and that he had been able to do that because I had been in a state of inner silence. He explained that the articulation point of everything seers do is something he had talked about since the day we met: stopping the internal dialogue. He stressed over and over that the internal dialogue is what keeps the assemblage point fixed to its original position.
“Once silence is attained, everything is possible,” he said.
I told him I was very conscious of the fact that in general I had stopped talking to myself, but did not know how I had done it. If asked to explain the procedure I would not know what to say.
“The explanation is simplicity itself,” he said. “You willed it, and thus you set a new intent, a new command. Then your command became the Eagle’s command.
“This is one of the most extraordinary things that the new seers found out: that our command can be-come the Eagle’s command. The internal dialogue stops in the same way it begins: by an act of will. After all, we are forced to start talking to ourselves by those who teach us. As they teach us, they engage their will