Don Juan had said that our “first ring of power” is engaged very early in our lives and that we live under the impression that that is all there is to us. Our “second ring of power,” the “attention of the nagual,” remains hidden for the immense majority of us, and only at the moment of our death is it revealed to us. There is a pathway to reach it, however, which is available to every one of us, but which only sorcerers take, and that pathway is through “dreaming.” “Dreaming” was in essence the transformation of ordinary dreams into affairs involving volition. Dreamers, by engaging their “attention of the nagual” and focusing it on the items and events of their ordinary dreams, change those dreams into “dreaming.”
Don Juan said that there were no procedures to arrive at the attention of the nagual. He only gave me pointers. Finding my hands in my dreams was the first pointer; then the exercise of paying attention was elongated to finding objects, looking for specific features, such as buildings, streets and so on. From there the jump was to “dreaming” about specific places at specific times of the day. The final stage was drawing the “attention of the nagual” to focus on the total self. Don Juan said that that final stage was usually ushered in by a dream that many of us have had at one time or another, in which one is looking at oneself sleeping in bed. By the time a sorcerer has had such a dream, his attention has been developed to such a degree that instead of waking himself up, as most of us would do in a similar situation, he turns on his heels and engages himself in activity, as if he were acting in the world of everyday life. From that moment on there is a breakage, a division of sorts in the otherwise unified personality. The result of engaging the “attention of the nagual” and developing it to the height and sophistication of our daily attention of the world was, in don Juan’s scheme, the other self, an identical being as oneself, but made in “dreaming.”
Don Juan had told me that there are no definite standard steps for teaching that double, as there are no definite steps for us to reach our daily awareness. We simply do it by practicing. He contended that in the act of engaging our “attention of the nagual,” we would find the steps. He urged me to practice “dreaming” without letting my fears make it into an en-cumbering production.
He had done the same with la Gorda and the little sisters, but obviously something in them had made them more receptive to the idea of another level of attention.
“Genaro was in his body of dreaming most of the time,” la Gorda said. “He liked it better. That’s why he could do the weirdest things and scare you half to death. Genaro could go in and out of the crack between the worlds like you and I can go in and out a door.”
Don Juan had also talked to me at great length about the crack between the worlds. I had always believed that he was talking in a metaphorical sense about a subtle division between the world that the average man perceives and the world that sorcerers perceive.
La Gorda and the little sisters had shown me that the crack between the worlds was more than a metaphor. It was rather the capacity to change levels of attention. One part of me understood la Gorda perfectly, while another part of me was more frightened than ever.
“You have been asking where the Nagual and Genaro went,” la Gorda said. “Soledad was very blunt and told you that they went to the other world; Lidia told you they left this area; the Genaros were stupid and scared you. The truth is that the Nagual and Genaro went through that crack.”
For some reason, undefinable to me, her statements plunged me into profound chaos. I had felt all along that they had left for good. I knew that they had not left in an ordinary sense, but I had kept that feeling in the realm of a metaphor. Although I had even voiced it to close friends, I think I never really believed it myself. In the depths of me I had always been a rational man. But la Gorda and the little sisters had turned my obscure metaphors into real possibilities. La Gorda had actually transported us half a mile with the energy of her “dreaming.”
La Gorda stood up and said that I had understood everything, and that it was time for us to eat. She served us the food that she had cooked. I did not feel like eating. At the end of the meal she stood up and came to my side.
“I think it’s time for you to leave,” she said to me.
That seemed to be a cue for the little sisters. They also stood up.
“If you stay beyond this moment, you won’t be able to leave anymore,” la Gorda went on. “The Nagual gave you freedom once, but you chose to stay with him. He told me that if we all survive the last contact with the allies I should feed all of you, make you feel good and then say good-bye to all of you. I figure that the little sisters and myself have no place to go, so there is no choice for us. But you are different.”
The little sisters surrounded me and each said good-bye to me.
There was a monstrous irony in that situation. I was free to leave but I had no place to go. There was no choice for me, either. Years before don Juan gave me a chance to back out, I stayed because already then I had no place to go.
“We choose only once,” he had said then. “We choose either to be warriors or to be ordinary men. A second choice does not exist. Not on this earth.”
6
The Second Attention
“You have to leave later on today,” la Gorda said to me right after breakfast. “Since you have decided to go with us, you have committed yourself to helping us fulfill our new task. The Nagual left me in charge only until you came. He entrusted me, as you already know, with certain things to tell you. I’ve told you most of them. But there are still some I couldn’t mention to you until you made your choice. Today we will take care of them. Right after that you must leave in order to give us time to get ready. We need a few days to settle everything and to prepare to leave these mountains forever. We have been here a very long time. It’s hard to break away. But everything has come to a sudden end. The Nagual warned us of the total change that you would bring, regard-less of the outcome of your bouts, but I think no one really believed him.”
“I fail to see why you have to change anything,” I said.
“I’ve explained it to you already,” she protested. “We have lost our old purpose. Now we have a new one and that new purpose requires that we become as light as the breeze. The breeze is our new mood. It used to be the hot wind. You have changed our direction.”
“You are talking in circles, Gorda.”
“Yes, but that’s because you’re empty. I can’t make it any clearer. When you return, the Genaros will show you the art of the stalker and right after that all of us will leave. The Nagual said that if you decide to be with us the first thing I should tell you is that you have to remember your bouts with Soledad and the little sisters and examine every single thing that happened to you with them, because everything is an omen of what will happen to you on your path. If you are careful and impeccable, you’ll find that those bouts were gifts of power.”
“What’s dona Soledad going to do now?”
“She’s leaving. The little sisters have already helped her to take her floor apart. That floor aided her to reach her attention of the nagual. The lines had power to do that. Each of them helped her gather a piece of that attention. To be incomplete is no handicap to reaching that attention for some warriors. Soledad was transformed because she got to that attention faster than any of us. She doesn’t have to gaze at her floor anymore to go into that other world, and now that there is no more need for the floor, she has returned it to the earth where she got it.”
“You are really determined to leave, Gorda, aren’t you?”
“All of us are. That’s why I’m asking you to go away for a few days to give us time to pull down everything we have.”