knowing anything.
I’ve been trying to tell you about attention, she pro-
ceeded, but you know as much as we do about it.
I assured her that my knowledge was intrinsically different
from theirs; theirs was infinitely more spectacular than mine.
Anything they might say to me in relation to their practices,
therefore, was a bonus to me.
The Nagual told us to show you that with our attention
we can hold the images of a dream in the same way we hold
the images of the world, la Gorda said. The art of the
dreamer is the art of attention.
Thoughts came down on me like a landslide. I had to stand
up and walk around the kitchen. I sat down again. We remained
quiet for a long time. I knew what she had meant when she
said that the art of dreamers was the art of attention. I knew
then that don Juan had told me and showed me everything he
could. I had not been able, however, to realize the premises of
his knowledge in my body while he was around. He had said
that my reason was the demon that kept me chained, and that
I had to vanquish it if I wanted to achieve the realization of his
teachings. The issue, therefore, had been how to vanquish my
reason. It had never occurred to me to press him for a defini-
tion of what he meant by reason. I presumed all along that he
meant the capacity for comprehending, inferring or thinking,
in an orderly, rational way. From what la Gorda had said, I
knew that to him reason meant attention.
Don Juan said that the core of our being was the act of per-
ceiving, and that the magic of our being was the act of aware-
ness. For him perception and awareness were a single, func-
tional, inextricable unit, a unit which had two domains. The
first one was the attention of the tonal ; that is to say, the
capacity of average people to perceive and place their aware-
ness on the ordinary world of everyday life. Don Juan also
called this form of attention our first ring of power, and
described it as our awesome but taken-for-granted ability to
impart order to our perception of our daily world.
The second domain was the attention of the nagual ; that
is to say, the capacity of sorcerers to place their awareness on
the nonordinary world. He called this domain of attention the
second ring of power, or the altogether portentous ability
that all of us have, but only sorcerers use, to impart order to
the nonordinary world.
La Gorda and the little sisters, in demonstrating to me that
the art of dreamers was to hold the images of their dreams with
their attention, had brought in the pragmatic aspect of don
Juan’s scheme. They were the practitioners who had gone
beyond the theoretical aspect of his teachings. In order to give
me a demonstration of that art, they had to make use of their
second ring of power, or the attention of the nagual. In
order for me to witness their art, I had to do the same. In fact
it was evident that I had placed my attention on both domains.
Perhaps all of us are continually perceiving in both fashions
but choose to isolate one for recollection and discard the other
or perhaps we file it away, as I myself had done. Under certain
conditions of stress or acquiescence, the censored memory
surfaces and we can then have two distinct memories of one
event.
What don Juan had struggled to vanquish, or rather sup-
press in me, was not my reason as the capacity for rational
thought, but my attention of the tonal, or my awareness of
the world of common sense. His motive for wanting me to do
so was explained by la Gorda when she said that the daily
world exists because we know how to hold its images; conse-
quently, if one drops the attention needed to maintain those
images, the world collapses.
The Nagual told us that practice is what counts, la Gorda
said suddenly. Once you get your attention on the images of
your dream, your attention is hooked for good. In the end you
can be like Genaro, who could hold the images of any dream.
We each have five other dreams, Lidia said. But we
showed you the first one because that was the dream the
Nagual gave us.
Can all of you go into dreaming any time you want? I
asked.
No, la Gorda replied. Dreaming takes too much power.
None of us has that much power. The reason the little sisters
had to roll on the floor so many times was that in rolling the
earth was giving them energy. Maybe you could also remem-
ber seeing them as luminous beings getting energy from the
light of the earth. The Nagual said that the best way of getting
energy is, of course, to let the sun inside the eyes, especially
the left eye.
I told her that I knew nothing about it, and she described a
procedure that don Juan had taught them. As she spoke I re-
membered that don Juan had also taught the same procedure
to me. It consisted in moving my head slowly from side to side
as I caught the sunlight with my half-closed left eye. He said
that one could not only use the sun but could use any kind of
light that could shine on the eyes.
La Gorda said that the Nagual had recommended that they
tie their shawls below their waists in order to protect their hip-
bones when they rolled.
I commented that don Juan had never mentioned rolling to
me. She said that only women could roll because they had
wombs and energy came directly into their wombs; by rolling
around they distributed that energy over the rest of their
bodies. In order for a man to be energized he had to be on his
back, with his knees bent so that the soles of his feet touched
each other. His arms had to be extended laterally, with his
forearms raised vertically, and the fingers clawed in an upright
position.
We have been dreaming those dreams for years, Lidia
said. Those dreams are our best, because our attention is com-
plete. In the other dreams that we have, our attention is still
shaky.
La Gorda said that holding the images of dreams was a
Toltec art. After years of consuming practice each one of
them was able to perform one act in any dream. Lidia could
walk on anything, Rosa could dangle from anything, Josefina
could hide behind anything and she herself could fly. But they
were only beginners, apprentices of the art. They had com-
plete attention for only one activity. She added that Genaro
was the master of dreaming and could turn the tables around
and have attention for as many activities as we have in our
daily life, and that for him the two domains of attention had
the same value.
I felt compelled to ask them my usual question: I had to
know their procedures, how they held the images of their
dreams.
You know that as well as we do, la Gorda said. The only
thing I can say is that after going to the same dream over and
over, we began to feel the lines of the world. They helped us
to do what you saw us doing.
Don Juan had said that our first ring of power is en-
gaged 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, how-
ever, 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