La Gorda laughed and said that she understood why I had
caused the Nagual such an intense concern. She had seen for
herself that I indulged beyond my limits. She sat against the
pole next to me and said that she and the little sisters were
going to gaze into the Nagual’s power place. She then made a
piercing birdcall. A moment later the little sisters came out of
the house and sat down to gaze with her.
Their gazing mastery was obvious. Their bodies acquired a
strange rigidity. They did not seem to be breathing at all.
Their stillness was so contagious that I caught myself half
closing my eyes and staring into the hills.
Gazing had been a true revelation to me. In performing it
I had corroborated some important issues of don Juan’s teach-
ings. La Gorda had delineated the task in a definitely vague
manner. To zoom in on it was more a command than a de-
scription of a process, and yet it was a description, providing
that one essential requirement had been fulfilled; don Juan had
called that requirement stopping the internal dialogue. From
la Gorda’s statements about gazing it was obvious to me that
the effect don Juan had been after in making them gaze was to
teach them to stop the internal dialogue. La Gorda had ex-
pressed it as quieting down the thoughts. Don Juan had
taught me to do that very same thing, although he had made
me follow the opposite path; instead of teaching me to focus
my view, as gazers did, he taught me to open it, to flood my
awareness by not focusing my sight on anything. I had to sort
of feel with my eyes everything in the 180 – degree range in
front of me, while I kept my eyes unfocused just above the
line of the horizon.
It was very difficult for me to gaze, because it entailed re-
versing that training. As I tried to gaze, my tendency was to
open up. The effort of keeping that tendency in check, how-
ever, made me shut off my thoughts. Once I had turned off
my internal dialogue, it was not difficult to gaze as la Gorda
had prescribed.
Don Juan had asserted time and time again that the essential
feature of his sorcery was shutting off the internal dialogue.
In terms of the explanation la Gorda had given me about the
two realms of attention, stopping the internal dialogue was an
operational way of describing the act of disengaging the atten-
tion of the tonal.
Don Juan had also said that once we stop our internal dia-
logue we also stop the world. That was an operational descrip-
tion of the inconceivable process of focusing our second
attention. He had said that some part of us is always kept
under lock and key because we are afraid of it, and that to our
reason, that part of us was like an insane relative that we keep
locked in a dungeon. That part was, in la Gorda’s terms, our
second attention, and when it finally could focus on some-
thing the world stopped. Since we, as average men, know only
the attention of the tonal, it is not too farfetched to say that
once that attention is canceled, the world indeed has to stop.
The focusing of our wild, untrained second attention has to
be, perforce, terrifying. Don Juan was right in saying that the
only way to keep that insane relative from bursting in on us
was by shielding ourselves with our endless internal dialogue.
La Gorda and the little sisters stood up after perhaps thirty
minutes of gazing. La Gorda signaled me with her head to
follow them. They went to the kitchen. La Gorda pointed to
a bench for me to sit on. She said that she was going up the
road to meet the Genaros and bring them over. She left
through the front door.
The little sisters sat around me. Lidia volunteered to answer
anything I wanted to ask her. I asked her to tell me about her
gazing into don Juan’s power spot, but she did not understand
me.
I’m a distance and shadow gazer, she said. After I be-
came a gazer the Nagual made me start all over again and had
me gaze this time at the shadows of leaves and plants and trees
and rocks. Now I never look at anything anymore; I just look
at their shadows. Even if there is no light at all, there are
shadows; even at night there are shadows. Because I’m a
shadow gazer I’m also a distance gazer. I can gaze at shadows
even in the distance.
The shadows in the early morning don’t tell much. The
shadows rest at that time. So it’s useless to gaze very early in
the day. Around six in the morning the shadows wake up, and
they are best around five in the afternoon. Then they are fully
awake.
What do the shadows tell you?
Everything I want to know. They tell me things because
they have heat, or cold, or because they move, or because
they have colors. I don’t know yet all the things that colors
and heat and cold mean. The Nagual left it up to me to learn.
How do you learn?
In my dreaming. Dreamers must gaze in order to do
dreaming and then they must look for their dreams in their
gazing. For example, the Nagual made me gaze at the shadows
of rocks, and then in my dreaming I found out that those
shadows had light, so I looked for the light in the shadows
from then on until I found it. Gazing and dreaming go to-
gether. It took me a lot of gazing at shadows to get my dream-
ing of shadows going. And then it took me a lot of dreaming
and gazing to get the two together and really see in the
shadows what I was seeing in my dreaming. See what I mean?
Everyone of us does the same. Rosa’s dreaming is about trees
because she’s a tree gazer and Josefina’s is about clouds because
she’s a cloud gazer. They gaze at trees and clouds until they
match their dreaming
Rosa and Josefina shook their heads in agreement.
What about la Gorda? I asked.
She’s a flea gazer, Rosa said, and all of them laughed.
La Gorda doesn’t like to be bitten by fleas, Lidia ex-
plained. She is formless and can gaze at anything, but she
used to be a rain gazer.
What about Pablito?
He gazes at women’s crotches, Rosa answered with a
deadpan expression.
They laughed. Rosa slapped me on the back.
I understand that since he’s your partner he’s taking after
you, she said.
They banged on the table and shook the benches with their
feet as they laughed.
Pablito is a rock gazer, Lidia said. Nestor is a rain and
plant gazer and Benigno is a distance gazer. But don’t ask me
any more about gazing because I will lose my power if I tell
you more.
How come la Gorda tells me everything?
La Gorda lost her form, Lidia replied. Whenever I lose
mine I’ll tell you everything too. But by then you won’t care
to hear it. You care only because you’re stupid like us. The day
we lose our form we’ll all stop being stupid.
Why do you ask so many questions when you know all
this? Rosa asked.
Because he’s like us, Lidia said. He’s not a true nagual.
He’s still a man.
She turned and faced me. For an instant her face was hard
and her eyes piercing and cold, but her expression softened as
she spoke to me.
You and Pablito are partners, she said. You really like
him, don’t you?
I thought for a moment before I answered. I told her that
somehow I trusted him implicitly. For no overt reason at all I
had a feeling of kinship with him.
You like him so much that you fouled him up, she said in
an accusing tone. On that mountaintop where you jumped,
he was getting to his second attention by himself and you
forced him to jump with you.
I only held him by the arm, I said in protest.
A sorcerer doesn’t hold another sorcerer by the arm, she
said. Each of us is very capable. You don’t need any of us
three to help you. Only a sorcerer who sees and is formless
can help. On that mountaintop where you jumped, you were
supposed to go first. Now Pablito is tied to you. I suppose you
intended to help us in the same way. God, the more I think
about you, the more I despise you.
Rosa and Josefina mumbled their agreement. Rosa stood up
and faced me with rage in her eyes. She demanded to know
what I intended to do with them. I said that I intended to leave