"Falling for Truth" by Howdie Mickoski
Appendix D
(reproduced for Fair Use transformative Educational purposes)
TONAL AND NAGUAL
“What happens to someone whose assemblage point loses rigidity? They think they are losing their mind.” (Carlos Castaneda)
Carlos Castaneda created a number of terms that he used in his writing. That does not make them invaluable, but does mean that the terms are his creations- but what they are pointing to is something quite timeless and found in the ancient world. Some of these terms are: assemblage point, tonal, nagual, human form, and parallel lines. I wanted to present these terms, and my understanding of what they point towards in case some readers are now interested to read his books. Again though, I am reminded how poor I feel his first novel is. I recommend that if you want to read Castaneda’s work, start with his next three novels: A Separate Reality, Journey to Ixtlan, and Tales of Power. Then read further if you wish.
Carlos Castaneda wrote of something that he called the assemblage point, normally positioned opposite the right shoulder blade. 34 Castaneda said that when one could “see” (perceive beyond normal reality) they would recognize that the world is not made up of objects like we normally think, but instead made up of fields of energy—which he described as infinite threads of light. The Gnostics referred to the world as Emanations of light coming from the Pleroma (Source). We, too, are not solid but a bundle also made up of these threads of light. This “us” is bombarded by millions of these fiber-like emanations, which all pass through this assemblage point, which for unknown reasons chooses some threads to “light up” while keeping the rest of the threads dark. You could say infinite movies are being projected (as beams of light), but only one gets selected to be placed on the movie screen. What we call Earth 2018 is just a small grouping of continuously chosen light fibers. Each person chooses a slightly unique selection, but close enough so that reality seems similar for everyone.
Using the metaphor of a radio, when a radio dial is on AM 1200 we will hear that station and only that station. Move the dial and we get a new station. The old station is still playing, but we can only hear one at a time. If you did not know that the dial could move (because it was locked in place), you would not even guess that there could be other stations. To understand the metaphor of Plato’s Cave properly, the chains that bind the prisoner to the seats are not physical, but are more accurately that which keeps this assemblage point static. Move our assemblage point and we access a different frequency. This movement is called dreaming, because of the dream-like quality of any other world, and I guess because how “dreamy” it would be to hear other stations playing.
Part of the way the point is rigidly maintained is through habits and internal dialogue, which for each person is slightly different, but keeps perception within the safe range of station AM 1200 (1190-1210). This agreement of what radio station is playing is called being of “sound mind” (because we hear the same station as everyone else). However, the assemblage point can shift—(being in love, hunger, illness, fear, drugs or lengthy stillness35) or the interaction of the Spirit.36 In a sense this is one of the underlying bases of the movie Pleasantville—where the townsfolk can only hear the “pleasant” sounds of 1200, but David and Jennifer come along with knowledge of other radio stations. Move your point far enough and you are in a totally new world (as the people of Pleasantville were at the end of the movie).
A movement of the point is usually forgotten because it does not conform to our normal view of the world. We try to explain the odd event by known beliefs or claiming that we were hallucinating or drunk (the prisoner just sits back down). “Seeing” is the capacity to perceive the world as it appears without the filter of conditioning. When your assemblage point gets loose, reality begins to collapse. You may think you are going crazy, but rather you are seeing that reality is nothing like you have been told it is. One who goes psychotic had this movement happen, but lost their foundation. You want to encourage the movement, while keeping the foundation of normal perception available.37
The ancient writings speak of the need to combine two elements, the Ka and the Ba (for Egyptians), the Eagle and the Jaguar (for the Maya), the sun and the moon (for alchemists). Usually this is thought to be either the male and female halves of oneself, two parts of the mind, or perhaps the mind and the heart. But this combination is much deeper than that. What must be combined are hard to define aspects which Castaneda called the Tonal (the world of manifested objects and all ideas, concepts, and beliefs), and The Nagual (Void, Spirit, No-thing).
Website author’s note:
I would say the Tonal (return) is body, energy, all-thing (BEA) compared to the Nagual (return) is the void, spirit, no-thing (VSN).
It is the Tonal that helps to lock the assemblage point, and thus our perception. It could be said that the Tonal begins with our form’s birth, and ends with our death—not entirely accurate, but close enough. The Tonal is not bad or evil, it serves a function in the dreamworld, but that function becomes incredibly warped without the balancing influence of the Nagual. We want to experience a 50-50 connection between the two. The Tonal is compared to an island (the cave), which seems to exist individually and separately from all the other islands in the ocean of the Nagual. We are not trying to escape from the island, but claim it. This island was originally clean, but became messed up over time, our symbolically getting locked into a theater seat. The island has everything our form will need in this life. The problem is not from the things we were given on the island, but rather the landscaping of them. We began to be told that some things are nice and should be kept and grown, while others are not—so we tried to build up the nice things and hide or shrink the rest. We tried to get rid of things from the island, but nothing on the island can be eliminated, just misplaced. Millions are thinking they are ridding themselves of bad aspects when all they are doing is denying them or pushing them into a more dangerous spot. Instead of trying to eliminate something such as anger, we allow it to come out of hiding and just be there on the island, a tool in a tool box of possibility, used when the outer circumstances demand its use. To repress something just means it will come out eventually as an explosion. This has nothing to do with trying to be a perfect human according to some moralistic religious jargon, but simply to be the complete human you were created originally as...with all the naughty and nice accepted and potentially available.
The parasite mind has come to that island, claimed it for its own use, and developed protections to keep things landscaped for its benefit. The warrior wants to break this hold, but to do so in a way that does not damage his form. He sees illness not as a weakness of his form, but as a reflection of something weak or misplaced on his tonal. Reacquiring proper tonal will save vast amounts of power, for we are no longer wasting energy trying to be something that we are not. When Osiris is shut into the box by Set, he is imprisoned in the Tonal. He needs Horus, who represents the warrior obtaining proper tonal, who can open the box (bubble) and release access to the Nagual. By reorganizing the island properly (regaining our natural clear mind state as when a young child) one will have totally changed, yet at the same time remain the same. We become a younger and wiser version of our current self. Only when our island has been put back in proper order, do we have the foundation to begin to spend time off of it, in the Nagual.
“My only advantage over you is that I know how to you get to the Nagual, you don’t. But once there I have no more knowledge or advantage than you.” (Carlos Castaneda in Tales of Power)
The Nagual is the part for which there is no description, no words, names, feelings, knowledge. While not exactly the Absolute, it could be considered the doorway to it—perhaps like what Rose called the Unmanifested Mind. One can talk about the Nagual but never explain it, usually only feel it. Another name for it would be Spirit, or that which lays beyond normal waking reality.
Connecting with this area is the activity called Seeing, which is an intuitive grasp that comes when the bubble has been burst, moving perception from The Tonal to the Nagual. It has a visual edge to it, but it is not primarily visual. It is not right to think of it as seeing through objects, or making them transparent, but more that one is able to feel into that object to know more of its essence and history. I would not call it an intuitive feeling either which is something more within the Tonal world.
Castaneda claimed that there were three attentions, what might be called different observation locations on the mountain of Totality, which also makes the three attentions similar to the three sections of Rose’s Jacob’s Ladder (which is also a three-step process of deeper and deeper observational awareness). Thus, seeing is allowing observation from this second attention (the Nagual) while at the same time keeping the regular physical image of the first attention (Tonal, normal reality). However, even when the Nagual appears, few will have any memory of it because the Tonal, through reason, has sucked up all their available energy. There is no energy or power left for someone to examine any oddities and so one just ignores anything such as odd occurrences or lapses in time or memory and goes back to the regular daily routine.
When the Nagual manifests (as an omen, power, unique experiences) we are not supposed to talk or think, only act. Don’t view the experience as something special, but instead look at it as something common so your energy will not get drained. Blink. Shut off dialogue and just witness. This happened to me one night. While out at a power spot, an Ibis appeared. This bird is a symbol of Tehuti and is not found within thousands of miles of where I was. It was power, via the Nagual, bringing me a message. If I stayed relaxed and just looked on with wonder and interest, the bird stayed and interacted with me. As soon as I began to think how special this experience was (pushing perception back into Tonal egoic reason), the bird flew away.
The Nagual is personal and individual thing. One will be experiencing it, while others around will not notice anything out of the ordinary, perhaps only trees moving in the wind or a strange light. At times the Nagual itself will rearrange things, set up things in a special way so the person can have the experience without interference. Other times two or more people can be given a similar experience, but even though things may seem almost the same, when one meets the Nagual face to face they are alone. When a physical object is being borrowed by the Nagual, such as for an omen or message, that thing is no longer the normal object—it is the Nagual manifest. A bird is a bird as long as it is reflecting the earthly tonal. If it is reflecting the Nagual, it is no longer a bird and all bird rules are suspended (as something beyond the dream is borrowing the object for a short time). Normally an encounter with the Nagual is frightening for most people because Tonal rules are not in effect. It is why so many people are afraid of shamans when they first meet them. The body recognizes that he/she can open up the Nagual, which can make their parasite jumpy.
We shift or move our Intent to the Nagual and it decides on its own how things should turn out. We can only intend the Nagual and witness its effects, but no one has any idea how it works. In the Tonal we can show something specific to someone else, such as how to drive a car or hit a golf ball. In the Nagual all that can be done is open the door of it for someone, then watch and join along with them. It takes a long time to learn how to be such a doorway for someone else.
Again, there are no objects in the world, simply fibers that come from a force known as the Eagle, which have become caught in a bizarre loop of time. Humans have been conditioned to notice on a small amount of reality and “skim” or ignore the rest. We focus on fewer “items” than we believe. What we select as reality must be constantly renewed, recreated each moment to have freshness. Thus, we must intend “mountain” or “stone” each time we look at one. It is the reason that not-doings are taught which really create “obstruction” in the normal perception of the first attention, thus interrupting the ability for mind to recreate normal reality.
What is often thought of and sold as enlightenment, is really a glimpse into the immensity of that thing/force of Nothingness. Encountering it can leave one without hope, as they see that all they believed to be real are but a shadow of Nothing. Hope is the result of familiarity with the skimmings (normal way of perceiving objects) of our day to day world, and our belief that we can control them. A glimpse shows something else is in control of everything, and that is crushing to the ego. This glimpse is rarely remembered, for trips beyond “the dream” are often only remembered as a moment where there was no memory of activity, or perhaps like being in a fog.
Most would call a glimpse of the great Nothing the enlightenment experience (where there is no experience), but the ancients were clear that when in the second attention, the first attention does not really work, thus the only memory that returns from an encounter is blackness. The Land of Osiris. Until one can train their second attention through Dreaming exercises to handle the Nagual, the only thing experienced will be blackness. But it is not actually black and can in fact be perceived and interacted with. One begins to activate the second attention by forcing it to wake up, and the only way that you can wake it up is to block the first attention’s normal hold on us. Are you beginning to see why the standard enlightenment talk is backwards? You wake up the second attention by blocking the first. The egoic self wants to hold onto the old system of interpretation as long as possible, but it must be blocked. There is no specific thing to do to cross the lines themselves (no doing, no effort), yet at the same time great effort is required to block the normal skimmings of the mind.
Getting to the second attention and staying aware is also called crossing the parallel lines. The first line is where normal Tonal attention (everyday reality) ends and is perceived or felt as a wall of fog-veil.38 Going through that wall, the first line, is moving towards “the other self” (some may call it the astral body)—and your physical body will generally feel this movement as a shift or a pressure. The second attention (other self) can be found on the other side of the second line. Both lines must be perforated (burst like a bubble) to cross over completely, leading to totally different perception. Between the two lines is an area of awareness that seers call limbo, and where most spiritual shifts of consciousness or Dreaming experiences tend to occur. Limbo is a transitional zone between the two attentions. The closer you are to first line the more the limbo experience will be similar to the tonal, the normal world experienced in a more dream-like fashion. Closer to the second line the experience will become more Nagual like, having similarities to what is called in spiritually the Astral World. Along with journeying, a good way to cross through the parallel lines is by falling backwards. This is what Egyptian false doorways in Sakkara and Giza were designed to do—fall backwards into and cross over instantly into the Nagual.
A reminder is that there is a third line that can be broken as well, taking one to the third attention or third view, where the Totality of the Self can be obtained. However, this information is of little value until someone has become familiar with the second attention, and by that time, they may be able to understand the doorway to the third attention on their own.
The Nagual was personified by David and Jennifer in the movie Pleasantville, who begin to break all the rules of the town and show there is far more to their bubble. Morpheus and the crew returning to the Matrix-world to interact with a possible person ready to jump their awareness, is another movie aspect of the force of Intent. In the Truman Show, Sylvia was the force that made Truman go looking beyond the town of Seahaven (his “heavenly” bubble). Sylvia arrives, and just before being “captured and removed” tells Truman that his world is not real and that he needs to escape. He cannot believe her for it sounds so bizarre, but “something” about her seems unworldly to him, and he never forgets her or what she said. He decides that since he feels he trusts her, he will find a way to start testing reality, quietly, without anyone else knowing. In the process, he notices bizarre or strange things in his surroundings that make him begin to question his world. Truman must have noticed these odd things before, but easily found a logical explanation. After meeting Sylvia, however, all was now open for questioning. In Castaneda terms, Sylvia is the Nagual Woman. In a sense, she acts like a driving force—even though no longer there—but somehow like a beacon. He tries to find a way to her and trusts something in her message.
Maybe the Genesis story of the Garden of Eden is not about paradise, but more of the Gnostic idea of being trapped in matter. Maybe it was not Jehovah who sent Adam and Eve out of “paradise,” but Adam and Eve who wanted to leave (finding their paradise was a bubble), and the serpent is really the hero of the story—representing Intent that slipped in to reveal the truth of their situation. Eve is not the force of original sin, but like Sylvia, the passionate focus that got her and Adam to a place beyond what was perhaps a nice bubble, but a bubble nonetheless.
The Truman Show ends as Truman manages to escape the watchful eyes and goes through his final remaining fear (water), which is both the symbol of his confinement as well as the means of escape. His commitment overpowers anything thrown at him. His boat (the Santa Maria) finally punctures the external bubble—shattering the world Truman had always been led to believe in. Before walking up a set of stairs that lead to an exit door, Christoff tries one last time to convince Truman that he is safer in the bubble world, even though it is nothing but a television show. That is when Truman asks in pure Zen fashion, “Then who am I?” The poignant question all must answer if they ever want answers. Truman says good-bye to the only world he has known, and heads for the exit to see reality.
At the end of Vanilla Sky, Tom Cruise jumps off the building (a la the Tarot Fool into the Abyss). In Pleasantville, Toby McGuire leaves his cheerleader and perfect life behind to return to his crappy nerd world. In both cases they knew that the nice dream was not true reality, and no matter how nice the offer was, they would choose the real and whatever consequences came with it. For David (interestingly the character’s name in both movies) even their perfect woman was not enough consolation, for she was still a “fake” woman in a fake world. In Truman’s case, Sylvia is the only thing real that he knows, and thus becomes what he heads towards.
LOSING THE HUMAN FORM
“Losing the human form was the only means of breaking the shell (the luminous core, of awareness) which is the Eagle’s food. The day you don’t covet the company of your friends, where you use your shields, that is the day your person has died. Losing the human form is called the clear view, when human pettiness vanishes.” (Carlos Castaneda, Eagle’s Gift)
“I understand exactly what you are going through. When I laugh at you, I really laugh at the memory of myself in your shoes. I too held onto the world of everyday life with my fingertips. Everything told me to let go, but I couldn’t. Just like you I trusted my mind implicitly, even though I had no reason to.” (Carlos Castaneda)
What Castaneda called Losing the Human Form is a very interesting part of the process of breaking down the egoic structure, and the shields that make it up. What one calls “a human person” is not the body that they carry, but the entire structure of layers of beliefs. To let all that dissolve or fall away is called Losing the Human Form. People act the way they do because they are clinging to the human form, which is a force, a mold. Everything, including plants and animals have a mold—the source, or basic structure of that type of object. When the human mold is witnessed it appears as a radiant light, so strong that it can blind us. Normally if anyone sees this radiant sight, they believe they have seen God, and in one sense they are correct.
This dropping can only happen when we lose our desire to cling. People will cling to anything they like, even the desire to be liked. Losing the Human Form is a rather painful experience, and is described nicely by U.G. Krishnamurti, Richard Rose, and Castaneda. Deeper awareness will burst through and burn everything. Depending how strong one’s shields are, will determined how much pain is present in the process. It often leaves only following a massive internal battle that can manifest as an illness, and it is a natural reaction to struggle against it, as if something bad is happening, and in so fighting it we block it. Let go of your fear and let the human form fall away on its own. Losing the human form links to what is described in the Additional Material as the shamanic initiation illness.
Ok, I couldn’t resist adding this one clip, NOT found in Howdie’s book
When Losing the Human Form has finally been completed, the normal human feelings will no longer be there. Then comes an odd aloofness and detachment. Everything is equal and the same, yet the person is totally new. To anyone who knew that person prior to this happening, it will be hard, for they will keep expecting or hoping or trying to make them be the normal person that they were before. Yet following Losing the Human Form, the regular connection to the natural world is simply gone, and nothing comes to replace it. They don’t become a different type of person, but something deeper—and all the expected rules of behavior and thought get burned out in the process. The human form is the belief that has caused people to think they are people in a life game with rules, winners, losers and advancement. Once the human form is gone—all that is seen to be far less important than previously. It will also take much of the judgment and anger about others away, for they were only acting the way they did because it was their shields that caused the behaviours, not the deeper reality of someone.
“He desires nothing, yet instead of playing with his fellow men like they were toys, he meets them in the midst of their folly. The only difference between them is that a man who sees, controls his folly while the average man does not. A man who sees no longer has an active interest in his fellow men. Seeing has already detached him from absolutely everything he knew before.” (Carlos Castaneda)
The aftermath of this process takes time. After a true encounter with the Absolute (Nagual) many will find it hard to return to the Tonal (world of order, noise, pain). But to stay or return is something that has nothing to do with one’s reason. If one chooses not to return, they will disappear as if the earth has swallowed them up. Perhaps this is the explanation for the odd event referred to as human spontaneous combustion, the burning up of a person who lost the human form and did not want to remain. But anyone who “chooses” to return to the earth then must WAIT until one’s PARTICULAR TASK is finished, a task each being is given (even if one cannot notice it) and once we have stepped beyond the normal dream what matters is that we complete our task. Waiting to fulfill that task is a very special waiting. If you get impatient or desperate, you will be cut down mercilessly by the sharpshooters of the universe (the forces of adversity).
If on the other hand your personal power and effort is such that you can complete the task—in either SUCCESS or FAILURE—then each will get their gift of power, the Totality of the Self. I believe that Rose’s experience that he had when he was 30 was the reaching of the Nagual—experiencing enlightenment, but not becoming enlightened. He must have had some task (perhaps surrounding his teaching work and preparation) and as that task got completed he became the experience. Even though he knew, he still had to work to finish his totality, which as some point before he began his teaching occurred. Hence it was then what he called “the time being right” for the students to start to come.
When the task is over, and they have reached their totality, they will also become filled with Power. Each will then do with that power what they are drawn to do—some may live as a hermit, another become famous. We might say that Rose’s power from completing his task became the TAT Foundation. The warrior will truly understand that they are alone, but they can never be lonely because their love of the Absolute becomes total. For a warrior there can be no greater love than Totality, and nothing else can bring so much freedom to his spirit. It will only make sense when someone has faced his death and aloneness.
Kamala (ie right side of brain “Sophia”) is a metamorph, who can become the ideal companion to any man (ie Picard left side of brain “Christos”), aka true transhumanism, aka Alchemical Marriage, aka The One Great Work.
Kamala reached her Totality/Absolute and was filled with Power, drawn to marry a man she did NOT love, to bring peace to warring planets.
This clip encapsulates Rose’s concept of “controlled folly”, aka becoming a secret agent “actor”.
Part of the waiting involves examining if you can help other people in the ways we have come to think of as helping. Mostly you don’t help people like you think that you would. At first, to find out that the world is nothing but a dream, movie, hologram is depressing. Well, for your ego it is depressing, because it has been spending all its time trying to get more, advance, fix, change. And when we see that none of that can happen, that is where the depression comes. But for what is deeper than the egoic structure all that is felt is a magnificent freedom. One knows it is a dream, but interacts with everything as if they were real, as if what they do matters, offering help or guidance or laughter or whatever in an acting known as controlled folly (see chapter 10). They feel comfortable getting to know the dream and not needing to change it. They simply want to alter a few elements of it. This is mirrored in the myths of the Hopi who talk symbolically of the need to break into a new world, not fix or change the old one.
With this gaining of power comes a new way of working with time. They no longer deal with time the way others do, linear, but instead see time as a tube, similar to looking into a tunnel, and draw from that look the knowledge of how to proceed. In a sense they are no longer looking at time as it passes (normal awareness) but see time before it comes. Donnie Darko suggests this with Mr. Monatoff when he speaks of following God’s Channel, thus if one can see what God wants and perform that action they will always be walking in a correct and holy way—no matter how unholy their actions could in fact seem to be within the dreamstate. Doing this also helps them to learn how to be like Morpheus on the street in the Matrix, avoiding everyone effortlessly while Neo (stuck in the mind) bumps into everyone and gets his attention drawn to that which is not helpful (the woman in the red dress). Meanwhile Morpheus in his state of flow is able to keep his attention free to find the next mind he might be able to help, the next person who could be brought closer to an encounter with the Nagual.
MEETING THE NAGUAL
I was visiting an old university friend in Calgary and took time to go down to the Hillhurst area and have a coffee and enjoy the nice weather. Memories of previous walks when I was in a good energetic space filled my mind as I headed towards the Higher Ground. Today was a stunning day out and I wanted to sit on a bench outside rather than inside. As I walked in, I noticed a cute blonde sitting, and writing, on the farthest outdoor table. I went in and got my coffee and felt kinda “flirty” and said to myself that if the bench beside her is still free I would sit and just drink beside her. It was, so I sat down. She was writing feverishly, so I got out my notebook and was making some notes myself. Then for some reason I said to her, “want to trade notebooks, you write in mine, I’ll write in yours?” She smiled, “I don’t know if I have anything to write in there.” I said, “ok, if you think of something profound to say, ask for my notebook.” She said ok. I looked at her, and had a hard time gauging her age, based on her appearance and clothing. I really noticed her clothing for some reason, a red two strap top and a pair of black tights. It made it hard to tell if she was a first-year university student, or a 29-year-old who had just finished working out. I was just happy sitting there watching the dream characters walk by, when she took a break from writing and asked me, “What are you writing?”
I replied, “I am writing about the dream.” She asked if it was a dream I had last night, and I said “no,” and pointed with my hands to the street, “this dream.” She looked at me in an odd but curious fashion. I asked her what she was writing. She said she likes to look back one year from where she was and write about it, and one year ago she claimed she was in some sort of marathon. I didn’t fully catch if she meant she ran in one or organized one. I remember asking her if it was a good experience, and she said it was great.
Around this point I began to recognize that she was responding energetically in this conversation. We did not know each other, and most women would be very reluctant to say anything to a male stranger, but she was very relaxed and talkative. I tried to think exactly what I was doing a year ago. I told her a year ago I was in Europe. She asked what I was doing there. My response was odd I said, “I was doing some talks.” She asked on what. I said, “Ancient Knowledge.” She asked if I was a scholar, I said no. She asked what I wrote about, I said mostly on the secrets of alchemists and shamans, the hidden stuff beyond what most people think about them.
It was then she hit me with her question. “What is the biggest secret you have found?” It shook me. I had no answer, partially because I wasn’t sure. She joked, “Would you have to kill me if you told me?” I said, “No, it’s not that kind of secret.” At that moment there was a beep from a car horn, and she raised her hand to a guy in a white pickup truck and said to me, “My ride is here, have a great day.” She bounded to the truck and I just sat, mostly disappointed that my interesting conversation had ended. I was enjoying it. Oh well, that’s how these things go.
I got up and began to walk to the New Age bookstore in the area, then walked back to Higher Ground to have another coffee and relax as my friend was still working for another hour or so. I chose to walk back on the other side of the street than I had walked up. Half way there a white pickup truck pulled over—which I instantly noticed, and a woman got out and rushed past me into a bookstore. There was a sense it was the same girl I had been talking to. I didn’t get a good look at her face, just the overall sense of her. Height was the same, and she was wearing the SAME clothes. Too co-incidental. I thought the guy driving (likely boyfriend/husband) might recognize me from the bench and may not be too happy that I turned in my tracks to talk to his girlfriend. So I stopped at a bench beside a gelato store and waited until the light turned green and the truck sped away.
With the truck gone, I stood up and went walking back up the street to find her, when “she” came out of a bookstore. I walked past and stared at her face, only this was not “her.” This woman did not have blonde hair, her hair was brown with blonde highlights—but she was the same height, same build, wearing the exact same clothes, exiting the exact same white pickup. A few elements of her face were also slightly different from the woman I conversed with at the coffee shop. This new woman was carrying a huge box. She walked past me without even a hint of eye recognition that she knew me. If we had just talked twenty minutes ago for almost an hour on a bench, her eyes would have told that by glancing towards me. No glance. I was a total stranger. Yet I was also 100% sure, this had to be the woman I just talked to. But how could she not look the same? How could her appearance in certain areas change in twenty minutes?
I staggered past her a few steps, stopped and sort of tried to catch my breath and think about this. For some reason I only spent a moment or two on the oddity, then walked to the restaurant where I was meeting my friend for dinner. I had mostly forgotten all about this until my friend asked me at dinner if anything odd happened during the day. As soon as I retold the story I realized that, shit, it was the same woman. But when I spoke to her at the coffee shop she was in the Nagual, and not a person (at least for my individual perception). The Spirit had altered her appearance slightly to look and act a particular way for me, and when I saw her again she was in her normal person state without the Nagual borrowing her. She was the Nagual when talking to me, a direct Spirit interaction, then to make it clear the dream showed me the real person a few minutes later. It was a meeting right out of a Castaneda novel, meetings that tend to make me question reality. How did I not fully recognize this at the time I was speaking to her? Why did I not pay more attention to every detail of that meeting when it was occurring?
Footnotes:
34 I always believed that it was just a metaphor that Castaneda used, but John Lash at Metahistory.org found reference in GRS Mead’s “The Subtle Body in Western Tradition.” Here the writings of Damascius paraphrased Isadorus (of the Alexandrian Mystery School) which discusses the augoiedes or auric egg that surrounds the physical body and was one of the deepest secrets of the mysteries, and how the luminous oval is connected or locked onto the physical body at a point on the back, high up on the right shoulder blade.
35 Drugs move the point quickly, which is why they were used in the ancient world, but they also are hard to control, and have consequences for the physical body, thus are not recommended.
36 Anything classified as a ritual is just a way to trap the attention to let the assemblage point move, either for an individual or a group. While ritual works, it is cumbersome. If someone is about to die in five minutes and your ritual takes four hours, no matter how good your ability to shift the assemblage point, you will be of little help. They teach us rituals, so that in time, we will know when we don’t need the ritual anymore. But perhaps it was being involved in various religious or spiritual rituals that helped our prisoner to stand up.
37 One needs to be ready for shifts is when around artifacts or sites of the ancient world (due to the power placed in the statues and buildings). Thus, one might get very tired. This happened to me in Egypt, and I wondered why all the other travelers I met were also exhausted at the end of the day. The places and the objects were moving people’s assemblage points, and in the case of those with any spiritual training, greatly. The recommendation at such sites is to move slowly, pay attention to your overall energy. Take far more breaks to allow the assemblage point “rest time” to better handle all that is taking place and being stored in that movement.
38 Again, the majority of time slips or rapid movement have been said to have come after the person involved noticed an odd fog or mist.