Cracking the Program Wide Open

I was recently asked... Why do we need to break out of the program? For starters, as long as we are operating within its limits, evolution is impossible, because personal evolution is not part OF the program -- i.e., the established belief system allows for essentially one of three alternatives: 1) any established religion; or 2)atheism; or 3)molecular regeneration. Any of those belief systems are accepted inside the box. Anything other than that would be considered, essentially "hocus pocus" or completely insane.

The program labels those who are "insane" as, essentially, those who do not find themselves in agreement with the program. And, again, fear raises its ugly head. We are afraid of the label "insanity", and so we hoist ourselves back in line with the program - at least insofar as we discuss publicly. Thus, fear holds us captive to the program. What we gain by breaking the program is coming to see that we are not "insane" at all, but instead it is the world that has gone mad and the lunatics are running the asylum. Certain new age "teachers" always squawk when I say that, because their naive opinion is that the "lunatics" are innocent, ignorant sheep who know not what they do. Personally, I don't care if they know it or not. It is, even by THEIR definition, insane to go through the motions of "a normal life", knowing all the while that it ultimately means nothing when all is said and done.

And now we come to those unpopular ideas that can cause even warriors to start singing Mary Had A Little Lamb, jamming their fingers in their ears, and pretending not to hear. This is the part of the road we come to where we desperately WANT to go back to Ixtlan, but where we realize that it is only a phantom city inhabited by hollow-eyed zombies, yet it is a city we have defended all our lives, a city we have loved, the only city we have ever known. And we're scared to death of leaving it!

What do we have to gain by breaking out of the program? Absolutely nothing... except a glimpse of freedom. We have everything to lose, of course. Family. Friends. Comfortable beliefs. Even a self-identity we might have believed real all our lives. But it's worth it, that single glimpse of freedom - to know there is a foundation above and beyond all this lunacy where all the role-playing games are stripped away and we lay our souls bare to find our double standing whole and pure in the third attention - the perfected self we have created through our dreaming, the self we will inhabit into eternity, beyond the eagle's reach.

New age bullshit? Nope. I've been there. I've inhabited that double which is actually the self made whole into eternity, and believe me, I was loathe to come back to the asylum. But... there's still work to be done, fragments to be gathered, songs to be sung, and fires to be lit in the spirit so the heart can find its way back home to that place in the third attention from whence it came in the first place.

Yes, it's all a quantum paradox, but that's the delight of it -when it all starts to make sense. All I can do now is spin a web of words, trying to form a net in which to capture the essence of freedom, but my words will never be enough. And, ironically, how would one capture freedom?

You've had the power all along.

What do we gain by breaking the program? We find ourselves face to face with the answer to the first question: who am I? As long as the program is in effect, there is no possible answer to that question, for we are only the program manifested, fragmentary selves, false personalities, phantoms wearing our own face. But once the program falls, we turn and face the double, who begins whispering in our ear about the right way to live, the path of heart, the assimilation of cohesion.

Follow the yellow brick road, knowing all the while that the red slippers can take you home anytime. That's intent.

What is Spirit?

Spirit may also manifest to seekers as the voice of the double,
whispering Knowledge from the Infinite.

A Message From the Double via Silent Knowing

Spirit is the feeling that accompanies the midnight cries of a lone coyote, and it is the reason for the cry itself. It is carried on the sound, but is not the sound. Spirit is the soul poem blowing in on the edge of an oncoming storm, yet it is neither the words nor the rain, nor the thunder and lightning, but is instead the creative and infinite force which summons the storm into being - not the physical elements of meteorology, but the metaphysical shiver of the universe which is the generative spark of spontaneous parthenogenesis. Something from nothing. Spirit is the sentient force of the energetic universe, permeating all living and non-living matrices, yet it is neither the form nor substance, nor even energy.

If there are four elements of life and creation - earth, air, fire and water - spirit is the fifth element which brings the others into alignment and creates both cohesion and the possibility of meaning. Spirit is the animus, without which all else is rendered inert.

Does it have its own volition? In human terms, it could be said to have omniscient and omnipresent awareness, yet it is not comparable to any deity or entity. It is sentient without being singular, yet it is the singularity at the heart of the All. It is an element of the infinite, the compelling force of the nagual which is at the same time the breath of life within the tonal. To speak of volition in terms of spirit is rather like attempting to define time without using the word time in the definition.

It does nothing TO humans, but when humans come into alignment with the spirit, there is nothing they cannot do. It is a force that is omnipresent and may be summoned with intent; yet it is at the same time elusive by virtue of being the essence of the All itself.

To a warrior, Spirit is the force which guides one's choices and creates a viable sense of purpose, direction, well-being and forward motion even in times of seeming inaction. To live in alignment with the Spirit is to live impeccably, for then it could be said that what is within the Self has achieved an unbroken communion with the All. This does not diminish the individual, but to the contrary enhances the uniqueness of the Self by bringing into manifestation the Whole potential of that individual identity. Living with the Spirit does not mean becoming One with the All, but becoming Whole within the All, and ultimately becoming the All itself.

Messages from the double via silent knowing

Orlando -- June 28, 2003

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copyright 2015 by Della Van Hise

All Rights Reserved

________________

To read similar messages from the shaman's double, please consider...

It's not your neatly typed essays that interest me,
but the scrawls on the walls of your soul."
-Orlando

A Suicidal Blind Madman

Consider this: it will always be easier to take the road already built by those who have gone before, for the journey is well-mapped and the conveniences along the way even make the trip easy. Ah, but what if that road you're on was first forged by a suicidal blind madman running headlong through the jungle with a sword, hacking out the path to his own death so he might find it waiting at the end of the way, and what if all of humanity timidly followed that demented fool just to see where he was going, but now they've been on that same fatal road ever since, never stopping to consider that there are many paths to the river, and not all of them need end with death?

Orlando - September 26, 1999
The ongoing gnosis of shadows

Why the Heart Has Two Chambers

With regard to the double being (or Nagual) Carlos Castaneda may not have had the full story when he wrote THE EAGLE'S GIFT, in that he was still describing the Nagual (double-being) as two separate individuals, when my own experience (as well as several other "naguals" I know) has been that this may not be entirely accurate. In fact, there is a lot of experiential evidence to support the idea that the Nagual is actually a single being that divides at some point, and so may have the APPEARANCE of being 2 separate beings, when in reality it is a single entity with the natural ability to divide, much as cells do.

Because Carlos himself was described as a 3-pronged nagual, his own "division" may have been somehow thwarted or he only partially divided, and so the other "part" of himself was either lost entirely, or perhaps never made it to third attention and became trapped in some other realm. No way to know. Another Nagual woman was presented to him (Carol), but though she was *a* Nagual woman, she was not *the* Nagual woman specifically-matched to Carlos. Again, tip of the iceberg, and the wabbit hole goes plenty deep.

Don Juan said, "it is impossible to try to reason out the double", and yet, I'm not so sure it's "impossible" as much as it requires re-writing the paradigm of our belief systems about the nature of "reality" itself. In so many ways, our present mode of thinking is still at the level of "flies cause garbage", and because it's what we've always believed, we have no easy way to see it from a completely different angle.

Of course... I can also argue the other side, where CC is coming from, because it is more "rational" than what I'm saying. Easier to think that two separate beings could come together than to think a single being divides for the purpose of coming together again in what amounts to a different space-time continuum. But I think the "easier" explanation is also very limited. In my experience, the whole point of the double being is that one "half" of that being is predisposed to exist in the conditions of third attention, and the other half is predisposed to exist as a mortal human.

I think it's important for warriors, and especially for those who may discover themselves to be double beings, to have as clear an understanding as possible. I think CC was right in baseline theory, but he simply never revealed the whole picture. My suspicion is that if he ever did realize the deeper secrets about the Nagual, he simply chose not to write about it, because as I have discovered through experience, there is no way, really, to explain any of this rationally. So we have a tendency to simplify, to say "two separate beings", when in actuality, it is a single being that splits in two for the purpose of serving as its own guide.

First shaman created the world, and when she realized she was lonely, she tore out half her heart and put it into her own dreaming body so she would never be alone. Because the double was made of spirit, though, it left her all too soon and went to dwell in eternity, where its siren cries call her back into the Infinite. This is why the heart has two chambers and why the shaman walks the earth with one eye on the world and the other focused on that which has no name.
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For more anecdotes of a similar nature...

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They are available for $5.00 plus shipping here. I'll even sign your copy on request!

Awakening Inside the Double

It was a weekend of sensory overload, a contrast of a noisy generator on one side, and the clatter and clamor of drums and belly dancers on the other, offset by a crowd of 100,000 Renaissance patrons and participants, all of whom seemed to be in a tremendous hurry to be somewhere other than where they were, even though they had paid a fair amount of money to be precisely where they were.  My cold had turned to the flu. The assemblage point shifts in delirium. A cacophony of unrelated colors and shapes. A din of heat. An ice-cream flavored swirl of screams and shouts. Maybe I had a fever. A pox on any moron who sells a child a toy flute.

On the drive home, I was finally alone for the first time in over 5 days. Being a loner, I do not care much for human contact. Find it painful for the most part. Minds press too close. Probes attempt to penetrate. I turn to smoke.

The rental car glides easily through the desert, with Leonard Cohen's gruff voice on the CD player and massive thunderheads gathering in the west. The Nevada/California desert weaves an alien landscape.  Joshua trees walk the night. Jagged mountains poke bony fingers skyward. Skid marks zip the road tight to a parched earth.

Words are only fodder for semantics, tools of misunderstanding. You had to be there.But I was alone. No way to tell the tale but to trace along the edges, maybe to reveal what lies beneath.  Such is the contour of the nagual.

 "The self dreams the double. Once it has learned to dream the double, the self arrives at this weird crossroad and a moment comes when one realizes that it is the double who dreams the self. Your double is dreaming you. No one knows how it happens. We only know that it does happen. That's the mystery of us as luminous beings. You can awaken in either one." (Carlos Castaneda, TALES OF POWER)

You can awaken in either one.

Somewhere in the middle of the desert, in the middle of a long and winding road, I awakened inside Orlando. It really was that simple. Opened my eyes, looked around, had a laugh or two at the human condition, a bigger laugh at my mortal self going through the machinations of Life, and began to cross-ponder from what can only be called a "dual point of view" (Orlando and Della) this bizarre thing called Time.

Time is a mortal construct. We make it up to use as a yardstick, a reference point against the backdrop of eternity.  But it isn't "real" in the sense we might think. Impossible to describe how it felt to be outside of time altogether. Orlando often talks about Time, but after today's experience, I now realize he talks to us in much the same way an adult would talk to a 5-year old about the birds and the bees. He uses language we can understand, but the actuality of it all tends to lose a lot in the translation. Birds and bees have very little to do with human reproduction, and time has very little to do with life and death. It's just an egg in which we gestate while waiting to hatch. While. Waiting. Our language itself creates Time, referencing it in countless subtle ways...

So there we were. Mortal self and eternal double driving down a winding 2-lane road in the middle of nowhere in the geographical center of infinity. Perhaps chance chose the space-time. Who's to say?  Life seemed strange, at odds with itself in so many ways. The organic robot in the SUV behind me was flashing his lights while puffing on a cigarette and talking on a cell phone. Funny monkey - all red-faced and angry, holding up a predictable finger while mouthing some obscenity in my direction as he zipped past on his way to his appointment with death. For kicks, I showed him my own finger in return - it was expected, after all, and I had a bigger ring that caught the sun - and with that little ritual out of the way, I turned my attention back to Orlando.

"You are the final fragment of yourself," he whispered, so close to my ear I could feel the heat of him, even though logic and reason said it was only the sun pouring through the window. "Touch me with your naked hand, touch me with your glove," Leonard Cohen murmurs in a black silk velvet voice that sends shivers down my spine, a voice that invokes the midnight even in mid-afternoon. I felt Orlando's touch. As if in a vision more visceral than stone, the thunderheads in the west trembled. A lover's caress. Lightning snaked parallel to the ground. A golden butterfly struck the windshield and entered eternity.  An eagle soared over the desert, hunting. Two fine fat black ravens strolled along the side of the road, oblivious to the slipstream thrown off by a careening 18-wheeler.

"There is a crack.  There is a crack in everything.  That's how the light gets in."  Cohen again. Wickedly perceptive old man.

I laughed, hearing it echo from here to there and back again, from the dark into the light, manifesting particle-wave duality riding itself back into the blackness, serpent eating its own tail only to turn wrongside out into some other perception of an ever-evolving reality. "You are the final fragment of yourself."

And then I was mySelf again, just a mortal crone propelling herself down the road at dangerous speeds, cycling endlessly between one moment and the next, between here and now, drifting between the harsh terrain of Time and the snowscape of timeless infinity.

"When the final fragment is integrated, Time itself will end."

"I see," said the blind man.

I See.
___________________
An Excerpt from Quantum Shaman: Diary of a Nagual Woman
copyright 2015, by Della Van  Hise
All Rights Reserved

To read more anecdotes from the path with heart...
Quantum Shaman
Scrawls On the Walls of the Soul

The Longing of the Heart

(A message from the double)

There is an energy in sorcery that has no name in any language. The closest words can come to describing it is a soul-deep pain, not unlike the longing for the stars you felt as children. It is that energy, when carefully directed, that fuels the heart of the double and causes it to begin to beat. First just a single drum in the night, a long, single beat. Then a little faster as the ache inside you grows over the years. The danger faced by both the double and the mortal self is simply that if the ache dies, the heart of the twin can cease to beat. It is the hurt that will make you hunt a cure. But if you let the hurt die because you are afraid of never being able to soothe the ache, what really dies is yourself, yes? (Orlando, 2003)
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I remember being about 6 years old, and feeling that terrible ache/longing for the first time, and it actually took my breath away. When I tried to explain it to my mother, she looked at me as if I were daft, and I don't think she had ever experienced it. For me, it has indeed proven to be the heartbeat of the double.

Some might say the conclusion that there is “no cure” is perhaps a self-fulfilling prophecy which could have the dangerous side-effect of self-pity if one is not careful – which is why don Juan often cautioned Carlos against morbidity. For myself, the "cure" has always been around the next bend in the road, over the next hill, beyond the next horizon. The cure is not the destination, but the way of traveling.

Most of all, the cure is the Knowledge that if one is ever REALLY cured of their longing, one has become a phantom.

An Exercise in Silent Knowing

Find a place that is comfortable for you and relax into the Now. Have awareness of your surroundings without being attached to them. Is there a bird chirping in the distance? A dog barking? Road sounds? All of these things will be part of the experience, so awareness of them enables a blending of the warrior into milieu, and the milieu into the warrior.

Essentially, the purpose of this exercise is to bring the warrior in contact with the double. As you sit with yourself in silence, focus on the Intent to move the assemblage point into "the place of silent knowing" - aka "gnosis". For warriors at an advanced level, this may seem too simple. For those who have not yet worked with gnosis on a conscious level, it may take a few attempts to really make the connection, but once it is made, it is unmistakable. For myself, when I enter into a state of gnosis, there is a tendency for my head to tilt back and my eyes to close - though obviously this is my predilection and your mileage will vary. However it works for you to shift your AP to the place of silent knowing, the purpose of this exercise is to actually "hear" the voice of the double - though it may not be experienced as a "voice" as we traditionally think of it. Could be a whisper that sounds at first like your own internal dialogue, yet is experienced as a bit of knowledge or information you did not know on any conscious level.

One of the hardest tasks a warrior faces is learning to distinguish the voice of gnosis from one's own internal dialogue.The easiest way I have found to make the distinction is that the internal dialogue is usually nothing more than lists, comments about what we are experiencing, reflections on the past, or otherwise "personal" information that is likely filled with our own self-importance. IOW - the internal dialogue is saying, "It's all about ME!"

The voice of gnosis, on the other hand, is often experienced as a single statement that fills the mind quite abruptly, and may or may not have any direct relevance on the surface. One of the strongest voices of gnosis I ever experienced came when I was staring up at a huge mountain overshadowing Palm Springs. "You have to meet the immortal world on its own level," the voice informed me. Another one: "I am helpless before all possibility." Another: "The core of your belief determines the realities you see and obliterates those you choose to ignore."

Each of these statements is what amounts to a zip file - a single statement embedded with layers upon layers of additional knowledge which unlocks & unfolds itself over time, assuming the warrior takes upon herself the task of contemplation and the act of assimilation. I found it helpful to keep a journal, though some will frown on that as an "attachment." It's up to you.

So as you sit in the place of silent knowing and take measures to stop the world, simply be open to hearing the voice of gnosis and take note of what it says. It doesn't usually tend to give long speeches, though it certainly can if there is a reason. But for the most part, if the warrior approaches this exercise with Intent and impeccability, most likely you will begin to hear the voice of the double - and it is through learning to listen, ask questions, and communicate with the double that the double is further developed until, as don Juan pointed out, there comes that crossroad moment when you realize the double is dreaming you.

What does your double have to say to you? What message are you receiving? Would be curious to hear of your experiences - hope you will take the time to comment.

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