Surviving the Jungle

A little parable about a little survivor

***

A wealthy man decides to go on a safari in Africa and takes his faithful pet dachshund along for company. One day, the dachshund starts chasing butterflies and before long the dachshund discovers that he is lost.
So, wandering about, he notices a leopard heading rapidly in his direction with the obvious intention of having lunch. The dachshund thinks, "OK, I'm in deep trouble now!"

Then he notices some bones on the ground close by, and immediately settles down to chew on the bones with his back to the approaching cat.

Just as the leopard is about to leap, the dachshund exclaims loudly, "Boy, that was one delicious leopard. I wonder if there are any more around here?"

Hearing this, the leopard halts his attack in mid-stride, as a look of terror comes over him, and slinks away into the trees. "Whew," says the leopard. "That was close. That dachshund nearly had me."

Meanwhile, a monkey who has been watching the whole scene from a nearby tree figures he can put this knowledge to good use and trade it for protection from the leopard. So, off he goes. But the dachshund sees him heading after the leopard with great speed, and figures that something must be up.

The monkey soon catches up with the leopard, spills the beans and strikes a deal for himself with the leopard. The leopard is furious at being made a fool of and says, "Here monkey, hop on my back and see what's going to happen to that conniving canine."

Now the dachshund sees the leopard coming with the monkey on his back, and thinks, "What am I going to do now?"

But instead of running, the dog sits down with his back to his attackers, pretending he hasn't seen them yet... and just when they get close enough to hear, the dachshund says, "Where's that monkey? I sent him off half an hour ago to bring me another leopard."

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Survival 101

Intent and Will

(A communication from the double)
One thing I have come to understand is that you do not fully comprehend the nature of intent. I fear you're confusing it with intentions and it's a clever trick of the Eagle that the two words bear visual resemblance but are essentially opposites.

Look at it like this: you will never become eternally Whole through good intentions but only through unbending intent, and if you don't see the difference you will stumble and fumble and ultimately fail because intentions are the things you want and hope and plan to do, but Intent is the unwavering image held in the heart of your heart and soul - the paradigm upon which everything you Think or Do becomes a Realized reflection of the paradigm itself, yes? It is a meta-physical part of you, invisible to the naked eye but no less real than liver or spleen, and if you aren't using it to its full potential, your evolving self is incomplete, dis-eased as a body without a heart, see?

Intent is the active side of clarity, an unwavering vision held firmly in the mind, which serves as the sorcerer's direct interface between question and answer; the metamagickal probe or prod applied to the all-knowing All as a means of extracting the specific Knowledge required to achieve the manifestation of the intent itself; it is the quantum Questioning mother of the Will - not the Will, but without which the Will can never manifest because without Intent the Will has nothing to manifest, nothing to create, no seed to nurture; Intent is the goal/vision the sorcerer projects unceasingly onto the silent screen of eternity until eternity reflects the sorcerer's will by yielding up the information required to achieve the Intended evolution. Intent does not compromise. It does not yield to reason or common sense. It can be summoned clearly, instantly and impeccably in all states of awareness by invocation of the word Intent.

The quantum concepts with which otherworlds are built can give you the keys to the third attention or just as quickly lock the door forever if you take it as commonplace or just another mystery with no solution, and this is another reason your Intent must be impeccably defined with the sharpest knife, a vision cut away from the Nothing which you turn to in times of doubt or confusion. Intent is the instrument you rub against the web of non-local information to create a sympathetic synapse between the brujo's question and the evolutionary answer, the intersection where vision becomes manifestation through manipulation of matter/energy using the invisible tool of Intent itself. It is, quite simply, the overlap point of vision and creation, brought into being by using the question to elicit an answer which is in accordance with the unbending vision.

(Orlando, November 23, 1999)
Excerpt from "Quantum Shaman: Diary of a Nagual Woman"

Recapitulation & the Teflon Warrior

Though I have been on this path of heart for many years, one thing that has traditionally seemed off to me is this idea of recapitulation with the intent of reclaiming lost energy. There are several reasons for this, some scientific and others meta-physical. On the one hand, it makes sense to disentangle the hooks embedded in one's spirit from events in the past, so perhaps it's the wording “reclaiming lost energy” which has always disturbed me. Energy is always in motion and cannot, therefore, really be reclaimed, just as one cannot step into the same river twice.

Also, it's been my experience that attempts at recapitulation could, under certain conditions, actually be harming the warrior's progress, because it will always be easier to deal with the past than to create the future. For myself, what's traditionally worked with regard to not losing energy is to recapitulate as I go along, and that is quite easily done by the simple realization that we live in a world of illusion peopled largely by phantoms. It might be best said that nothing sticks to a teflon mirror. Once we realize the world is folly – truly internalize that down to a molecular level – it becomes only a vast play on a canvas of dust, an interaction with phantom actors who might try to get hooks of their script into us, but there is simply no surface of the warrior vulnerable enough to be penetrated.

The true seeker actually has the ability to reflect those intended hooks right back at the phantom who launched them in the first place, or to merely deflect them so they fall harmlessly aside.

As for recapturing energy from the past, once one begins to live in a manner of a teflon mirror, recapitulation is no longer necessary as a ritualistic practice, for one also realizes that the world has always been folly, thus these events in our past which have left us with hooks begin to fall away quite naturally, which is far more energy efficient trying to re-experience them.

One thing about the Toltec practices, in my opinion, is that way too much emphasis was placed on the idea of making lists and recapping each and every annoying gnat on the nose of my discontent. To me, that is an ultimate waste of time and energy, when the teflon approach works not only in the now, but also as a retroactive enchantment – which is to say, when one masters it in the Now, the ramifications and benefits sweep not only into the future, but also into the past.

My father was a tyrant of the nth degree. It would take years to recap everything that man ever said or did, and though I can see a certain appeal to the traditional idea of recapping, I can also see that it might become one hell of an indulgence, too. By releasing the phantom self, the energy hooks just naturally fall away, because once it is recognized that the warrior is essentially a new being, the whole idea of a long and drawn-out, ritualized, list-bearing recapitulation becomes unnecessary.

So, when a warrior is serious about recapitulation, I encourage them how to recap themselves. And it is not a long and drawn-out process. It is a ruthless shift of the AP and an immediate release of any self-importance or indulgence that may be attached to personal history. Quite obviously, the teflon warrior technique is not something that can be easily accomplished by those new to the path, but works miraculously for those at a more advanced level.

(Excerpt from Quantum Shaman: Diary of a Nagual Woman)
Copyright 2015, All Rights Reserved

Available on Amazon, or from
http://www.quantumshaman.com

Joiners Need Not Apply

A seeker recently asked whether or not he should join a particular organization. He went on to say that the founder of the organization seemed to advocate raping and eating children. Whether this was a misconception on the part of the seeker or a legitimate nest of crazies, who's to say?  But the fact that anyone would even consider aligning themselves with such an organization prompted the following response...
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If someone is seriously talking about raping and eating children, why in all the collective fucks would you even THINK of joining them? And for that matter, why would you want or need to JOIN anything at all? In almost ALL of the esoteric teachings, "joining" is a fast track to mental and spiritual enslavement, and maybe a whole lot worse. You won't get super powers or immortality through ANY form of ritual or community. You will get it through DOING THE WORK for yourself. What does that LOOK like, you may ask?

1. Define your intent. What do you really WANT? And what could you want so much that you would consider joining a group that rapes and eats children? Ask yourself this question - "Am I right in the head?"

2. While some groups will claim that "Evil is in the eye of the beholder," consider that it is also in the HEART of the do-er. Put simply, there is a concept which Carlos Castaneda calls "the right way to live" - an intrinsic knowing that tells us right from wrong. In order to attain the immortal condition or even simple "enlightenment," you really do NEED to make contact with that aspect of yourself. THAT is where you will find the assemblage point of unconditional love - which is not some ooey-gooey lovey-dovey sweetness-and-light crap. It is the seat of your existence and the source of the power of your own self-creation. FIND IT. And if you can't, go to the bother of creating it.

3. Identify and THOROUGHLY examine all your belief systems - including and especially any belief systems that are telling you there is a short cut to power and immortality. Look not only at WHAT you believe, but ask yourself WHY you believe it. Begin with the stuff that may seem trivial. You probably believe the sun will rise tomorrow morning, right? Maybe the belief is true, maybe it is false. Either way - WHY do you believe it? Who told you? Upon what evidence do you base your belief? In this case, you probably base it on the fact that the sun has always risen every morning since you were born - so you base it on subjective experience. But when you start looking at the bigger belief systems (god, religion, good, evil) you may find that MOST if not ALL of what you currently believe is based on nothing more than what you have been told you SHOULD believe. Start with a simple question in each case - "Does this thing even EXIST apart from my belief in it?" If you are at all honest with yourself, you'll find that most of these "esoteric" beliefs are nothing more than fairy tales. Here's a head start for you to think about - good and evil don't really exist as extant elementals. They are extensions of Man's doings, but even more than that, they are extensions and CREATIONS of Man's beliefs. In and of themselves, there is no difference between "good and evil." What you believe is good, I may perceive as evil. We are both wrong. (And once again, I direct you to "the right way to live" - which is really the ONLY guide we have to tell us right from wrong.)

4. Release your belief systems altogether (this will take time and actual WORK), until you become a "seer" - basically someone who is able to see the world as it is, without the distortions created by false beliefs. This is a stage where you may experience great joy and/or great anger, and/or extreme ecstasy, and/or extreme "depression." Reason being - all those feelings are just the death throes of your false belief systems. We want-to-believe there is goodness in the world. We want-to-believe that the things we do somehow MATTER (they really don't). When you become a seer, you see equally the beauty and the futility in all things. This is where you graduate to "controlled folly."

5. Controlled folly - instead of deteriorating into the state of deep depression because you finally *see* the futility of existence (but also the POTENTIAL for doing the impossible, equally), is when you begin to live your life in a way different from how you've always lived it. Knowing "nothing matters," you nonetheless start to live your life AS IF it matters. You learn to pick your battles, in other words. You don't waste time chasing after political causes or religious fanaticism, you don't involve yourself in "causes" that are ultimately futile, but you DO decide what you are going to do AS IF it matters. To some people, maybe that's raising a family - though that comes with a whole butt-load of programs and issues that I've never personally wanted to undertake, so that was not a "battle" I personally chose. To other people, maybe it is a stand of action for animal rights - not in any political arena, but in direct experience. If you're going to get involved in something, you do so with the knowledge that in the end, it won't matter one wit. But maybe for one individual (yourself), it will make a difference in the direction of the building of your Will and the manifestation of it. If some temporary "good" comes of your actions, so much the better - but if you engage your controlled folly with that EXPECTATION, then you have missed the point altogether.

6. Controlled folly will also require the art of detachment - which involves getting away from the indulgences in all those comforting belief systems. As long as someone believes in god, just for example, there is always the underlying implication that "God will take care of it." When you release that belief system, when you realize that YOU are the only god there is, you begin to come into your own "personal power." As long as there is ANY hope of salvation or divine intervention, you have defeated your own power and settled for a role of "passive observer" rather than "creator of singularities."

There is also a "mantra" that comes with any doings of metaphysics. "As it harms none, do as you Will." This does not mean to do as you PLEASE. It means to do what your Will is capable of doing - what you yourself are capable of bringing into manifestation. "As it harms none..." Think about that before you would even consider joining ANY group, particularly a group that clearly intends to use "evil" as a means to an end (and an end that will never manifest). Anytime you "Join" anything, you have given away your power to the group. Is that really what you want to do? I don't think so. "As it harms none..." Joining is an act that harms YOU... so when you join a group such as that, you've already broken the first law of magick.

Thou art god. Create yourself accordingly. 

______________

May 12, 2015

Traffic Jamming

January 16, 2004

Traffic was endless. I was at risk of falling asleep at the wheel.

Los Angeles has always conjured up the words in the darkest recesses of my mind: Camelot of the Damned. So as I was leaving that dark gothic necropolis on an afternoon of no particular significance, with the rapidly setting sun in my rearview mirror and a stream of red tail lights stretched out in front of me like an artery bleeding out of the inner city, I began to experience a feeling which is virtually impossible to describe. Some might call it a longing such as one experiences when looking up at the stars and wondering who might be looking back. That was the kind of longing I felt as an eleven-year-old girl longing so desperately for those stars which seemed so very far out of reach, that all she could do was shake her fist at the sky and shout, "If I can't come to you, I'll bring you to me!"

It was something like that which came over me in the car, only darker, and carrying with it an intensity that made me instantly want to turn away from it. I could sing. I could count SUVs. I could turn on a CD and lose myself in someone else's lyrics. But even as I was having that instinctive "run away from this" reaction, it occurred to me to ask: Why did I so want to turn away?

Impossible to categorize, except to say it was an ache from deep in the soul – like the pain one experiences in unrequited love. Bittersweet. Some ancient link to some ancient memory – like waking up one morning with a sense of being in love... only to realize that the object of one's affections died 30 years ago, when you were both still in high school. This feeling had elements of silver winter, a faded photograph that hangs innocuously in the hall for years, until one morning it simply hits you that this is some part of life that is no longer reachable.

Heavy, dark – and yet strangely alluring at the same time. I felt I was looking through time, yet there was no single event or memory I could point to. And then I realized I was looking through the worlds, seeing and experiencing something for which no words exist. The lure of the nagual man, and the pain of knowing I will not see him again in this physical lifetime. The call of the siren he has become – a cold and lonely wind blowing fierce over the icy expanse of eternity. The cry of the muse, beckoning me to follow, but at the same time making it altogether clear that the mortal human never really catches the muse, and the goal therefore is the chase rather than the capture.

Still, knowing all of those things didn't lessen the sensation. Quite the opposite. How is it possible to say that the feeling was energy unto itself, and that by going into that energy, I found myself being pulled out of body right there on the I-10, in the middle of rush-hour traffic, surrounded by gang-bangers in dilapidated death-traps, semis spewing diesel fumes, and the distant screaming of emergency sirens that reminded me of some frightened animal finally driven mad by its unnatural environment.

My body went on automatic, because clearly someone was driving the car. And yet, to my perceptions, I was suddenly standing on a mountaintop that had been nearly 50 miles in the distance – Mt. San Jacinto –  the towering granite peak that looms over Palm Springs and casts a shadow over the entire desert valley.
Years ago, very early on in my journey, I had looked at that mountain, feeling a presence from it that I could not identify, and heard the words through gnosis, “You have to meet the immortal world on its own level.”  At the time, I took those words to mean that it is up to the mortal self to climb the mountain, because only in doing so do we stand any chance of becoming the thing we seek to become. Over time, those words have become something of a personal mantra, whose meaning has grown and evolved along with my own understanding.

At any rate, I suddenly found myself on top of this snowy mountain with Orlando. Normally, when he appears in visions, he might be wearing jeans and a t-shirt or occasionally with nothing but a loincloth and his hair in long dark dreads. On this day, on this inaccessible mountaintop, he was wearing a fine tuxedo, though somehow managed not to look like a stiff jackass in his finery. Top two buttons were undone, and the traditional bow-tie had been left at home.

And there was that feeling again. Looking at him as if he were dressed for a wedding, I knew intuitively that this was not the time we would exchange our final vows. Death had not yet tapped me on the shoulder even though I was standing face to face with my own double, in defiance of one major aspect of the rule of the nagual.

He opened the conversation without preamble. “You humans have no concept of the nature of time.”

I couldn’t very well argue that one, so I challenged him as he has so often done to me. “Then why don’t you tell me?” I invited.

He only laughed. And then he did something completely unpredictable. He made a small cut on his left wrist, but his blood wasn’t red. Instead it was shimmery gold-silver-copper-bronze. Liquid light. Time condensed. Essence of the ancient future.

He gave me that look – the one that ended my world when I knew him in manifestation. Half-smile, half-sinister. “To taste eternity is to understand it,” he said, holding his wrist out to me.

I stood there like some pole-axed schoolgirl, though it shouldn’t surprise me that he would behave like a vampyre – feeding me his lifeforce to make me like himself. That’s long been one of my favorite fantasies, and the nagual man is a  master of knowing exactly what will lure the nagual woman into the Infinite.  And yet…

I found myself not knowing whether to trust the bastard.  Had I miscalculated?  Was I already dead?  Had the Suburban gone off the road and was this, then, just the rehearsal dinner before the darkest wedding of bones to the earth?

 I know myself well enough to know what I’m capable of as a stalker. Would I trick myself into going willingly into the arms of my own death if it meant I would simply walk out of one world where my body was still stuck in a traffic jam, and into the Otherworld where my Whole self was waiting to welcome me with a loving embrace?

 “When it’s time, I won’t have to trick you,” he said, reading my thoughts. “You’ll come to me willingly, and then we’ll dance, because that’s the way we both want it, no?”

He knew I would succumb to his charm. The snow was cold beneath my feet. I could feel it as surely as if my physical body were there. The dusk-wind was blowing through the crack between the worlds.

I took his wrist and drank, and then I simply Knew. In both worlds, I felt my body spasm – like a seizure that occurs when the body is exposed to some massive jolt of electricity. I understood it all – the nature of time, the dance of the immortals, the evolutionary two-part migration of the soul.  To taste eternity was to understand it – right down to a molecular level.

It. Was. All. There.

And yet… when the nagual man pulled his wrist away and I returned to a state of semi-ordinary awareness, the Knowledge left me as quickly as it had filled me. It could not be held, it could not be brought back to this world – no matter how hard I tried, no matter how much I was willing to surrender or let it go. This was simply the way things are, for there was a Truth in his lifeforce that told me we simply do not possess the preceptor organs in first or even second attention to process or store direct memory of events in third attention.
I could taste it and Know it, but it would forever remain the nagual – the literal unknowable – for as long as my organic awareness was housed in the world of ordinary affairs.

The only words that escaped my lips were spoken aloud in two worlds, for I heard the echo of my physical body speaking in unison with my astral Self. “I am here with you.”  What I was trying to convey to myself was that the experience was real – valid. More than just a hallucination or even a vision. Somehow, what I had tasted of eternity had shown me that, and it was all I was able to bring back.

As I spoke, Orlando just laughed softly, maybe even a bit sad. “Exactly.”  Then he shrugged and brushed a snowflake off the lapel of his tux. “It’s about remembering on the bridge between the worlds. Humans have forgotten how to remember the other self, so they get lost in the little dream down there in the traffic.”  He jutted his chin toward the freeway which was nothing more than an unmoving line of light, lightyears distant, and for a moment, I had no idea what he was talking about – for I had forgotten that dream.

“Will I ever be able to remember what I experienced today?” I asked. “Will I ever be able to bring it back to ordinary awareness?”

He looked at me for a very long time, then reached out to pull me against his chest. He was real in my arms – far more real than the endless river of taillights and the heartbeat of some vicious rap song on a passing radio. It had nothing to do with time or otherworlds. It had to do with perception and awareness – with Knowing it is real instead of only believing it.

“Now that you’ve tasted eternity, all you have to do is remember,” he said.

And then I was back in traffic. A funeral was in progress at Forest Lawn, and just as the sun slipped below the horizon, a flock of white doves was released from somewhere near the coffin that was being slowly lowered into the ground. On the CD player, Amy Lee of Evanescence was screaming out a plea to the cosmos, to her own double:  “Bring… me… to… life.”

And so I go on, struggling always to remember.

 _______________
Copyright 2015, by Della Van Hise
All Rights Reserved

Excerpted from Quantum Shaman: Diary of a Nagual Woman

Manifesting the Mystical

When I'm observing inanimate objects, it's usually with certain expectations which may or may not be valid in the sorcerer's world. For example, I do not EXPECT a rock to move, but in the sorcerer's world, there's nothing to say it can't. We program ourselves to have certain beliefs & expectations, yet those are only belief systems as long as we agree to them. The reason some folks can walk on hot coals (or water), the reason a monk was once observed levitating a coconut, the reason it sometimes might seem that the faeries have moved a pencil from where it was left on the desk last night... all these things are possible when the programs are shattered and we enter into what don Juan called "the sorcerer's world".

I recently read ILLUSIONS by Richard Bach. Some of the things described were mirrors of things I've done in my own life, and with some degree of regularity. A few years ago, when I was first beginning to "see" that the sorcerer's world existed, I began experimenting. One day, on the way home, I said to myself, "Okay, Self, if we create our own reality, let's test it. I want to see a red hearse before I get home." In the middle of nowhere, on a sparsely traveled desert road, this seemed highly unlikely if not impossible. I had the thought, let it go, and went on with my journey. I hadn't traveled more than a few miles when I came to a 4-way stop. There, facing me in the oncoming traffic lane, a hearse. It chilled me to the bone, for though it wasn't red, it was most definitely a hearse. I patted myself on the back and said, "Okay, but not exactly what I asked for." But then... as the hearse and I passed one another going in opposite directions, I noticed the license plate. 1RED338 So... the big IS has a grand sense of humor.

I repeated this experiment many times. Once on a freeway in San Diego, I said to Wendy, "I want to see a crib before we get to your mother's house." No sooner had we gotten off the fwy that I looked into a residential neighborhood to see an unassembled crib leaning against a garage wall. A few months later, mid-summer, I said to Wendy on the same fwy, "I want to see a pumpkin before we get to your mother's house." Again, we get off the fwy, and there sitting on the front porch of a house is a fine fat pumpkin. Nowhere near Halloween or Thanksgiving. Not pumpkin season. Yet there she sat. Might as well have been some grand carriage drawn by tiny mice who had transformed into mystical horses. Just a pumpkin on somebody's porch... and yet one of the finest manifestations of the nagual I had ever witnessed.

Another incident: driving through the desert, again in the middle of nowhere. By this time I'm getting a bit demanding with my manifestations. So I picked something REALLY impossible. I said to my traveling companions, "I want to see a washing machine before we get home!" And so as we bumbled along the road where only chaparral and jackrabbits dare to dwell, we came around a bend in the road, and there on the side of the road sat not only a washing machine, but a washer AND dryer. Sense of humor evident. A sign on them said, "Free." Not if THAT wasn't a message from the nagual! :-))) "Free" indeed!

A few months later, on the way home from Encino, stuck in a major traffic jam on the 101 fwy outside of LA, I turned to Wendy and said, "I want to see a lion before we get home." She shot me a dirty look, stuck in traffic as we were, and she at the wheel. The stench of diesel and brushfire choked the air. Red tail lights had formed a river of blood that seemed to stretch endlessly, clogged in freeway veins. I shut up and went back to contemplating the dust on the dashboard. In less than 2 minutes, we rounded a bend, and there, emblazoned across the horizon, was a HUGE sign made entirely of tiny white lights, cast in the shape of a lion's head. Stood about 50' tall. And as if I might miss it, directly beneath, also enlightened in huge, glowing white letters, "THE LION KING."

There have been many such incidents since embarking on this path. So many I cannot count them all. So many that all I can do is gaze in wonder at the earth, the red hearses, the pumpkins and the lion kings, and occasionally glance at the face in the mirror and wonder, "Who ARE you?" The answer is a work in progress, a mosaic of memories and mumblings, a strange tapestry of strange events that really aren't strange at all once we finally accept that the "magick" is real. It's our CR view of the world that's the ultimate illusion, the greatest lie.

We program the coconut to hang on the tree, but we might just as easily rearrange its molecules to become a fine, fat pumpkin on a porch in San Diego. It's all just an arrangement of energy in the sorcerer's world.
_____________
March 6, 2003

Excerpted from...
Quantum Shaman: Diary of a Nagual Woman

Available on Amazon
or from the author's website at
http://www.quantumshaman.com