Thursday, February 11, 2016

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Saturday, February 06, 2016

Knowledge, Masks and Roles

One thing I have consistently observed is that people can and do learn from one another as a natural occurrence. I've learned as much on my own path from fellow travelers as I ever did from any extant teacher, but in the big picture I've learned far more from my own higher self (the shaman's double) than from all other sources combined. To me, that's how it must be - in the end, we really have only ourselves to rely on and the process of silent knowing (aka "gnosis"). And yet, it must be acknowledged that most do not really start out on the path with that connection to the infinite already established. Part of the path is establishing the connection & learning to use it, so in many ways it can get into the conundrum Orlando (my own double/higher self) presented me with a few years back, and which has become almost a mantra: "You have to be immortal before you will know how to become immortal." 
So, how does one get to that point of having "already" (time being an illusion notwithstanding) experienced the wisdom/totality/Knowledge of one's double without first going through the process of building the connection to that infinite self? For even though all Knowledge is accessible to the infinite self, it really is the matter of learning to access it and put it to use in our ordinary lives that brings the warrior/seeker to a higher level of awareness where the conundrum stated above begins to make sense. It is only after we have experienced the infinite that we know how to become/be infinite... and yet we have to be infinite before we may truly manifest the entire process of becoming infinite. 
Ultimately, for myself, this process involved a wide range of experience which could not have been predicted nor even wholly understood from within the process itself. I might say it began with an inquisitive and unrelenting nature - to experience the unknown, to dive headlong into the mysterious call of the nagual while all my peers were basking in "the light". But part of the process also involved a willingness to simply let go of what I believed I already knew, so that I might begin to experience things outside the range of my previous combined experience. Sounds simple, but for many of us, it really isn't. We have a tendency to hold onto what we believe when it may well be that those beliefs are holding us back from actual Knowledge. 
So what does this have to do with teachers, apprentices and being immortal before we will know how to become immortal? Simply this. One thing I am constantly observing is my own reaction to to life, experience, other people, my own thoughts, what have you. And one thing I have observed to be true with nearly all humans is that we are the result of the sum total of our programming - both positive and negative (if such words must be applied at all). 
What this means is that there is a tendency for humans to take on roles of mimicry just because it is our nature. In our early lives, we learn by mimicking our parents, siblings or other role models, and it is a habit that follows us into adulthood. If we are not ruthless with ourselves, even warriors may find themselves falling into old patterns of behavior with regard to roles and how we may see ourselves as a reflection of our programming. Without awareness, in other words, we run a high risk of simply being little robots acting out some belief about how we think we should be in any given situation. 
One of the areas in which this becomes most evident is when dealing with the whole concept of teacher/student/apprentice. The words themselves conjure up images and ideas which are altogether arbitrary and inaccurate. A teacher is anyone or anything from which we may learn something. A student is anyone who may be open to learning (sounds simple, but isn't). And an apprentice may simply be someone who dedicates him/herself to the pursuit of Knowledge. Beyond that, all bets are off. 
But the problems and issues arise when the participants attempt to take on certain roles - and it is the roles themselves which create the issues and house the issues. Example: the moment someone enters the scene and proclaims, "I am the teacher and you are the student," a certain series of expectations is automatically created. The "teacher" has assumed a seemingly "superior" role, which may have the automatic result of causing anyone else in the arena to feel inferior. And at that very moment, the roles have become perhaps more important than the individuals inhabiting them, and most opportunity for learning will go right out the window. Why? Because ultimately whenever we attempt to inhabit a role (whether student or teacher), we may actually feel a shift of the assemblage point which moves us away from our authentic self and into a place of what we believe we should be/do, and it is then that we find ourselves affixed utterly in the ordinary world, and we have become actors in someone else's drama,which is usually a big tragedy all the way around, since it is not really anyone else's fault, but just our own lack of attention to the matter of ruthless maintenance of our own awareness in the Now. 
Put another way: when we forget who we are because we have been told we are something else, we are nothing. When we lose the assemblage point of the authentic self, we stray into the territory of sheeple and begin to graze on the poisoned oats of our own complacency. 
What is the point of this? Simply to point out (mainly to myself) that it is the roles and the accompanying "costumes" which may ruin an otherwise prime opportunity for learning. If someone insists on assuming the role of teacher, it may well be that the requirements of the role itself can blind the teacher to any true learning. By the same token, if a "student" automatically defers to a "teacher" just because s/he has been told that this person is The Teacher, then it may well be that the "student" automatically assumes a role of being "lesser than" the self-proclaimed Teacher, and what we are left with are two people caught up in their roles, with both probably missing an otherwise prime opportunity for learning & sharing that can ONLY exist when all roles, expectations and belief systems are ruthlessly shed through the process of stalking oneself. 
One way I learned to do this was simply to observe myself as I interacted with different people who were in different "roles" in my own life. If I found that I was automatically "deferring" to The Boss, for example, I would force myself to climb out of that role and simply see The Boss as another human being bumbling along his own path, whatever that may be. If I found myself feeling superior to the homeless man in the gutter in the streets of Los Angeles, a very small bit of stalking would remind me in a hurry that I was no different than that man in the gutter except through the choices I might make from moment to moment - and so the man in the gutter had become a divine teacher and the boss had become a human being... and it is then that we begin to be able to navigate the path from a more authentic self rather than automatically falling into the roles which are based on the assumptions that guard our belief systems. 
Now, if I see someone I believe I might learn from, I simply take it at that and see where it leads. It's usually the expectations that will get in the way of learning or teaching, so for me it's a matter of shedding all the baggage before taking the next step on the path, whatever that step might be. 
If someone needs to believe they are "The Teacher", that doesn't mean I can't learn something from them. It might mean they cannot learn anything from me, but that is not my concern. That's their little role playing game rooted in their own journey through the tonal, what they need to believe about themselves. So, for me, it's a matter of remembering that everyone and everything is potentially the finest teacher I will ever encounter. And it is a matter of remembering that I am an apprentice to Knowledge... not to any person or place or thing. 


Knowledge wears no masks and is free to all who seek it. The sorcerer's trick is learning to see it even when it is hiding in plain sight. A hint: it's within us all the time, but the path to finding it takes many twists and turns until one eventually sees the answer to the conundrum: "You have to be immortal before you will know how to become immortal." What we do in the Now affects not only who we will be in the future, but who we have been in the past... because Time itself is the ultimate human illusion, and only when we begin to navigate outside of it do we really begin to glimpse that the connection we forge to the Infinite Self in the Now is the vessel of timeless "immortality" in the form of the shaman's double. We are not linear beings, despite what our roles and our teachers would have us believe. 
In order to see that, we have to let go of our roles. In order to be that, we have to embrace it in the now, so that it becomes the teacher within, timeless and free. 
______
Della Van Hise
April 15, 2007
All Rights Reserved

  


Questions Along the Way: Conversations With a Quantum Shaman
Book 3 in the Quantum Shaman Series
Available from Amazon or directly from www.quantumshaman.com

Into the Infinite: Opening the Door to the Unknown
Book 4 in the Quantum Shaman Series
Available from Amazon or directly from www.quantumshaman.com

Wednesday, February 03, 2016

Castaneda: Shaman or Sham?

A seeker wrote:
 It seems to me that Castaneda just snapped toward the end of his life, and the fact that he died a human death instead of burning with the fire from within would also seem to invalidate a lot of his earlier teachings.

All we really know are stories told by disgruntled former followers, and that's rather like listening to the robber's version of what really went down in the gunfight. What a lot of people fail to take into account is that we are all - Carlos included - human begins with human frailties. No matter how accomplished we may become as stalkers or dreamers or Naguals, we are still human - and personally I'm not sure that how Carlos lived in any manner affects or sullies the Knowledge he gave to the world in the form of his books.

In my own life, I've made the statement that anyone looking to discredit me will easily be able to do so a thousand times over - and I will even provide them with the tools with which to do it. But at the same time - the magic of duality allows two seemingly contradictory "realities" to exist simultaneously, overlapping, side by side... and neither obliterates or obscures the other. Point being - just because Carlos spent the last few years of his life apparently fucking his apprentices and raving like a madman really has very little bearing on what he Knew and what he wrote about.

Sure, we can all point fingers of blame and say he should have done things differently or should have practiced what he preached... but the bottom line (and I speak from experience) is that sometimes the Knowledge we receive channels initially from what some have called a "higher source" - what I myself would call the double or the infinite self - and that infinite self is not prone to our human frailties... and especially not prone to the deterioration of the mind/body which occurs as a natural (and perhaps unavoidable?) side effect of being in human form in the first place.

A lot of younger warriors like to believe they will not succumb to the ravages of old age - but there is a reason Don Juan listed old age as the fourth enemy of a man or woman of Knowledge. It is the only one of the four enemies that cannot be defeated. No matter how well-conditioned you are right now, my own experience has been that the body is simply made of organic stuff (even though it is energy at its source), and the juxtaposition of our matter/energy construct is such that even the finest warriors among us may have a genetic predisposition toward Alzheimer's, liver cancer, brain tumors, or something else which might be identified as simply a tool in Death's hip pocket.

I could be wrong. I personally like to think tales of The Tenant (the death defier) are real. But I have had the word out for years that I would be most interested in meeting him/her, and so far the phone isn't ringing off the hook. Then again, I may well have met him/her back in the late 80s and simply didn't recognize him for what he really was. Who's to say with so many years between then and now? Point is - to blame Carlos for being human is sort of like blaming fire for being hot. It just is - and I've seen a lot of folks using the fact that he seemingly died a human death of liver cancer as some sort of banner-flag to be waved about as some sort of proof that he was a charlatan and a fraud and a whole host of other things... when the simple reality is that he was just a man like any other.

A few years back, I began to think about my own changing body, and I wondered to the universe one night in meditation, what would happen if I simply grew old, forgot everything I ever learned on the path, and became a drooling liability in a nursing home. I ran this question past several other warriors, including a couple of self-proclaimed Naguals, and the consensus at the time was that none of them could really provide an answer on any level.

It was about 2 weeks later, in a trance-dreaming state, when I received very clearly the message which provided the following information: Once we accomplish something, that something becomes part of the matrix of the I-Am. In other words, if I were to become a woman of Knowledge in the year 1996, for example, with all the attributes that term implies, but then lived on another 50 years and turned into a raving lunatic with a brain tumor, it would not alter the fact that in the energetic framework of the universe, I would still (and always) be a woman of Knowledge. Duality. Depends on where one is standing on the time/space map that determines how we perceive it, but the reality is much larger than any single point on the map. Once something is experienced (such as the state of being a woman of Knowledge, for example), that experience becomes part of our personal hologram - which cannot be destroyed for as long as even one microgram of energy of the hologram remains in existence.  (See "The Holographic Universe"; Michael Talbot).

And this also brings us face to face with the need for Do-ing. It is through Do-ing that we actually accomplish the things that become part of our energetic matrix (the I-Am). To think about becoming a woman of Knowledge is not the same thing as going through the process of becoming a woman of Knowledge. To fantasize about walking with an ally is not the same thing is spinning with the ally and risking the very real possibility that one may never come back to this world at all.

Even as we grow old and become frightful reminders of the fourth enemy to warriors of the younger generation, what must be taken into account is precisely what I learned in my own do-ings: once we accomplish "the thing", it can never be taken from us. Once we become a woman of Knowlwedge, that Knowledge can never be taken from us within the energetic framework of the hologram of the I-Am. 

So just because Carlos died a human death doesn't automatically make him a charlatan or a fraud, as a lot of folks like to say. What is limited there is their own thinking - and what may be called into question is why they were willing followers of a man who had basically told the world through his books to go out and do/see/be for themselves. The fact that people would fall in line to follow someone who had spent his life telling them not to be sheeple... speaks far more to their shortcomings than to his.

Some may choose to see this as me defending Carlos - but that is simply not the case. I never met the man. Never knew him. And probably would not have liked him much had I followed through on any of the multiple chances I had to meet him. Do I think he was an ass in love with his own ego? Not up to me to decide, because I wasn't there.

Point is, trying to invalidate the teachings by invalidating the teacher just doesn't work for me.

__________

  


Questions Along the Way: Conversations With a Quantum Shaman
Book 3 in the Quantum Shaman Series
Available from Amazon or directly from www.quantumshaman.com

Into the Infinite: Opening the Door to the Unknown
Book 4 in the Quantum Shaman Series
Available from Amazon or directly from www.quantumshaman.com