Encounters With The Nagual: Part 1 - Chapter 07. Energetic Drainage.

Encounters With The Nagual © 2004 by Armando Torres:

Part 1 - Chapter 07. Energetic Drainage.

On many occasions when I listened to Carlos, he referred to the topic of energy. Each time, he would explain different aspects of it. I have gathered some of his explanations in this chapter to give the reader a more coherent view.

Carlos' said that the teachings of the tradition of seers to which he belonged begins with the idea that the universe is dual.

It is formed by two forces which the old seers symbolized by means of two snakes that are intertwined.

The two forces constitute an inexplicable wave of energy which the Toltecs called the tonal and the nagual.

Everything we can interpret or imagine in any way is the 'tonal', and the rest which we cannot categorize is the 'nagual'.

The tonal and nagual are not two antagonistic realities, but rather are two complementary aspects of one unique force which the Toltecs nicknamed 'The Eagle'.

Carlos stressed that these forces have nothing to do with the dualities we call good and bad, God and Devil, positive and negative, nor any other kind of opposing pairs we can think of coherently.

The seers compared the tonal and the nagual with the right and the left sides of our physical body simply because our basic configuration as an organisms is structured from a bilateral symmetry.

However, the tonal and nagual are not associated with either side of our bodies.

The tonal and nagual are two forms in which energy of the Cosmos manifests itself to us as humans, and thus dictates the way we perceive the world.

The old seers called the free energy of the cosmos 'the emanations of the Eagle'.

Life is formed when a portion of the emanations are encapsulated by an external force. This then becomes a new individual being that is aware of itself.

The old seekers found that this new being's awareness of the world around it happens when something they called 'the assemblage point of perception' comes into play.

That assemblage point operates as the center of awareness for every living being in the universe.

On this Earth, seers have found that the deliberate awareness of oneself can only be achieved by human beings, and by a group of species who lack physical organization whom the seers of antiquity called 'allies'.

Interaction between man and the ally beings is not only feasible, it is something that frequently happens in our dreams.

Ancient sorcerers cultivated this interaction since the consciousness of inorganic beings, who are much older than us, is filled with something that we all covet-- Knowledge.

Having taken on the work of investigating the tonal and nagual as modes of energy, the sages from old Mexico were urged to describe to their contemporaries what they had discovered.

In the effort to describe their understanding of things which they experienced but that were were far beyond common consensus, the seers borrowed the most appropriate terms from commonly known items.

They said that all that exists is divided into light and dark, like day and night.

From this as a starting point, they derived an infinitude of binary descriptions, almost as if the universe held out a command to reflect some great cosmic duality.

Through their seeing, they had discovered that the world of energy is made up of extensive areas of darkness, sprinkled with tiny points of light.

And they perceived that the dark areas correspond to the feminine part of the energy while the bright areas correspond to the masculine. They arrived at the inevitable conclusion that the universe is almost in its entirety feminine, and that the bright energy, the masculine, is rare.

By definition, they associated darkness with the left side, the nagual, the unknown, and the feminine.

They associated luminosity with the right side, the tonal, the known, and the masculine.

Continuing their observations, they saw that the act of galactic creation happens when the cosmic darkness contracts itself, and from it arises an explosion of light, or a spark that expands giving origin to the order of time and space. The law of this order is that things always have an end, which again implies that the unique and perennial principle of the universe is the dark energy; feminine, creative, and eternal.

Likewise, human beings are divided into the tonal, represented by his daytime vigil; and the nagual, represented by our dreams at night.

From these observations, the rest of the wisdom of the naguals is derived. The seers teach that dreams are a doorway to power because, ultimately, what sustains us is the dark energy to which we go periodically to be renewed.

Consequently, the seers directed all their power towards perfecting the art of becoming conscious while in the state of dreaming. They called that special kind of attention 'dreaming', and they used dreaming to deliberately explore the dark energy, and to come into contact with the source of the universe. In that way, the initial observations of the wise Toltecs became a practical knowledge.

One of Carlos' more frequent statements was that we as average human beings form opinions about everything.

This transforms our world into something more and more predictable until the possibility of visiting other worlds becomes a fairy tale.

On one occasion Carlos explained, "For modern man, absolutely everything that exists is put into definite categories. We are labeling machines.

"We classify our world, and our world classifies us.

"If once you killed a dog, you are the dog-killer for the rest of your life-- even if you never touched another one.

"Those classifications are even inherited!"

Carlos mentioned a series of funny and expressive last names that were related to the characteristics of a particular person. He said the names were then passed onto their descendants as an imposition on them. It went to show that people become marked energetically.

He asserted that the greatest example of that absurd propensity to classify us is what believers call 'original sin'; the sin of Adam and Eve which makes us all forever sinful, and also, makes us all behave as sinners.

Carlos then said, "We have become perceptual jailers of each other. The chain of human thought is powerful.

"We classify and order our deepest feelings so that nothing can escape.

"One example is the way we alienate ourselves from the actual time we are living in by mindlessly going around repeating stereotypes. We have a collection of preset days-- Mother's Day, All Saints' Day, Valentine's Day, birthdays, anniversaries, and weddings.

"They are like stakes we tie our life to so that we will not get lost. Thus we walk the Earth focused only on our descriptions like beasts tied by the neck."

Carlos told us about when he and Don Juan once traveled to a small town in the north of Mexico, and they had sat down to rest on a bench in the church square.

Suddenly, ten or twelve Mexican youths came carrying a Judas figure made of cloth and canes. It was dressed in a blanket and sandals; like an Indian. They installed it in the town square, and that night there was a public burning. Everybody drank, and everybody took turns insulting the puppet as part of the ritual.

Carlos explained, saying, "With customs like that, people keep Judas alive. They remember him. They sustain him. They keep him in a true hell with their memories. And, after burning him, the next year they resuscitate him, and kill him again.

"The rigidity of human behavior is revealed in those routines."

A person in the audience requested permission to speak, and asked Carlos whether, regarding how by remembering Judas the town keeps him alive, his statement was meant literally, or was just a metaphor.

Carlos answered, "Sorcerers affirm that since a current of thought is an injection of life, as long as there is memory, there is awareness of being. True death is oblivion.

"The idea that time moves in a straight line from past to future is completely primitive, and is something that goes against the experience of sorcerers and even of modern science. But due to that limited interpretation of time, most of humanity is kept prisoner in a tunnel of time where their destiny becomes an infinite repetition of the same.

"The reality of our condition is that we are energetically blocked due to what sorcerers call 'the collective fixation of the assemblage point.'

"A remarkable consequence of that fixation is the way we specialize. When preparing for a profession, for example, instead of widening our scope, we usually end up becoming sedentary, boring individuals without creativity and without motivation. In a few years, our life becomes tedious. But far from taking responsibility and changing ourselves, we blame our circumstances.

"One of the most serious habits that shape our inventory is the habit of telling others everything we do, or we stop doing. It is an important part of socialization. We want to generate an exclusive image of ourselves. But the image ends up molding itself to other people's expectations, and we become imitations of what we could be.

"Once others consider us as facts, we have to follow certain behavioral patterns even when we are sick of them even if we do not believe in them. Any intent to change puts us up against the wall.

"Most people have built their lives on a superficial base of relationships and so they feel empty when they do not have love or friends.

"And, unfortunately, friendship is generally based on an exchange of intimacies but with a basic premise of our mundane relationships being that everything we say and do will some day be used against us. It is a sad fact that the ones we care about the most are also our worst headaches.

"So most people do not have any time left to ponder their destiny.

"Sorcerers maintain that talking about ourselves makes us accessible and weak, while learning how to be quiet fills us with power. A principle of the path of knowledge is to turn your own life into something so unpredictable that not even you yourself knows what is going to happen.

"The only way of leaving the collective inventory is moving away from those who know us well.

"After a time, mental walls that trap us become a little softer and they start to give in. That is when genuine opportunities for change appear and we can take control of our lives.

"If we were able to transcend interpretation and face pure perception without prejudice, the impression of a world of objects would vanish.

"In its place, we would witness energy as it flows in the universe. Under such conditions, the chain of other people's thoughts would no longer have the smallest effect on us and we would not feel obliged to be or do anything.

"Then our senses would have no limits. That is 'seeing'."

Carlos later defined seeing further, saying, "The sorcerer's objective is to break the fixation of social interpretations, and to see energy directly. To see is a total perceptual experience.

"Seeing energy as it flows is an imperious need on the path of knowledge. Ultimately, all the effort of sorcerers is guided to that end. It is not enough for a warrior to know that the universe is energy. He, or she, has to verify it for him or herself.

"Seeing is a practical matter which has immediate consequences and far-reaching effects on our lives. The most dramatic of them is that sorcerers learn to see time as an objective dimension."

Carlos continued by explaining that energy is distributed through the universe in layers. All conscious beings belong to one of them and we can tune in to energy of other bands thanks to a phenomenon known as the 'alignment of perception.'

He said, "At some points, the layers are crossed at generating energy vortices. At those points, phenomena take place of the utmost importance to the sorcerers that see. At those places, the conditions for the alignment of perception are best and it occurs spontaneously.

"Seers speak of passageways, bridges and barriers in the space where the coordinates of time lapses, and the consciousness of the traveler enters strange worlds. Inorganic beings from all corners of the universe take advantage of these points to cross the border into our land, and we also can do the same into theirs.

"To you this may seem incredible, but such phenomena, to me, is as natural as rain from the sky.

"On one occasion I was taken to a site in the desert in northern Mexico. I was shown a place where the area was a cosmic whirl. We fought for hours to penetrate the area, but it was impossible. It was as if there was a barrier there."

We asked Carlos what that was, and he responded, saying, "I could never decipher it. But a sorcerer with enough power and who knew how to use those places could have passed through that.

"Another time I was able to witness the most extraordinary effects of one of those passages of energy.

"I was driving in the middle of the desert when a storm hit the road, and completely clouded my field of vision.

"Suddenly a tractor trailer appeared next to my car. The driver made a sign for me to follow him, and we continued over a long stretch. I was sheltered at his side; protected by the huge flank of the truck.

"Finally, the storm abated and we both stopped. We were on a path of stones that I did not know. The driver of the truck exited and greeted me. I recognized that he was an Indian shaman from the area whom I had met before.

"He told me that when he protected me in that way, he was paying for the gift that I had done for him years earlier. He did not attempt to identify the place where we were because he said it was a hideout of the second attention.

"I was amazed by his words; amazed that a warrior would have had enough energy to carry me, car and all, to the other world.

"After a brief chat he told me that it was time to get out of there because the storm had already finished. I followed him along an unknown path, and again I found myself on the motorway. But the truck and trailer were gone without a trace."

These anecdotes had the effect of exciting our imagination, and so we beset Carlos with all sorts of questions. But he remained unflappable. He said that this kind of phenomenon occurs more often than we could believe, and that is not to be reasoned out. It was only to be experienced.

Carlos continued to explain that another striking and very useful effect of seeing energy as it flows is that sorcerers perceive the feelings of other people directly; like heat waves leaving our bright masses, and driven by emotions. The sorcerer even detects feelings that the keeper does not know are there.

He said, "It is as if you projected an infrared light which can be targeted by a seer, whereas most people do not see their fellows more than as an impenetrable darkness.

"Seeing allows you to get through the guards of the conduct of others. This makes it impossible to cheat a seer, and extremely difficult to surprise one.

"However, the real value of seeing is that it helps us understand what we are attempting to achieve.

"I said before that all of existence is energy levels. When we see, we realize that there is something more here. And subsequently, we find some new rule of action which organizes everything.

"Sorcerers identified this rule, or purpose, as a supreme and impersonal will which they manage to tune through their interior in silence.

"Obviously a person of knowledge, with such a tool at their disposal, combines things in the most appropriate way for their awareness and energy. Brimful of energy, and serene is the mark of the warrior. You see?"

In another of his talks, Carlos told us that we bring all of our energy at birth, but we usually die disastrously clueless about energetic facts.

He said, "It is as if we are born with a certain amount of money in the bank; about a million more or less. No matter the difference between individuals, in most cases this is a sufficient amount which would allow us to lead decent lives until the end.

"But, because of the lack of a proper energy culture, most people start to spend that awareness and energy heritage so crazily from the beginning that when they die, they are in a pitiful state of misery.

"However, a few people learn to save up, and to multiply their profits. They also die, but with more capital. And they come further, and go farther.

"The difference between dying with all our gains as warriors full of power, or dying as a bald dog, is due to the way we treat our energy and our awareness."

Carlos explained that the field of light around us is like a giant ball of cotton candy; a dense interweaving of fibers that emanates energy just as a radiator does.

He said, "When two people enter into a relationship, what happens is an exchange of fumes. Our fibers interact even though we may not want them to interact; or we interact our energy fibers without even realizing it is happening. It is an energetic fact that energy flows from where there is more to where there is less.

"So, as we turn life into a constant interaction, it is normal that in the dying end we will be very little of ourselves, and much of what others left in us.

"However, warriors learn to violate this cultural law of energy exchange through exercises such as the recapitulation. This is an endeavor designed to recover our energy, and makes us self-sufficient. We recover our original birthright capital, and return with all we had loaned.

"Some warriors learn to divert the troublesome weight of the attention of others; while other warriors simply separate from average people and become hermits.

"John Tuma used to wear dark glasses. He did it, he said, 'for not dissipating energy through the eyes'.

"The real value of that practice, however, was that this created a barrier between himself and others, and he was no longer accessible.

"The issue of energetic trade and dissipated awareness has the most serious implications on our lives, and this has led to the expression, 'tell me who you hang out with, and I will tell you who you are'.

"That not only describes a state of psychological affinity between two people, but a measurable impact of each others' energetic awareness; a personal energetic condition that a seer or even a sorcerer can perceive.

"If you want to be yourself, learn to walk alone.

"The crucial point is that our interactions can enslave us or liberate us.

"Not every exchange is undesirable. Warriors seek the company of those who help them grow. For example, dealing with witches compels us to be vigilant, and to be impeccable.

"In sharp contrast are common relations which are exhausting because those interactions are based on predetermined patterns of behavior demanded of our-self and the other person.

"Think, for example, in dating relationships where levels of predetermined expectations and demands are often so high that sometimes it destroys the lives of those same people."

One of the people present asked Carlos to illuminate what happens during the exchange of the fumes of sex.

Carlos replied that since life began with a sexual act, we should consider that our energy for sexual activity was determined then. In fact, the primary consideration in dealing with our luminosity is related to this fundamental dimension of our being.

He continued, saying, "The first thing we need to know is that our emotional connections with people are a result of the way we were conceived. At that time, once and for all, the availability and level of our energetic awareness was defined. Our field of energy fibers were sealed, and we are the sum of the passion and desire that our parents collected at the time of conceiving us.

"Everything that follows our conception is a manipulation within limits defined back then; whether it be the wear and tear of our social commitments, or our path of recovery and energy savings.

"And since sex between humans tends to be a routine event, the problem with our level of our energetic awareness often started with our parents there.

"Then socialization imprisons us in a way that gets into our privacy, and obliterates the energy-conscious magical possibilities of our own sexual unions. Socialization turns the sexual act into an obscene and compulsory routine with the often undesirable consequences of conception.

"And then those routine conceptions are reflected strongly in those children.

"As support for this assertion, I tell a joke about a man who tells his wife, 'Honey, on Monday I can not be with you, otherwise I can not play cards with my friends. And on Tuesday I go bowling. On Wednesday, my friends will be waiting for me in the gym.'

"The man thus continued listing his preoccupations for the entire week. Finally, his wife retorts, 'This house will find you in it every night at eight, or you will not find yourself in it!'

"The problem is not making love, but rather doing so by habit.

"The resulting effect of any routine is that it dissipates energy, and dulls what could be the keen edge of our awareness.

"That is shown dramatically in the routine of sex because its outcome are the children who come into the world with a serious deficit of vitality.

"We are so adapted to this situation, that if and when a child is born with all of his or her power intact-- a condition that we consider abnormal-- we deliver the child to a psychiatrist to be calmed.

"And due to the simple coincidental nature of how we select our breeding partner, Don Juan named the generation of modern society, 'the children of aberration'.

"There are two types of unions at conception. The tedious union, and the energetic union.

"Socially speaking, it is very unlikely that we are the product of an energetic conception. Almost all of us come from a routine union. In the view of a seer, typically we are rolled up energy with inhibiting folds in our luminous energetic fibers as if from birth we were already very old men and women.

"Since we can not change our heritage, it is a matter of sanity to learn to save our resources.

"According to sorcerers, the greatest escape of energy in a man or woman is creating children. Having children is a great investment which affects our permanent brightness.

"Therefore, our purpose of bringing children into this world must be deliberate, and weighed with the utmost seriousness.

"If we were conceived in a routine act, and if subsequently we are dedicated simply to the reproductive momentum of producing children, the inevitable result is the fragmentation of our energy unit. Our luminous egg as parents is like a dam with holes where the water is drained. Those holes are our children.

"Those parents will never accumulate enough spare energetic awareness to change themselves unless they apply the energetic principles in their lives called 'the way of the warrior'."

Someone in the audience asked Carlos about the energetic exchange between parents and children.

He answered, saying, "Cutting the newborn's umbilical cord does not mean it has automatically severed the child's connection with their parents. The 'string' light is still active throughout life as an energy straw. It is a real connection that even the blind can see as a fiber that comes from the cocoon light of the parents, to their children.

"The drainage does not occur in a conscious fashion, so for the average person there is no way to avoid it. No matter how much love parents and children profess among themselves, from the standpoint of energy that love is only concerned about the luminosity that has been exchanged. That is why parents are often very demanding with their children and try by all means to mold them to become like them.

"Bringing children to this world is not a clean delivery. It is an investment.

"The blind can see how the depredations result from having children. The parents' energy filaments are projected outward like torn tissue fragments as if it were an old and frayed shirt, or as if they had intestines leaving a disembowelment. This is, of course, one of the most appalling conditions possible."

Carlos' graphic descriptions, accompanied by his gesticulations, had the effect of plunging almost all of his listeners into a state of alarm. I noticed the side casting looks of those who were around me.

With a flickering voice, one of the audience asked him how a warrior can clog their drainage points.

Carlos responded, saying, "The only chance children have to cancel the command of socialization is abandoning father and mother; and not letting their head get back in the game.

"As for the parents' relation to the children, there is no other choice but to eat them. If you can not bite a kid, you bite it yourself."

These words were just too much for some of those present, and I noticed them leaving the the room.

Immutable, Carlos told us how, on one occasion, he was involved in an extraordinary encounter with a girl and an aware female being of another realm; a being whom he wanted to release from her condition of slavery.

Before Carlos found the girl, she had, as a result of her imprudence, engendered a foreign female being for energy.

Carlos continued, saying, "Don Juan was, however, fully aware of my limitations, and he took responsibility for the creature and the girl-- a situation the girl gladly acquiesced to.

"One day, in the presence of the girl's birth mother and I, Don Juan took the girl from the room we were in.

"Upon returning, Don Juan placed in front of us a tray of carnizas, and told the mother, 'here is your daughter Cómanla.'

"The mother and I could do nothing else. Bound by don Juan's compelling gaze, the mother and I complied with the unspoken order.

"For us it was a monstrous act, but it had a monumental beneficial effect. It restored the integrity of our once bright luminosities. As a result of the communion with the tender meat, both the birth mother and I recovered all the love and all the light we had poured on the girl, and we closed our holes. In that way, we came back to being complete.

"Eight years later, Don Juan brought the girl back to us. He presented her as 'the blue scout.' He said that he had hidden her during that time, and that what her mother and I had eaten was a baby pig."

Listening to this denouement, a sigh of relief toured the room.

Carlos continued, saying, "I can say that the return of the daughter did shock me; and I felt no solace in knowing that everything had been a joke. My energy body, however, was not surprised."

Out of curiosity, some of those present wanted to know what had happened with the girl during those eight years.

Carlos replied, "Oh, she grew up with my teacher and his fellows in northern Mexico among the Yaqui indians. She became a fierce being. She was not a normal creature. Her energy came from elsewhere.

But unfortunately, she used power plants without discrimination.

"She was so untamed that to get her out of Mexico and bring her to the United States, she had to be tied and put it in the trunk of the car as if she were a suitcase.

"The mother and I could never touch her physically, although she was affectionate with Don Juan.

"I remember, however, on one occasion, by her own will, she put her head on my knees. The mother and I looked at each other surprised; unable to believe it.

"That was the nagual's last maneuver for her disregarding us. The girl knew that she was alone, and she was not going to let the two of us parasite her. She had become a being of her true constitution.

"We are aggressive beings; territorial. We are not pets.

"That girl is the living example of what can be achieved by a maneuver of witches in the sense of re-consolidating our energy."

On another occasion Carlos went back to touch on the subject of boring sex. The conversation led to the manipulation of sexual energy.

Carlos said that the life generating force that was placed in us is important, and has many uses of which we are not fully aware.

He said, "It is pitiful that most people only know how to think about sex in terms of physical pleasure.

"It is like only considering the wild things you can do when you happen to be faced with a something of incredible value-- like a very valuable book, and all you see in it is suitable material to ignite a fire.

"We spend most of our lives worrying about how we are seen by the members of the opposite sex. That means, first, a constant preoccupation of attention to physical appearance.

"In addition, we go to places where we meet other people in the same situation as us, as if we all have set appointments there. We invest many, many hours chatting on peripheral things, but always with our minds set in on our target material. Such a wasteful investment is staggering.

"Sorcerers know that the basis of sex is not playfulness. They know it is ludicrous to think that the power that governs us, created something as important as the generating force, just so that we can perpetuate like mushrooms on earth.

"The generating force's purpose goes beyond sex, and connects us with the mystery of the origin of all things. The universe emerged from a single outbreak that still lingers, and is expressed every time we make love. If the source of who we are is germinating power, then the center of our work ought to be the interior re-channeling of sexual energy."

Doing a very expressive gesture with his hands, Carlos exclaimed, "Sorcerers realize what they gained by not having wasted. Sex is money. Cash. Our destiny is to expand cosmic consciousness. That is why we were endowed with a portion of the creative power of the Eagle. Sexual energy was made for evolving."

Carlos stated that we might theorize that the exchange of sexual partners' energy need not affect the availability of energy of each of the participants because, for example, a man takes the woman's energy as she takes his. The result would seem to be a neutral balance.

But in fact, the operation of the energy mix typically has undesirable side effects generated by bonds of dependency that restrict our freedom, and requires many years of recapitulation to be discarded.

And in practice, that sort of energy exchange is more strenuous than dry red wine to our vitality. When we make love, the movement of energy is not done so as in the case of a closed system. There is always a gap there.

Carlos explained, "Having sex with a person has to do with the whole gene chain that gave us origin. And as a result the fibers that connect us to our parents are altered as well.

"We human beings are not independent entities, but rather are terminal elements. Although sexual activity occurs between individuals, our mold is human, and our peer group strictly determines how the bulk of our awareness is used and processed.

"That social inflexibility is responsible for the feelings of jealousy, dependency and attachment relating to our sexual partners. It turns us into hardened investors until the vileness of it perverts a noble word like 'love'.

"The attitude of the common man, at the possibility of a boundless love, has been diminished to a cold and calculating machine.

"'I love my kids, because they are the reservoirs of my energy. I love my wife, because she washes the clothes and the kitchen, and makes love to me.

"I love my dog because it guards my home. I love my country, because I was born here. And I love my god, because I am going to be saved' ..."

Carlos' face was contracted in a gesture of displeasure.

He continued, saying, "Love is difficult to give without expecting something in return.

"Everyday love ends up becoming a debt when others claim from us the same attention they gave us. And a debt of feelings is something fatal.

"For these reasons, one of the priorities of a sorcery teacher is to destroy the apprentice's sexual patterns. This is a crucial matter that requires lifelong work, but it is necessary to begin this from the first moment of training because becoming a member of a party of sorcerers cannot be used as a pretext for sexual deficiencies.

"If we do not solve that matter as ordinary men and women, our chances to advance on the warrior's path are very slim.

"Sorcerers have many ways of correcting an apprentice. Some teachers do not have any scruples, and subject the pupil to real tortures by attacking his or her weaknesses until she or he gets cured or cracks.

"Others, like my teacher don Juan, were extremely delicate on this point, and preferred to work with our energy from the inside. He made the apprentice become aware of him or herself, and react from that awareness.

"But any method is legitimate as long as it produces the results desired.

"The nagual Julian, for example, combined a merciless efficiency with a tremendous ability to become what he wanted.

"And it was not that he acted. Rather, he genuinely transformed himself by moving his assemblage point to the position corresponding to the form of an animal or another person.

"One of his favorites ploys was to take the form of a woman. Once, in the shape of a beautiful girl, he seduced his apprentice Juan Matus who at that time was barely twenty years old, and hot as a young bull.

"When they were both in bed, the nagual Julian moved his assemblage point back to its habitual position and was a man again. This made the youth Juan Matus run terrified from the room.

"For a mentality like the one Juan Matus had at that time, the impact was devastating. It demolished his stereotypes.

"It was a grotesque joke, but uniquely effective. In one slash, it broke don Juan's inclination to surrender to the first female who made herself available.

"Don Juan never forgave his teacher for the joke, but as time passed he learned how to laugh at the story."

At this point, Carlos allowed a small round of questions.

One of those present interrogated him regarding celibacy and whether it was or was not indispensable for sorcerers; and what the advantages were.

Carlos answered, "A priori, sorcerers are neither for nor against celibacy.

"Sorcerers see that everything depends on the congenital disposition of energy. There are some who are born with the necessary passion to make love every day, while others do not even have enough for a masturbation.

"Some people recover their luminous totality by means of discipline. Others have the appearance of strainers and will die incomplete. All these factors modify and determine the behavior of sorcerers regarding sex.

"What characterizes sorcerers is their refusal to be victims of the collective reproductive command, and lies in their ability to choose a responsible use for their energy. Also, none of them can be trapped in any sexual category.

"Sorcerers are free. They proceed every moment according to what power indicates to them. To have that vision, they cultivate a sobriety that the ordinary person does not know."

Carlos explained that, in general, the new seers opt for a position of celibacy and self-sufficiency because they are very greedy with their energy, and they prefer to dedicate it to the expansion of their awareness. They have witnessed worlds on their journeys into infinity that make all other things seem pale and without attraction; even the sexual act.

Carlos finished by saying, "Don Juan told me that making love is for those who do not have attachments."

Responding to another question, Carlos said that there is no such thing as 'a sexual problem', but rather, there are only individuals with their own particular dilemmas to resolve.

"To see anything, including sex, in a generic form is a trap because it makes us dilute our responsibility; and excuses us with the notion that everybody else is the same as we are. Like birth and death, to procreate is an individual act and a gift which the Eagle has granted us.

"What sorcerers demand is something very simple. Responsibility.

"The society in which we live is a school where they force us to comply with astonishingly cruel orders. We become old, and making love turns into a grotesque parody.

"Society imposes a drainage on us in terms of preset behaviors. And that does not stop until there is not a single blink of light left in us.

"I had an example of this in my grandfather. The old man used to say, 'You cannot make love to them all, but you have to try!'

"He already had one foot in the grave, and he still kept reacting the way he had originally been taught. He spent half his time getting a woman, and the other half working to maintain her. He never realized that he had never been shown our genuine choices.

"Finally, on his deathbed, the old man became bitter with the idea that his lovers did not want him for his manliness anymore, but rather for his money. He whimpered. 'She does not love me!'

"His grandsons assured him, 'She does love you, grandpa!'

"The stupid man died that way, screaming, 'Here I come, mommy!'

"Is it necessary to be a sorcerer to grasp that this is not all we can have as human beings.?"

Carlos admitted that before deciding to practice the warrior's way, he believed he was a seductive man, and he behaved as one; driven by the Latin male stereotype.

He said, "Once I seduced a girl, and brought her to my car. We both got so horny that the windshield got all steamed up with all the kisses and hugs we gave each other. When I was most turned on, I discovered that the supposed girl was a man!

"Another time I fell sincerely in love with a young girl, but eventually I began to suspect that she cheated on me. I changed my car, and stayed watching from the corner of her house.

"I saw her other lover arrive. When I asked her to explain, she told me, 'With you, it is love, and with him it is just sex!'

"These kind of encounters made me decide to behave with more moderation in my love affairs.

"But the pressure of my stereotype was too strong, and I continued to spend my energy on sex according to the pattern of my race until Don Juan gave me the choice that either I had to calm down, or abandon the apprenticeship."

Responding to another question, Carlos maintained that the best way of stopping the energy drainage that takes place through sexuality is learning how to make magnanimous gestures which counter and loosen the fixation of our attention.

He said, "We have received life as a cosmic gift, and it is our privilege to reflect that gesture with total detachment.

"Thanks to a warrior's indifference, she or he is in the position of turning her or his love into an unconditional blank check. Their love can be an abstract affection because it does not start from desire. What a marvelous thing!

"Contrary to what a man in the street thinks, the nature of sorcerers is both passionate and telluric. But the object of their passion is no longer carnal.

"Sorcerers have seen the glue that ties all things together. It is a wave of passion that floods the universe, and cannot be stopped because, should that happen, everything would be reduced to nothing.

"Through their seeing, sorcerers have established their base on the cornerstone of awareness as a most powerful state of individual attention.

"Their love is an overpowering reality that vibrates in every breath, is expressed in every gesture, and gives meaning to their every word. It is a force which impels them to explore, to take risks, and to evolve-- constantly bringing out the best of themselves.

"Sorcerers have discovered the most refined form of love because they love themselves. They know that all we give out is a reflection of what we have inside.

"They have put the power of passion to the service of their being, and this gives them the necessary impulse to undertake the only quest that counts. The quest for oneself."