Encounters With The Nagual: Part 2 - Chapter 12. Believing Without Believing.

Encounters With The Nagual © 2004 by Armando Torres:

Part 2 - Chapter 12. Believing Without Believing.

For a couple of weeks, I was devoted to classifying everything with which I felt mentally identified.

I had accepted that exercise, suggested by Carlos, because I found it inoffensive to write down my beliefs.

I had hoped my inventory would be simple and clear. But I was soon surprised as I found an endless list of thought patterns appearing; patterns that sometimes were not very coherent in relation to each other.

For example, one of my beliefs was that only when something can be proven and demonstrated could it be called a certainty.

But at the same time, I believed that a supreme and divine being, beyond all experimentation, does exist.

And no matter how much I tried, I could not resolve that contradiction.

Regarding my non-beliefs, I also had surprises. The most unpleasant was my discovery that one of my mother's simple and repeated suggestions had been blocking an enormous area of possibilities for me.

I had begun to investigate why I honestly found it impossible to accept Carlos' statements regarding how, through dreams, we can access other real and complete worlds.

Then I had remembered that, when I was a child, and I had a nightmare, my mother used to repeat the refrain of a children's story which said, "Dreams are just dreams."

When I met Carlos again, I gave him a superficial account of the results of my investigations.

He told me that my efforts were sufficient, and that I already had enough material to attack the second part of thee exercise.

He suggested that I select the most important one of my beliefs, which served as a base to all the other ones, and stop believing it for a moment.

Carlos told me I should then do this with each one of my beliefs, according to their degree of importance.

When Carlos saw my bewildered face, he said, "I assure you that it is not difficult. And above all, it will not harm your faith. Remember, it is only an exercise."

I protested; and in a decisive tone, I told Carlos that the basis of my principles was my certainty that God exists; and that I was not willing to question it or even analyze that point.

Carlos replied, "That is not true. Your most ingrained conviction is that you are sinful, and for that reason you justify God's existence.

"And so now you can justify your making mistakes, and squandering your energy; and giving in to anger, lasciviousness, whims and fear. After all, you are human. And God will always forgive you.

"Do not fool yourself. Either you choose your belief, or it chooses you.

"First of all, that belief is an imposition and not worthwhile.

"On the other hand, your belief is authentic. It is your ally. Although it sustains you, you are able to manipulate your belief at will. "

I replied that the exercise that he proposed-- treating my faith as casually as a man changing his shirt-- was not only blasphemous and mercenary, but the practice would probably end up throwing me into a state of internal confusion.

Carlos observed, "You do not have to be mentally clear to enter the world of sorcerers!

"Our idea that truth goes hand-in-hand with mental clarity is a trap. The spirit is too inaccessible with our fragile human mind to be understood.

"As you well know, the essence of religion is not clarity, but faith. However, faith is worth nothing in comparison with experience.

"Sorcerers are practical. From their point of view, what we believe or stop believing is absolutely irrelevant. The stories that we tell ourselves do not matter in the least.

"What matters is the spirit. When in the realm of spiritual power, the content of the mind is something secondary.

"A sorcerer could be an atheist, or a believer as a Buddhist, a Muslim or a Christian.

"Regardless, cultivating their impeccability is that which automatically brings him or her to power."

Carlos' words irritated me beyond reason. When I realized it, I was surprised to find how deeply the Catholic doctrines I learned during my childhood had penetrated me. Now that Carlos questioned them, it felt as if he was unfairly robbing me of something very valuable.

He noticed my dilemma and began to laugh.

Carlos told me, "Do not confuse things. Religions are not remedies. Religions are the consequence of man's pitiful state of awareness.

"They are replete with good intentions, but very few people are prepared to fulfill them. If their commitment meant anything of real value, the world would be full of saints, not sinners.

"The moment ideologies-- including nagualism-- become widespread, they become cultural mafias, or schools to make people sleepy.

"No matter how subtle those individuals' postulates are, and no matter how much those individuals try to validate those postulates with personal corroboration, the postulates invariably end up conditioning our actions according to some form of reward or punishment.

"As a result, the postulates pervert the very essence of the search. If the pillar of our faith is a salary, what merit does it have?

"Sorcerers love the purity of the abstract. For them, the value of the path with heart is not so much where it takes us, but how intensely we enjoy it.

"Faith may have value in an ordinary life, but it is useless against death. Our only hope when facing our inevitable death is the warrior's path.

"Sorcerers call the ability to manipulate their mental attachments 'believing without believing'.

"They have perfected that art to the point where they can identify sincerely with any idea. They live it, love it, and discard it without remorse if it comes to that.

"And inside that freedom of choice, they ask sorcerers' questions. For example, 'Why accept myself as a sinner, if I can be impeccable?'"

After some resistance, I agreed with Carlos that there could not be anything wrong with subjecting my beliefs to a shake.

And so, as a result, what I found to be the main effect of the technique of 'believing without believing' was that it showed how incredibly fragile my catalog of ideas was.

Each belief was prone to disintegrate at the slightest blow.

I understood then why Don Juan had claimed that the world we live in is a magic fabric.

Don Juan referred to the fabric of our lives as the magic of our 'first ring of power'.