Encounters With The Nagual: Part 2 - Chapter 19. Dreaming and Awakening.

Encounters With The Nagual © 2004 by Armando Torres:

Part 2 - Chapter 19. Dreaming and Awakening.

Carlos had a great ability to turn conversations towards the practical side of things. In spite of the extraordinary sharpness of his intellect, he hated it if conversations sank to the level of mere speculations.

I often watched how he, in an ingenious but firm manner, would unravel the argumentation of the most rigid speakers, and confront them with the topic of 'results'.

In my case, his method for silencing my attacks of rationality consisted of reducing everything to the immediate proposition of my controlling my dreams. According to Carlos, dreaming was something not very difficult.

However, for me, dreaming was the hardest aspect of his teaching.

Firstly, I could not distinguish the concept of 'dreaming' from ordinary dreams; which are two totally different things for a sorcerer.

Secondly, the idea of focusing my attention on sleep instead of on being awake was contrary to everything that I had learned in my philosophical searches.

Both these considerations very quickly made me avoid dreaming without ever accepting it as an authentic and reachable possibility.

Whenever I listened to Carlos talking about dreaming, I was filled with apprehension. And I justified all this by saying to myself that such an irrational topic was not even worth the pain of trying to analyze it.

One afternoon Carlos asked how my dreaming practice was going.

I admitted that my prejudices had prevented me from making a serious decision, and so, not surprisingly, I had not obtained any positive result.

Carlos commented, "Maybe you just have not been lucky. My teacher don Juan said that each human being brings his basic inclination with him at birth. Not everybody can be a good dreamer. Some people find stalking easier. Yet, the important thing is that you insist."

But Carlos' words did not console me. I began explaining to him that my incredulity seemed to be the result of some mental block implanted in my earliest childhood.

He did not allow me to finish. Making an imperative gesture with his hand, he replied, "You have not done enough.

"If you promise yourself that you will not eat, or pronounce a single word until you dream, you will see what happens. Something in your interior becomes soft, your internal dialogue gives in, and kaboom!

"Keep in mind that, for you, dreaming is not just an option. It is something basic. If you do not accomplish it, you can not continue on the path."

Alarmed by his words, I asked, "But what do I have to do to achieve it?"

He answered, "You must want to do it. It is as simple as that.

"You are exaggerating the difficulty of this exercise. Dreaming is open to everybody. To start dreaming barely requires a minimum of deliberation as compared, for example, to the deliberation that is necessary to learn how to type, or to learn to drive a car."

I commented that it was very difficult for me, to understand, how the handling of dreams could take us to internal awakening.

Carlos replied, "You are confused by the words. When sorcerers speak of dreaming and awakening, the terms do not have anything to do with the physical states you know.

"I do not have any choice but to use your language, because otherwise you would not understand me at all. But if you do not do your part, and put aside everyday meanings, and try to penetrate the meaning of what I am telling you, you will never get out of your state of mistrust.

"I can only guarantee you that, your mental mess will clear up by itself, once you discard the laziness that prevents you from facing the challenge, and you then attack dreaming directly, and without hesitation."

I apologized for my stubbornness, and asked Carlos to elucidate the meaning of dreaming once more.

Carlos, did not give me a theoretical explanation; which was what I wanted. Instead, he gave me an illustration.

He said, "Imagine a confirmed religious believer; one of those people who can not do anything without requesting permission, from his or her god, beforehand. Once they fall asleep, what happens to their convictions? Where do those convictions go?"

I did not know what to answer.

Carlos continued, saying, "They turn off, like the flame of a candle in the wind.

"When you sleep and dream now, you are not the owner of yourself. Your visions are isolated bubbles without connections to each other, and are without the memory of the your true self.

"And of course, the force of habit will almost always take you to dreams where you are your usual self. You might be brave or a coward, young or old, or a man or a woman.

"Presently, in your dreams, you will only be an assemblage point which moves at random; nothing truly personal.

"For the ordinary man, the difference between being awake and dreaming is that while awake, his attention flows with continuity. And while dreaming, his continuity flows in a disordered manner. But in both experiences, the ordinary man's degree of participation, from his 'will', is minimal.

"An average person will wake up in the place where, as always, he puts on his personality like a shirt, and goes out to fulfill his routine tasks.

"Upon falling asleep, he gets disconnected again, because he does not know he can do something else.

"Our everyday wakefulness does not leave us room to stop, and wonder if this world, that we are perceiving now, is as real as it seems.

"And the same thing must be said of any ordinary dream. While it lasts, we accept it as an unquestionable fact. We never judge it, nor put it in more practical terms. We never intend, while inside the dream, to remember some command or agreement we made to our-self while awake.

"But there is another way of directing our attention. The results of that can rightfully neither be called 'dreaming' nor 'awake', because it starts from a deliberate use of our intent.

"What happens is that we take charge of our awareness. And that awareness is the same whether we are sleeping, or awake, because it is something that transcends both states.

"That is the true awakening; to take charge of our attention.

"The Toltec teachings emphasize dreaming. It does not matter how it is described, the result is that the perceptive chaos of an ordinary dream is transformed into a practical space where we can act intelligently."

I asked, "A practical space?"

Carlos said, "That is right. A dreamer will remember himself under any circumstance.

"He always has a password on hand; a pact he has made with his will which lets him align with the warrior's intent in a microsecond.

"He can sustain the vision of his dream, whatever it may be, and return to it as many times as he wants to explore and analyze it. And better still, within that vision, he can meet other warriors. That is what sorcerers call 'stalking in dreaming'.

"This technique allows us to intend objectives and pursue actions, just as we do in the daily world. We can solve problems and learn things.

"What you learn there is coherent. It works.

"Maybe you can not explain how you received that knowledge, but you will not forget it."

I asked Carlos what kind of knowledge he was talking about.

He answered, "Life is learned by living it. The same happens in dreams. There we learn how to dream.

"But those on the warrior's path sometimes hit upon other abilities. Don Juan, for example, used to use his dreaming body to look for hidden treasures, and buried things from the war.

"The products of his 'dreaming' operations he invested in various things, like petroleum, plantations of tobacco..."

My face must have shown the mixture of astonishment and incredulity I felt, because he exclaimed, "It is not so extraordinary! We can all carry out similar feats. It is not even difficult to understand how it happens!

"Imagine somebody teaches you a new language while you sleep. The result is that you learn that language, and you can remember it when you wake up. In the same way, if you find something in that state, like a lost object, or witness an event that is happening somewhere else, you can go and verify it later.

"If it is just as you dreamt it, then it was 'dreaming'.

"Learning in dreaming is a resource much used by sorcerers. I learned much about plants in that way, and I still remember all of it.

"Do not underestimate your resources. Everything the spirit has put inside us has a transcendent meaning. That means dreams are there to be used.

"If it were not so, they would not exist. The techniques I have described to you are not speculations. I have personally checked them out. The art of dreaming is my message to people, but nobody pays any attention."

When I heard the sad tone of Carlos' last observation, I was suddenly struck by the unbearable timidity of my imagination.

For years and years, without fail, Carlos had encouraged us to expand our vision. This was not out of any selfish concern on his part, but for his sheer pleasure of transmitting to us his superior state of awareness.

And here I was, wallowing in my second-hand beliefs, and my habitual doubts.

I wanted to be on his side in the world. I got up from the bench with the intention of shaking his hand to show my gratitude.

I was about to promise Carlos something, but he stopped me by saying, "It is better if you do not say anything, and thereby not waste your time.

"Maybe it is not your destiny to be a brilliant flying warrior. But as to dreaming, you do not have any excuses. Like everyone, you too are splendidly equipped for dreaming.

"If you do not get to it, it is because you do not want to."