Page:Para leer a Carlos Castaneda.djvu/101

 This is why, warriors have to find past reference points in order to be able to use abstract centers stories and get knowledge. The common man also uses the past, but always for personal reasons that exalt and glorify their personal importance.

"—What is my story about the spirit manifestations?" —I asked a bit baffled—.

—If there is a warrior conscious of his stories, it is you —replied—. After all, you have been writing them for years, right?..." C.C. 

THE NAGUAL ELIAS IMPECCABILITY This story speaks the nagual Elias impeccability that attentive to a spiritual manifestation, manages, on the basis of a grotesque story, hooks —impeccably— two apprentices: Talia and Julian. He frees her from an enormous superfluous energy flow, and rescues him from death. Teaches them that in life there is no second chance when "The freedom bird" shows up, and that this bird either carries people with him or leaves them behind forever.

''"He did not have any problem, no doubts in leaving everything behind. He understood perfectly well that there would not be a second chance and that the freedom bird either takes people with him or leaves them behind..." C.C.  ''

THE SPIRIT TOUCH

Ancient naguales preferred actions over reasoning. Instead, modern, and in particular Castaneda, get lost in reason the deviations, while others seek freedom.

Enhanced consciousness is something mysterious to our reason; in actions, it is simple and easy. The problem is that humans always complicate things when trying to minimize the immensity around us to something reasonable and manageable by our reason parameters.

Toltec warriors, when they managed to stop self-compassion (which is nothing but disguised personal importance), stop being compassionate for others. For the warrior everything begins and ends in himself; everything else is a permanent controlled folly and his contact with the abstract helps him overcome personal importance feelings, until turning himself into something abstract.

Don Juan says that long ago humanity lived in the abstract and that this was its sustaining force. Something turned men away from the abstract and it is now very difficult to get back. However, this is one of the warrior challenges.

To become sensitive, perceptive, able to feel the spirit and move in the abstract, is giving a 180 degree turn to what we have learned, obsessive and compulsively, throughout our lives. The warrior path and Toltequity are one of the many possibilities that humankind has created from wisdom.

"For a witch, the spirit is the abstract, because to know it does not need words, not even thoughts; it is the abstract, because a witch cannot conceive what the spirit is. However, without having the slightest opportunity or desire to understand it, the witch manages it; recognize it, calls it, incites it, becomes acquainted with it, and expresses it in his acts."... C.C.