Page:Para leer a Carlos Castaneda.djvu/73

 similar and common. The jaguar attitude is stalking, and the eagle, stopped, almost motionless in the heights, is of reverie.

Florinda taught Castaneda the first stalking principles, the first three principles of stalkers rules, and three first stalking moves. She teaches through telling him the story of how she was "hooked" in Toltec knowledge by her teacher. A truly fascinating story in which Florinda was a "woman object" of a powerful, dominant, violent and possessive man.

Stalkers learn to never take themselves seriously, so learn to laugh at themselves. Given that they have no fear of acting foolishly, they can fool anyone. Stalkers learn to have endless patience. Stalkers are never in a hurry, never get angry or upset. Stalkers learn to have an infinite improvisation capacity.

The principles are: 1—. Choose the battlefield. 2.— Eliminate all unnecessary. 3.— They must be ready at any time to enter battle… but not hastily and without strategy. 4.— They must rest before going into battle. Forget about themselves, not be afraid. 5.— Do not let go with the flow and when they cannot fight the adversary, they retreat and get busy with other tasks. 6.— Compressing time, learn not to waste a moment.

The rules are: 1.— Everything that surrounds us is an unfathomable mystery. 2.— The warrior tries to decipher the mystery, although he has no hope of achieving it. 3.— Conscious of the unfathomable mystery which surrounds him, the warrior takes his rightful place as an additional mystery. Therefore, the mystery of being has no limits, so it is humbly shared and understands he is equal to all.

When a warrior applies these techniques scrupulously, the results are formidable. Stalkers never take themselves seriously, they learn to laugh at themselves. As they can play the role of "fools" they can fool anyone. Stalkers learn to have endless patience. Stalkers are never in a hurry, never get upset, and finally, stalkers learn to have an infinite improvising capacity.

"Assured me that a perfect recapitulation could change a warrior even more than reverie total body control. In this regard, reverie and stalk lead to the same end: entering the third attention. For a warrior, however, it was important to know and practice both.. Florinda explained to me that the key element when recapitulating was breathing. Breath, for her was magical, because it was a life given function...

''We are warriors and warriors have a single goal in mind: being free. Die and be devoured by the Eagle is men destiny. On the other hand, wanting to get out of our destiny, wanting to join freedom, serene and generous is the final boldness..." C.C.''

THE FEATHERED SERPENT Castaneda titled the last chapter of this book the "Feathered Serpent" and we do not believe he used it has a decorative element; we assume that future books will more accurately discuss the relationship between Toltequity and the so called "Don Juan Teachings". As previously noted, when deepening into the author’s the work of we find surprising parallelisms with "profound Mexico" "oral tradition" and somehow also, with the Academy; as confirmation we again quote, professor Séjourné in her book "Thought and Religion in Ancient Mexico". P. 95: