Magicians' Explanation: Bet on the Force
You are in a dream that is not a dream. Any dream is an altered state of perception, but you are not in an altered state of perception, although what you are experiencing now seems to you a dream, a bad dream! This is a real nightmare, although not a dream at all, but what warriors call the madness of sleep. To understand why we are talking about madness, you first need to look at your life in the true light. Re-viewing here will not help you, because, despite all its value, re-viewing concerns only the mortal you - that is, the tonal. However, I am not talking about mortal you, but about you immortal, about the true you, the nagual who is incarnating life after life to develop his awareness.
How many times have I emphasized that you are not your tonal, you, like each of us, are a mystery even to yourself. And while you are willing to accept in part that your picture of the world may not be the only reality that exists, your fear of letting it go is so great that you cling to it with all the means at your disposal, because you never wanted to get rid of the image of yourself. Your identification with this image is so strong that you sincerely believe that this image is the real you. But if that's true, then you're going to have to admit: your business is pretty bad right now! Look at you! What have all your efforts in this life led to? Not much I can see! How do you feel about that? Where's the straw you're hoping to grab? What do you think is happening to you right now?
Let me tell you what you think. You think what's happening to you right now is just a bad dream that's going to get out of your way sooner or later. And when that happens, life will go its usual course, and, one way or another, you will be able to maintain an image of yourself, and you will always remain as you are used to seeing yourself. In other words, you still want to have a life on your own terms. But here's the irony: even though I've always told you that you can't have life on your own terms, you've never asked me questions about it, you've never asked me to explain what I mean by "you." However, you did this throughout your apprenticeship, because you constantly thought that you understood my statements. You never knew that when I said we can’t have life on our own terms, I was pointing out directly that we don’t know who we are and what we really are, and even less do we know what life is. What conditions can we talk about? In order to have a life on our terms, we must first know what life is, and secondly, have an idea of who we are and what we are, only then it is possible to set our terms. But you never understood it, and therefore, overwhelmed by feelings of self-pity, believed that this statement meant that we were all puppets, or worse, victims of some evil and despotic force living somewhere outside. And it never occurred to you to question your own sense of self-pity.
So it doesn’t matter how often you declare your desire to learn, how ardently you claim your desire to change. The fact that you held on to your self-image with all your might is a perfect proof of how much you are really lying, arrogant, and imbued with self-pity. The truth is, you don’t want to know the real you.
You don’t want to know the nagual, because you only see your tonal and that lousy image of yourself that you built around the tonal, assuming that this is the real you. You just want to know how to improve your image. Why not? Because you believe that you are this image, you believe that your image is immortal, and you hope that if you can somehow prove it, you can continue to have life on your own terms. In the end, you really don’t see the need to erase a personal story. Why! She is immortal to you. In other words, not only do you want to have a life on your own terms, you want to change only on your own terms. Or rather, you only want to change what you think needs to be changed.
So what are you trying to do?
You're a mystery, but you've traded it for a pathetic image of yourself that you cling to for your present sweet life, and as a result you have what you have. Putting the tonal above the nagual, you always believed that you were fighting for your freedom, but in fact you were only fighting for the inviolability of your image. In the end, your life has become empty and meaningless, devoid of real hope and joy, because all you have left is your muddled insistence on wanting to be right, having life on your own terms. But if you're right, why do you feel so lousy? Why is there such a mess in your life? But your business is even worse. By placing the tonal above the nagual, you not only deprived yourself of the opportunity to learn in the true sense of the word, but also separated yourself from life, since it is the nagual who is life. And since each of us is a part of the One Life, the One Spirit, the One Nagual, your actions aimed at separating yourself only confirmed your arrogance. If you did not prefer the tonal, you would understand that your nagual is not your nagual at all, but a particle of the One Life. However, in your arrogance and sense of separateness, you continued to believe that as a part of the One Life you can still have life on your own terms. This is tantamount to believing that as a part of the One Life you can control the universal nagual, and therefore you can find some way not just to dictate the conditions, but to impose your own conditions!
You have shown yourself to be a real magician, which means that you rightly deserve this explanation, because it is designed exactly like you. It is my duty as a nagual to see to it that you receive yours justly, and therefore, as I continue to reveal to you the Magi Explanation, I am doing absolutely flawless. As you've probably begun to realize, magic leads to a dreary and miserable existence. After all, so strongly wanting to control everything, magicians end up completely losing control over anything. Look at you! All this time you've been fighting for your so-called freedom! Freedom from what? You're not free! Your self-image is stronger than ever. Your beliefs are stronger than ever. In short, your mind is even stronger now than it has ever been, and it controls you completely! Where is freedom if you are a victim of your own mind? Where is freedom if you can’t change your beliefs? Where is freedom if you are a slave to your own image of yourself?
So what you're facing right now is just a reality you've built for yourself. You may believe that you are a victim of circumstances, or that other people helped you create the chaos you have turned your life into. But the truth is that this is your life and, because it is yours, you must take full responsibility for your own actions. Among these actions, the most important was your persistent desire to have a life on your own terms, it determined the course of your entire life up to this point. The result is your unwavering commitment to maintaining your image of yourself and your picture of the world. And this desire was the deadliest of all that you did to yourself. No one hurt you. No one's ever forced your image on you. You developed it yourself, and it was you who clung to it. And no one forced you to hold on to your picture of the world, it's your choice to keep it. In fact, other people’s actions toward you simply reflected what you were doing to yourself. So, apart from yourself, you have no one to blame for the unpleasant situation in which you find yourself now - you created this trap yourself.
Always wanting to have life on your own terms, and therefore clinging to your picture of the world, you never realized that while you were in full confidence that you were doing everything possible to expose your picture of the world, you were actually just expanding it. But this is what happens when a person does not want to let go of his picture of the world. You, unwittingly, are stuck in the known. Yes, but you've got a lot of clarity, but it's only about what you know. Thanks to your newfound clarity, you naturally saw many perspectives that you had not previously suspected. However, for all its value, they relate only to the known. You sincerely believed that you were making good progress in exposing your picture of the world, but you were only expanding the same picture of the world that you had been developing since childhood. Therefore, all your efforts to expose your picture of the world were reduced to rebuilding the old picture of the world in order to make it bigger and more beautiful than before. And this, in your opinion, was the release of the old and the choice of the new. But you didn't let go of the old, you just tweaked it to make it look new.
The same goes for your image of yourself. You were always sure that your image is the real you, and therefore you bowed to the tonal, believing that this is the nagual in you. You never wanted to admit that the nagual in you is a mystery, and therefore you cannot know who and what you really are. Instead, you held fast to the belief that your tonal is you, even more so that you are the behavior of your tonal. And so you looked at all your actions, including thoughts, emotions, and inner dialogue, as if it were you. You have no idea that your actions, your thoughts, your emotions, your inner dialogue and everything else are just the result of your perception of how your tonal relates to the rest of the world. If you realized this, you would realize that you cannot be your tonal, for the tonal is only a tool for drawing up the nagual, which is the real you, the map of the great unknown. Therefore, instead of seeing the tonal as an island that has everything you need to map the nagual’s mystery and reordering your tonal island to carry out this design, you have begun to rearrange it so as to strengthen your belief in the image of yourself, naively believing that you are acquiring knowledge of the true self and faith in the true self.
You did it all by reason and conversation. And although throughout your apprenticeship I have constantly warned you to listen to your heart and not to succumb to rationality of mind, you have never taken these warnings seriously. And because you're deifying your tonal, you never wanted to believe that by listening to your mind, you're just buying into your picture of the world over and over again. Therefore, everything you learned during your apprenticeship made sense to you only when it was in line with the reasoning of your rational mind. And you used the teaching only in a way that was consistent with your reasoning. As a result, when I told you directly that you were sifting through your picture of the world, my words were irrelevant to you, even though you agreed with them. But while agreeing that they make sense to you, you never noticed how you yourself reinforce your picture of the world, while claiming that you really understand everything - because you are so open and well aware of the selectivity of your perception.
You, however, have never understood anything but your own reasoning about teaching, and have never been open-minded and unbiased. Your mind, like everyone else’s, is open only to what you think you already know. But what you think you know is nothing more than the result of your extremely selective perception of everything you've experienced in life. And since you believe your reason, you have never questioned your knowledge, considering it to be an indisputable truth. Therefore, all the concepts of the doctrine were used by you not to question reason, but to find in them confirmation of the correctness of your reasoning and to prove to yourself that you are progressing well in your training. So, for example, instead of using concepts such as standing firm in your knowledge, to reassess your existing knowledge, and to study how your selective perception actually works, to become more objective in your perception of yourself and the world around you, you just used them to justify your actions, entirely based on selective perception, aimed at maintaining the picture of the world and the image of yourself. As a result, instead of standing firmly in the knowledge that your perception is selective and aimed at maintaining your picture of the world, you have unreasonably continued to stand firmly in your faith in the indisputableness of your own reasoning. In this faith, you never realized that all you thought you knew was not true even in regard to the known, but simply the dismembered and fragmented pieces that you had gathered, obeying your reason, in a way that would fit your picture of the world.
But not only was your sanity ruinous to you, but so was your manner of speaking. I have warned you not only about reason, but also about the importance of paying close attention to the properties of words. It is not only that each of us is a product of his speech, but also that speech has the property of revealing the truth and distorting it. But in reality, you have only verbally acknowledged the truth of this aspect of the teaching, preferring to indulge yourself in using words only to calm your mind, constantly looking for only those answers that would support your picture of the world, your image of yourself, and therefore your selective perception. Again and again, I warned you not to take words literally, but to use them as a springboard to reveal the unknown in yourself. But time after time, you let your attention cling to the interpretation of words that suited your electoral perception. So instead of allowing words to lead you to things that can’t be expressed, you’ve used them to maintain your belief that if you constantly interpret yourself and your perception, you’ll inevitably discover the truth you’re seeking. But it never occurred to you that in this use of conversation you remained within your own understanding and in fact sought only to confirm that your picture of the world is true and that your image can therefore remain intact.
So, your case is now in this way - a complete mess, even greater than before. But you weren't a student before, and you could always refer to your ignorance. But now, thanks to the teachings, you can no longer refer to ignorance. So if you want to be honest with yourself for once in your life, you have no choice but to admit that despite all your efforts, you are in a much more difficult situation than ever before.
Your mind, your reasoning, your use of conversation didn't get you anywhere. Moreover, you really do not envy now, because you are caught in a trap that you yourself have prepared. As you must have already understood, with your current perception and with the way you have been doing things up to now, there is no way forward for you. But at the same time, you can not return to your former life - simply because none of us, having learned something, can not take and learn. You may not have learned much of what is truly valuable. But at the very least, you learned that your old way didn't work and that you were offered a different way, even if you were scattered with opportunities to claim it. So, what's it got you to do?
If you want, you can run away and try to forget that you ever found the Way of the Warrior. But in your heart, you know that this approach won't work, and that's why you shouldn't even take this possibility seriously. But you're free to try your luck! Otherwise, you’ll have to find a way forward. However, since you are not listening to anyone and nothing but your mind, there is only one way forward for you - to find a way forward bypassing the mind. What a challenge! A complete paradox in terms of your precious intelligence*. But whatever it is, it's your only way forward. For the first time since you've been on the Warrior's Path, you'll have to use your mind to deceive yourself and, leaving your petty control, let you track down your own perception! This is what you have been learning from the very first day of your training, but still allowing your mind to dictate to you every action, every thought, emotion and perception, including your perception of not doing. Now you have to find a way to change - unless, of course, you're going to be stuck forever where you are now.
As you can see, you need to be trapped. You have fallen into it with all your giblets, but the power of reason over you is stronger than even the thirst for freedom. Reason has convinced you that you are capable of fighting for freedom on your own terms. And that's how he managed to do it. You are completely confused about where the difference is between what you want and what you like. And this despite the fact that throughout your apprenticeship I have repeatedly emphasized: there is no romance in the Path with the Heart and, following his heart, the warrior is forced to fight in battles that he would prefer to avoid. But this is where the confusion comes in. After all, the mind by its nature is inclined to idealization. He tends to believe that we can choose which challenges to accept and which to ignore. But the heart is not able to lie, and therefore it is not characterized by such misconceptions about fate. As a result, internal conflict flares up when the mind says one thing and the heart says another.
Whenever your mind doesn’t like something, it invariably starts to resist putting itself in the position of something it doesn’t like, and so immediately tries to explain why you don’t want it. But what you like and what you want are not the same thing. For example, you may very much want something - no matter what - but at the same time not find that you really like it. This is especially true in relation to the Way of the Warrior, because, despite the fact that everyone wants to have the strength and freedom of a warrior, no one really likes to work and make the effort necessary to gain this strength and freedom. However, if you want something strong enough, you will be equally eager to do everything necessary to get what you want - even if you do not like what you have to do. Of course, very few people think so. Most people prefer to be content with what they like and not fight for what they want, even if the result is much worse than what they want. You're a perfect example of this kind of behavior. After all, despite the fact that in the depths of your heart you really want to live the life of a warrior, you do not like the challenges associated with the need to let go of the image of yourself and the picture of the world. And to justify yourself, you allow your mind to convince you that what you want must be the same as what you like, and if you don’t like something, it means you don’t want it. As a result, you have driven yourself into a dead end, because in the depths of your heart you still know what you want, but since the challenges associated with finding this desired, your mind does not like, you walk in a vicious circle. On the one hand, you can’t forget what you want, and on the other hand, you can’t make the challenges that you will face like you.
You are constantly tripping over the inability to grasp the fact that what we desire is an expression of inner thirst, and what we like or dislike is personal preference, conditioned by the framework of our experience. In other words, what we like or dislike is nothing more than prejudices that have arisen from the limitations of our knowledge. No matter how insignificant this fact may seem, it is in it that the only and most important difference between a warrior and a magician lies. Magicians always fall into the network of prejudices and therefore express their needs, remaining within the framework of prejudice. Unlike sorcerers, a warrior whose greatest need is to learn sees little use in prejudice. Since he longs to know as much as possible, but knows from experience that he cannot have life on his own terms, the warrior embraces everything in this life with the same passion - even what he does not like. A warrior is capable of this because the source of his passion is in the act of knowing, not in expressing his personal preferences. Unlike the magician, for whom passion and addiction are synonymous, the warrior knows that true passion is a matter of the heart, a state of objective awareness that does not support prejudice, but, on the contrary, carries the all-encompassing necessary for the acquisition of knowledge and freedom.
What I'm explaining to you may seem very simple and even innocent. But this is the only, most important key that magicians have always sought, and they have not found. And not because this key is kept in great secret and it is difficult to find, but only because this concept is beyond reason. In theory, it is very well understood by the mind, but in practice the mind is not able to accept it. The sorcerers, the slaves of their minds, have such a deep-rooted passion for controlling everything and everything, imposing their conditions on life that they simply cannot accept the fact that the desire for power implies the need to abandon personal prejudices. In fact, the preservation of personal preferences for the magician is the most important need, and, trying to satisfy it, he craves only such power that will allow him to fully express his personal preferences. He wants to gain this kind of power at all costs. But the only form of force that meets the requirements of the magician is the force of the tonal, called the first ring of force. The other two rings of power cannot be mastered by reason, since they belong to the nagual, and are therefore outside the tonal. Therefore, the magician, being a slave to his mind and caring only for the needs of his tonal, automatically deprives himself of the opportunity to access the second and third rings of power.
However, when using the first power ring, the magician falls into a trap. After all, although this type of power does give him the ability to have life on his own terms, the magician, however, is forced to constantly resort to manipulation to maintain control over his life. But the result is a problem: such coercive control conflicts with the course of life, and because the more you manipulate, the more and more you need to manipulate. And the more powerful your control, the harder it is for you to maintain it. The areas that need to be controlled are getting bigger and bigger. And, despite the fact that this type of force works well for a while, soon the level of manipulation necessary to maintain control becomes almost unattainable, and in the end the magician loses control / not only over his life, but also over himself. Having reached the limits of his power of control through manipulation, the magician finds too late that the power he possessed has been hopelessly dissipated due to the enormous number of objects subject to control. As a result, his life begins to crack at the seams and fall apart, but after reaching the limits of his ability to manipulate life, the magician can not stop the destruction of his life and his strength. Such is the inexorable fate of every magician - a short success that ends in complete collapse.
The warrior, being completely inclusive and impartial in his attitude towards everything in life, surprisingly comes to the fact that he does not want anything! Not wanting to control anything and meeting each challenge with an open take, intelligently cooperating with the course of life, the warrior in abundance acquires the power that comes to him uninvited. As a result, the warrior controls everything without controlling anything, because intelligently cooperating with the course of life, he becomes more and more an integral part of it. Because he is an integral part of the One Life, his power becomes truly irresistible, and with every challenge he encounters, regardless of his character, the warrior gains even more strength - even when the battle is lost. Therefore, the steadfastness of a warrior is strengthened with every step, every moment lived increases his strength and brings freedom. However, this is only real because the warrior has come to understand the impossibility of having life on his own terms and the need to abandon prejudices in favor of inclusiveness, for which you need to let go of the image of yourself and your picture of the world. There is no other way, and it is as simple and difficult as listening and acting in accordance with what the heart wants, as opposed to what the mind likes or dislikes.
It is only possible to learn to listen to the heart and act flawlessly on the basis of its dictates when the four basic techniques are considered as tools for the implementation of the desired, and not to maintain prejudices. And this is possible if the practitioner does not try to control the result of their application. However, the sorcerer is also unable to grasp this concept with his mind, because he tends to consider everything, including the four main techniques, as something that needs to be controlled and manipulated. But since we cannot control life itself, we cannot control the results of the techniques. Life just exists. Whether we like it or not, all actions have consequences in life. The four techniques are no more than four courses of action that yield very specific results. And the consequences of these results, their impact on the web of life, we can control nothing more than life itself. However, by following the flow of life along with these consequences and not trying to impose our control on them through manipulation, we, paradoxically, really control them. But not literally - moving with them in a single stream, we encourage them to work for us, not against us.
Now you understand a lot, and I'm sure you can see clearly that you're standing at the decisive and most difficult crossroads you've ever met in your life. I’m talking about a crossroads, paying tribute to tradition, because it’s not exactly a crossroads — even if in a metaphorical sense it can be called that. But personally, I don't like to use metaphors in situations like this, because you and I are not engaged in a verbal debate about the Way of the Warrior.
On the contrary, what we are talking about is a matter of life and death. Your life and your death. That's why I'd rather see where you are as a fork. After all, although theoretically there is a way forward, in practice you closed this path for yourself out of your own stupidity. You can certainly go back to where you came from, but this choice can hardly be taken seriously, because it leads to stagnation, death and decline. So you really only have two options: you can turn left or right.
On the right is the known and the tonal. This path will lead you either to where you came from, or, if you do not want to return to the starting point, straight to the Path of Magic. On the left is the unknown and the nagual. Traveling on this path is not for the faint-hearted, because even the very entry into this path involves what is called a bet on strength - an irreversible act inherently. And to survive, having committed it, it is possible only if for a person the Way with the Heart really consists in accepting the challenges of power at every turn, abandoning the image of oneself and one’s picture of the world. If you decide to go this way and if your bet on strength is accepted, in time the road will lead you to the integrity of yourself and thus to the realization that the real you is the nagual staying in the tonal.
However, it is impossible with the help of reason to bet on power - and even so that it is accepted. After all, it is not a solution, not a thought, not a desire, and not even a dream. A bet on strength is, without any exaggeration, an act of survival committed in a moment of greatest crisis. And if you decide to go down this road, you're going to have to go through it. To be accepted, it is not enough to simply fight for your survival, because only if at this critical moment you can hear what your heart whispers to you, and begin to act on his orders, your bet will be accepted. But if, by betting on strength, you succumb to fear or ambition, you will again follow your mind - strength will reject your bet. This will be an irreparable loss for you, since the opportunity to bet on strength appears only once in your life, and therefore failure entails stagnation, death and final decline.
But if by the time you reach the tipping point of your life you have enough personal power to yearn for knowledge with every bit of your being, in the midst of the battle for survival, that deep inner thirst will allow you to listen to your heart. As a result, your actions coming from the heart will be flawless and untainted by fear or ambition. If you manage to do this, the bet will be accepted, and from that moment your life will be completely transformed. The old will slip away from you like a shed cover, and the new will pour into you with a dizzying speed, forcing you to hold your breath and freeze in awe, admiration and delight. The fact that the bet is accepted means that nothing will now be able to delay your progress, for the path lying in front of you is clearly visible. You will continue to assert your rights to power, gaining more and more freedom with each step. However, this does not mean that the challenges will disappear from your life. For now you must understand that for a warrior, challenges are the only way to assert his rights to strength and freedom, and the more severe the challenges, the greater the gifts of strength they bring. In other words, following the Way of the Warrior does not guarantee that you will necessarily survive under the onslaught of force. But at least, as long as you manage to survive, you will be completely alive, and not drag a miserable existence, rotting for the allotted time on this earth.
So, that's where you're at right now. You can go right or you can turn left, but what happens next is no longer in your hands. Once you make a decision, the power will come to you in one way or another, and it depends on which way you go, whether you survive or not. Even if you turn left, your survival will depend on whether you can bet on the power and whether the power will accept your bet. But ultimately, as you can see, you have no choice - even if your mind is trying to convince you that you have the right to choose. In fact, none of us have a choice. The best we can hope for is the right to choose the color of the shirt in which we will face our challenges today. With the exception of such trivialities, we have no choice. All we have is a thirst to live long enough to learn to reach the nagual. But you have to decide for yourself if you're thirsty. If so, and you want to satisfy her, then at the same moment you have to decide to turn left.
This is your battle. And now you are at the most amazing crossroads of all, which can only hope to be a man. The Toltecs call this crossroads the lumen to freedom. You can take advantage of this lumen or lose it, but in any case you have to make a decision. The decision to stay in the known or the decision to take the chance to enter the unknown. But before you make that decision, I have to give you another piece of the Magicians' Explanation. The Toltecs call this part the gateway to the nagual's world.