'Intent is not intention' Don Genaro, Journey to Ixtlan.
By Ina Woolcott
Castaneda's works offer us views into a revolutionary and deeply spiritual
outlook on the world. One of his most profound insights is that we have a
latent awareness that continues once we are dead. The main aim of a warrior
is to maintain this awareness when one dies physically. This is also known
as darting past the Eagle and being free. The eagle embodies the force which
devours the awareness of ALL beings when they die. All of the discipline
that encompasses a warriors way of life needs to be mustered up to defy
death in this way.
As Don Juan said in Journey to Ixtlan, chapter 11 (The Mood of a Warrior)
"to seek the perfection of the warrior's spirit is the only task worthy of
our manhood." Shamanic practises are designed to maximise a warriors
personal power, or experience. Within the books are easy to follow
transformational exercises. Practitioners and book readers the world over
are incorporating Castaneda's ideas individually or through consultation
with Castaneda affiliates. An example of one of Castaneda's exercises is the
art of recapitulation, where one reviews ones life in order to successfully
master detachment and heighten awareness and energy.
When you have enough personal power, which is achieved by gathering energy
though the techniques outlined by Castaneda, you are led to the mastery of
Intent, primarily the controlled manipulation of what is termed the
assemblage points, the centre of a bundle of energy emanations/filaments
that come out of the body. Castaneda, like those trained before him, found
that we all have luminous cocoons surrounding us like a big ball of light.
When babies our assemblage points are fluid and free moving throughout our
luminous cocoons. As we develop into adults our cocoons become rigid because
we become set in our ways and have our rigid perceptions of the environment
around us. The cocoons are crisscrossed with the emanations that create our
perception, as we get older and our views of the world are set and filtered
through these emanations, we use only a small amount of them. This limits
our awareness. The waking ordinary reality we perceive, what we feel and the
way we perform in our day to day lives is predisposed by the rigid fixture
of our assemblage points. When we are able to move our assemblage points
then we can tune into the realities that surround us (non-ordinary reality),
that are just as valid and real as 'ordinary' reality.
The only time when 'ordinary people' are able to manipulate their energy
points is when they are dreaming (which is the easiest and most used way by
a warrior), after an accident, by use of hallucinogens or plant allies,
meditation, love, or through Intent. Castaneda thoroughly describes the
methods to master awareness through dreaming, and outlines the exercises
used by him for this in his book "The Art of Dreaming". (an excellent book, I
highly recommend it!)
Minute manipulations of the energy points results in minute changes in
perception, large manipulations result in large changes. When we live with
intent, we send out psychic energy of a magical and glowing disposition. Our
energy bodies are non physical and composed of Intent. Through using the
techniques Castaneda learned from Don Juan Matus such as developing the
warriors mood, dreaming and ascension, and stopping the world to name but a
few, the warriors goal is to recapture the luminosity that has been lost
through the 'ordinary awareness' of day to day life, and in the end have
direct influence over Intent. The warrior aims to achieve totality of self
by illuminating all of the emanations intersecting the cocoon surrounding
them at once and thereby aligning them with all of existence and experience.
"Think about this," he urged us. "Perhaps this is exactly what is
happening to all of us in the world of daily life. We are here, and the
fixation of our assemblage point is so overpowering that it has made us
forget where we came from, and what our purpose was for coming here" Don
Juan Matus, The Art of Dreaming
