12-24-2015, 12:00 AM
Serloco helped me to find my center, to level myself, and achieve a state of detachment from the highs and lows, and billy's detachment practice thread also helped me a great deal to hold this. My states were significantly negative for most of my life as i've said, and my habitual reaction is to see the negative aspects, when i find myself struggling, it is this reaction that is the catalyst for my fall.
From Journey to Ixtlan
Before I could say anything else he told me I should relax, but not fall asleep, and be in a state
of awareness for as long as I could. He said that the "bed of strings" was made exclusively to
allow a warrior to arrive at a certain state of peace and well-being.
In a dramatic tone don Juan stated that well-being was a condition one had to groom, a
condition one had to become acquainted with in order to seek it.
"You don't know what well-being is, because you have never experienced it," he said.
I disagreed with him. But he continued arguing that well-being was an achievement one had to
deliberately seek. He said that the only thing I knew how to seek was a sense of disorientation,
ill-being, and confusion.
He laughed mockingly and assured me that in order to accomplish the feat of making myself
miserable I had to work in a most intense fashion, and that it was absurd I had never realized I
could work just the same in making myself complete and strong.
"The trick is in what one emphasizes," he said. "We either make ourselves miserable, or we
make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same."
This quote has often inspired me, after a few years reading Castaneda, and aiming to become a warrior, Serloco helped me to find this condition of well-being.
Now that I know this, I have still found it difficult to hold. This state of well-being (which i see as neither negative or positive, the 'strength' DJ speaks of, i see it as the middle way) is all that I have wanted from life, as I see that it is the state from where it is possible to achieve the many amazing things that Don Juan described, and Serloco later expanded on. I am not on the path of high adventure, I am on the path of heart, and I feel that humbleness is my predilection. I hope to achieve this state of well-being as a constant in my life, and I feel that I am very close. I know that there is pleasure and pain, yet there is a middle ground. I know that following the path of heart I have aimed at an end to suffering, which i see as the engagement of those negative states that i have fallen into in the past. I have seen that this 'suffering' has decreased in my life since i have been talking to Serloco, and as I say, the condition of well-being is starting to take over.
From Journey to Ixtlan
Before I could say anything else he told me I should relax, but not fall asleep, and be in a state
of awareness for as long as I could. He said that the "bed of strings" was made exclusively to
allow a warrior to arrive at a certain state of peace and well-being.
In a dramatic tone don Juan stated that well-being was a condition one had to groom, a
condition one had to become acquainted with in order to seek it.
"You don't know what well-being is, because you have never experienced it," he said.
I disagreed with him. But he continued arguing that well-being was an achievement one had to
deliberately seek. He said that the only thing I knew how to seek was a sense of disorientation,
ill-being, and confusion.
He laughed mockingly and assured me that in order to accomplish the feat of making myself
miserable I had to work in a most intense fashion, and that it was absurd I had never realized I
could work just the same in making myself complete and strong.
"The trick is in what one emphasizes," he said. "We either make ourselves miserable, or we
make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same."
This quote has often inspired me, after a few years reading Castaneda, and aiming to become a warrior, Serloco helped me to find this condition of well-being.
Now that I know this, I have still found it difficult to hold. This state of well-being (which i see as neither negative or positive, the 'strength' DJ speaks of, i see it as the middle way) is all that I have wanted from life, as I see that it is the state from where it is possible to achieve the many amazing things that Don Juan described, and Serloco later expanded on. I am not on the path of high adventure, I am on the path of heart, and I feel that humbleness is my predilection. I hope to achieve this state of well-being as a constant in my life, and I feel that I am very close. I know that there is pleasure and pain, yet there is a middle ground. I know that following the path of heart I have aimed at an end to suffering, which i see as the engagement of those negative states that i have fallen into in the past. I have seen that this 'suffering' has decreased in my life since i have been talking to Serloco, and as I say, the condition of well-being is starting to take over.