05-29-2002, 12:00 AM
Every human being has two sides, two separate entities, two counterparts which become active at the moment of birth; one was called the Tonal, and the other, the Nagual.
The tonal is the social person...the tonal is, rightfully so, a protector, a guardian, that most of the time turns into a guard.
The tonal is the organizer of the world...perhaps the best way of describing its monumental work is to say that on its shoulders rests the task of setting the chaos of the world in order. It is not farfetched to maintain, as sorcerers do, that everything we know and do as men is the work of the tonal. At this moment, for instance, what is engaged in trying to make sense out of our conversation is your tonal; without it there would be only weird sounds and grimaces and you wouldn't understand a thing of what I'm saying.
...the tonal is a guardian that protects...our very being. Therefore an inherent quality of the tonal is to be cagey and jealous of its doings. And since its doings are by far the most important part of our lives, it is no wonder that it eventually changes...from a guardian into a guard.
The tonal is everything we are. Name it! Anything we have a word for is the tonal. And since the tonal is its own doings, then everything, obviously, has to fall under its domain.
The tonal is everything we know. I think this in itself is enough reason for the tonal to be such an overpowering affair.
It can be said that the tonal is everything that meets the eye.
We begin to groom it at the moment of birth. The moment we take the first gasp of air we also breathe in power for the tonal.
The tonal begins at birth and ends at death.
The tonal makes the world...it cannot create or change anything, and yet it makes the world because its function is to judge, and assess, and witness...the tonal makes up the rules by which it apprehends the world, so in a manner of speaking, world.
There is a personal tonal for everyone of us, and there is a collective tonal for all of us at any given time..."the tonal of the times".
[In order to see a man as a tonal] one must cease judging him in a moral sense, or excusing him on the grounds that he is like a leaf at the mercy of the wind. In other words, it entails seeing a man without thinking that he is hopeless or helpless. The tonal is very vulnerable. It cannot withstand maltreatment.
There are, roughly speaking, two sides to every tonal. One is the outer part, the fringe, the surface of the island. That's the part related to action and acting; the rugged side. The other part is the decision and judgment, the inner tonal, softer, more delicate and more complex. The proper is a tonal where the two levels are in perfect harmony and balance.
[Description of person possessing a proper tonal]...attractive, well groomed, eyes clear and peaceful. [smiled while Carlos spoke..."something winning" about her].
The agreement that we are solid objects is the tonal's doing. When the tonal shrinks, extraordinary things are possible. But they are only extraordinary for the tonal.
The tonal must be protected at all cost. The crown has to be taken away from it, but it must remain as the protected overseer. Any threat to the tonal always results in its death. And if the tonal dies, so does the whole man. Because of its inherent weakness, the tonal is easily destroyed, and thus one of the balancing acts of the warrior is to make the Nagual emerge in order to prop up the tonal...only by boosting the tonal can the Nagual emerge...that boosting is called personal power.
As long as [a warrior's] tonal is unchallenged, and his eyes are tuned only for the tonal's world, the warrior is on the safe side of the fence. He's on familiar ground and he knows the rules. But when his tonal shrinks, he is on the windy side, and that opening [in the gate] must be shut tight immediately, or he would be swept away. And this is not just a way of talking. Beyond the gate of the tonal's eyes the wind rages. I mean a real wind. No metaphor. A wind that can blow one's life away. In fact, that is the wind that blows all living things on this earth.
As a rule the tonal must defend itself at any cost, every time it is threatened; so it is of no real consequence how the tonal reacts in order to accomplish its defense. The only important matter is that the tonal of a warrior must become acquainted with other alternatives. What a teacher aims for...is the total weight of those possibilities. It is the weight of those new possibilities which helps to shrink the tonal. By the same token, it is the same weight which helps stop the tonal from shrinking out of the picture.
tonal means to be aware of everything that takes place on the island of the tonal.
In order to be an average tonal, a man must have unity. His whole being must belong to the island of the tonal.
Without that unity the man would go berserk; a sorcerer, however, has to break that unity, but without endangering his being. A sorcerer's goal is to last; that is, he doesn't take unnecessary risks, therefore he spends years sweeping his island until a moment when he could, in a manner of speaking, sneak off of it. Splitting a man the gate for such an escape.
A warrior doesn't ever leave the island of the tonal. He uses it.
A grave issue for a warrior is to know exactly when to allow his tonal to shrink and when to stop it. This is a great art; A warrior must struggle like a demon to shrink his tonal; and yet at the very moment the tonal shrinks, the warrior must reverse all that struggle to immediately halt that shrinking.
A warrior...cannot cling to the meanings made under the tonal's order because he knows for a fact that the totality of himself has but little time on this earth.
The tonal doesn't know that decisions are in the realm of the Nagual. When we think we decide, all we're doing is acknowledging that something beyond our understanding has set up the frame of our so-called decision, and all we do is acquiesce.
Cleaning and reordering the island of the tonal means regrouping all its elements on the side of reason...the art of a teacher was to force his disciple to group his view of the world on the right half of the bubble...the side of the tonal.
...once a warrior is confronted with his incapacity to reason everything out, he will go out of his way to bolster and defend his defeated reason, and to that effect he will rally everything he's got around it. The teacher sees to that by hammering him mercilessly until all his view of the world is on one half of the bubble. The other half of the bubble, the one that has been cleared, can then be claimed by something sorcerers call will... The benefactor's task is then to open the bubble on the side that has been cleaned. Once the seal is broken, the warrior is never the same. He has then the command of his totality. Half of the bubble is the ultimate center of reason, the tonal. The other half is the ultimate center of will, the Nagual. This is the order that should prevail; any other arrangement is nonsensical and petty, because it goes against our nature; it robs us of our magical heritage and reduces us to nothing.
Here is something Don Juan didn't tell you. The tonal is the foreign installation.
Lone Wolf
The tonal is the social person...the tonal is, rightfully so, a protector, a guardian, that most of the time turns into a guard.
The tonal is the organizer of the world...perhaps the best way of describing its monumental work is to say that on its shoulders rests the task of setting the chaos of the world in order. It is not farfetched to maintain, as sorcerers do, that everything we know and do as men is the work of the tonal. At this moment, for instance, what is engaged in trying to make sense out of our conversation is your tonal; without it there would be only weird sounds and grimaces and you wouldn't understand a thing of what I'm saying.
...the tonal is a guardian that protects...our very being. Therefore an inherent quality of the tonal is to be cagey and jealous of its doings. And since its doings are by far the most important part of our lives, it is no wonder that it eventually changes...from a guardian into a guard.
The tonal is everything we are. Name it! Anything we have a word for is the tonal. And since the tonal is its own doings, then everything, obviously, has to fall under its domain.
The tonal is everything we know. I think this in itself is enough reason for the tonal to be such an overpowering affair.
It can be said that the tonal is everything that meets the eye.
We begin to groom it at the moment of birth. The moment we take the first gasp of air we also breathe in power for the tonal.
The tonal begins at birth and ends at death.
The tonal makes the world...it cannot create or change anything, and yet it makes the world because its function is to judge, and assess, and witness...the tonal makes up the rules by which it apprehends the world, so in a manner of speaking, world.
There is a personal tonal for everyone of us, and there is a collective tonal for all of us at any given time..."the tonal of the times".
[In order to see a man as a tonal] one must cease judging him in a moral sense, or excusing him on the grounds that he is like a leaf at the mercy of the wind. In other words, it entails seeing a man without thinking that he is hopeless or helpless. The tonal is very vulnerable. It cannot withstand maltreatment.
There are, roughly speaking, two sides to every tonal. One is the outer part, the fringe, the surface of the island. That's the part related to action and acting; the rugged side. The other part is the decision and judgment, the inner tonal, softer, more delicate and more complex. The proper is a tonal where the two levels are in perfect harmony and balance.
[Description of person possessing a proper tonal]...attractive, well groomed, eyes clear and peaceful. [smiled while Carlos spoke..."something winning" about her].
The agreement that we are solid objects is the tonal's doing. When the tonal shrinks, extraordinary things are possible. But they are only extraordinary for the tonal.
The tonal must be protected at all cost. The crown has to be taken away from it, but it must remain as the protected overseer. Any threat to the tonal always results in its death. And if the tonal dies, so does the whole man. Because of its inherent weakness, the tonal is easily destroyed, and thus one of the balancing acts of the warrior is to make the Nagual emerge in order to prop up the tonal...only by boosting the tonal can the Nagual emerge...that boosting is called personal power.
As long as [a warrior's] tonal is unchallenged, and his eyes are tuned only for the tonal's world, the warrior is on the safe side of the fence. He's on familiar ground and he knows the rules. But when his tonal shrinks, he is on the windy side, and that opening [in the gate] must be shut tight immediately, or he would be swept away. And this is not just a way of talking. Beyond the gate of the tonal's eyes the wind rages. I mean a real wind. No metaphor. A wind that can blow one's life away. In fact, that is the wind that blows all living things on this earth.
As a rule the tonal must defend itself at any cost, every time it is threatened; so it is of no real consequence how the tonal reacts in order to accomplish its defense. The only important matter is that the tonal of a warrior must become acquainted with other alternatives. What a teacher aims for...is the total weight of those possibilities. It is the weight of those new possibilities which helps to shrink the tonal. By the same token, it is the same weight which helps stop the tonal from shrinking out of the picture.
tonal means to be aware of everything that takes place on the island of the tonal.
In order to be an average tonal, a man must have unity. His whole being must belong to the island of the tonal.
Without that unity the man would go berserk; a sorcerer, however, has to break that unity, but without endangering his being. A sorcerer's goal is to last; that is, he doesn't take unnecessary risks, therefore he spends years sweeping his island until a moment when he could, in a manner of speaking, sneak off of it. Splitting a man the gate for such an escape.
A warrior doesn't ever leave the island of the tonal. He uses it.
A grave issue for a warrior is to know exactly when to allow his tonal to shrink and when to stop it. This is a great art; A warrior must struggle like a demon to shrink his tonal; and yet at the very moment the tonal shrinks, the warrior must reverse all that struggle to immediately halt that shrinking.
A warrior...cannot cling to the meanings made under the tonal's order because he knows for a fact that the totality of himself has but little time on this earth.
The tonal doesn't know that decisions are in the realm of the Nagual. When we think we decide, all we're doing is acknowledging that something beyond our understanding has set up the frame of our so-called decision, and all we do is acquiesce.
Cleaning and reordering the island of the tonal means regrouping all its elements on the side of reason...the art of a teacher was to force his disciple to group his view of the world on the right half of the bubble...the side of the tonal.
...once a warrior is confronted with his incapacity to reason everything out, he will go out of his way to bolster and defend his defeated reason, and to that effect he will rally everything he's got around it. The teacher sees to that by hammering him mercilessly until all his view of the world is on one half of the bubble. The other half of the bubble, the one that has been cleared, can then be claimed by something sorcerers call will... The benefactor's task is then to open the bubble on the side that has been cleaned. Once the seal is broken, the warrior is never the same. He has then the command of his totality. Half of the bubble is the ultimate center of reason, the tonal. The other half is the ultimate center of will, the Nagual. This is the order that should prevail; any other arrangement is nonsensical and petty, because it goes against our nature; it robs us of our magical heritage and reduces us to nothing.
Here is something Don Juan didn't tell you. The tonal is the foreign installation.
Lone Wolf