Using the Eight Points

[DanJones]

[DanJones]

We were silent for a few minutes. I waited for him to speak. Finally I asked, "Did don Genaro
make me leap up to the rock ledge?"
"Don't take that leap in the sense that you understand a leap," he said. "Once again, this is only
a way of speaking. As long as you think that you are a solid body you cannot conceive what I am
talking about."
He then spilled some ashes on the ground by the lantern, covering an area about two feet
square, and drew a diagram with his fingers, a diagram that had eight points interconnected with
lines. It was a geometrical figure.
He had drawn a similar one years before when he tried to explain to me that it was not an
illusion that I had observed the same leaf falling four times from the same tree.
The diagram in the ashes had two epicenters; one he called "reason," the other, "will."
"Reason" was interconnected directly with a point he called "talking." Through "talking,"
"reason" was indirectly connected to three other points, "feeling," "dreaming" and "seeing." The
other epicenter, "will," was directly connected to "feeling," "dreaming" and "seeing"; but only
indirectly to "reason" and "talking."
I remarked that the diagram was different from the one I had recorded years before.
"The outer form is of no importance," he said. "These points represent a human being and can
be drawn in any way you want."
"Do they represent the body of a human being?" I asked.
"Don't call it the body," he said. "These are eight points on the fibers of a luminous being. A
sorcerer says, as you can see in the diagram, that a human being is, first of all, will, because will
is directly connected to three points, feeling, dreaming and seeing; then next, a human being is
reason. This is properly a center that is smaller than will; it is connected only with talking."
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"What are the other two points, don Juan?"
He looked at me and smiled.
"You're a lot stronger now than you were the first time we talked about this diagram," he said.
"But you're not yet strong enough to know all the eight points. Genaro will someday show you
the other two."
"Does everybody have those eight points or only sorcerers?"
"We may say that every one of us brings to the world eight points. Two of them, reason and
talking, are known by everyone. Feeling is always vague but somehow familiar. But only in the
world of sorcerers does one get fully acquainted with dreaming, seeing and will. And finally, at
the outer edge of that world one encounters the other two. The eight points make the totality of
oneself."
He showed me in the diagram that in essence all the points could be made to connect with one
another indirectly.
I asked him again about the two mysterious remaining points. He showed me that they were
connected only to "will" and that they were removed from "feeling," "dreaming" and "seeing,"
and much more distant from "talking" and "reason." He pointed with his finger to show that they
were isolated from the rest and from each other.
"Those two points will never yield to talking or to reason" he said. "Only will can handle
them. Reason is so removed from them that it is utterly useless to try figuring them out. This is
one of the hardest things to realize; after all, the forte of reason is to reason out everything."
I asked him if the eight points corresponded to areas or to certain organs in a human being.
"They do," he replied dryly and erased the diagram.
He touched my head and said that that was the center of "reason" and "talking". The tip of my
sternum was the center of feeling. The area below the navel was will. Dreaming was on the right
side against the ribs. Seeing on the left. He said that sometimes in some warriors seeing and
dreaming were on the right side.
"Where are the other two points?" I asked.
He gave me a most obscene answer and broke into a belly laugh.
"You're so sneaky," he said. "You think I'm a sleepy old goat, don't you?"
I explained to him that my questions created their own momentum.
"Don't try to hurry," he said. "You'll know in due time and then you will be on your own, by
yourself."
"Do you mean that I won't see you any more, don Juan?"
"Not ever again," he said. "Genaro and I will be then what we always have been, dust on the
road."
I had a jolt in the pit of my stomach.
"What are you saying, don Juan?"
"I'm saying that we all are unfathomable beings, luminous and boundless. You, Genaro and I
are stuck together by a purpose that is not our decision."
"What purpose are you talking about?"
"Learning the warrior's way. You can't get out of it, but neither can we. As long as our
achievement is pending you will find me or Genaro, but once it is accomplished, you will fly
freely and no one knows where the force of your life will take you."
"What is don Genaro doing in this?"
"That subject is not in your realm yet," he said. "Today I have to pound the nail that Genaro
put in, the fact that we are luminous beings. We are perceivers. We are an awareness; we are not
objects; we have no solidity. We are boundless. The world of objects and solidity is a way of
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making our passage on earth convenient. It is only a description that was created to help us. We,
or rather our reason, forget that the description is only a description and thus we entrap the
totality of ourselves in a vicious circle from which we rarely emerge in our lifetime.
"At this moment, for instance, you are involved in extricating" yourself from the snarls of
reason. It is preposterous and unthinkable for you that Genaro just appeared at the edge of the
chaparral, and yet you cannot deny that you witnessed it. You perceived it as such."
Don Juan chuckled. He carefully drew another diagram in the ashes and covered it with his hat
before I could copy it.
"We are perceivers," he proceeded. "The world that we perceive, though, is an illusion. It was
created by a description that was told to us since the moment we were born.
"We, the luminous beings, are born with two rings of power, but we use only one to create the
world. That ring, which is hooked very soon after we are born, is reason, and its companion is
talking. Between the two they concoct and maintain the world.
"So, in essence, the world that your reason wants to sustain is the world created by a
description and its dogmatic and inviolable rules, which the reason learns to accept and defend.
"The secret of the luminous beings is that they have another ring of power which is never
used, the will. The trick of the sorcerer is the same trick of the average man. Both have a
description; one, the average man, upholds it with his reason; the other, the sorcerer, upholds it
with his will. Both descriptions have their rules and the rules are perceivable, but the advantage of
the sorcerer is that will is more engulfing than reason.
"The suggestion that I want to make at this point is that from now on you should let yourself
perceive whether the description is upheld by your reason or by your will. I feel that is the only
way for you to use your daily world as a challenge and a vehicle to accumulate enough personal
power in order to get to the totality of yourself.
"Perhaps the next time that you come you'll have enough of it. At any rate, wait until you feel,
like you felt today at the irrigation ditch, that an inner voice is telling you to do so. If you come in
any other spirit it'll be a waste of time and a danger to you."
I remarked that if I had to wait for that inner voice I would never see them again.
"You'd be surprised how well one can perform if one is against the wall," he said.
He stood up and picked up a bundle of firewood. He placed some dry sticks on the earth stove.
The flames cast a yellowish glow on the ground. He then turned off the lantern and squatted in
front of his hat, which was covering the drawing he had made in the ashes.
He commanded me to sit calmly, shut off my internal dialogue, and keep my eyes on his hat. I
struggled for a few moments and then I felt a sensation of floating, of falling off a cliff. It was as
if nothing were supporting me, as if I were not sitting or did not have a body.
Don Juan lifted his hat. Underneath there were spirals of ashes. I watched them without
thinking. I felt the spirals moving. I felt them in my stomach. The ashes seemed to pile up. Then
they were stirred and fluffed and suddenly don Genaro was sitting in front of me.

[DanJones]

This was pivotal for me. Everything I read from what Carlos wrote shows up in this diagram. This diagram is very old and I am still trying to find out where it came from. It is an abstract easily ignored because it takes power to use it. Believe it or not but it is a map of our being and it is also a map of infinity and eternity. In it is all the knowledge of Sorcery and Nagualism, and in the forth coming posts I will demonstrate what it can do.

[serloco]

I am delighted by your post and your power in this. It reminds me of me (ofcourse!) I once made a diagram of creation that consisted of 7 symbols that depicted creation and everything within it every created. Like you said with power you can see it all. As an artist and a sorcerer I also created a work of art that when you looked at it it would change pictures depending on your perception. It was genius and was guided by many allies/beings spread throughout time. So it wasn't me alone that painted it. I merged awareness with many greats like einstein darwin davichi and others. It was pretty sweet indeed.

So yeah back to your post, it is nice to see your enthusiasm in this too. I look forward to your insight.

[Guest]