Sobriety

This term on the Toltec path is one loaded with social conditioning and pitfalls of the monkey mind.  The warrior of freedom is a sober warrior.  Sobriety is key to freedom.  So taking time to look at sobriety goes hand in hand with recapitulation in all its forms. 

Sobriety is for the warrior defined as the efficient use of our personal energy.  It is the ability to not fall into the trap of repetitious behaviors which drain the warrior.  Seeing and dreaming cannot open up for the warrior without sobriety.  It is not about chemistry.   Drinking or not drinking alcohol is not the definition of sobriety in this case.  That is a social convention and norm.  The warrior of freedom sees that all chemicals can lead to insobriety or sobriety depending on the repetition of use. Insobriety creates fast ways to shut down potentials and a chemical used repetitiously limits our perception.  We are left in these moments to skimming the surface when we fall into insobriety with anything.   And chemicals are not the only thing that can create insobriety.  Repetitions of emotions, drives to satisfy selfish needs, even repetitive intake of similar food can all lead to insobriety for the warrior of freedom. 

Freedom

Freedom, the sweet taste of freedom; what does this mean?  For some it is the ability to purchase anything that they want.  For others it is the definition of safety and security to grow old.  For others it is escaping injustice.  For others it is the philosophical ideal that they can do anything that they want.  And for a few it means being able to be the sum total of what it means to be human and so much more…. Creating every moment as though it were the last.  Freedom is a loaded word.

The politics of freedom are in reality a trap of the dominant paradigm.  Politically humans are not free, they submit all the time to something so that they can feel free.  Free to speak, to bare arms, to have rights and to be treated fairly.  But these are actually compromises in the face of the mob.  The mob whose shadow side sits right below the surface willing to do anything to keep freedom in check.  This is the freedom to have an idea, a distant memory of a possibility that lives planted within our bones.  In the best of times, humans will do anything to preserve this middle ground of freedom.  In the worst they will do anything at all.  Humans are willing to die in the name of that possibility for themselves or for the generations to come in hopes that things will get better.  And in many ways it has.  In many ways progress has occurred.

The Empty Mirror

The warrior knows that he is unfathomable mystery.  He spends a life unraveling unfathomable mystery, knowing he will never complete such a task.  This is what gives the warrior peace and joy, for he, in this task, is neither better nor worse than anyone else in pursuing the task.  Rather he is equal to everything and everyone.  This is a warrior’s humility.

This statement, a variation of Carlos’ own words in the Eagle’s Gift, is the guiding principle for the life of a warrior of freedom.  There is nothing unique and special about walking the path of a Toltec warrior.  In fact it is no better or worse than any other path that one can choose.  As a warrior of freedom, we know that it is a path with heart… that it is a good way.

This is counter intuitive to the thinking of the rational human.  The rational human uses his thoughts and ideas to control his world.  He uses them to manipulate himself and those around him to be better or worse than himself.  He sets himself up in self importance to be something little knowing that this is really nothing more than what everyone else is doing around him.  This drive to be special, something more is rooted in a drive for more awareness, but the rational man clamps down on this awareness with control.  In groups, humans create systems which are dependent on the goal of being right or wrong, part of the in group or the out group.  The worst of these groups force humans to submit to a pattern so they can be saved at some time in the future… the best of these groups work themselves into a fever to save the world from injustices of these pattern making control mongers.  Little knowing that this is slavery as well to the attempt to control anything.

Reason for the Season

With all this hoopla about whatever anyone celebrates at this time of the year, it seemed appropriate to write about why we have such an obsession with the season.  Knowledge leads to freedom and none of this is new. 

The birth of the Christian son of god, if he was the person of the story, was not at this point of the year.  Joshua was born, according to the story, in the spring in alignment with the Passover feast as his family was required to return to their home of record.  But here is where things get really mixed up.  The rest of the story is a mixture of the savior myths of the fertile crescent, Egypt and Greece, to say nothing of Moses (which means “life” or “pulled from life” – aka the Nile)… As scholars of myth know, there were no less than 12 concurrent myths, and probably more, from the times that have a god being born to a virgin (which meant “maiden” not “chaste”) in a stable or lower class housing of some sort in other words he was one of the people. 

A Letter to my fellow humans

Dear Humans,

When I first read your books, your sacred texts of belief, I had no response.  In fact it confused me as to why you wanted me to read them in the first place.  But then again, we are in some way entangled energetically and my love for you and our life experiences together as humans are rooted in the entanglement that we shared.  What I see in these writings now is a lack of connection over a number of years.  And a lot of context is missing from our connection.  The words that you share in your textbooks are beautiful, they are human experience and they are the path that you are on.  I see your struggle with the shadow, an essential part of being human.

I want to share my journey with you because we have shared so much, but fear the words would be taken as a rejection of you.  You may think that what I say is a secret or hidden truth.  This is not a rejection of you or your path.  Far be it for me to tell anyone that the agreements that they have made with the universe are wrong.  They are not wrong…. But I risk to share, for my journey has been in and through this universe traveling the bands of awareness.  I am first and foremost an artist, a seer of life, a sorcerer.  A toltec warrior who has dared to leave the village, the center of the town, the agreements which were inherited and pushed upon me with a voracity of the foreign mind and installed for me to acquiesse to the dominant paradigm.  This was and is not enough for me… because it is fraught with not-enoughness, the best definition of evil.  I see in your words as a push to know the old paradigm at its best, yes at its best it is a brilliant possibility of humans connected in a network of light and joy sharing in the ecstasy of the singularity, we are all one.  That cannot be denied as a beautiful vision.  A vision for humanity which vibrates with the collective drive and essence for the light.

We are split beings.

Wind hollers in the night

Leaves rustle with the moonlight

Dreaming splits across the plains. 

We are split beings.  We are born to a world of deep perceptual frameworks, vast enticements of feeling, a range of wonder and beauty.  We are born to choose constantly, or retreat from choice.  We are born to move free across the plains like the wind and rustle with the leaves in the moonlight.  We are split in two carefully, craft-fully, shortly after birth.  One world, that of constant exploration with the fullness of who we are, and the other a managed barnyard full of animals such as ourselves who are afraid to move except with the herd.

Water

Water is the most sacred of the elements on this planet.  It is for certain the key to all life on earth.  Where water is precious, the people act and treat each other with a preciousness that can only be found in the deepest well of our beings.  Where it is abundant it is assumed with all the possession of a beast to be consumed in vast quantities of unconsciousness.  Where it is scarce it is fought over and possessed as a value greater than life.  Seeking balance requires seeking an understanding of water as a most precious of elemental life.

In the forest where rain dominates and mold is abundant, the people often cling to each other and feed off of each other.  Where it is a commodity and controlled, people use every ounce of there energy to divide that water into packets of monetary sums.  The entire legal system could be said to be founded not on the ownership of land, but on the resource of water.  Areas of desert, drive one to become a warrior to survive with less.  Areas of jungle there is less appreciation of what we have.

When we look at the founding principles of the greater movements on the earth, consider the roll of water.  Desert religions are violent.  Jungle religions are healing.  One cannot consider that either is better, just extremes of the other.

The people need to find balance.  When they share water, they are sharing a basic knowing of how precious each is.  We need to return to a point when the people lived in balance with water, and then this balance will return us to a balance between each other.  We need to renew our visions of life and the workings of our days to a fundamental truth about water.  Until then, there will be no planetary healing for the mold of man…. The mold will be exactly that, a disintegrating force living off the rot of each other.  Cut to the core, we could, if we are willing to truly change, have more than enough of everything.  Until then, there will be inequities in the system, and abuse at the edges.

Water and all of its power is what the prophesies of indigenous people is all about.  Seek a balance with water.

Simplicity

Sitting in the center of a garage full of stuff, it has been such a pleasure to eliminate the half ton of the ton of stuff that is hanging around me. What has been occurring is an amazing amount of lightening the load and as a result, I too feel lighter and lighter.

I am aware that my words often have the density and intensity of a man obsessed with words, but all too often, to be clear, I find myself being outrageously verbose to simply say something. The balance is in the following poem, which guides my every step:
“Trying the empty nothing and demanding something, Banging the silent zero in search of sound”…. Li Po, Chinese poet.

Assemblage Point Part One

 We are, most of what we know, the assemblage point.  This bold statement is not a random one nor one whose goal is to create a new religion, philosophy or science.  Religion, philosophy and science all fall within the bounds of the assemblage point.  Even these words and anything we can say or share about the current band of awareness is within the assemblage point.  We do not have an assemblage point, we are the assemblage point.

This knowing has been held for generations.  Seers, scientists, artists and warriors of perception know this not as a fact but as a truth.  This truth is the reality of experience, a direct understanding of how the universe of perception works.  It is created moment to moment by all of us and each of us founded on the heaps of being which defines our constant shining across the vast line of potential energies that are there to be perceived.  We organize energy by gathering it together.  Functionally clamping down on energy with awareness and perceiving creates the drama of the self-imposed on the constant dance of potential.  Every perception manages and manipulates our demand on the world as we choose to know it.

Where the Eye does not See

There comes a point in every warrior’s life when the path and walk, even the discipline which he has walked, brings him to a point beyond which he cannot see.  Looking back upon the path, it is obvious that every vision, every practice of seeing was but looking deep into the patterns of life.  Whether these patterns were towards freedom, healing or even new beginnings, there is a moment when the act of seeing gets in the way of the flow of power which courses through the veins,