Mini-interview with the Apprentices
of Carlos Castaneda
1. The Navigators' Log is still a mysterious issue for many practitioners. We
don’t know exactly the meaning of saying that it is a tool. Many practitioners
have said that they notice they may write the same things in their log that they
wrote many months before, and they find it hard to face. Can you talk about this
topic?
The Navigators’ Log, Carlos Castaneda told us, is indeed a mystery --it is a
record, he said, of something very rare: the energetic facts that seers perceive
on their journeys in infinity; facts derived from the perception of the physical
body and the energy body together. For this reason, he said, it is a log that is
very concise, because, as Don Juan Matus told him, energy is very precise.
By having their apprentices record their perceptions, as he asked us to do,
seers endeavor to lead those apprentices to hone the ability to perceive energy
directly --to make their first steps toward enticing the perception of the
physical body and the energy body together.
Recording one’s perceptions brings one very quickly to the recognition that
we repeat ourselves, perhaps because we repeat given phrases to ourselves. Some
practitioners said they found these in their inventory of unexamined syntactic
commands: praising or deprecatory formulas built into language:
“I can’t do it!” “This is not going to work!” “What do they take me for? A
fool?” “It’s really cool!” “Wow! Great!” “The more things change, the more they
remain the same,” etc.
Seeing our repetition can be disappointing at first. Carlos Castaneda said
that we can only be disappointed if we have great expectations of the self. He
recommended a more sober view of the self, one in which we suspend judgment.
Don Juan told him:
“A warrior knows that he cannot change, and yet he makes it his business to try
to change, nevertheless. The warrior is never disappointed when he fails to
change. That’s the only advantage a warrior has over the average man.” The Wheel
of Time
Carlos Castaneda suggested that from this standpoint, we could acknowledge our
limitations, and yet, we could nevertheless begin to direct our attention to
what is essential for seers, and the real subject of the Navigators’ Log: What
are our perceptions? What did we witness this day in infinity?
2. Many practitioners have felt that, ever since they started practicing the
mapping of the energy body in the mornings and evenings, they experience dreams
where they are about to cross a threshold in dreaming, it is frightening and
they want to wake up. What can you say about this?
If we have hidden fears in our waking hours, seers believe, those fears
appear as barriers in dreaming. Recapitulating our lives is essential to
relinquishing those fears so that we can act.
Don Juan’s students said that what brings us the confidence to act in
dreaming is the energy body, the energetic twin of the physical body, and that
we tune and hone the energy body during our waking hours. They urged us, as an
integral part of our dreaming practices, to entice the energy body by carrying
out the simplest actions with the precision and efficiency that comes from
abstract affection --the detached affection of the energy body itself.
The dreamer’s discipline, Carlos Castaneda said, is to sustain his affection
for what he is doing --to intend by his actions, that his wonder is greater than
his fear.
© Copyright Fractalum
Magazine
Publication Date: October 2000
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