The second topic of tremendous interest for the sorcerers of ancient Mexico was the center for decisions. Those sorcerers were convinced, by the practical results of their endeavors, that there was a spot on the human body that accounted for decision-making: the “v” spot on the crest of the sternum at the base of the neck. They claimed that it was a center of tremendous subtleness and that it stored a specific type of energy which they were incapable of defining, perhaps because it defied definition. Yet, they were utterly convinced that they could feel the effect of its energy, and its presence. They asserted that this special energy was pushed out of that center very early in the lives of human beings, and that it never returns to it, thus depriving human beings of something perhaps more important than all the energy of the other centers combined. Shamans have pointed out, over the centuries, the incapacity of human beings to make decisions.
The “v” spot at the base of the neck was for them a place of such importance that they rarely touched it, and if they did, the touch was ritualistic and always performed by someone else, with the aid of an object. Don Juan Matus told me that they used highly polished pieces of hard wood or polished bones of animals, or even human beings.
“How did they come to find out that that hollow spot is the center for decisions,” I asked.
“Every center of energy in the body,” he replied, “shows a concentration of energy; a sort of vortex of energy, like a funnel that actually seems to rotate counterclockwise, from the perspective of the seer who gazes into it. The strength of a particular center depends on the force of that movement. If it barely, barely moves, the center is exhausted, deplenished of energy.”
Don Juan explained that there were six enormous vortexes of energy in the human body that could be dealt with. The first was on the area of the liver and gallbladder; the second on the area of the pancreas and spleen; the third in the area of the kidneys and adrenals; and the fourth on the hollow spot at the base of the neck on the frontal part of the body. This center, he depicted as having a special energy, which appears to the eye of the seer as possessing a transparency, something that could be described as resembling water; energy so fluid that it is liquid. A fifth center which was pertinent only to women, was the area of the womb. And there was a center on top of the head, which was not dealt with at all by the sorcerers of ancient times.
“Why this discrimination, don Juan?” I asked.
“That sixth center of energy,” he said, “does not quite belong to man. We human beings are under siege, so to speak. It is as if that center has been taken over by an unseen enemy. And the only way to overcome this enemy is by fortifying all the other centers.”
“Isn’t it a bit paranoiac to feel that we are under siege, don Juan?”
“Well, maybe for you, but certainly not for me. I see energy, and I see that the energy over the center on the top of the head doesn’t fluctuate like the energy of the other centers. I also see that in a sorcerer who has been capable of vanquishing the mind, which sorcerers call a foreign installation, the fluctuation of that center has become exactly like the fluctuation of all the others. The rotation of the energy at the center for decisions is the weakest of them all. That’s why man can rarely decide anything.”
The general idea which those sorcerers had was that the human body is a concrete and sealed unit of energy fields. No energy could be injected into this sealed unit, and no energy could escape from it. The feeling of losing energy, which all of us experience, was the result of energy being dispersed or being chased away from the five natural centers of energy. Energy, those shamans believed, is pushed out of those centers and dispersed toward the outer limits of our being. Any sense of gaining energy was understood by those sorcerers as the concentration of previously dispersed energy on the aforementioned centers of vitality. They called this maneuver “redistributing energy previously dispersed.” Tensegrity, the modern version of magical passes, accomplishes the same goal: it redeploys energy already dispersed, but without the shamans’ ritualistic encumbrances.
(Carlos Castaneda, Silent Knowledge)
