A complete tonal is one that can maintain its attention on its entire island. But as long as there is an obsessive aversion or an exclusive focus on one or more items on the island, the tonal‘s attention becomes fragmented, divided, and conflicted.
In such a state of attention, which in nagualism is called the first attention, and which we simply call ‘attention’, energy is fully projected onto the screen of perception, onto the walls of the cocoon, into our surroundings. The personal tonal becomes subject to external circumstances, or more precisely, to the INTERPRETATION IT MAKES of the external circumstances, which are in constant change, and thus the tonal is also never the same.
And in this state, the tendency is for the attention to become accessible prey for the flyer’s mind (mente voladora), as it can manipulate the tonal‘s interpretation of things to the extent that the tonal is distracted enough to take the thoughts passing through its mind as its own. As a consequence, since energy follows attention, energy shifts to the periphery of perception, and the result is a feeling of exhaustion of the energy contained in the vital centers of the physical body and a growing attachment to circumstances.
From this arises for the warrior the practice and the inevitable challenge of CLEARING their tonal island, which is also called “cutting the hundred heads of self-importance.”
The task consists of emptying oneself of the importance given to each of these items, each one a reflection of an aspect of the importance one gives to oneself, personally. To empty oneself of each of these importances is a small death, to give up a small whim, to die to a small thing one insisted upon.
The techniques of stalking taught by don Juan’s lineage to clear the island of the tonal are:
- Assuming responsibility for our acts, which led us to this problematic situation of giving importance to this matter.
- Using death as an adviser, to put into perspective the real importance of this matter in the face of the inevitability of our own personal death.
- Abandoning self-importance, that is, directly perceiving that what lies behind this conflict is the feeling that we are important to ourselves, and deliberately being willing to let go of this idea.
- The recapitulation: going to the root memory of this obsession and applying the power of the breath to undo the energetic knot created there.
There is also the warrior’s strategy, whose main element is the petty tyrant: to voluntarily use challenging relationships as a mirror to understand and free oneself from the beliefs about oneself that lead to draining patterns of defending one’s self-image.
Within this, there is a technique used in our lineage, which is similar to a technique called in the Fourth Way “voluntary suffering,” which we apply as follows: it is about not fleeing from the suffering caused by a conflict, nor trying to ignore it, or fight it with positive thoughts, or try to destroy it, but to receive it, to make space for it, to sustain the feeling of it in the body. For it is the internal tension caused by this suffering that generates the necessary driving force to apply the other techniques and undo the importance given to the matter behind the tension (if, on the contrary, we simply “discharge the tension,” the tendency is to repeat the same cycle over and over and get “stuck” at that point, walking in circles). The saving of sexual energy also has the same effect of pressing on the blockages in the flow of our energy, and this internal pressure is often felt as anxiety and restlessness.
The result of these practices is to acquire a natural and unforced equanimity regarding the items with which one was previously obsessed, positively or negatively.
They lead to removing these items to which we give importance from the left side of our island—the side of our will—and relocating them to the right side—the side of reason. In other words, we stop INSISTING on it, and it becomes just another item like any other on our island.
It is a process that can take a short or a long time to reach an adequate point of emptiness that allows for an attempt to awaken the luminous egg.
The warrior becomes less and less reactive, more centered, less compassionate with their whims. Their attention becomes less and less divided, more silent, and the moments when a subject arises that hooks and engages their obsession become increasingly rare. Their island becomes more and more empty (of importances), more and more sober, lucid, and whole.
This free attention opens the conditions for the left side, now empty, to stalk itself. And it is this self-stalking—different from the self-stalking by the right side—that is the foundation for the nagual to begin to awaken.
— J Christopher
