After a male or female warrior, through their efforts to stalk themselves, clean their island, expand their field of attention, and be present, becomes accustomed to living for longer and longer as a “perfect” or full tonal, aware of everything happening on their island, immersed in their inner silence, they are then in a position to intend the movement of BECOMING the tonal’s island itself.
This means their assemblage point is ready to make a perceptual shift where their sense of being abandons the idea of being a personal tonal, a human-shaped body-mind (“breaking the chains of self-image”) and perceives the fact that their being is (and always has been, as far as they can recall) an island, a bubble, of which their previous identity is an item like everything else. They realize that of the two identities, the second IS the more stable:
they used to believe they were the personal tonal because that seemed to be a stable identity,
while everything else was always changing around them.
But now they see that even this personal tonal isn’t a stable “harbor” for their identity:
it’s also constantly changing, inside and out, changing moods, changing ideas, changing form.
All the content of the tonal island changes every instant.
But this awareness of being that embraces the entire island is always present, in all their experiences, immutable in itself, conscious of everything,
conscious of all these changes: it is the present moment itself, the totality of perception,
and it can appear as a kind of abstract island.
This is what Don Juan called the “nagual below the island,”
and when a shift occurs in a warrior’s sense of being to this perspective,
this is called “losing the human form.”
The warrior initially becomes a kind of island that embraces and encompasses everything that exists in the tonal as part of themselves,
the constant movement, without clinging to it.
The body, an insect, distant stars, the earth, their fellow beings: EVERYTHING before their sight, in its constant changes, is part of their being.
They take a step back towards our nature, of being perceivers.
They no longer exist within reality,
but reality exists within them.
— J Christopher (2019)
