The Second Ring of Power (44 page)

Don Juan had made me stare at the water of an irrigation ditch behind
his house various times
while he had me under the influence of
his smoking mixture. I had experienced inconceivable
sensations.
Once I saw myself all green as if I were covered with algae. After that he
recommended
that I avoid water.

"Has my second attention been injured by water?" I asked.

"It has," she replied. "You are a very indulging man.
The Nagual warned you to be cautious,
but you went beyond your limits
with running water. The Nagual said that you could've used water like no one
else, but it wasn't your fate to be moderate."

She pulled her bench closer to mine.

"That's all there is to gazing," she said. "But there are
other things I must tell you before you
leave."

"What things, Gorda?"

"First of all, before I say anything, you must round up your second
attention for the little
sisters and me."

"I don't think I can do that."

La Gorda stood up and went into the house. She came back a moment later
with a small, thick,
round cushion made out of the same
natural fiber used in making nets. Without saying a word she
led
me again to the front porch. She said that she had made that cushion herself
for her comfort
when she was learning to gaze, because the position
of the body was of great importance while
one was gazing.
One had to sit on the ground on a soft mat of leaves, or on a cushion made out
of
natural fibers. The back had to be propped against a
tree, or a stump, or a flat rock. The body had to be thoroughly relaxed. The
eyes were never fixed on the object, in order to avoid tiring them.
The
gaze consisted in scanning very slowly the object gazed at, going
counterclockwise but
without moving the head. She added that
the Nagual had made them plant those thick poles so
they could use
them to prop themselves.

She had me sit on her cushion and prop my back against a pole. She told
me that she was going to guide me in gazing at a power spot that the Nagual had
in the round hills across the
valley. She hoped that by gazing at it
I would get the necessary energy to round up my second
attention.

She sat down very close to me, to my left, and began giving me
instructions. Almost in a
whisper she told me to keep my eyelids
half closed and stare at the place where two enormous
round hills
converged. There was a narrow, steep water canyon there. She said that that
particular
gazing consisted of four separate actions. The first one
was to use the brim of my hat as a visor to
shade off the
excessive glare from the sun and allow only a minimal amount of light to come
to
my eyes; then to half-close my eyelids; the third step
was to sustain the opening of my eyelids in
order to
maintain a uniform flow of light; and the fourth step was to distinguish the
water canyon
in the background through the mesh of light fibers on my
eyelashes.

I could not follow her instructions at first. The sun was high over the
horizon and I had to tilt
my head back. I tipped my hat until I had blocked off most
of the glare with the brim. That
seemed to
be all that was needed. As soon as I half closed my eyes, a bit of light that
appeared as if it were coming from the tip of my hat literally exploded on my
eyelashes, which were acting as a filter that created a web of light. I kept my
eyelids half closed and played with the web of light for a moment until I could
distinguish the dark, vertical outline of the water canyon in the
background.

La Gorda told me then to gaze at the middle part of the canyon until I
could spot a very dark brown blotch. She said that it was a hole in the canyon
which was not there for the eye that looks,
but only for
the eye that "sees." She warned me that I had to exercise my control
as soon as I had
isolated that blotch, so that it would not pull me
toward it. Rather, I was supposed to zoom in on
it and gaze
into it. She suggested that the moment I found the hole I should press my
shoulders on
hers to let her know. She slid sideways until she was
leaning on me.

I struggled for a moment to keep the four actions coordinated and
steady, and suddenly a dark spot was formed in the middle of the canyon. I
noticed immediately that I was not seeing it in the
way I usually see. The dark spot was
rather an impression, a visual distortion of sorts. The
moment my control waned it disappeared. It was in my field of perception
only if I kept the four
actions under
control. I remembered then that don Juan had engaged me countless times in a
similar activity. He used to hang a small piece of
cloth from a low branch of a bush, which was
strategically located to be in line with specific geological formations
in the mountains in the
background,
such as water canyons or slopes. By making me sit about fifty feet away from
that
piece of cloth, and having me
stare through the low branches of the bush where the cloth hung, he
used to create a special perceptual effect in me.
The piece of cloth, which was always a shade
darker than the geological formation I was staring at, seemed to be at
first a feature of that
formation. The idea was to let my perception
play without analyzing it. I failed every time
because I was thoroughly incapable of suspending judgment, and my mind
always entered into some rational speculation about the mechanics of my phantom
perception.

This time I felt no need whatsoever for speculations. La Gorda was not
an imposing figure that I unconsciously needed to fight, as don Juan had
obviously been to me.

The dark
blotch in my field of perception became almost black. I leaned on la Gorda's
shoulder to let her know. She whispered in my ear
that I should struggle to keep my eyelids in the
position they were in and breathe calmly from my abdomen. I should not
let the blotch pull me,
but gradually
go into it. The thing to avoid was letting the hole grow and suddenly engulf
me. In the event that that happened I had to open my eyes immediately.

I began to breathe as she had prescribed, and thus I could keep my
eyelids fixed indefinitely at
the appropriate aperture.

I remained in that position for quite some time. Then I noticed that I
had begun to breathe normally and that it had not disturbed my perception of
the dark blotch. But suddenly the dark
blotch began
to move, to pulsate, and before I could breathe calmly again, the blackness
moved
forward and enveloped me. I became frantic and opened my
eyes.

La Gorda said that I was doing distance gazing and for that it was
necessary to breathe the
way she had recommended. She urged me
to start all over again. She said that the Nagual used to
make
them sit for entire days rounding up their second attention by gazing at that
spot. He cautioned them repeatedly about the danger of being engulfed because
of the jolt the body
suffered.

It took me about an hour of gazing to do what she had delineated. To
zoom in on the brown
spot and gaze into it meant that the
brown patch in my field of perception lightened up quite suddenly. As it became
clearer I realized that something in me was performing an impossible act.
I
felt that I was actually advancing toward that spot; thus the impression I was
having that it was
clearing up. Then I was so near to it that I could distinguish features
in it, like rocks and
vegetation. I came
even closer and could look at a peculiar formation on one rock. It looked like
a
roughly carved chair. I liked it
very much; compared to it the rest of the rocks seemed pale and
uninteresting.

I don't know how long I gazed at it. I could focus on every detail of
it. I felt that I could lose
myself forever in its detail because
there was no end to it. But something dispelled my view;
another
strange image was superimposed on the rock, and then another one, and another
yet. I
became annoyed with the interference. At the instant I
became annoyed I also realized that la
Gorda was
moving my head from side to side from behind me. In a matter of seconds the
concentration of my gazing had been thoroughly dissipated.

La Gorda laughed and said that she understood why I had caused the
Nagual such an intense
concern. She had
seen
for
herself that I indulged beyond my limits. She sat against the pole next
to
me and said that she and the little sisters were going to gaze into the
Nagual's power place. She
then made a piercing birdcall. A
moment later the little sisters came out of the house and sat
down
to gaze with her.

Their gazing mastery was obvious. Their bodies acquired a strange
rigidity. They did not seem
to be breathing at all. Their stillness
was so contagious that I caught myself half closing my eyes and staring into
the hills.

Gazing had been a true revelation to me. In performing it I had
corroborated some important
issues of don Juan's teachings. La
Gorda had delineated the task in a definitely vague manner. "To zoom in on
it" was more a command than a description of a process, and yet it was a
description,
providing that one essential requirement had been fulfilled; don Juan had called
that
requirement stopping the internal dialogue. From la
Gorda's statements about gazing it was
obvious to me
that the effect don Juan had been after in making them gaze was to teach them
to stop the internal dialogue. La Gorda had expressed it as "quieting down
the thoughts." Don Juan
had taught me to do that very same
thing, although he had made me follow the opposite path;

instead of teaching me to focus my view, as gazers did, he taught me to
open it, to flood my awareness by not focusing my sight on anything. I had to
sort of feel with my eyes everything in
the 180-degree
range in front of me, while I kept my eyes unfocused just above the line of the
horizon.

It was very difficult for me to gaze, because it entailed reversing
that training. As I tried to
gaze, my tendency was to open up. The
effort of keeping that tendency in check, however, made
me
shut off my thoughts. Once I had turned off my internal dialogue, it was not
difficult to gaze as la Gorda had prescribed.

Don Juan had asserted time and time again that the essential feature of
his sorcery was
shutting off the internal dialogue. In terms of the
explanation la Gorda had given me about the two realms of attention, stopping
the internal dialogue was an operational way of describing the act of
disengaging the attention of the tonal.

Don Juan had also said that once we stop our internal dialogue we also
stop the world. That
was an operational description of the
inconceivable process of focusing our second attention. He
had
said that some part of us is always kept under lock and key because we are
afraid of it, and that to our reason, that part of us was like an insane
relative that we keep locked in a dungeon. That part was, in la Gorda's terms,
our second attention, and when it finally could focus on
something
the world stopped. Since we, as average men, know only the attention of the
tonal, it is not too farfetched to say that once that attention is canceled,
the world indeed has to stop. The
focusing of our wild, untrained
second attention has to be, perforce, terrifying. Don Juan was
right
in saying that the only way to keep that insane relative from bursting in on us
was by
shielding ourselves with our endless internal dialogue.

La Gorda and the little sisters stood up after perhaps thirty minutes
of gazing. La Gorda
signaled me with her head to follow them. They went
to the kitchen. La Gorda pointed to a bench
for me to sit
on. She said that she was going up the road to meet the Genaros and bring them
over. She left through the front door.

The little sisters sat around me. Lidia volunteered to answer anything I
wanted to ask her. I
asked her to tell me about her gazing into don Juan's power spot, but she did
not understand me.

"I'm a distance and shadow gazer," she said. "After I
became a gazer the Nagual made me start all over again and had me gaze this
time at the shadows of leaves and plants and trees and rocks.
Now
I never look at anything anymore; I just look at their shadows. Even if there
is no light at all,
there are shadows; even at night there are shadows. Because I'm a shadow
gazer I'm also a
distance gazer. I can gaze
at shadows even in the distance.

"The shadows in the early morning don't tell much. The shadows
rest at that time. So it's
useless to gaze very early in the day.
Around six in the morning the shadows wake up, and they are best around five in
the afternoon. Then they are fully awake."