Disabling the Matrix / Chapter 7 / Riddles, Archons, and Mud Shadows

Posted on May 10, 2023 by Rio

Chapter 7

Riddles, Archons, and Mud Shadows

“Waking is long and dream short; other than this there is no difference.”—Sri Ramana Maharshi

I finished shopping and returned to where I had parked my car. But my car is not there. I figure I may be in the wrong block and retrace my steps to verify my whereabouts.

No, I am not lost, it is the right place, but my car is not there. Anxiously, I surveyed the neighborhood. Then I awake and realize it is a dream. I didn’t wake up in my bed. I awoke in the dream. I am dreaming. My car is not missing. And I walk on without a care in the world.

We fret, wonder and ponder continuously. We are not present when we wake up every morning. We are thinking. To force reality into this dream, we overthink and chat. And as long as our inner chatter hides Reality, we will live in ignorance, and think we lost our car or worry about myriad things. To realize nothing is lost, we must pay attention. 

Since this is a persistent, collective dream, our car may be gone, and we will call the police and make a report. Still, even in our collective dream, we can wake up.

* * *

Is this a dream?
The following events happened in Mexico a few years ago. Please bear with me:
I am looking for a dentist in earnest (not using painkillers). Miss Nessie, the manager of my apartment complex, recommended this dentist and gave me directions to his office.
I arrived at the address. There is a hardware store to my left, as she described, and catty-cornered stands the doctor’s office. But I cross the street and find a gym instead. I can hear people lifting weights behind a folding wooden screen, and I see a schedule and flyers advertising upcoming workouts and events nailed to the screen. Dumbfounded, I examined the brochures. 
Then, I retraced my steps to figure things out. I may have made a mistake. But I am sure I have the right corner due to the hardware store and because the main street is only one block away. Nevertheless, I needed to find that dentist, so I resolved to check all immediate corners.

I marched to the right and surveyed all four corners of the two blocks that flanked the locale. When returning from the opposite direction, and not finding a single dentist, I decided to ask at the hardware store; they should know, I thought.
When they directed me to his office across the street, I refused to believe them. I tried to explain that I had just been there:
“He must have moved,” I said, “… there’s a gym there.”
“No, no, no,” they insisted, pointing at it, “that’s his office.”
I wouldn’t have dared to argue; it’s their neighborhood. But I had just been there. Reluctantly, I walked across the street again, thinking that the doctor perhaps shared his office with the gym, and I would see his office as soon as I entered.
The missing folding screen and absence of any flyers about coming events took me aback. Instead, I found a door ajar, leading to a small waiting room; chairs edged the walls and nailed to the door, a protruding sign displayed the doctor’s name.
So, I ask you, “What is reality?”

Weeks later, riddled with curiosity, I surveyed the area again. Lo and behold! I walked one block down from the doctor’s office to find the gym. But that particular day, it wasn’t there. That day, I inspected every corner (especially that one) thoroughly. I know what I saw. Remember, I was not on a Sunday stroll; I needed a dentist.

Maybe we have alternate universes that somehow occasionally overlap. According to physicists and researchers, we are living in a multidimensional universe with at least eleven dimensions: https://youtube.com/shorts/f3gobdK0P3Y?feature=share Have you heard about time slips? https://youtu.be/vLfV9PowEbw?si=mfa6xCgcaJ1i-CM_ / Why Files

Not long ago, in a guest house in India, I mislaid a towel. After finally finding it under my blanket, I folded it and placed it on the bed.
After I shower I usually use two towels. The one in the shower room I hang and leave behind. But the towel I had just recovered, folded, and left on my bed vanished. Again, I looked everywhere. Nothing else had disappeared. My computer and phone were in sight. Only the towel, (the one I just found and placed on the bed) dematerialized.
After searching thoroughly and convinced that I would never find it, I searched on the internet and found two similar cases:
One in which someone found his keys (days later) in a location in which he never placed them. In the second occurrence, a nightgown hanging on a hanger disappeared to reappear in the closet a few days later.

Not only do towels cease to exist, but I found that from 1940 to 1950, several people disappeared for good in the Bennington Triangle, Vermont. And in New York, 1975, Martha Wright stepped out of her car in the Lincoln Tunnel to help her husband clear the condensation in the windows. She vanished. There was no sign of violence to suggest foul play.
Furthermore, on May 25, 1999, Carl Herbert Landers hiked ahead of his friends in Mount Shasta, Washington, failing to arrive at an arranged spot. The search parties found nothing.
Portals? Stargates?

A Bennington Triangle experience:
“It was, he said, a disorienting experience. Though he felt he was sticking to the path, he became confused. His car, which he thought to be less than a mile away, turned out to be six or seven miles out. Retracing his steps, he found that the trail appeared entirely different, with fallen trees and other markings he didn’t remember being there previously.
“Right before I lost the trail, everything like crescendoed [sic] into this weird sort of dizzying confusion,” Singley said. “It just suddenly got dark, and then it was like, ‘Where am I? What’s going on?’ I was totally lost.”—Robert Singley, article by Jake Rossen
https://www.mentalfloss.com/posts/bennington-triangle-paula-welden-vermont-mystery
On October 10, 2010, a whole village disappeared in the Shaanxi province, near the Qinling Mountains in China, not far from a nuclear facility. The inhabitants of Xian Yang, a nearby town, noticed strange lights at about 10 o’clock that night. The glowing objects seemed to be rotating. The display of lights lasted for about two hours. The villagers vanished forever, all gone.
http://www.latest-ufo-sightings.net/2010/10/ufo-caused-entire-village-to-disappear.html

UFOs? Perhaps they were carried to safety, away from the nuclear plant.

*  *  *

Crop circles, called Devil’s Mowing in years long past due to their unexplained origins, have appeared since the 1600s. The Nature Journal mentioned them in the 1800s. Some crop circles have been made by pranksters, but not all. Italian inventor, Umberto Baudo says:
“Crop circles: the media and science treat this phenomenon subtly, but it is of great importance for humanity. Only those who study it seriously can understand that it is not a joke. After a long and exhausting study, I can demonstrate that many of these crop patterns are not man-made. Since the beginning of my research, I noticed they were technical drawings that show us new ways to produce free energy.” Source: https://youtu.be/r4fIaT89R-w

Engineer Edward Leedskalnin, a Latvian immigrant to the United States, single-handedly built the Coral Castle in Florida. The National  Register of Historic Places added the Coral Castle in 1984. Leedskalnin said: “I understand the laws of weight and leverage and know the secrets of people who built the pyramids at Giza in Egypt.”

It is reasonable to conclude beings with advanced knowledge of complex mathematics design these crop circles. And some are blueprints of magnetic motors and free energy devices. Maybe they mean to help us. But don’t they know that our roads to free energy are blocked, and our ruling class assassinates many of our researchers and scientists?
Alan Holt, a project manager for NASA, visited Wiltshire in Southwest England in the year 2000, and (while in the crop circle fields) he asked the crop artist to show him something that might help his research into “advanced transport field physics.” Two days later, a diagram of “the magnetic field near a bar magnet” appeared in crops at Avebury, Wiltshire.

Crop Circles: https://youtu.be/x2BQyZorSQc / Why Files  
Universe Inside You /https://youtu.be/jXrYXgWtyOo?si=afQ-JdPtmExkH-YD / Enki (3:48)

* * *

Tartaria, a lost empire?
During the 16th century, crop circles already sprouted on sowed fields. But in most places, people still traveled on horseback, stagecoaches, and sailboats. This lifestyle endured until about 200 years ago. Gasoline cars only started to appear in the early 1900s.
Thus, who built some of the impressive, old buildings that are still standing? Was there a mud flood around 300 years ago? Where did the hundreds of orphaned children come from? A reset? Are we overlapping dimensions? We are living in extraordinary times.

New York City mud flood?

To delve deeper into the mysteriously lost empire of Tartaria: https://odysee.com/@WallieBuddz:8/Our-Buried-Past-The-Mud-Flood:6?r=AZbFrCxjhhHyr94gNLRKDkdP8DrDyXuj and https://youtu.be/mk2Q6Vsph7s  (Jon Levi)

* * *

Was Barbarik artificial intelligence operating 5000 years ago?

The Indian Scriptures do not mention Barbarik. But, before the great war of the Mahabharata this famous warrior met with Lord Krishna to enlist. He had only three arrows in his quiver, so Krishna wondered about his prowess.

In a version of the story, Barbarik explained that one arrow would find the selected targets, the second one would mark them, and the third would eliminate them. Lord Krishna put the claim to the test. The first arrow pointed to the leaf hidden under his foot after pointing to all the chosen leaves on the tree.


Convinced that Barbarik could change the course of history in one day, Lord Krishna tricked him into cutting his own head by making him promise he would cut the head of the first warrior he would see that day. Then, he placed a mirror in front of him. Barbarik understood why Lord Krishna tricked him. So he cut his head and asked Krishna to put it where he could witness the clash of the eighteen armies.


The scriptures say that Sanjaya, the advisor of the blind king Dhritarashtra, was able to see the Kurukshetra war from afar due to the powers granted to him by the sage Vyasa. But could this be mythology? According to another version, Barbarik was an AI robot. What if Lord Krishna placed Barbarik’s head on a drone of some sort to record the event? And what if Sanjaya did see the spectacle, seating comfortably miles away while recording and reporting the events as they happened? In the year 1027 AD, in the town of Kathu, Rajasthan, India, the metal skull of Barbarik appeared in a sealed, air-tight metal box with his name on it. A working crew bumped into it while digging a well. You can visit the Khatushyam Temple to see it yourself. Please check:

 

* * *

Could the Earth be as hollow as the moon? According to Admiral Richard E. Byrd (one of the most decorated officers in the United States Navy) a Crystal City thrives under the Antartica sheets of ice. 

Admiral Richard E. Byrd’s Missing Diary: A Flight to the Land Beyond the North Pole into the Hollow Earth.—Compiled by Geoff Douglas. Foreword by Dr. William Bernard. “…a mystery that will probably never be solved.”

We may be close to solving mysteries en masse. But even if we do not, the message given to Admiral Byrd by the man his captors called Master is accurate. And I quote: “Your race has now reached the point of no return, for there are those among you who would destroy your very world rather than relinquish their power as they know it.”

Isn’t that so?

https://odysee.com/@Rawd:b/lmh2019antartica:e?r=21hq5n8By5nNXkFZWQKH96TS5bBsBjRX (11:40) Hieroglyphics / Antartica / Linda Moulton Howe Admiral Bird’s cover up / Billy Carson https://youtu.be/rvklUIySnfk?si=odQRKRwXZutaE4Uj

*  *  *

About the stupidity of humanity’s belief systems and our contradictory behavior (the greatest riddles), shamans say that it happens because we are prey. They expose the predators: the mud shadows–inorganic beings that feed on our energy and keep us ignorant, arrogant, and underdeveloped.
Could the mud shadows be the archons of gnostics’ teachings? Don Juan introduced them to the terrified Castaneda as the flyers: ”They are big, black shadows that jump through the air. They pounce upon us to devour our energy.” They are described in The Active Side of Infinity by Carlos Castaneda: https://youtu.be/p9KIu8QYSyk
My Chapter about Mud Shadows:
https://rioguzman.com/2013/01/07/free-chapter-the-eye-of-the-dragon-enjoy/, The Eye of the Dragon: Stalking Castaneda

An excerpt from Possession and Predation:
“Of course, nothing indicates that all the manifestations of human contact with extraterrestrial entities are parasitical and negative. But it would serve us well to understand those cases that are. “Whatever the case, parasitism and predation resemble a kind of psychological warfare of which the aims are not known, but which deserves to be taken very seriously, without making a mental illness out of it.
  “Probably, the flyers, Archons, Greys, fairies, djinns, and other demonic-type entities are all part of the same taxonomy, the same array of mysterious forces able to interfere with us and yet, somehow, transcend the normal dimensions in which we live.”— Alain Gossens, Possession and Predation
http://web.archive.org/web/20051024093310/http:/www.metahistory.org/Gossens.php

Although I have never seen Flyers, I have encountered mysterious inorganic beings that can communicate with us. They long for our energy and some of them are hostile.
The gnostics who directed the Mystery Schools of the Near East in antiquity taught that the true mind of human beings is part of the cosmic intelligence pervading nature. But due to the intrusion of the Archons, it is subverted and occupied by another mind.
https://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/nag_hammadi/contents.htm
But here is where I go back to basics: the ego is a master at deception—a liar and the father of them. Let me quote from the paragraph above: “…due to the intrusion of the archons, it is subverted and occupied. . .” But that is exactly what the ego does. It subverts and occupies our minds. That is why Don Juan tells Castaneda (when facing the mud shadows) not to be afraid but to keep his inner silence so the flyer will leave.

I am not denying the existence of the flyers. I saw a picture once (taken with an infrared camera) in which two creatures resembling amoebas hovered in our atmosphere. They were not visible to the naked eye, but the unknown entities were there. Were they archons?
But we are giving too much importance to these miserable parasites, disregarding our most ubiquitous and damaging enemy: our self importance. Our hubris delivers us to our nemesis: the archons and the ruling class. We participate in their charade, applauding King Charles, voting for his minions, and absorbing their egomania.
It is our ego that makes us prey. If we unmask the imposter and relocate it to its rightful place (gatekeeper), we will be invulnerable—no more karma. If we awake, we will understand that all organic or inorganic forces attacking us will fail, repelled by our inner balance. Our strength does not reside in our minds but in our hearts—I am referring to our psychic hearts located beside our physical ones, the ones connected to our Source.

* * *

It is said that once one of Buddha’s students, who had limited intelligence and could not understand the teachings, despaired in frustration while being rejected by the sangha. While escorted out by his embarrassed brother, the Buddha noticed, figured out what was occurring, and intervened. He escorted him to a small stupa where two monks were sweeping.
The Buddha explained to the impaired young monk that he only had to keep his attention on the broom as it moved back and forth. He told the other two monks to please keep sweeping until he returned. Upon his return, he found three enlightenment monks.

Now, I understand that this may be a didactic story, not an actual event; but the fact remains that our mind is a two-edged sword that requires training. Otherwise, our ego will gain control and produce fears galore while remembering all our past misdeeds, spawning the negative energy and attitude our enemies crave.

And pertinent to my point: our ego is not indigenous to us; it forms around the age of two or three when we start identifying objects separate from us. That is the moment when the lady that lifts you becomes your mother—another human being. Or the structure you are under becomes a table or a chair, displaying separation. And the ego ( I ) is born.

According to shamans, it forms to help us navigate and interrelate in a physical . But it rebels. Instead of remaining a helpful guide, it becomes a parasitic, despotic guide. It will impersonate us. And gradually, it will make us believe it is us. It is not: it is only the gatekeeper of a dream, the collective dream. We are the dreamers.

Work in Progress!

All chapters are available now: Chapter 3: The Black Knight and The Moon, Chapter 4: Our Colonizers and the Sasquatch, Chapter 5: Hidden: Zero Point Energy and UFOs, Chapter 6: Remote Viewing, Chapter 7: Riddles, Archons, and Mud Shadows, Chapter 8: Was Jesus a Hybrid? Chapter 9: Your Identification Please, Conclusion, Bibliography and Acknowledgements.

Chapters 1 and 2: https://rioguzman.com/2023/02/25/dreaming-the-script-the-way-out-chapter-1/

This book (published in installments on this blog) is free. It will still be available after publication. A copy (PDF) will also be available upon request. It does the following for you.

  1. It exposes that a clique of psychopaths is currently culling our species. (See Current Affairs / Chapter 2)
  2. It unmasks Yahweh (and all gods), revealing extraterrestrial colonizers influencing Earth’s governance and observing us. We are a species on trial. 
  3. Show you that the theories of evolution have many loopholes and we are genetically modified beings.
  4. It reveals the predictive programming for World War Three. (See Conclusion) If we let it happen, it will be Armageddon.
  5. It will spur you into action upon realizing that voting, protesting, complaining, and whining will accomplish nothing. And we must round up these criminals now (hunt the hunters) when we still have the number, or we will be dead, slaves or fugitives before long. 
  6. It will make you question (in more ways than one), who are we?
  7. It exposes how ignorance, conceit, and extensive programming annul our powers and prevent the instant disabling of our dystopian socioeconomic system (Matrix). 
  8. It takes you to the ghastly bottom of the rabbit hole but every chapter points (directly or indirectly) to the way out–disabling the matrix.

My work is controversial (even for those who “know”), but for everything  I say, I list reliable sources; you will find the bibliography instructive, perhaps even enlightening. Humanity is in grave and imminent danger, so there is no charge for the book. If at the moment is too controversial for you, don’t worry, wait. I understand. And please accept my best wishes. The Hunger Games are beginning soon, and you will play an important role. May the odds be ever in your favor. Thanks for sharing.

To support my work please visit:

http://www.amazon.com/author/sguzmanc

http://www.rioguzman.com

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/rioguzman/disabling-matrix

https://odysee.com/@rioguzman:7

Thanks for your feedback. It is helping.

rioguzman@protonmail.com

Translate to your language on the left sidebar.

http://www.amazon.com/author/sguzmanc

https://www.buymeacoffee.com/rioguzman

Filed under: Books and Movies, Perspective | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Disabling the Matrix / Chapter 7 / Riddles, Archons, and Mud Shadows

Free Chapter | The Eye of the Dragon | Enjoy!

Posted on January 7, 2013 by Rio

Dragon cov 1 pg.

Chapter 9

Mud Shadows

“What is the force that binds us to selfish deeds, O Krishna? What power moves us, even against our will, as if forcing us?” —Arjuna

It is a constant challenge for human beings not to struggle in compulsive thinking to just enjoy life to the fullest. And it is astonishing that, although all of us have unlimited potential, we don’t seem to care to explore it; we rather indulge in petty fights with our immediate neighbors, and wage war with distant countries. It poses some interesting questions.

Again, in the Mahabharata, when the words of the Bhagavad Gita are about to be given to him, the warrior Arjuna asks Krishna: 

“What power binds us to selfish deeds? What power moves us, even against our will, as if forcing us?” 

When I read the passage, I thought that maybe Arjuna didn’t get an accurate answer. Perhaps Krishna, considering his inner turmoil, didn’t want to rattle him further—the Hindu Scriptures do refer to outside forces frequently. He answered the question with the words: 

“It is selfish desire and anger, arising from the guna of rajas (passions); these are the appetites and evils that threatens a person in this life.” 

Yes, but why? 

“What power moves us, even against our will, as if forcing us?”

This question points to the possibility of an alien force. Is there an alien being out there who puts a foreign installation in our heads? Satan? 

Castaneda wrote about a kind of inorganic being (mud shadows or flyers) who feed on our negative energy. These beings, to ensure their food supply, supposedly place an installation in our minds when we are young. This installation thinks for us, fostering our narrow-minded self-reflection. It creates the energy the mud shadows like, the outbursts of our ego: anger, envy and hate.

Being aware of humanity’s tendency to self-reflect and wantonly destroy, I can understand where the idea of an alien influence comes from. After all, shouldn’t we be doing better than we are? Why do our actions contradict our intelligence so consistently? Why our insistent self-reflection? What power moves us . . .?

I found an interesting parallel in the works of G.I. Gurdjieff. When he noticed the inability of human beings to confront the fact that we are transitory, he explained the aberration in a similar way: the Powers That Be to prevent our despair upon realizing that we are condemned to die, decided to keep us blind and  implanted in us the Organ Kundabuffer. It was placed at the base of our spine when we still had a tail.

Gurdjieff was being facetious, I presume, but the fact is that quite frequently we behave as if controlled by little green men from outer space. We are the only species on the planet that is always at odds with each other, with practically all other species, and with the planet itself. We are the only species with wars, jails, ghettos, and mental institutions where we act and live worse than animals would anywhere.

While working in Berkeley, selling my work at Telegraph Avenue by the University of California, I was exposed to the strangest cases of human behavior and mental illness. In those days Berkeley was called Berserkeley. Mental institutions had been closed down for lack of government funding and apparently all the inmates had been sent to Berkeley. 

Indeed, some Telegraph Avenue’s habitués were in great need of assistance. There was a man (I frequently saw him collecting money for the free clinic), who, for greeting him once, cussed me and even mentioned my mother. There was another deranged being, who, to get the newspaper, would kick the stand until it would break open; and yet another, who, as he passed by, would yell at you to shut up if you were speaking. Berserkeley.

I also remember in Berkeley, an insane young man who would come to the street with a beer in his hand. There were three or four blocks of vendor stands, and he would start at one end; he would dawdle behind the stands on both sidewalks, bleating like a goat. That man, to me, was representing humanity, bleating in despair through the fog of our own making. How did we arrive at such quandary? What have we done to ourselves as a species? What is the force that binds us to selfish deeds?

Since I had been in contact with inorganic beings (some of them hostile), and I had read in the Hindu Scriptures about the devas, and how we are assaulted “even in our dreams,” I was beginning to think that Castaneda was right. Noticing how our egomania seems to annul our intelligence, rendering our species violent and destructive, I was seriously considering the possibility that an alien force could be the cause. After all, the energy brought forth by our divisiveness could be palatable to some sort of inorganic being.

But I have never seen a flyer. I have seen the other inorganic beings, but never a mud shadow. And once, when Castaneda was facing a gigantic mud shadow, terrified to the bones although the encounter was being supervised by don Juan, he received the following advice: 

Don’t be frightened, don Juan said imperiously. Keep your inner silence and it will move away.

And I understood then that the flyer was the ego, which is always defeated by inner silence. 

So always remember that when you succumb to worry, fear, anger, self-pity, random thinking or any other unbalanced state of mind, the flyers’s mind, the ego-mind, is in control; the flyer has you by the throat. But don’t be frightened, revert to inner silence and it will go away. And if you practice consistently, you will see that we are all part of the Whole, everything is interconnected, nothing stands on its own, and there is nothing to fear.

*  *  *

Berkeley was also a haven for extraordinary people. I remember an attractive young lady without arms, her hands sprouted at her shoulders. And a man, with a terribly disfigured face, who wouldn’t cover his deformity, like the phantom of the opera would, but faced the world with it. 

I nodded at him once, a gesture of acceptance, and he came up to me, so that I could appreciate his disfigurement better. He stood in front of me and waited for a moment, as if trying to impress upon me the notion that, when you were as repulsive as he was, nobody wants to deal with you, as if  trying to tell me that I shouldn’t nod at him if I couldn’t talk to him.

And the fact was that I didn’t know what to say. Perhaps today, I would have known; perhaps today, I would have asked him his name. Or maybe I would have told him that we all have a challenge, and everything is interconnected. Perhaps not. But that sunny morning, I merely looked briefly into his brown eyes, the only part of his face that looked human, and he left, without saying a word.

*  *  *

Don Miguel Ruiz, in his work, The Four Agreements Companion Book, also talks about inorganic beings who feed on our fear and divisiveness, explaining it as mythology and allegory: Our own demons (fear, envy . . .) that can turn into allies (love, kindness . . .) depending on our energy and attitude. Don Miguel says that the Judge in us (ego), the Victim in us (also ego) grows to the point of becoming a Parasite that destroys our awareness and enslaves us. He explains that our Belief System (collective ego) reinforces the delusive program of our individual egos and magnifies the challenge. 

In Castaneda’s words: The protective guardian (ego) becomes a jealous, despotic guard who robs our energy to feed itself, while obliterating our connection to the Spirit.

*  *  *

The Buddha dispelled my doubts further when he explained: 

“There is no effect without its cause, and no supernatural beings that interrupt the basic causal processes of the world.” 

Since the Buddha also says that the ego is not indigenous to human beings, it seems that the foreign installation is formed, as Ramana Maharshi says, when the I thought sprouts at an early age. Whereupon the ego assumes separation and limitations, and we start creating our troubles. It seems that Satan, the Beast, Mara, the Flyer and the Ego are one and the same.

*  *  *

Castaneda’s foreign installation (the flyers’s mind) is, like Satan, a psychological spur. The idea that we may be prey for an inorganic being, just like chickens are prey for us, should galvanize us into action. It should also cut us down to size, shouldn’t it? For it turns us from the dominant species into just a remarkable species among many other remarkable species. Castaneda was a trickster.

Nevertheless, it is irrelevant whether there is an inorganic predator fostering our self-importance or not. For the fact is that as a species, we live in a state of constant and selfish preoccupation, which is causing great harm not only to ourselves but to all sentient beings. And it behooves us to control our pernicious ego, and discipline our minds, so that we can evolve into human beings with inner sight.

*  *  *

J. Krishnamurti daresay that being present should require no effort because it is just a matter of being here. Why should that require any effort? He also said that we put too much importance on the methods we use to awake: meditation, chanting, mantras . . . because methods imply time, and awakening is in the here and now. And I quote:

“When you see the necessity of it (a still mind), then there is no inquiry into the method at all. Then you see the necessity of having a quiet mind, and you have a quiet mind.” 

Paradoxically, although awakening is in the present moment, there is an effort to be made, for there is a habit to break: our internal dialogue. And we do need, as the Buddha teaches, the right effort. Presence is acquired with the right effort, for the ego will try to assert itself repeatedly; it will try until we see the necessity of a still mind with our very core.

*  *  *

Shamans instill in their apprentices the habit of breaking routines, because it changes their perspective and forces them to still the mind. When we act from habit we don’t need to focus our attention, and our mind indulges in its usual internal babble. So we break routines to disentangle ourselves from the programmed mind, and to help ourselves break free from the habit of compulsive thinking, our most detrimental routine.

I remember walking at leisure up to the Geisel Library at the University of California in San Diego one night (it is a long walk even when you pay for parking), when I noticed my absent minded condition. I had been wrapped in thought, pondering, absent, oblivious to my surroundings. Does it happen to you? Exactly. We are all ponderers. And we miss Reality.

So I decided to focus on what was taking place at the moment. I became aware of the things that I was approaching:    benches, buses, cars, bus stops . . . I noticed the aroma of the eucalyptus trees as I strolled along the wooded trails. 

Soon I arrived at the last stretch of my walk: The wide walkway lined by towering eucalypti, which takes you directly to the library. I noticed other pedestrians immersed, like I had been, in self-reflection, oblivious to the world.

I noticed the library in the distance, a huge building that rose like a mushroom, like a giant bird spreading its wings and obliterating the star-raddled sky. I pondered how such an enormous building could remain aloft with such a narrow base, a feat of engineering. It reminded me briefly of the ship Nostromo, in the movie Alien, and for a moment my mind drifted in that direction. I brought it back.  

I continued focusing on my surroundings, aware of the approaching building and the steps that brought it near. Gradually I was awaken from the slumber of self-reflection. 

When I arrived at the Geisel Library I was fully present, and the feeling of lightness was such that I felt like prolonging my walk. A quote from the Christ interrupted my concentration again, “Let thine eye be single and your whole body will be full of light.” 

And then I realized that prolonging my walk really didn’t matter, for, regardless of where we are or what we are doing, presence of mind is always an option. Our attention can always be placed on the action at hand.

It does not matter how well we do it either; our best is enough. Do not judge yourself, just be aware of what the mind does—that is the key. To see how we worry about past events that can’t be changed, or future ones that will never happen, is the first step. 

Stalk yourself. Watch the mind’s moves. Make it play. And don’t force the issue, for the mind’s very nature is to think. If you must think, however, do so about what is pertinent, or occurring now.

Our best effort is advised, for an undisciplined mind can’t avoid misleading us. Having a disciplined mind is the only way to control our ego-induced self-reflection, the darkness of selfishness. A disciplined mind is the key to happiness. “Let thine eye be single . . .”

When the Buddha finished his three months retreat, during the season of the southwest monsoon, he would tell his monks that if anyone asked what he did during his retreat, to tell them that he was mindful of his breathing, his body, his mind, his emotions, his feelings, and finally, he was mindful of the phenomena around him.

*  *  *

The act of following our breath will immediately place us in the present moment, away from the morass of mental imagery. Basui and Ramana Maharshi also recommend the method of self-inquiry to arrive at inner silence.

“Who am I?” We must ask the question repeatedly, with the intention of bypassing the ego to find out who we really are.  Who is reading this? Who wants to know?

*  *  *

At times, when I am about to succeed at stilling my mind, a different dialogue pops up. This time the dialogue is about explaining to somebody what I am doing and how, so that they can do it also. This dissertation seems worthy but it’s also useless; there is no one there for me to explain anything. No matter how worthy the dissertation seems, it is empty talk; I am talking to myself, and probably the situation will never happen. 

And even if it did, it is not happening at the moment. It’s the ego again, the monster with three thousand heads. Zen Buddhist monks say that even thinking about the Buddha is a waste of time. Our sages do not want us to think about them or worship them; they want us to be like them, present. The right thought is the thought reflecting what is occurring right now.

Another thing worth considering is that upon gaining ground, a stream of negative thoughts can erupt in your mind. As if someone, who knows your weaknesses, is feeling threatened by your progress and trying to stall you. Sometimes the thoughts are incongruous or grotesque, and seem to pop out of nowhere; they are completely unrelated to the present moment. These intruding states of mind should help you realize that the ego is not only a foreign installation, but a foreign installation, who, although our own creation, has a will and an energy of its own. And it tries to reassert itself.

The challenge is clearly cut out for us. The ego has to be taken for what it is, a mere point of reference in a dream. Our senses feed us incomplete and therefore misleading information. As don Juan told Carlitos: “Doing makes you separate the pebble from the larger boulder. If you want to learn not-doing let’s say that you have to join them.” 

We have to bypass our mind.

*  *  *

Life is full of paradoxes, isn’t it? The ego doesn’t really exist, it’s just a thought. But we need it to be able to operate in a world that is itself a thought, an interpretation of energy, a dream. The Toltecs call themselves warriors because the conquest of the self is the greatest of all conquests; it requires a sustained effort; it requires unbending intent. 

The following quotes go to the gist of the matter. The first one illustrates the challenge that we face; the second shows the way to meet that challenge:

 

“Lack of vigilance is like a thief, who slinks behind when mindfulness abates. And all the merit we have gathered in, he steals, and down we go to lower realms.”

—Shantideva in The Way of the Bodhisattva

 

“The more I doubted, the more I meditated, the more I practiced. Whenever doubt arose I practiced right at that point.  Wisdom arose. Things began to change. It’s hard to describe the change that took place. The mind changed until there was no more doubt. I don’t know how it changed. If I were to try telling someone, they probably wouldn’t understand.”

—Ajahn Chah in Food for the Heart

Amazon link: The Eye of the Dragon: Stalking Castaneda 

Filed under: Books and Movies | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Free Chapter | The Eye of the Dragon | Enjoy!

The Eye of the Dragon | Published!

Posted on December 2, 2011 by Rio

Published!

The Eye of the Dragon, Stalking Castaneda has been published. 

“In The Eye of the Dragon, Stalking Castaneda the author has written an engaging metaphysical narrative about the work of Carlos Castaneda. He is telling his own adventures and experiences, and using these as metaphors for the actual teachings.
At the premise level, this book is focused on a fairly generic subject, but at the execution level this generic quality is lifted with a personal and unique narrative. This personal touch warms up the material and makes the work accessible to the reader. Guzman’s writing style is particularly engaging, and he has a wonderful cadence to his writing that grabs readers and holds their attention.
This is ninety percent episodic narrative and ten percent outright teaching.”—CreateSpace

Although the main subject of the book is shamanism, the author juxtaposes the teachings with other major philosophies to show how they all converge at one point: the eye of the dragon . . . and to expose humanity’s bane.

To order: The Eye of the Dragon

To Excerpts 

It is also selling through amazon.com at: The Eye of the Dragon: Stalking Castaneda The “search inside the book” option is available now.

Also available at the Kindle library, and you can ask at your local library.

And Barnes and Noble  The Eye of the Dragon: Stalking Castaneda

Filed under: Books and Movies | Tagged: , , , , | Comments Off on The Eye of the Dragon | Published!

The Matrix | The Eye of the Dragon | The Challenge

Posted on June 2, 2010 by Rio

At last, I saw The Matrix. I liked the analogies (the Wachowskis must have read Carlos Castaneda) and implications. For although The Matrix is not produced by artificial intelligence (machines), it actually exists. It is here, limiting human beings, holding us in bondage, and rendering our intelligence useless − it creates a petty and cruel species that preys on its own kind.

What actually pulls the wool over our eyes, however, and forces us to take reality for what is not (and act like nitwits) is our own reflection − that is the part the movie misses. But, of course, being science fiction it is entitled to. I wonder, however, if it will help us realize that we are boundless beings trapped in a crippling system. And we can actually fly!

The Matrix is indeed everywhere, we are trapped in a bubble of perception, but so is the way out, the eye of the dragon, the knowledge to destroy our chains. We have a challenge in our hands, a challenge worthy of us.

There comes a moment in our lives when we are struck by a gut feeling that something is wrong, something is out of kilter. From that moment on it is our responsibility to accept the challenge and take action, do our search. Not doing so will extract from us an extremely high toll.

Be advised.

**********************

Morpheus: … you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Into a prison that you cannot taste or see or touch. A prison for your mind.

Buddha: Regard this fleeting world, as a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream,  a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, a flickering lamp, a phantom and a dream. − The Diamond Sutra

Morpheus: I’m trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You’re the one that has to walk through it.

For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart. There I travel, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length. And there I travel, looking, looking breathlessly. –Don Juan

Filed under: Books and Movies | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | 7 Comments »

Stalking Castaneda | Excerpt | Castaneda’s Legacy

Posted on June 15, 2009 by Rio

. . . and in case you don’t know Castaneda, I’ll tell you a little about his work as I go along, for it was a great help in my search for the eye of the dragon. I will also be comparing it with other works that have also been helpful. I won’t delve into any of these works; that is unnecessary. I will just say that their main and recurring theme is our destructive egomania, and I’ll let my own experience illustrate. It behooves you to do your own research and confirm the damaging effects of the ego, for being the bane of humankind its study is worthy of our consideration. Consider this:

     In an article I once came across in a monthly magazine, I read about a six-year-old boy who died after breaking his neck under an extremely heavy load, too heavy for the child to carry. The article also said that he had been a slave all his life. The author knew this because archeologists are trained to read bones. And the child’s bones, together with other bones (a mass grave for slaves) had been found while excavating somewhere in New York City (of all places) to lay the foundation for a new building. His bones not only told this archeologist how he had died but also how he had lived. They told him that he had been overworked all his life, that he had been malnourished, that he probably never had a loving arm around him. His bones told him that that heavy load killed him at the tender age of six years old.

    Should I ever feel sorry for myself? But actually, a more pertinent question would be, should I ever be sorry for that little boy? For just like that little boy I am going to die, and although longer, my life might well end up being much more miserable than his was. For only by reducing my self-importance to the lowest can I claim to be different from his captors and murderers; there is such a thing as a collective responsibility, a social contract. We all endorse a social contract that thrives in egomania, an egomania that causes the suffering of humanity.

Carlos Castaneda is dead now, but his controversial legacy remains.

Filed under: Tips for the Spirit | Tagged: , , , , , | Comments Off on Stalking Castaneda | Excerpt | Castaneda’s Legacy

Success Now!

Posted on October 25, 2008 by Rio

In this world of matter everything is temporary, nothing stays. To try to wrestle permanence out of situations and things is not seeing reality as it is. To cling selfishly to anything is the mark of the ignorant. (This is the ignorance caused by an ego that refuses to acknowledge that everything is interconnected) Success comes when we see clearly that when we unconditionally help others we help ourselves, for we are never separate from the Source; to think otherwise is delusion; it is, again, the work of the ego.

Now, to see things as they are, to see the unity of all things, requires presence of mind, which means that your thoughts are not in past or future situations (unless you are using the past for reference or planning a shopping trip) but in what you are doing right now! Remember, you can’t cross the bridge until you get to the river. If you see ‘Reality’ as it is you’ll see that success, like well-being, does not depend on outside circumstances, for we actually have all we need. If you see reality as it is your life situation could change suddenly and drastically without affecting your inner balance because you’ll see that you are part of a whole that is in perfect balance and working perfectly well.

Of course, you will not see this if you don’t discipline your mind and develop presence because the ego will render you blind. And I am afraid that just reading or hearing about it will probably help you little. But if you do just your best and practice, you’ll see it as clear as sunshine. And allow me to quote from “Mindfulness in Plain English” by H. Gunaratana: “Your practice can show you the truth. Your own experience is all that counts.”

Filed under: Tips for the Spirit | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Comments Off on Success Now!