Throughout the books, Don Juan often mentions "the spirit", for example in the Introduction to Magical Passes:
"Don Juan Matus was not ever interested in teaching his knowledge; he was interested in perpetuating his lineage. His three other disciples and I were the means - chosen, he said, by the spirit itself, for he had no active part in it - that were going to ensure that perpetuation."
"Since I couldn't choose to whom I would impart my knowledge, I had to accept whomever the spirit was offering me. And that person was you, and you are energetically capable only of ending, not of continuing."
What is this spirit? Is it like Brahman or God? Is it the eagle? Can one rely on it, be guided by it? How to get to know it?
10 Comments
Intend to get to know it. Intend to have a relationship with it.
In short, it’s everything. Everything you see before you. No separation, no empty spaces, everything filled and it’s all the spirit.
If you read every single book, you’ll start to get an idea but the best way to find out is to perceive it for yourself.
Thanks for the answer.
But has this spirit a will of its own? The above quotes seem to imply so...
I read all books except Wheel of Time and Magical Passes, as they seemed rather irrelevant to me. Would you recommend these two though?
That you would consider anything written by either Castaneda, Abelar or Donner as being irrelevant, to us specifically…is at the least, not encouraging.
Part of the problem is the ingrained pathology in western civilization to equate anything that has to do with “the spirit“ with religion rather than pure observation (resist going for a full science boner).
Because the pure part (clean link to Intent) is a real bitch.
I recommend reading every book available, check out the Books and Media section. Wheel of time is a nice selection of quotes from all of the books, and magical passes is directly relevant to the practices recommended here.
Spirit IS Will. Sentient source energy of everything there is. You can communicate with it, it can communicate with you, it’s everything that happens and everything you’re made of.
It’s all going to sound like woowoo until you experience it for yourself. There’s no way to really describe it sufficiently and there’s no way for me or anyone else to know exactly what it is.
It’s not something you can read about to know. You can begin to grasp the concept but there’s a thousand different words and descriptions for it and each one is only really a small piece of it.
Lately I get trapped in the perception of lack of personal free will. My entire life is dictated by inorganic intelligence. I am learning a lot but it is all the Eagle's will and never my own. Does this seem right? How do others break the perception of this?
Scroll down to the Nagual ; The Abstract/Spirit on this page:
https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/wiki/terminology/
And the biggie:
https://www.reddit.com/r/castaneda/wiki/intent
Did you read the "Bad Player" link?
Make sure you do or your chances to actually learn are very low.
You've gone the wrong direction.
What is "The Force" in Star Wars? What is the "Universe' in New Age?
Can only say how I see it: The Spirit is all things, it's the conscious energy web of the world. It has a remarable sense of humor, it's playful and attentive to your every thought and emotion.
It can sometimes be a "genie", you ask for a bit of a break and getaway, bam - you come down with a flu, you ask for more personal time and next thing you know, - you're fired. The goal is to understand it better, to strengthen your connection/clean the link to intent and reduce the genie effect, ultimately - to SEE how the energy flows, actually see it.
If spirit is the energy web... are the inorganic fluffs, the spiders on that web? are we the spiders? I have seen the violet fluffs form as dark spiders. Does this particular form have a significance? Maybe the 8 legs means something indicative of the energy flow?
I'm super under-qualified to answer your questions. lol And yet, I'll reply, keep my limitations in mind, tho.
I can only say, that all beings in the Universe are formations on that "web". I guess the "web" is an unfortunate choice of the word, the Matrix, the fabric of the world then. It's similar to how Neo sees the code as it flows in the Matrix. Don't take this literally, either, please! Just a metaphor to help me illustrate the point. The Matrix isn't LITERALLY The Spirit.
Don't know anything about energy forming into spiders (but all literal spiders are also energy formations, naturally, as everything and everyone is). Maybe somebody more knowledgeable could shed some light on what you experienced.
Also don't know about inorganic beings, since the way seers can know who is a human and who is an inorganic being is by looking at them: humans are luminous eggsm made of threads of white/golden light, but inorganics morphing into a human will still look like a human to a seer, not as an egg.
P.S. I don't know about their place in the Universe at all: if they can't die, it means the Eagle can't absorb their expereince or they found a way to gift their expereinces to the Eagle while still alive?