Chapter 13 Qualities of an Authentic Teacher The Buddhist tradition places special emphasis on finding a teacher who will help you move closer to your goals. I said earlier that although the underlying nature is present in each of us, we are unable to recognize it without the help of

Natural position We have already talked about what our natural position is. Let's put it all together. We are souls. The body is a shell that can change, but the soul located in this shell is immortal, full of knowledge and bliss. Being one of the energies of God,

Importance of ATS

– You think and talk too much. You have to stop talking to yourself.

- What do you mean?

-You talk to yourself too much. You are no exception to this. Each of us does this. We are having an internal conversation. Think about it. What do you do when you're alone?

- I'm talking to myself.

– What are you talking to yourself about?

- I don't know. Anything, I guess.

“I’ll tell you what we’re talking to ourselves about.” We talk about our world. In fact, we maintain our peace with our self-talk.

– How do we do this?

– When we stop talking to ourselves, the world is as it should be. We renew it, we give it life, we support it with our inner conversation. Not only that. We also choose our paths according to what we tell ourselves. So we repeat the same choice again and again, until we die. Because until we die, we continue the same internal conversation.

The warrior is aware of this and seeks to stop this conversation. This is the last thing you need to know if you want to live like a warrior.

“A warrior realizes that the world will change as soon as he stops talking to himself,” he said. “He must be prepared for this extraordinary push.”

“What do you mean, don Juan?”

– The world is such and such only because we tell ourselves that it is like that. If we stop telling ourselves that he is like this, then he will stop being like this. I don't think you're ready for such a sudden blow at this moment, so you should slowly start to stop creating the world...

...it is the internal dialogue that pins us to the ground,” don Juan said. – The world for us is such and such or such and such only because we tell ourselves about it that it is such and such or such and such...

...the entrance to the world of magicians opens only after the warrior learns to stop his internal dialogue.

“As you know,” he said, “the main obstacle in magic is internal dialogue: it is the key to everything.” When a warrior learns to stop it, everything becomes possible. The most incredible projects become feasible. The key to all the mysterious and supernatural things you have recently experienced was the fact that you were able to stop the internal conversation with yourself.

“I told you that it is the internal dialogue that pins us to the ground,” don Juan said. – The world for us is such and such or such and such only because we tell ourselves about it that it is such and such or such and such.

Don Juan explained that the entrance to the world of sorcerers opens only after the warrior learns to stop his internal dialogue.

“The essence of magic is to change our idea of ​​the world,” he said. – Stopping the internal dialogue is the only way to achieve this. Everything else is just empty words. Understand that everything you saw or did, with the exception of stopping the internal dialogue, could not change anything either in yourself or in your idea of ​​the world. The condition of this change, of course, is that it should not lead to madness. That is why the teacher does not attack his students. This would only lead them to depression and obsessions.

Vision comes only when the warrior is able to stop the internal dialogue.

“Stopping internal dialogue, however, is the key to the world of sorcerers,” he said. – All other activities are only support. All of it is aimed only at accelerating the effect of stopping the internal dialogue.

He said that there are two main activities or techniques used to speed up the stopping of internal dialogue: erasing personal history and dreaming. He reminded me that in the early stages of my apprenticeship he had given me a number of special methods for changing my personality. I wrote them down in my notes and forgot about them for several years until I realized their importance.

“Of course,” he said. “They opened you up, stopping your view of the world. In this, the power plants have the same effect on the tonal as the correct way of walking. Both overwhelm him with information, and the power of internal dialogue comes to an end. Power plants are excellent for this purpose, but their use is too expensive. They cause too much harm to the body. This is their disadvantage, especially the devil's grass...

Don Juan said that after the internal dialogue was stopped by the action of power plants, an inevitable impasse appeared. The student began to have doubts about the meaning of the entire apprenticeship. In don Juan's opinion, even the greatest enthusiasts would experience a serious loss of interest at this point.

Don Juan asserted again and again that the shutdown of internal dialogue was an essential feature of his magic. From the point of view of the explanation of the two spheres of attention given to me by La Gorda, stopping the internal dialogue was a working way of describing the distraction of the tonal's attention...

Don Juan said that as soon as we stop the internal dialogue, we stop the world. It was an operational description of the incomprehensible process of focusing our second attention. He said that some part of us is always locked away because we are afraid of it.

This part of us, from the point of view of our minds, is like a crazy relative whom we keep locked up in a dungeon. This part was, according to La Gorda, the second attention. When it can finally focus on something, the world has stopped. Since we, as ordinary people, know only the attention of the tonal, it is not much of an exaggeration to say that as soon as this attention is extinguished, the world really stops for us.

Focusing our wild, untrained second attention must inevitably be a terrifying thing. Don Juan was right when he said that the only way to keep this crazy relative from attacking us is to protect ourselves with an endless internal dialogue...

Don Juan defined inner silence as a special state of expulsion of thoughts, in which a person can function at a different level of consciousness than usual. He emphasized that inner silence occurs when the internal dialogue - the eternal companion of thoughts - ceases, and therefore is a state of deep silence.

The sorcerers of ancient times, don Juan said, called this inner silence, since in this state perception does not depend on the senses. During inner silence, another ability of a person comes into force, the ability that makes him a magical being, an ability limited not by the person himself, but by some alien influence...

Inner silence, he continued, is the basis of all magic. In other words, everything we do leads us to this basis. It, like everything else in magic, does not reveal itself until something gigantic shakes us up.

Don Juan assured me that inner silence is the path that leads to true renunciation of judgment; to that moment when our senses cease to interpret the sense data emanating from the entire Universe; to the point where comprehension ceases to be a force that comes to determine the nature of the universe through repetition and use.

Sorcerers need a turning point for inner silence to work, don Juan said. - The turning point is like the mortar that a mason puts between rows of bricks. Only then do the individual bricks turn into a structure when the mortar hardens.

Accumulation of inner silence

Don Juan said that the sorcerers of ancient Mexico invented all sorts of ways to shake themselves or other sorcerer practitioners to the core in order to achieve a secret state of inner silence. They came up with the most unimaginable actions that, it would seem, could not be associated with achieving inner silence, such as, say, jumping into a waterfall or nights spent on tree branches upside down. However, these were the key techniques to achieve such a state.

Following the logic of the sorcerers of ancient Mexico, don Juan categorically stated that inner silence increases and accumulates. In my case, he tried to guide me to create a core of inner silence within myself, and then gradually build it up at every opportunity. He explained that the sorcerers of ancient Mexico discovered that each person has his own threshold of inner silence in terms of time. In other words, inner silence must remain in each of us for a certain time before it works.

And what did the ancient sorcerers consider to be a sign that inner silence had begun to work, don Juan? I asked.

Inner silence begins to work from the moment you begin to develop it in yourself,” answered Doi Huang. “What the magicians of antiquity sought was the finale, the dramatic end and the result of reaching that individual threshold of silence. Some especially gifted magicians need only a few minutes of silence to achieve their desired goal. Others, less talented, require a much longer period of silence to achieve the desired result. The desired result is what sorcerers called the stopping of the world - the moment when everything around ceases to be what it always was.

This is the moment when the magician returns to the true nature of man,” don Juan continued. - The magicians of ancient times also called it absolute freedom. This is the moment when the human slave becomes a free being, capable of such miracles of perception that challenge our ordinary imagination.

From the very beginning of our acquaintance, don Juan never ceased to hammer into my head the idea of ​​the meaning of inner silence. I tried my best to follow his advice to accumulate inner silence in the most sincere way every moment. I had neither the ability to measure my gains nor the means to judge whether or not I had finally reached my threshold. I simply stubbornly set my sights on developing such a state in myself. And not only to please don Juan, but also because he considered it a matter of honor.

Carlos Castaneda "The Active Side of Infinity"

The way that don Juan was able to silence the internal dialogue of his disciples was to encourage them to remain silent, second after second. We can say that silence “glues together” from seconds until it reaches the individual border that exists in each of us. My limit was fifteen minutes. When I reached it, accumulating silence, the everyday world changed and I perceived it in an indescribable way. The only possible practice that can be advised is an effort, an intense desire to achieve silence, step by step. It is absolutely unacceptable for someone to teach us how to take these steps, or to lead us by the hand, giving instructions every moment. Don Juan said that the only essential thing is the personal decision of each of us to come to silence.

You think of accessing magic as a matter of accumulating enough energy, but not all people seem equally capable of it by birth. Is there really a chance for everyone?

Yes. I would add to this that it seems to me that no one is born sufficiently endowed with energy. This reduces the problem to a common denominator: since no one has enough energy, we all have almost equal chances. Undoubtedly, there are people who were born with much more energy than others, but this is only to waste it on everyday activities. This amount of energy has no advantage in reaching the world of magicians. This includes those who accumulate energy of a special quality: the fruit of iron discipline and intention.

Is it possible to face the everyday world without losing energy?

Magicians like don Juan say it is possible. They say that the events of the everyday world are destructive for us only if they are refracted through a sense of self-importance. We are so self-centered that the slightest trouble overwhelms us. We spend so much energy trying to present and protect our “I” in the everyday world that we have nothing left to face anything that contradicts us. This complete wear and tear seems to be something inevitable, since we move exclusively along the rut laid out by our socialization. If we dared to change the track, change the way of existence, only suppressing the onslaught of self-importance, we would achieve an unprecedented result: we would eliminate the daily waste of energy and find ourselves in energetic conditions that would allow us to perceive much more than we used to think possible .

Is it possible to achieve this without the nagual's "push"?

What don Juan offers is achievable for all those who have achieved inner silence. Stopping internal dialogue is the ultimate goal that can be achieved using any means. The presence of a teacher or guide is not superfluous, but it is not absolutely necessary. What is really needed is daily effort to accumulate silence. Don Juan said that coming to complete silence is tantamount to “stopping the world.” This is the moment when you see a flow of energy in the Universe around us.

Interview with C. Castaneda to the magazine "Mas alla de la ciencia" 1997

The fifth theme, which is the culmination of the previous four, and which the magicians of ancient Mexico most eagerly sought to achieve, is inner silence. Inner silence was defined by don Juan as a person's natural state of perception when thoughts are stopped and all of a person's faculties function at that level of consciousness when the everyday way of knowing does not work.

Don Juan compared inner silence to darkness, since human perception, deprived of its usual companion, internal dialogue, that is, the silent verbal expression of the process of cognition, falls into something resembling a dark pit. The body functions as usual, but consciousness is heightened. Decisions are instantaneous, and they seem to be born from a special kind of knowledge, devoid of thoughts and words.

The sorcerers of ancient Mexico, who discovered and used the magical passes that are the core of tensegrity, believed that human perception, operating in conditions of inner silence, can reach indescribable levels.

They even argued that some of these levels of perception belonged to other worlds, which they believed coexisted with our world; worlds, including the one in which we live; worlds where we can live or die, but which cannot be described in terms of the linear paradigms that the ordinary state of human consciousness uses to explain the Universe.

Inner silence, in the understanding of the sorcerers of don Juan's line, is the matrix for a giant step of evolution; the sorcerers of ancient Mexico called this giant step silent knowledge. Silent knowledge is a state of human consciousness in which knowledge comes automatically and instantly. Knowledge in this case is not a product of brain activity, or logical induction or deduction, or generalizations based on similarity and difference. In silent knowledge there is nothing a priori, nothing that constitutes the body of knowledge. For silent knowledge, everything is hanging now. Complex pieces of information are grasped immediately, without any preliminaries.

Don Xian believed that the Silent Knowledge was hinted at by early man, but that early man was not the true master of the silent knowledge. Don Juan said that such a hint was then much stronger than what a modern person experiences, because now most knowledge is acquired by memorization. He believed that although we have lost the hint, the road leading to silent knowledge will always be open to man, and it begins with the matrix of inner silence.

Achieving inner silence is a necessary precondition for everything described here. Don Juan said that inner silence must be achieved through the consistent pressure of discipline. He said that inner silence must be accumulated, or stored up bit by bit, by second. In other words, a person must constantly force himself to be silent, at least for a few seconds. Don Juan said that if a person is persistent, then persistence will overcome habit, and then the person will come to the threshold when he begins to accumulate seconds and minutes, but this threshold is different for everyone. For example, if for someone the threshold of inner silence is ten minutes, then as soon as this mark is reached, inner silence appears on its own, in other words, of its own accord.

There is no way to know in advance what an individual person's threshold is. This can be learned with practice. I'll tell you about myself. Following don Juan's instructions, I persistently forced myself to remain silent, and one day, while walking through the grounds of UCLA (University of Los Angeles, California) from the anthropology department to the cafeteria, I reached my mysterious threshold. I knew I had achieved it because in an instant I experienced something that don Juan had told me about in detail; he called it stopping the world. In an instant, the world ceased to be what it was - it stopped - and for the first time in my life I realized that I saw energy as it flows in the Universe. I sat down on the stone step. I knew that there were stone steps where I was sitting, but I knew this only intellectually, from memory. I myself felt that I was sitting on energy. I myself was also energy, like everything around me.

Then I was horrified by something that no one except don Juan could explain; I realized that although I was seeing for the first time in my life, I had seen energy as it flows in the Universe all my life, but I was not aware of it. Seeing energy as it flows through the universe was not new. It was a new question that arose in me with such incredible fury that it even brought me back to my everyday world. “What has kept me my whole life from seeing energy as it flows in the Universe?” I asked myself.

Don Juan explained this to me by making a distinction between ordinary consciousness and intentional awareness of something. He said that deep consciousness is inherent in man, but all these moments of deep consciousness are experienced by a person when he is not able to consciously become aware of them. He said that inner silence filled the gap and allowed me to become aware of things that I was only aware of in general terms.

Brochure by Carlos Castaneda distributed at a seminar given by Carlos Castaneda, Florinda Donner-Grau, Taisha Abelar and Carol Tiggs July 20-25, 1996 at the University of Los Angeles, California (UCLA).

ATS practices

Intent of ATS

“The sorcerers’ explanation for choosing a theme for a dream is as follows,” don Juan said. – The warrior chooses the topic consciously, interrupting the internal dialogue and keeping the image in his head. In other words, if he can interrupt the conversation with himself for a while, and then, even for a moment, hold the image or thought of the desired thing in a dream, the desired topic will come to him. I'm sure you did it, albeit unknowingly.

“Your task for tonight is to see people,” he said finally. – First you have to stop your internal dialogue. Then you must conjure up an image of the face you want to see. Any thought that you hold in your mind in a state of inner silence is itself a command, since there are no other thoughts there that can compete with it.

Carlos Castaneda "Tales of Power"

Don Juan reminded me that the key to everything seers do is to stop the internal dialogue. He told me about this many times from the very beginning of our communication. And he emphasized again and again that it is the internal dialogue that fixes the assemblage point in its original position.

“Once you achieve silence, everything becomes possible,” he said...

“The explanation is simplicity itself,” don Juan said. -You commanded it. By doing so, you have set a new intention, a new command. Well, then your team became the Eagle team.

– This is the most extraordinary of the discoveries of new seers. Our teams can become Eagle teams. The internal dialogue stops due to the same thing due to which it begins: due to the action of the will. After all, we are forced to start an internal conversation with ourselves under pressure from those who teach us. When they teach us, they use their will, and we use ours, just like them, without realizing it. By learning to talk to ourselves, we learn to control our will. It is our will to talk to ourselves. And to stop the internal conversation with ourselves, we should use the same method: we must command it, we must intend it.

Carlos Castaneda "Fire from Within"

Listening to the sounds of the world

– How can I stop talking to myself?

– First of all, you should use your ears to take some of the strain off your eyes. Since birth, we have used our eyes to judge the world. We talk to others and to ourselves mainly about what we see. The warrior is aware of this and listens to the sounds of the world.

I put my notes aside. Don Juan laughed and said that he did not mean that this should be forced. That listening to the sounds of the world should be harmonious and patient.

I began to practice “listening to the sounds of the world.” Don Juan told me to practice this for two months. It was excruciatingly difficult to listen and not watch, but the struggle with internal conversation was much more difficult. However, by the end of the second month I learned to stop it, albeit for short periods of time, and also pay attention to the sounds.

Carlos Castaneda "Separate Reality"

Walk of power

At the beginning of our acquaintance, don Juan outlined the following technique to me. It consisted of walking for a long time without focusing on anything. He recommended not looking at anything directly, but, slightly squinting your eyes, maintaining a peripheral view of everything that appears before your eyes. He insisted, although I did not understand it at the time, that if you keep your unfocused eyes at a point just above the horizon, it is possible to perceive everything in a 180-degree spectrum in front of you. He insisted that this exercise was the only way to stop the internal dialogue. At first he asked me about my successes, but soon he stopped being interested in this...

Then I realized that stopping internal dialogue is not just cutting back the words spoken to oneself. The whole process of my thinking stopped, and I felt as if suspended, floating.

In order to stop the way of seeing the world that you have maintained since the cradle, it is not enough to simply wish or simply make a decision. A practical task is required. This practical task is called the correct way of walking. It seems harmless and pointless. Like everything else that has power in itself or through itself, the correct way of walking does not attract attention. You understood him and treated him, at least for a few years, as just a curious way of behaving. It didn't occur to you until very recently that this was the most effective way to stop your internal dialogue.

– How can the correct way of walking stop internal dialogue?

“Walking in this specific manner saturates the tonal,” he said. “It floods it.” You see, the tonal's attention must be kept on its creations.

In fact, it is this attention that creates order in the world in the first place. Therefore, the tonal must be attentive to the elements of its world in order to maintain it. And above all, he must maintain a picture of the world as an internal dialogue.

He said that the correct way of walking is a deception. The warrior first draws his attention to his hands by tucking his fingers, and then, looking without fixing his eyes at any point directly in front of him in the sector that begins at the ends of his feet and ends above the horizon, he literally floods his tonal with information. The tonal, without its face-to-face relationship with elements of its own description, is unable to talk to itself, and so it becomes silent.

Don Juan explained that the position of the fingers did not matter and that one simply had to draw attention to the hands by squeezing the fingers in unusual ways. And what is important here is that the eyes, kept unfocused, notice a huge number of features of the world without receiving a clear idea of ​​them. He added that eyes in this state are able to notice details that would be too fleeting for normal vision...

Carlos Castaneda "Tales of Power"

La Gorda formulated this as “the subsidence of thoughts.” Don Juan also made me do this, although he took me in a different way: instead of focusing my gaze, as contemplatives did, he taught me to open it, to flood my awareness without focusing my gaze on anything. I had to feel the entire 180° in front of me with my eyes, keeping my eyes unfocused just above the horizon line.

Carlos Castaneda "Second Ring of Power"

We believed that an essential aid to dreaming was a state of mental calm, which don Juan called “stopping the internal dialogue” or “not talking to oneself.” To teach me how to do this, he usually had me walk for miles, keeping my eyes fixed and unfocused at a level just above the horizon, so as to place emphasis on the peripheral field of vision. This method was effective in two ways. After years of trying, he allowed me to stop my internal dialogue and he trained my attention. By forcing me to concentrate my attention on the periphery of my visual field, don Juan increased my ability to concentrate for long periods of time on a single activity...

Carlos Castaneda "The Eagle's Gift"

Contemplation

Instead of struggling to focus, a woman should distract herself from the images of the world, contemplating distant hills, water, such as a river, or clouds.

During contemplation, your head begins to spin and your eyes get tired, but if you close them a little and blink and move them from one mountain to another or from one cloud to another, then you can contemplate for hours or whole days, if necessary.

The nagual used to make us sit by the door and contemplate those round hills on the other side of the valley. Sometimes we sat like this for several days until the crack opened...

He never explained to us what he actually did. He simply taught us to contemplate. We never realized that staring was a way of catching 28 our second attention. We thought it was kind of fun. But that was not the case. Before dreamers can capture their second attention, they must first become contemplatives.

First, the Nagual put a dry leaf on the ground and made me look at it for hours. Every day he brought a sheet and placed it in front of me. At first I thought that these were the same sheet, but then I noticed that they were different. The Nagual said that when we realize this, we no longer look, but contemplate.

Then he began to place a pile of dry leaves in front of me. He told me to rake them with my left hand and feel them while contemplating. The dreamer moves the leaves in a spiral, contemplates them, and then dreams of the patterns formed by the leaves. The Nagual said that if a dreamer first sees patterns in a dream, and the next day finds them in his pile of dry leaves, he can consider himself to have mastered leaf contemplation. The Nagual said that gazing at the leaves strengthens the second attention. If you stare at a pile of leaves for hours, as he used to make me do, then the thoughts subside. Without thoughts, the attention of the tonal decreases. Suddenly your second attention catches on the leaves, and the leaves become something else. The nagual called the moment the second attention is hooked the world stopping.

“You make it sound so simple, La Gorda.”

– Everything the Toltecs do is very simple. The Nagual said that all we need to do to catch our second attention is just to try and try. We have all stopped the world by closely observing dry leaves. You and Eligio are different. You did it with power plants. Which way the Nagual followed in the case of Eligio, I do not know. He never told me. He told me about you because we have a common task...

“Did the nagual force you to contemplate only a pile of dry leaves?”

– When the dreamer knows how to stop the world, he can contemplate other things. Having finally lost his form completely, he can contemplate anything. I'm doing this. Although he advised us to follow a certain order in contemplation, I can enter into anything.

– At first we contemplated small plants. The Nagual warned us that such plants are very dangerous. Their power is concentrated, they have a very intense glow and are felt when dreamers contemplate them. They gather their light and shoot it at the beholder. The dreamer must choose one type of plant to contemplate.

Then we contemplated the trees. Each dreamer has his own type of tree to contemplate. In this regard, you and I are the same - we are both contemplators of eucalyptus trees...

Then, she continued, the nagual made them contemplate moving living beings. He said that small insects are the best objects. Their mobility made them harmless to the beholder, unlike plants, which extracted their light directly from the ground.

The next step was to closely contemplate the stones. She said that the stones are very ancient, strong and have a special light, rather greenish, in contrast to the white light of plants and the yellowish light of moving creatures. The stones are very difficult to open to the beholder, but it is worth the effort - the stones have their own special secrets hidden in their core. These secrets can help the magician in his dreams.

– What kind of secrets do the stones reveal to you?

“When I look closely at the very core of a stone,” she said, “I always catch a whiff of a special smell inherent only to this stone.” When I wander in my dreams, thanks to these smells I know where I am.

She added that time of day was an important factor when viewing leaves, rocks and plants. In the early morning, the trees and stones seem numb and the light is dim. Around noon they are in their best form, and contemplation of them at this time is carried out to borrow their light and strength. At the end of the day and early evening, the trees and stones are quiet and sad, especially the trees. La Gorda felt that at this hour they themselves were contemplating the contemplator.

The second series in the sequence of close contemplation is the contemplation of cyclical phenomena: rain and fog. She said that contemplatives can focus their attention directly on the rain itself and move with it, or focus it in the background and use the rain as a kind of magnifying glass to see the hidden features of the world. Places of power or places to be avoided are found through gazing through the rain. Places of strength are yellowish in color, and unfavorable places are intense green.

La Gorda noted that, undoubtedly, fog is for the contemplator the most mysterious thing on Earth and that it can be used in the same two ways as rain. But he does not easily yield to a woman; even after she loses her form, he still remains inaccessible to her. She told how one day the Nagual made her see a green haze in front of a line of fog and explained that it was the second attention of a fog gazer living in the mountains where they were then, and that it moved with the fog. She added that the fog is used to reveal the ghosts of things that no longer exist, and that the real skill of the fog meditators lies in the ability to allow their second attention to enter into whatever their contemplation reveals to them...

The next stage was a closer look into the distance and at the clouds. In both cases, the efforts of the contemplatives were to allow their second attention to go to the place they were contemplating. In this way they covered any distance or sailed on the clouds. When working with clouds, the Nagual never allowed them to contemplate storm clouds. He told them that they must first become formless, and only then they will be able to perform feats more spectacularly: they will be able to “ride” not only on a thundercloud, but also on the lightning itself...

The last episode was a close contemplation of fire, smoke and shadows. She said that for the contemplator the fire is not bright, but dark, almost black, the same as smoke. Shadows, on the other hand, are sparkling. They have color and they have movement.

There were two more things that stood apart - close contemplation of the stars and water. Stargazing was performed only by magicians who had already lost their human form. According to her, contemplating the stars went very well for her, but she could not cope with contemplating water, especially flowing water. Sorcerers used it to gather their second attention and transport it to any place where they wanted to be.

“We are all afraid of water,” she continued. – The river collects the second attention and carries it away, and there is no way to stop. The Nagual told me about your exploits in contemplating water. Once you almost disintegrated in the water of a small river, so now you can’t even take a bath...

La Gorda got up and went into the house. A minute later she returned with a small, thick, round cushion made from fibers commonly used for making nets. Without saying a word, she led me to the front porch. There she said that she made this pillow herself; it was comfortable to sit on when she was learning to contemplate. Because in close contemplation the position of the body is very important. You need to sit on the ground on a soft cushion made of natural fibers or on a bed of leaves. The back is leaned against a tree, stump or flat stone. The body should be completely relaxed. The eyes are never fixed on an object to avoid eye fatigue. Close contemplation consists of very slowly scanning the contemplated object counterclockwise, but without turning the head. She added that the Nagual made them dig these thick pillars so that they could lean against them...