"Passivity", he said, "is a violation of our nature, because, in essence, we are all formidable combatants. Every human being is, by right, a soldier who has achieved his place in the world in a battle of life and death."
"Look at it this way: At least once, as sperms, each one of us fought a battle for life - a unique struggle against millions of other competitors - and we won! And now the battle continues, since we are trapped by the forces in the world. One part of us is fighting to disintegrate and die, while another tries to maintain life and awareness at any cost. There is no peace! A warrior realizes this, and used it to his advantage. His goal continues to be that which inspired the spark of life that created him: Access to a new level of awareness."
He continued by saying that as we become socialized, human beings are tamed, just like animal is domesticated, by the power of stimuli and punishments.
"We have been trained to live and die meekly, following unnatural codes of behaviour which soften us and make us lose that initial impulse, until our spirit is hardly noticeable. We are born as a result of a fight. By denying our basic tendencies, the society we live in eradicates the warring heritage that transforms us into magical beings."
He added that the only available way to change is to accept ourselves just as we are, and work from there.
"The warrior knows that he lives in a predatorial universe. He can never let his guard down. Wherever he looks, he sees an incessant fight, and he knows that it deserves his respect, because it is a fight to the death. Don Juan was always moving, coming or going, supporting this or rejecting that, provoking tensions or discharging them in a burst, shouting his intent or remaining silent; doing something. He was alive, and his life reflected the ebb and flow of the universe.
"He told me that, from the moment when the explosion which gave us origin occurred, until the moment of our death, we live within a flow. Those two episodes are unique, because they prepare us for the encounter of what lies further ahead. And what aligns us to that flow? An incessant battle, which only a warrior will attempt. Because of that, he lives in profound harmony with everything.
"For a warrior, to be harmonious is to flow, not to stop in the middle of the current and try to make a space of artificial and impossible peace. He knows that he can only give the very best of himself under conditions of maximum tension. For that reason, he seeks out his opponent the way a fighting rooster does - with avidity, with delight, knowing that the next step is decisive. His opponent is not his fellow man, but his own attachments and weaknesses, and his grand challenge is to compress the layers of his energy until they won't expand when his life ceases, so that his awareness does not die.
"Ask yourselves these questions: What am I doing with my life? Does it have a purpose? Is it tight enough? A warrior accepts his destiny, whatever it may be. However, he fights to change things, and he made something exquisite of his passage on Earth. He tempers his will in such a way that nothing can deviate him from his purpose."
Armando Torres
Encounters with the Nagual
