Topic: The Nagual's Double

[Ke-ke wan]

I could have sworn I posted this before,  but can not find it for the life of me.  So will begin with part one,  with apologies to any who have read it before,  and add the rest as I read them myself.


By Leia Norton

I am making my way up a narrow path through green rice fields. A little stream flows briskly along to my left. The night chorus of crickets has given way to a loud call and response of roosters. They seem to remain unseen, like so much of Bali, behind a veil. It’s one o’clock in the afternoon and I feel the warm sun overhead. I turn left onto a smaller path going to meet Lujan Matus. After crossing a tiny bridge I arrive at an archway. A black dog announces my arrival. Not wanting to upset the dog I stay still, waiting. After awhile Lujan appears, greeting me with a hug. The dog falls silent.

I perceive him differently from yesterday. He seems larger somehow. Massive even. I become aware of a pressure inside my chest. The feeling quickly enlists my abdomen, which I can feel tightening as I follow Lujan. We walk past some workers and little children playing amongst baby chicks and many plants. Beautiful birds are singing. I notice there is a very good feeling in his space. He motions me to sit down.

“What’s going on?” He asks.

“Huh? Oh, I feel fine!” I respond with too much enthusiasm.

“You are different today. You have changed from yesterday. You heart space is spinning differently,” he relays to me, very matter of fact.

“Yea.” I turn my full attention to the unpleasant feeling swirling in my chest. “I am feeling somewhat nervous.”

“O.K. He seems to welcome my comment. “What is it”?

“I don’t know” I say flatly.

“Yes, you do know. You must tell me what it is.”

His pointed inquiry is increasing my anxiety. “It just happens to me,” I begin, searching for words to fit the feelings. “When I perceive myself going beyond my limits, a fearful feeling begins to arise. It increases until I am subject to it. It surrounds me. It has happened my whole life.”

“Where does it come from? What is its source?” He is regarding intently.

“I don’t know. I have just always had to deal with this. It comes up and envelops me as if it is a part of me.” I can feel the hopelessness of my words.

“You know where it comes from” he insists. “Something happened to you. This thing is not a part of you. You did not have it yesterday. You were yourself completely. Now this has entered. Tell me what it is.”

It appears I will have to answer. He is waiting, studying me. I want to escape his gaze. It feels as though he is reading my thoughts.

Nervous, I glance at him. He meets my eyes but I look away quickly, lowering my head. Gazing at the floor I am suddenly in the hallway of my house when I was 15. My father is there preventing me from going up the stairway. His presence is very oppressive and dangerous. I am cowering inside. He tells me he is going to break my spirit. I just look at him. I know he cannot do this, yet I feel my spirit move up within me and go out the left side of my body. I feel it hovering a little above me on my left. I become gripped with fear knowing my spirit is out of my body. I am in a cold sweat. I am paralyzed.

“What is happening?” I hear Lujan’s voice. It sounds far away.

I tell Lujan I know where the feeling comes from. I tell him about the encounter with my father.

“He is feeding off of your energy” Lujan announces. It is more of a pronouncement.

“Right now?” I ask.

“Yes. When this site is triggered within you he takes your energy. No one has the right to take your energy, Leia. This must stop immediately.” He seems to be talking to my body. “You have to seal yourself.” He falls silent and looks off to the side. Addressing me again, he says he can see visually what was occurring. He describes a chest of drawers. Some of the drawers are pushed in, making my energy available for taking. He tells me that now the drawers are going to go back into their proper position.

A picture flashes in front of Lujan as he speaks. The picture contains images that describe my energetic situation, and its resolution. Within the images is information conveyed as feelings being sent directly to my heart center. The pictures convey to me a feeling of how to seal my energy body. They also show me my energetic body sealed in an original state. The feeling is transferred to me, bodily.

“You just saw the pictures in front of us, didn’t you?” He knows the answer.

I confirm that I saw.

“What appeared in front of us confirms that you are now sealed.” As Lujan speaks the tattoos on his forearms lift up a foot and hover there. It feels like they are participating or making a statement. As they hover I feel the echo of my own feelings, a tremendous surge of love within my heart. “Your tattoos” I point out to him. He is observing them in silence.

I look around the room. It is very dreamlike. I look at Lujan. His eyes hold me within their kindness. I look within them for a long time. He beckons me to travel there and I travel, into nothing. His eyes are filled to the brim with emptiness.

“Shall we begin?” He asks.

Begin? I wonder what he means.

[Ke-ke wan]

PART TWO:
By Leia Norton



“What are you thinking?” he asks. I stop to examine my thoughts. My brain feels inert. “I’m not thinking anything,” I tell him. “Good,” he says. “Power never presents itself to those who are accessible.”

He motions me to a massage table in the middle of the room. I plop down looking at the floor. A reprieve.

“Do you feel that?” His hands are on my shoulders.

“Yea.” It feels altogether unique.

“That is my energy.” It streams in circling to my feet returning in my head. He withdraws his hands. “Can you sit up?” He is handing me a pair of headphones. “This will last about an hour. Just listen and relax.” He leaves going up a flight of stairs.

I hear the sound of rain. The room is womblike, a refuge, dimly lit with cobalt blue walls. It seems aware of itself. Protective. I allow myself to drift.

A sudden presence enters the room startling me out of my solitude. It is a force that flashes through me. Opening my eyes I am surprised to see Lujan standing on my right. It is Lujan but not Lujan. There is something strange about him. Then he vanishes. There is no one there.

“How are you doing?” Lujan is walking in.

“I just saw you in the room a minute ago!” I blurt out, part confession and accusation.

“Really?” he asks, surveying me intently. “What did I look like?”

“You looked exactly like you, only bigger.”

“You saw my double,” he says.

“Your Double.” I repeat as a kind of joke. A windy feeling becomes a highway through my abdomen.

“I heard the noise outside and knew you were distracted so I came down. My Double just got here first.” For some reason I laugh, aware there is no point. Recalling the noise I had forgotten, it is now a vivid memory. My mind drifts leaving my body there to face the situation. Lujan laughs. He stands in front of me, omnipresent. There is a bouncy feeling in my heart center and my limbs are buzzing. A part of me comes unhinged and roams out to meet him. It feels like going out to play as a small child.

He observes me closely then pauses as if to make a determination on some matter. “Go ahead and listen to the soundtrack. I’ll be back to check on you in a little while.” He leaves me with a pat on the shoulder.

I replace the headphones. Loud splats of rain are coming down. I hear African chanting in the background and focus on it to distraction obsessing about whether it is real or imagined. An internal trembling makes me fidget.

Suddenly the air in the room seems to rush past me coming from everywhere. It is the speed of the movement that is so startling. I open my mouth to gasp but make no sound. There is Lujan again. It’s as though he flashes into form for a second and then disappears. I stare at the empty space. Moments later Lujan is coming down the stairs. He walks over to me with a huge grin on his face.

“I saw you again.” I hear my voice from within a tunnel.

“I know. You saw my Double again. No one has ever seen it.” He seems excited. “Take those things off so you can hear me,” he taps on the headphones. “This is very interesting, very unusual,” he continues. “You beckoned me and so I came. My Double arrived first. It is always ahead of me, or just outside waiting.” He speaks to me as if revealing a secret.

“I don’t remember calling you.” I respond.

His laughter reverberates in the room. It’s contagious. I giggle, feeling elated and ridiculous at the same time. “Is there African chanting on the rain soundtrack?” I feel high, stoned.

“You are having quite a day, aren’t you?” He beams at me, not answering the question. “There’s another ten minutes of sound. Do you think you can listen awhile longer?”

I want to ask so many questions. I answer “yes.”

“Alright. Keep your eyes closed!” He leans in emphasizing the word “closed.”

Alone, I prop myself onto elbows and look around the room scanning and circling. Minutes pass. Nothing happens. Tiring of policing the circumstance I close my eyes. Bells are ringing in the rain. The chanting ceases. A bird just outside the door sings out and light floods the room. I wonder if the door is open and consider looking but do not.

He is here again. The Double. I feel the rushing sensation and a flash of panic. I fling my eyes open. He is closer this time, standing at arms length. He vanishes.

I wait for Lujan. He never comes. The rain stops and a night chorus of crickets begin. The sounds bring a memory of last night. I am upstairs in the bungalow and awaken to the cricket’s song. Climbing out of the mosquito netting I go to the open window and look into the rice field. A small section of plants come alive for the wind while the rest of the field remains motionless, witnessing itself. The wind moves like water on the plants in a glow of moonlight, swishing and swirling the delicate tips of the stalks. Lujan enters.

“Very unusual.” He seems contemplative. “Are you ok?”

“Yea, I’m ok.” I keep quiet about this last sighting of him. He takes the headphones, intently observing me. A lengthy silence ensues. “I know you saw me again,” he says finally. “You called to me. My Double was there but I decided not to come down again to talk.”

“Oh.” I say. “That’s ok.” I saw myself “calling” as he described and it dawns on me. He has seen me when I am not there, too.

I search for some words. “Nothing is hidden,” he offers.

[Ke-ke wan]

PART THREE:

“Look at me.” He is standing at my feet. The voice conveys a sense of urgency. “Take a look at what is in this room. See what is around you!” Lujan’s face moves like a mirage. I realize I am dreaming.

“Yes, I will.” I reply. Inwardly I do not feel up to the task.

“Quiet! Don’t say anything.” He commands. I become alarmed by my circumstance, remembering he has previously instructed me on the uselessness of talking instead of acting. My words cannot substitute for doing the thing now, without mental interference. I am already at a disadvantage. I have lost time.

My focus turns to the room. I struggle for a foothold into my surroundings. A fluttering brushes my left side but I cannot see what it is. My eyes are useless but I can sense its identity. I recognize it as a kind of emotional feeling. It is formless. I want to tell Lujan but he is moving and not receptive to words. He relocates around to my left and stands behind me. There is no time to turn around and view him. Many “feelings” are gathering in the room. They advance towards me. I use my arms and hands in a brushing motion to sweep the sensations down and away as they present themselves. With great effort I achieve some success.

“Leia,” I hear my name and awaken. “Leia,” a voice again calls my name out loud. “I’m here,” I reply. I am talking to myself. I hear the call of a gecko. Yes, I think to myself, I am awake now. Sitting up I look around the bungalow. My last memory is of lying down in the afternoon to rest. Night has come to the field. The plants are glowing under a blanket of mist, still warm from sunning themselves. I leave to go see Lujan.

NIGHT GAZING ONE

He sits cross-legged on the path facing the field. I sit down. There is a full moon overhead. The cricket’s opus is underway.

He directs me to look at a very bright star. “The big one there?” I ask. “Yes that one.” He affirms. I move forward to remove a telephone wire out of my line of vision to the star. Lujan adjusts himself in the other direction. “I want you to keep looking at the star. Just keep watching it.”

After a few minutes the star begins to shrink. “You see the star shrinking?” He asks. “Yes.” I tell him. “Now it is almost gone, it is disappearing,” he continues. I nod my agreement. “Now it is getting bigger again. It is forming a hourglass shape like it is going to split in two.” He narrates exactly what I have seen seconds after I witness it. “All right. Now I want you to shrink it back to its original size.”

I commence efforts to shrink the bulging star. I have no idea how to do this. It returns to its original size. “Keep watching it. Gaze directly into it.” He doesn’t miss a beat. As I watch, the star begins to weave to the left and then to the right. Lujan describes the movement. It weaves more drastically back and forth left to right until it is swaying like the pendulum on a grandfather clock. Lujan says as much. “It is moving faster now…tick tock tick tock,” he keeps time with each swing. It quickens and shortens from side to side until the star is vibrating rapidly, then stops.

“Now let’s have a look at the moon. This is a very powerful moon,” he says. He guides me through a series of gazing maneuvers with the moon. He then directs me to gaze at a point below the moon. I lower my eyes. The moon begins to move up. It is rising in the sky. Then it stops. I am just about to say something when it starts moving again. It is swimming like a tadpole quickly climbing up, then stops. It feels like my heart has climbed with it. My heart feels lifted, ascending with the moon. I turn my head to look at Lujan, wondering if he has seen. “Keep watching,” he whispers. In a burst it is on the move again, swimming quickly up it seems it might disappear. It has gone up but also out, away from us, settling deep into space.

“Look at the star.” He directs my attention back to the original star. “Do you notice anything?” He asks. I am still in awe over the moon. “Look at the position of the star,” he coaxes. At first I don’t see anything. Then I notice the star is way back under the telephone wire. I distinctly remember the star was over the wire when I gazed at it. Its position has shifted dramatically.

I wonder if we have been out here for a longer time than I realized. “We have been out here for 10 or 15 minutes,” Lujan answers my thought.

“What happened in the sky is a movement in the fabric of space.”

NIGHT GAZING TWO

Lujan sits in the grass behind a little rise of earth and motions me to join him. He is in silence for a long time. My mind wanders. I look out over the rice field. I can see the lights of my bungalow and the shirt I hung out to dry after washing. There is no wind. The stream is making a splashing sound on the other side of the path. After awhile it begins to sound like music. “The stream is singing Om Padme Siddhi OM.” Lujan says, breaking his silence. “It would be good to just lie by the stream all day and listen.”

“Can you see my shadow on the tree?” He asks. I hadn’t noticed it. In fact I didn’t even notice there was a huge tree just a little ways in front of us. Lujan’s shadow is positioned perfectly within it. He looks at me to make sure I see and focuses back on the tree. “I am going to make my shadow very still, very crisp,” he informs me. As I watch his shadow seems to darken, forming a sharp outline of dark against the tree. It is clear, like a figure in black on white paper. There is something tranquil about the shadow. It gives me a feeling of confidence to look at it. As I watch his shadow it begins to vibrate and expand. It starts to move like an image on the surface of water that has been disturbed. He narrates exactly what I am seeing. His words disturb what I have told myself, that I imagined what I saw.

Something begins to move on his shoulder. His shadow seems to be growing there. Then something leaps out of his shoulder. It has the shape of a gopher popping out of a hole. It is very pronounced. Again, he verbally confirms what I have already seen.

“Lets switch places.” He says, like we are playing a game. We trade places. He tells me to make my shadow move the same way his did. “Picture raising your arm above your head but keep your arm relaxed.” He coaches me. Nothing happens. After several minutes I manage a small bulge from the top of my shoulder. “Make your shadow very clear and still.” He switches my task. I watch my shadow become more solid with a clear outline. It appears calm and peaceful. “Now make your shadow vibrate.” He commands. I look at my shadow and tell it to vibrate. It seems to work. I can see it vibrating. I receive a “good” from Lujan.

We switch places. Lujan tells me he wants to make flames come out of his shoulder. “No,” he says, “I’m going to try something else.” I watch his shadow intently, waiting to see what happens. Suddenly a light appears on his shoulder. It fans out like an accordion and drops down six or seven folds of light from the top of his shoulder. It finishes in a ball of light, then evaporates into the darkness.

This time I’m sure I have imagined the effect. Again, like subtitles in a movie, he recites exactly what I have seen, narrating each detail. Very purposefully he explains that he has corroborated what I have seen. In fact, he has corroborated everything I have seen.

TBC...