The Nagual Knocked On The Door
Part 1
By Howard Vadnaiss
The Nagual knocked on the door. I had skipped dinner and was in bed with the lights out because I hadn’t slept in almost two days due to long flights and layovers. I found and put on a pair of shorts in the dark, searched aimlessly for a light switch, and finally opened the door.
Facing the Nagual in person for the first time forced me to confront an increasingly uncomfortable feeling that had been building in me for some time. Over the course of our association I had developed a great deal of respect for Lujan, yet the amount of my respect for him was equaled only by the uneasiness I felt in his company.
We sat down at the kitchen table and talked as I struggled with my apprehensiveness. I ended up making excuses for myself at certain points in our conversation. Despite anticipating this meeting, I felt the unmistakable urge to get the hell out of there. I had this unshakeable feeling that some unspeakable part of myself was deeply distressed and threatened by the mere presence of the Nagual.
I knew without doubt he was seeing something nobody else has in me, and having my walls of defense penetrated so easily was quite unnerving. He of course was very gracious and magnanimous, but that didn’t stop these feelings from festering in me.
The next afternoon was my first session learning Dragons Tears. After practicing only the initial sequence I started to hallucinate.
Lujan gave me a stool to sit on and made the comment, “Well, this is going to be an interesting two weeks.”
As practice continued he would stop and make repeated comments about how careful he had to be with me, that I was probing him for weakness and inconsistency. He told me that my hand gestures were as good as he’d ever seen, as if I’d practiced martial arts all my life, but that if I couldn’t get a hold on what was distorting our interaction, that he may be forced to stop his instruction altogether.
When he would make these comments I felt his words exposing and stirring these strange feelings I was having since before my arrival; as if he were relentlessly pulling something to the surface that I had absolutely no interest in facing. In fact, it felt like I was building a sand castle in the rising tide, and I couldn’t keep up with rebuilding the walls that he was tearing down. He would stop whatever he was doing and speak to these feelings in me the instant they would arise, which in turn alerted me to these slight shifts that he was exposing.
He tirelessly confronted me with my fixations, which in turn threw me for a tailspin. It was not long before I started feeling like an utter and complete failure. I had worked and saved up for this trip only to be revealed as a fraud and an incompetent. My self-doubt and confusion exploded when he insisted that this crap was becoming a loop, and if we were to move forward I would have to stop doing what I was doing.
The problem was, on the one hand I had no idea what the hell he was talking about – and intellectually that was true. I mean, I wasn’t doing anything, besides having these strange feelings exposed. But on the other I felt exactly what he was saying, I just couldn’t put my finger on it and therefore found stopping it impossible. The only thing I knew for sure was that my inner turmoil began spiraling out of control.
The next day when I went to our session Lujan walked past me and asked me to wait for him. He told me that he was going to go show the landlord the Nagual’s teeth. I knew enough of the Nagual that he doesn’t do things without purpose, and I knew if he wanted to bring up an issue with his landlord, he could have done so at a different time. By telling me that he was going to show them the Nagual’s teeth, I became extremely agitated while waiting at his door.
When he got back we went inside and he sat down across the room from me and stared right through me with the most piercing gaze I have ever felt in my life. His stare was unwavering and intense, but had a quality of distance, trance like. Looking at him I could feel this distance, as if there were no end, no thing behind it – a gaze from infinity. That gaze punctured me, and feeling its pressure, I wanted nothing more than to get the flower out of that place. I assumed an extremely defensive posture as he began to speak, and the storm that had been brewing inside me began to rage.
Early in our conversation he asked, “Go ahead, why don’t you tell me what it is you want to say to me.”
“flower Off!” I shot back like a cannonball.
“OK then. While you’re at it, why don’t you tell me what you think of me?” he continued.
“I flowering hate you, that’s what I think of you,” I smugly retorted.
“Well then, why do you hate me?” he continued, incredulous to my outburst.
“Because you’re so, sooo flowering uncompromising, that’s why!” I said matter-of-factly.
There was venom in my words, in my eyes, oozing out of my pores. At one point I tasted an unmistakable metallic taste in my mouth that made me repeatedly smack my gums because of its extreme distaste.
Lujan alerted me to the hatred streaming from my eyes, the daggers I hurled at him, and he didn’t release his pressure on me until the hatred retreated and I could finally embrace him with my gaze. At that point I felt like a stretched rubber band inside me had snapped, yet I was more confused than ever. How was it possible that I was so disconnected from my own feelings? What was it that concealed my own truth, not somebody else’s, or some idea of it, but my own truth? For Christ’s sake, who the flower am I?
That night I lay in bed kicking, punching, and trying to push and will this maelstrom out of me. Try as I might, I could not separate myself. Not only could I not separate myself, I could not detect a seam. I wanted more than anything to just cut this shit out of me! It felt like I was free falling and gathering speed, but for the life of me I couldn’t find the rip chord.
The next morning I didn’t want to get out of bed. I had great difficulty rising and I labored to get down to the cafe for breakfast. Those uneasy feelings that had started before I ever got off the plane, had by now completely enveloped me, and I was absolutely upside down. I felt that this must be like what it is to go mad - I was rapidly losing my grip on reality.
To be continued …
