Luminous Body

 

There is no point of talking about the luminous body, like it is a physical body - it is simply not.
The luminous body is located in the realm of imagination, and slowly becomes a reality when you become aware of its existence and can see it.

Luminous body is larger than the physical body, it shines, and is full of life of its own order. It has different "centers" - swirls and protuberances, some of them have color others don't have any color; some of them are located as high as the height of an out-stretched hand, others are as low as the ground.

Not every luminous body is round like a perfect sphere or an egg, in fact that is rather a perfectionist view promoted by some artists. While some of them look like eggs that have been bitten off, others look spread out and rather muddy, others look like pancakes with the high axis. Many shapes, these may be seen and understood in different ways, and a seer aims at seeing and understanding as many types of them as possible. Basically all of them, including (and especially) his or her own. There is no underlying principle in understanding of the luminous body, it is simply seeing, but that make take a while, as Don Juan did consider seeing to be a pinnacle of the warriors' accomplishments. It is that, that made her a woman of knowledge, and not just a witch, albeit a good one. Even though seeing is not hard, perfecting it as an in-and-of-itself capability is. We see energy regularly, and it is that seeing that we find funny or awful or intrusive, we just don' usually realize that we see.

Throughout the lifetime of her practice an adept gradually comes to see her own shape and all its peculiarities. It is complicated and yet it is obvious. It doesn't have to be so hard, but we are trained to see differently from the off-set of our training as humans, and thus our seeing is greatly fogged up by not looking at what's there in its most obvious existence possible - the light, the dark and its various shades, which are like emotions This lost ability can be regained, but it requires a lot of dedication.

The luminous body starts to take shape of a double when enough energy has been accumulated and cultivated. It starts of as a farfetched idea and gradually materializes. It works in and of itself and without asking for permission from you, so looking at it the same way that you look at yourself is not particularly useful. It has been helpful for me to look at it as a sort of mirror reflection, but you are the mirror reflection. It is kind of the same with the dreaming body in your dreams. If you can understand that, than you can understand the other. Don Juan differentiated the double as an accomplishment of the stalkers, while the dreaming body as that of the dreamers. I think both are fine. We should know though that what operates in the dreams is the dreaming body, and not just the consciousness.

Throughout the course of her practice the adept comes to see that the luminous body is continuously depleted and is under attack of sorts. The attacks are sometimes subtle and sometimes long term, and sometimes are like a sledgehammer aiming to crush you at once. They are like a rolling force, that is basically a penumbra of the final demise consistently trying to bash through the gap in your midsection. I haven't really attempted to see it, but it is quite enough to feel it.  The warrior aims to close that gap once and for all.

Feeling as though under attack is universal. I think anyone can claim to experience something of the sort, but I think there were only those old devils , the sorcerers of antiquity who have successfully saw and explained what those attacks are, and why are we being attacked  in the first place? The answer is simple and not simple at the same time - we are food for the beings of a different order, that can generally be considered an extension of the predatorial nature of this universe. They are much older and much more sophisticated than we are. They feed off our energy as we present it as food by the virtue of cultivating it throughout the course of our lifetimes. Bit by bit we lose our precious energy to quarrels, nerve racking life occurrences, successful (yesss!!! I did it!!!) and the unsuccessful  (OOhhhh sheeeeeet!) events that shape our personalities. No one can help us but ourselves, and our own increased awareness of such things, otherwise known as seeing. Even the teacher or the benefactor cannot - they can open the door, but it is up to you to do the walking. As we start off on that hike and improve our posture, grow, we may become very paranoid, as it is mind boggling to feel how connected the interchange of energy is and how easy it is to loose it! The intensity resonates as a feeling that you are about to explode. It may come as a surprise how weak we generally are behind our many resolutions, that all depends on the energy level and where it is being directed.

Anyways, back to the luminous body. As we become more aware of our rather miserable condition we can take steps to reverse it, for which there are many ways, that I am describing elsewhere. And so the patching up process begins, and once it starts it feels good. In fact so good, that I don't think anyone would like to exchange it for anything else. This feeling comes from the increased energy level as well as less energy leaving the body. What a joy it is to operate fully and without being eaten up by the flyer!

How to save up energy and how to patch up the luminous body to bring it back into shape is a tough question, and it takes breaking the routines of daily life, and various other strategies to actually begin the process. The society doesn't care if you save up the energy, and your family probably doesn't either, simply because they are not seeing it that way. If they would be capable of that, it would have the impact of the bell on top of the major cathedral - a wake up call like no other. BANG! WHAT!? I am being depleted from MY prescious energy? NOOOO! But that how it starts, and after the initial reaction subsides you start to desperately think what to do, that would be more practical than screaming or running amuck. And that's when you come back to the warriors' lifestyle. Warriors try to fight indulgences because indulgences deplete. What is an indulgence? It is simply something that you can't control, an ineffective use of energy. Oh you like that roast chicken soooo so so very much, and you cannot let go for even a million dollars. Warriors aim to bring the attention back from there and use it instead on filling up, seeing etc. In other words redirecting the energy into a more viable basin.

Attention is a biggy as we are all made out of attention. This! That! All these things! They are all attention that we actually "pay". Have you ever thought about who do we pay it to?

The 1st attention according to the toltecs of Don Juan's lineage is the attention that we use to function before we discover the warrior lifestyle, the normal attention that we use in daily life. Then, with the enough energy saved up we enter the world of the 2nd attention, or the nagual. This is where we operate with the heightened energy and heightened attention to detail, this may take years of hovering about. I can't speak yet of the 3rd attention.

During this process the luminous body becomes brighter and more acute, like a well-oiled mechanism and the little things matter more and more, as a warrior becomes baffled by the visions of these different things piled up, and sometimes chaotic. The only thing that may keep the warrior sane at this level is their strong inner conviction that there is no other way but to keep going, keep circling up and about, and keep realizing.

Also, although this is only a close proximity to what can be spoken about, the warrior-in the-making starts to encounter more and more that which can be described as power.

Power is many things and none of them. It is quite puzzling that something out there can be at your services, and yet be able to kill you without warning. Warrior spends years in refining this connecting link with power, and it is usually marked by an increased awareness, but also by an increased sense that it is further than ever. Power in the Toltec sense of the word is an ultimate gift and the ultimate addiction. As I said, it is consistently at your service, and yet it roams completely on its own. In the words of Don Juan, and I am paraphrasing here, "a warrior enters the world of power, and with that he encounters his third enemy" the four enemies being of course the fear, clarity, power, and old age.
What makes power an enemy? I think, it is because it has a strong potential to spoil, but in truth without knowing how it can spoil a warrior, there is no way to counteract it, so I do not think that there is a need to worry about it at this stage. However, like having a jinni in the lamp - he grants you three wishes, and that is it. If you have more than 3, you become the most miserable person because they are bound to remain unfulfilled. ..

ohhh the pull of power, how sweet you are...