---
title: "Energy and awareness – with Marco Baston"
url: https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/post/energy-and-awareness-with-marco-baston/
date: 2024-12-05
modified: 2026-07-03
lang: en
author: "Perseus Arcane Academy"
description: "Introduction This is post number three of this series. Several months ago I discovered the work of Marco Baston. His website is a treasure of information as are his published works. His..."
categories:
  - "Interviews"
  - "Shamanism"
tags:
  - "Energy"
  - "Marco Baston"
  - "Meditation"
image: https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Schermata-2017-01-15-alle-12.20.42-1024x550.png
word_count: 3468
---

# Energy and awareness – with Marco Baston

## Introduction

This is post number three of this series. Several months ago I discovered the work of Marco Baston. His [website](https://www.nagualism.org/) is a treasure of information as are his published works. His work focuses on Nagualism – Toltec Shamanism following the lineage of Felipe Amezcua in Mexico. When I contacted Marco he was open to sharing his work and did so extremely generously, he delivered a document in excess of 30,000 words going into detailed responses to the many questions I had asked. I was very curious about this tradition so asked a lot of intricate questions as I wanted to really understand. He answered in such an informative way, so well explained that I think many will find these posts to be an entrance way to his teachings and this wonderful tradition.

This is the first of what will be many posts as I have broken the 30,000-word document into its individual sections with each post focusing on a particular topic. Please let us know your thoughts in the comments and please do share if you think others would enjoy this topic.

[To start from the beginning of this series please see post one here.](https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/post/the-nagual-and-its-principles-with-marco-baston/)

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**PAA: How do you define energy in the context of Nagualism and what role does it play in your teachings?**

We have already talked in the introductory part about how energy is viewed within Nagualism however I will put a few more pieces in place to further clarify. 

To summarize a lot I can say that for the Toltecs, energy is time being actualized, it is time that is working. Or, put another way, these energy fibers, these energy fields, these emanations, are basically made of time, and energy is released and then unfolds in its many aspects at the moment when time is functioning, is enacting. This mode, indeed, this mode of time (this is the term used by the Toltecs), which is the "form" in which time is enacting itself, can express itself in countless different ways. And this determines the world we are dealing with, or, more accurately, instead of world, the alignment we are dealing with, in Toltec jargon. Basically, when the mode of time changes, the world (the alignment) in which we find ourselves also changes, and consequently so do we ourselves, who must adapt to the rules of the new alignment. 

That time functions in different ways in relation to our state of awareness we experience very clearly when we dream. Time is not the same as the world we live in while awake. Let us then remember that awareness has the ability to intervene in the functioning of time. It does so by adjusting the relation of internal emanations, and this adjustment, this change in the relation of internal emanations, shifts us, shifts our awareness (or the assemblage point more exactly) into different modes of time. I could say into different worlds. 

There are countless worlds, universes, on each other. These universes are separated from one another by the mode of time, which creates absolute separation. Here, in this very place where we are, there are worlds upon worlds. We cannot access or perceive the other worlds until we adjust our relationship of internal emanations in the mode of time relative to that other world. At that point we may even come to move from the world in which we are with the totality of ourselves. 

The way time-energy works also determines what we are; it determines it exactly down to the smallest details. 

Then there is a matter of a strictly perceptual nature concerning seeing in the Toltec sense of the term, energetic seeing. These energetic fibers, these emanations, actually appear as fibers or lines or bundles of fibers, and the perception or the sensation that the seer has, because seeing is first of all a sensation that then unfolds in the form of perception, well, the sensation is that these energetic fibers emanate an internal light. A kind of internal light. And it is clear at that moment, when you perceive it, that this luminosity is awareness. 

That is, every single emanation contains this spark of awareness. In living beings, awareness is implemented in the relationship between emanations. When you realize the whole, the conglomerate of energy fibers, that is the living being, you also release the ability to intervene in the way time is working, thus determining exactly what the living being is and what world it is dealing with.

**PAA: Then elaborate on the concept of energy lines, how do they affect our physical and emotional states? How can understanding energy dynamics lead to greater personal empowerment and better decision-making? How do you think energy manipulation relates to human experience and consciousness more broadly?**

So, I give a single, overall answer on these three questions because they are so related, intertwined with each other that separating the answers becomes quite difficult. Already in other questions I actually started to give answers to the points raised by these questions. Moreover, these questions go right to all the most central issues concerning nagualism, but not only that, they actually concern the human being and every being endowed with consciousness. 

Granted, I repeat, that we are a whole, a conglomerate of energy fibers, emanations, energy fields; let's use the term we prefer, let's call them energy fibers then, our overall condition depends solely and exclusively on how our components, these energy fibers, relate to each other. 

By how they relate or how they do not relate. 

Not only does our emotional condition, or physical condition, or mental condition, or health condition depend on it, this is the most superficial layer. Going deeper with the mastery of awareness, which then is the mastery of the assemblage point, of the energetic arrangement, so it is the mastery of the relationship between these energetic fibers that make up us, well, going deeper and with experience, we realize that potentially we could change our arrangement to such a level that we could also become something else than what we are now. Respect, that is, being human beings. The stories of sorcerers turning into animals or other elements of the world, trees, water, fog, are not just stories, they are the result of this mastery of the energy arrangement. 

There is one area of man within our light cocoon, within our conglomerate of energy fibers, and that is the one we usually use. Usually indeed we only turn on that one partially as well, we turn on a small band of these energy fibers of man. There would be much more even as human beings, and that is what the warriors are trying to achieve. 

But then there are vast areas, much larger areas, that it would be possible to access with our awareness, then with the assemblage point, where we become something else than what we are at this moment. We are human beings only incidentally. I would say therefore it is not the case that we should feel so important. 

For modern seers these kinds of operations are not of much value, that is, they can be of value only at the level of experience in the movement of the assemblage point. For ancient seers, on the other hand, they were fundamental operations of great importance. There are accounts of the first conquistadors who arrived in Mexico who saw these people transform into something else. And, go figure, of course The terror of the devil immediately set in. The extermination of the natives by the Europeans was inevitable, too great a gap separated them. 

However, given this background, it is therefore obvious that understanding how the relationship between internal emanations, between our energy fibers, works is crucial for any conscious being. Understanding the energetic dynamic can certainly lead to greater personal empowerment, better decision-making ability, but it can lead to much more than that. Improving our decision-making ability is only a small fragment, almost a side effect of the mastery of awareness. 

Toltecs are concerned with increasing one's inflexible intent, which is much more than decision-making ability. Inflexible intent is the ability to maintain the direction, or the position of the assembly point as one chooses. So moving it or stabilizing it to change its position and then being able to maintain that new position. Everything we do depends on whether or not we understand the relational dynamics of our energy arrangement and that with that of the world we are in at that moment. 

If we do not have this understanding or, as in most cases, do not even have the idea that such a thing exists, we are totally in the hands of forces beyond our control, forces at play around us that we completely ignore, forces that pull us to one side and the other like puppets. 

I am talking about cosmic forces, earth-bound forces or consciousnesses that have their own intentionality, their own intent, and they apply it on us. Because these entities are aware of the existence and dynamics of the energy set-up unlike us, so they are in a tremendous position of advantage over us. The world is neither inert nor harmless. I must say that, once again, on our condition of total lack of awareness, concentration on ourselves, our sense of personal importance, plays a key role. We feel so important that we consider ourselves on the top of the biological structure, on top of the world, above all other beings. I would say it is the exact opposite. We are totally in disarray and at the mercy of whatever force, whatever wind, whatever current passes around us. This is also seen, however, in how we are conducting our existence collectively, as a species in the world. 

It is therefore obvious that the conscious manipulation first of all of the relationship of the internal emanations, of the energy fibers that make up us to each other, and then the conscious manipulation of the relationship between our energy fibers and those that make up the world around us, is of vital importance to the human experience, to our consciousness, to our awareness, to develop and evolve. 

First of all we have to become aware of what we really are. There are techniques, practices that are also very accessible, that allow us to become aware, all in all quite quickly and easily, of the fact that we are a colony of energy fields, that is, of the fact that we are not a solid body, but something much more liquid, vaporous almost, that can be moved, changed by active awareness. 

Of course, I talk about all these techniques extensively in the books, in the online course, even in many videos I put on the YouTube channel. To delve pragmatically in the right way, you certainly have to put all the necessary pieces together. But the realization of our nature as beings made of energy fibers, it's not that difficult to achieve, it's quite within everyone's reach. From there everything else follows. First we get this awareness, and through this awareness, the possibility and ability to manipulate the relationship of inner emanations and inner emanations to extended emanations also awakens in us over time.

**PAA: What techniques do you recommend for people to increase their awareness of energy in their environments?**

So, let me premise that it is impossible to give an exhaustive answer to this question, in the sense that Nagualism is really about the basics, first of all getting the energy needed to do what the Toltecs then do. That is the essential premise. So you can imagine that, over thousands of years, Nagualists have developed a tremendous amount of techniques. 

No one knows them all, because each warrior learns and develops that part of the practices that is most akin to him. There are a number of techniques that we might call starter techniques, which then give access to the much larger set of more refined practices. These are used as they are for more or less everyone, with minor adjustments. 

Once you access the intent that underpins the set of practices you potentially have access to everything, but in reality then our personal predilections steer us in well-defined directions, if we have the necessary lucidity. 

The point, however, is that in practice we ultimately do not need to learn who knows what miraculous techniques, who knows what magic. We just need to increase our energy availability. 

In short, to put it simply, if we have sufficient energy, then it is possible to access all our potential possibilities even with very simple expedients. 

Certainly learning the techniques and practices to walk this path in the right way is essential, but the point is that without the energy, if we don't have the energy available, we can get busy as much as we want, learn the most incredible techniques, practice 25 hours a day but, basically, we achieve very little. We just lead a life of hell trying to do something that we will never be able to do because we lack the energy to do it. 

In fact, there is a whole part in nagualism called the "art of ambush," and that deals precisely with making our potential energy available. The art of ambush does not resort to actual techniques (except for recapitulation, which is an integral part of it); rather, it is a set of attitudes, of assemblage point positions, particular behaviors that become integrated over time into our existence and that lead to profound changes in the relationship between attention and energy. 

I also clarify that it is not that we do not have energy. Clearly individual energy levels are personal, not all of us are born with the same potential energy, however, we all still have enough to do everything that a human being can do in his or her more extended, broader potentials. 

The real problem is that most of our energy is engaged in other things, is mostly engaged in useless things. I'll make it very short. Ninety-five percent of our available energy is engaged in supporting our image. 

It is engaged in maintaining focus on ourselves and in the continuous repetition and confirmation of our image, our personal history, our habits, our beliefs, our habitual and comforting cycles of thought, feeling, action. All of this requires the engagement of almost all of our available energy, very little of which remains free. 

The little that remains free is certainly not enough to accomplish the "magical feats," let's call them that. Much more would be needed but we are not willing to surrender and disengage the energy we are committing in supporting the set of our habits, the set of our personal beliefs and everything that forms our description and idea of the world and ourselves. 

So, if I really have to give advice, which is not my advice after all, but is the advice of the Toltecs, the first thing we should do to regain, regain and make our energy available again, is to lose our sense of self-importance, to free ourselves from ourselves, to stop continuing to be completely focused on us, on what we are, what we do, what we don't do, what we think, what we believe, how much we have to support our ideas, how much better or worse we are than others, how successful we are at this or that. 

Lo and behold, all continuous consumption, this continuous trickle of energy engaged in supporting the repetition of our image, ends up reverberating, finding itself identically the same even when we begin to deal with nagualism; but this applies to any other path of knowledge. 

It is a mechanism that is projected into whatever we set out to do. We always carry this mode of attention with us. Because concentration on oneself is a mode of attention. 

Our attention, unlike that of all other species, basically all other living things, instead of being extended over the world and thus making us travel into infinity, making us live together with the world, is turned back on itself. We look at ourselves in a mirror, we look at our image in a mirror for our whole existence and we have no idea what is around us. This is due to a whole series of factors that now it would really be too long and complex to go into point by point, however, the situation is this. 

Another issue, if I have to point out some points now that can help you regain your energy, another important point is that of harmony between actions and decisions. Let's go back to the discussion of harmony, what is it according to the Toltecs, what are the elements that make up harmony. Harmony between actions and decisions means that we are able to be in accordance with our action, which should develop along with the flow of the world, of the alignment we are in at that moment. 

I don't randomly say, first actions and then decisions, because the action is already there. We just have to decide to do the action, the correct one, the one that would be, for us, personally right. And we know it, we know it every time. We know which direction we should go. We have in the body this feeling that would guide us. 

For example, when we have to make a choice, there is a choice that is correct, which is the one that makes us feel good physically; we feel the will area, which is the one around the navel, but then the whole body, which relaxes if we follow that direction. It's a direction, it's a choice that arises from our inner silence, which is already present in the whole of our energy fibers. 

That is the first feeling we get and that would be the right one. But usually then the internal dialogue intervenes that starts to make us deviate from our natural direction; that says, "no, but if you do this way you might maybe lose that, or you would be better off maybe doing it this other way because there might be this risk rather than that other." And then we start thinking, we start retaliating against ourselves again and we end up making a choice that is not the one that would be inherent in us. We all have this experience all the time. I don't think I'm talking about something unknown, and yet we fail to be consistent with our action that is already there to make it a decision. 

We fail to be coherent because we do not listen to our inner seer, rather we annihilate him bit by bit in the course of existence. We do not listen to the intelligence of the totality of ourselves, of our body, understood in the broadest sense of the term. So the totality of the energetic fibers that make up us that is a set of intelligent awareness, intelligent in the sense of coherent relationship with the world. So this is the other thing I recommend: listening to the inner seer, the dreamer, our true nature. 

Then I will talk a little bit about dreaming in another follow-up question to this one and clarify more about the concept of dreamer and dreamed. But let's say that what we know as ourselves actually is the dreamer, the dreamer is something else. The dreamer is the energy body. That impulse, that immediate and silent knowledge that comes immediately when we have to choose, comes directly from the dreamer, who has a very lucid strategic vision. 

Obviously, since the basis of nagualism is first to obtain the energy and sobriety necessary to then take the path of the warrior, it is clear that there are a tremendous amount of practices that help to improve our energy level, starting with contemplation for example, which, by nurturing internal silence and the right dynamics of internal emanations, leads us to have a significant improvement on the level of energy availability. 

Then recapitulation of course. We have already talked about it, and it is clear that recapitulation leads to a significant improvement in our energy availability, but not only in availability, also in the way we are able to then use this energy availability, because that is another important issue. It is not enough to have energy, we then have to use it properly. 

The proper use of energy is the very central issue in the art of ambush, and so really, if I have to point to something that deals with improving our overall energy condition within nagualism this is definitely the art of ambush.

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## Further Information

##### See all Posts from Marco Baston

##### See Marcos Website

##### See Marcos Books

##### See Marcos YouTube Channel

##### See Marcos Facebook Page

##### See Marcos Online Course

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