--- title: "The Nagual and its Principles – with Marco Baston" url: https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/post/the-nagual-and-its-principles-with-marco-baston/ date: 2024-12-03 modified: 2026-07-03 lang: en author: "Perseus Arcane Academy" description: "Introduction Several months ago I discovered the work of Marco Baston. His website is a treasure of information as are his published works. His work focuses on Nagualism - Toltec..." categories: - "Interviews" - "Shamanism" tags: - "Energy" - "Marco Baston" - "Meditation" image: https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/20161014_185229-1024x572.jpg word_count: 6013 --- # The Nagual and its Principles – with Marco Baston ## Introduction 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. --- ## Section 1 - The Nagual and its principles.  **PAA: Can you give an overview of the basic principles of Nagualism and how they shape its teachings?** Before responding, I want to make it clear that the topics we will cover are complex and their deep understanding requires dedication and constant practice, so in this interview I will necessarily have to simplify and synthesize that complexity, but at the same time try to be sufficiently clear. I make this premise to invite those who will read the interview to make the effort to go beyond the narrowest meaning of the words I use and try to see what lies behind them. I must then make an important distinction between understanding and comprehending. Understanding is an intellectual process that has nothing to do with experiencing, with experiencing the thing, the thing itself. And so understanding is not knowing, it is not knowing in the totality of oneself.  To understand, on the other hand, means to include in the totality of oneself the experience of what one is knowing. So, in this case I am asking you to understand. I make this premise because it took me a long time to understand that with nagualism you enter unknown territory, totally unknown to the West and mostly unknown to the East as well.  Thousands of years, tens of thousands of years of isolation, special conditions and experiences detached from the rest of humanity's progress in Eurasia, have produced something going in different directions.  Mind you, I am not saying that what the Toltecs did is better than anything else. It works very well for me and I consider it a direct way, extremely effective, but this is my personal consideration. Everyone will then make their own evaluations. Certainly, however, it is something completely different from what is known both in the East and in the West. It is an alien world to us.  There are elements and units of knowledge, not intellectual concepts, but just experiences and conditions that are not matched in other traditions, just because of the kind of basic approach. So for better understanding, I recommend avoiding looking for parallels between Nagualism and other systems.  It is something we do instinctively, this of looking for convergences where there are none, because we need to rediscover known territories. Maybe something may seem similar to us, but only to a superficial view. The "this is the same as that," forcibly creating parallels that do not exist between different systems of knowledge and that express their beauty and effectiveness precisely in their difference.  There are certainly points of contact between traditional knowledge systems, but then each has its own history, its own conditions of development, its own ways of achieving certain results. It is not by mixing everything that we improve; on the contrary, we get worse.  So to seek parallels with something that is completely alien to us is really misplaced, because we go and twist the nature, in this case of nagualism, and we completely lose the possibility of understanding this nature of nagualism. What happens is that we bring it back to something we already know.  And what we already know, the interpretation we already know, the description we already know, covers the profound nature of this a new experience. So in the end we do not experience nagualism, but only a readjustment of what we already know, into which we insert elements of nagualism by distorting them, adapting them to the known. Here we are instead entering into unknown territory, so I ask that we make this effort, to approach the contents of nagualism empty without having to necessarily call back to what we already know, because otherwise it doesn't work. And now we begin.  Perhaps rather than fundamental principles, we could speak of observations on the state of reality. The Toltecs are extremely pragmatic beings, and this pragmatism of theirs comes precisely from observing the state of reality. For they realized, by observing the state of reality, that only that which has correspondence with the real or, we might say, that which works in the reality of the world, has actual value.  It is necessary to make a premise now, however, with respect to this. The observations of the ancients and the new seers, of the Toltecs in general, about the nature of the universe in which we live, or we might say, the portion of the universe in which we live, are the result of thousands of years of experience, of countless generations of warriors and seers who have succeeded one another over time Based on this experience, on this direct confrontation with the reality of the world, (indeed of worlds) the Toltecs gradually, over time, fine-tuned their methods, their strategies, corrected mistakes that were made.  Nagualism is not a stationary system. It is constantly evolving because it follows the flow of the world, it adapts to the flow of the world, and the world is constantly changing. Therefore, if a system is alive, if it is real, it can only continue to change over time.  Static systems have no relation to reality, to things that actually work. On the basis of all this experience, certain observations about the nature and state of reality took shape that are foundational precisely for conducting the warriors', the Toltecs', lines of action and strategies. A fundamental observation about the state of reality tells us, for example, that the Universe is composed of an infinite, endless set of energy fields. These energy fields are called "emanations" in Toltec parlance.  They were given this name for specific reasons. It is a very exact term that has been fine-tuned over time by "seeing" the source of these energy units and the behavior of emanations.  Everything that exists and the very structure of the universe is composed of these emanations. We ourselves as conscious beings, (as human beings in our case), are a colony of emanations held together by an aspect of energy that is the true life force, is what holds us together, literally, as long as we are alive.  This aspect of energy, this agglutinating force that is typical of beings endowed with consciousness, of living beings in short, plays a fundamental role in the whole practice of the Toltec system.  To try to be very brief and as concise and clear as possible, I can say that nagualism is based on relationship and understanding.  The seers have thoroughly observed the interaction, the way these emanations or energy fields are organized in the universal structure and within each individual living being, in living beings among themselves and between them and the world.  What they observed is that everything depends on how each individual emanation that makes up the universe and all its elements, relates to others, interacts with others.  For example, we human beings, who are precisely this colony of emanations, of energy fields, (each by the way then separated from the others by an empty space to which we will return later), this colony of emanations therefore takes on the human structure.  It could take the form of something else, a plant or an animal or whatever, depending on how the internal relationship between emanations is structured. As we will see later, this structure, this internal relationship is mediated by something very particular which is the assemblage point, but we will get to that later.  What is important, however, is that the nature of the world we perceive depends on the relationship of internal emanations to each other and of internal emanations to those outside, to those that are outside us and make up the world we are dealing with.  These external emanations are called "extended" emanations to distinguish them from internal emanations and also because they extend in every direction to infinity.  So basically nagualism, summarizing a lot, is concerned with relationship: with the relationship between energy and attention. Because in beings endowed with awareness it is attention that channels the energy involved in the action of the moment, action also understood in terms of perception.  We could say that awareness, by means of attention, shapes the relationships between these energy fields.  Indeed, this is precisely a fundamental characteristic of living beings, that of shaping the relationship between emanations, between energy fields. That's their power.  And now let's go a little deeper into this question of energy. It is very clear to the Toltecs that we as a conscious being, as perceivers, cannot get all the way to the ultimate state of reality.  There will always be some degree, some even minimal level, of interpretation of what we are perceiving directly.  This ultimate degree, that is, the furthest point where we can go, or at least what the Toltecs have come to in these thousands of years of practice and experience, is the moment when we realize that these emanations, these energy fields, are actually made of time.  We could say that energy is actually time becoming active. Or that there is nothing but time; time that becomes energy as it manifests itself as action, as aspects of energy itself. Clearly we are not talking about time as we know it. Time is something else and is something indescribable, for which there are no words. One can only experience it directly.  We realize very clearly, however, that time is something else than how we commonly know it and that it can change its mode. When we dream, for example, if you notice, time works in other ways.  This is because we are in another condition, in another position of the assemblage point or, more precisely, in another mode of time.  It is a fundamental characteristic of living beings to be able to shape time. In fact, it is what makes us conscious. What makes living beings conscious is precisely the fact that they directly intervene in time, that is, they interact, they relate to time. Awareness is released only when the manipulation of time takes place. And here again comes the question of the relationship between attention and energy, also expressed in terms of time. We might say that this constitutes the fundamental basis of Nagualism: understanding how this ability of living beings to intervene in the most intimate details works on the nature of time and consequently on the nature of the world, indeed of worlds, in which we find ourselves and on our own nature.  What could we be, what could we transform into, or what could our evolution be once we change the relationship between attention and energy?  What I try to do is to use what I have learned to bring understanding, first of all pragmatic understanding and not intellectual understanding. This is a very fundamental, very important point. We Toltecs are very relatively interested in intellectual understanding, which is a fragment of our total capacity and often becomes a hindrance instead of a support. From our point of view intellectual understanding has value only if it is in function of a practical result in conducting the relationship with the universe, if it is in function of the possibility of actually implementing things. Generally, however, "understanding" works only in a very, very narrow world. Which is the one constructed by human lucubrations,  Outside of there, in the real world, all our lucubrations are worth very little. Nagualism relies heavily on this total, unified understanding.  This means that before the intellectual understanding that includes the totality of ourselves.  Our true mind is the body.  This needs to be understood very well. The body of which the Toltecs speak is not the body understood only as the physical body, but is something much more extensive.  It is the colony of emanations held together by an aspect of energy that is called the "vibratory aspect" and which can intervene in the nature of itself and the nature of the world or worlds, I should say more accurately, because once we have this total understanding of how the relationship between attention and energy works, we can open up avenues, pathways to other worlds. Now we come to the question of the assemblage point. In the course of their observations of the behavior, of the flow of energy in the Universe, the seers noticed that all beings endowed with consciousness, all living beings, have an area, a point, a very narrow zone, which appears to energy perception as highly luminous. In this area there is an extreme concentration of emanations, of energy fields, of energy fibers, which converge at that one point.  They flow from within the living being but also from outside, from the world to which the living being belongs at that moment.  To make a long story short, the conclusion they came to, what they realized by observing the behavior of this assemblage point, is that when the assemblage point shifts for some reason, such as while we are dreaming, the nature of the world the living being is dealing with, interacting with, changes, even to the point of changing the world (or "alignment" more precisely according to Toltec terminology, but let's call it world or worlds now).  So the seers realized that the position of the assemblage point determines which emanations, which energy fibers are ignited, are related both internally to the living being and between inside and outside, and that what we are and the world we are dealing with depends on this.  When the assemblage point is located, a certain portion of the energy fibers, of the emanations that make up the living being, is turned on, activated. This portion of the inner emanations is in relation, corresponds, is unified, outwardly, with an equivalent portion of the extended emanations, those that are outside, those that make up the worlds outside of us. It is this correspondence that generates awareness.  Seers perceive this very well. As long as the assemblage point is not correctly positioned, does not have stability and this correspondence between inner and outer, this unification, this alignment, this exact relationship between and among the inner emanations and of the inner emanations with those extended outside, the being has no awareness, its awareness does not come into operation.  The more stable, precise this inner-outer correspondence is, the more intense the level of awareness of the living being.  So learning to voluntarily maneuver the assemblage point means being able to access heightened states of awareness or even other worlds.  The seers realized that the positioning of the assemblage point determines, for example, what species the living being belongs to, in short, what its nature is and what world it perceives.  For example, we human beings all share the same position. In this way we share a common world, a common physical and perceptual condition. We can thus relate to each other and to the world in which we live.  If the assembly point moves, everything changes. We experience this well as we dream. The rules change, the world we are dealing with changes, the way we perceive the world changes, even our nature can change.  The ancient sorcerers of Mexico transformed themselves into animals, plants, other things, other entities, just by maneuvering the assemblage point to. remarkable depths.  And there is another very important aspect. The assemblage point is stabilized by the outside, by the extended emanations, by the world outside of us exerting pressure. We could say that the world gathers a certain bundle of extended emanations, exerts pressure on us from the outside, on our shell, and the assemblage point is forced to position itself in that way, gathering and igniting the corresponding internal emanations.  This is a phenomenon related to awareness and perception in general, it is related to the intelligence of awareness, which is spread all around us.  This is a detail not at all made secondary from a practical point of view, because in fact, in the way it works, awareness comes from outside. It is the result of the world's pressure on us. If there were no such pressure, we could not muster our awareness, attention and perception. We would not even be aware that we exist.  Based on this, warriors have understood very well that it is necessary to get help from the world, that alone we cannot do it, and so they seek in every way the connection and help of that which lies outside of us, which is infinitely greater, powerful and capable of guiding us in our explorations into infinity. The last point I want to address in this first question is the issue of the space separating emanations. Again, I try to be clear and concise.  So these emanations that make up us are separated by space. Each individual emanation or energy fiber is separated from the others by space. This space that separates the emanations is most important from the nagualistic point of view and actually that is what nagualism is all about.  I try to explain in what sense. Nagualism comes from the word nagual. Let me preface this by saying that nagual is indescribable; it is only experiential. So I try to go around it now, to try thus to point out the point.  This space that separates the emanations is the Nagual within us, that is, our nagual part. We can also say that we are composed of solids and voids, and that if we want to be able to maneuver the solids, that is, the elements that compose us, these energy fibers, we cannot do it directly from the solids, from the emanations themselves, we have to find a way to do it from the voids.  The force for that is needed to deliberately maneuver the emanations and thus change the attitude, energetic configuration and also change the position of the assembly point accordingly, is released in the empty spaces, applying the capacity, the faculty of "intending."  So already we also begin to introduce the concept of "intent," but we will come to that later in some of the subsequent questions to go into more detail. For now let's leave it for a moment.  There is an agglutinating force that holds us together, an aspect of energy that holds together the emanations that make up us. It is peculiar exclusively to living beings.  The Toltecs call it the "vibratory aspect of energy." Such force performs its function in these empty spaces. That is, the life force that keeps us together as a conglomerate of energy fields lies in these empty spaces.  Every single emanation that makes up us is in itself eternal and unchanging. But not us, because we are the temporary combination of a set of these energy fibers. We are not the energy fibers; we have those on loan from infinity and will have to return them.  We are actually the whole, the temporary relationship of these energy fibers, and this relationship, this being together and relating is guaranteed precisely by the vibratory aspect of energy, by this mysterious force acting in the empty spaces.  The void separating the emanations also represents, as I said before, our nagual part. What the nagual is, it is practically impossible to say. However, to try to give some sort of definition, we could say that we find ourselves floating on some sort of islands floating in the nagual, in this boundless ocean that has no definition, no description.  In this boundless ocean that the Toltecs call nagual, there move and float these islands that are us and that are also the worlds to which we belong.  Our nagual part would potentially allow us to relate by surviving to the Nagual that lies outside of us, the infinite, boundless one.  Warriors learn to immerse themselves in the nagual while maintaining their integrity. That is where they find the abstract, the knowledge. We have a spark, a crumb of this immensity, and therefore we can also succeed in witnessing this same immensity.  We can witness it but it is impossible to describe the nagual because it is outside the realm of description. Even talking about it as I am doing now only ends up perhaps creating more confusion than clarity. Clarity only comes when we confront and witness the nagual.  And to do this we resort to the forces that are inherent in these empty spaces that separate emanations. **PAA: How does the concept of teotl (divine energy) fit into your understanding of nagualism?** I make a premise about the original meaning of this Nahuatl term. The conquistadors, when they arrived on the new continent, interpreted the meaning of the local languages in their own way, mispronouncing words and names and also pouring their own way of seeing the world over the original meanings.  This also happened in the case of the word "teotl." Seeing that it was associated with mythological practices or buildings or entities or some of the forces, more exactly, aspects of the natural world, that could remind the Spaniards of religious or spiritual practices, well, they put two and two together and said to themselves: surely teotl means God; God of this aspect of the world, God of that other.  Translating it as "divine energies" comes a little closer, but it is still our transposition mediated by our culture. Because in reality literally teotl means energy; energy and that's it.  It is also necessary to consider that Nahuatl is an agglutinative language, that is, in which meanings can be created by putting together different terms or pieces of words. One can also create concepts that did not exist before by building them with the various pieces of the language.  Then this term energy in Nahuatl indicated, better still indicates, if we go to see its original meaning, certain aspects or ways in which energy manifests itself in our world. Even its material aspects.  Having said that, however, I want to mention that my lineage, like most lineages of modern seers, has completely abandoned practices traditionally related to the ritualistic-magical aspects of nagualism in order to care for more abstract aspects in a more direct way.  By this I do not mean that in the forms of traditional ritual practices there is no content of a magical nature. They are also very effective practices within their context. Clearly, for them to be truly effective, you have to know what you are really doing and therefore be able to go beyond the outward aspect of the sacred practice, the ritual. Knowledge of what is really behind the ritual has mostly been lost in popular culture. However, precisely in my lineage, as well as in the lineage that Castaneda had met, as in so many other lineages of modern seers, this whole part was abandoned because it was deemed no longer necessary, no longer in keeping with the times.  Modern seers have shifted to much more direct and immediate systems, no longer mediated by an outward form, which in those days was used to approach people, or to carry out a whole series of actions of a magical nature, sometimes not very sympathetic, with implications that also involved energy predation, especially in earlier times.  However, since modern visionaries aim directly at the abstract, it does them no good to set up a structure that then has to be disassembled anyway to get to the foundation, to the thing in itself. And so they start, they try to start, directly from the thing itself, and this whole traditional part has been gradually abandoned over time. **PAA: In your opinion, what role does maintaining harmony play in nagualistic practices?** Harmony plays a major role, but I think first we need to understand the meaning of the term harmony, that is, to understand the way the Toltecs understand harmony.  This in fact is already one of those cases where the cultural difference, of viewpoint on the world, between the Toltecs and us is highlighted.  For warriors there are certain lines of practical behavior that we could certainly relate to the sense of harmony, the sense of the word harmony.  One of these is impeccability. Flawlessness is, to put it succinctly, the correct use of the energy we have at our disposal. This is a key point in the nagualistic system. At any moment we can decide whether to perform an 'action, the same action, by dissipating, wasting, misusing our energy or by safeguarding it.  This is a question that warriors always have in mind. Every choice they make, every action they take is guided by a fundamental question. And the question is, "How am I using the energy engaged in the action of the moment? In this action." whether it's just moving a chair or walking.  There are only two ways to act. One is to use use the energy engaged in that action in the correct way, safeguarding the energy itself. The other is by dispersing the energy.  We usually opt for the second option, which is to disrupt our energetic integrity. We do this by misusing our attention. Instead of using it to channel energy properly into the action of the moment, we scatter attention and thus, by scattering attention, we also scatter energy.  This is already very closely related to the issue of harmony. Also because it is related to another aspect of the nagualistic system, which is that of balancing with extended emanations.  We are usually so focused on ourselves, only, exclusively and always focused on ourselves, that we cut off the rest of the world.  Our energy fibers, energy fields, emanations that make up us are as if turned in on themselves, twisted, turned inward. It is as if we were looking in a mirror at our reflected image for our entire existence.  This is not a natural condition. In all other living beings, almost all of them at least, their inner emanations are stretched out toward the extended ones, toward the rest of the world; they balance with the extended emanations, the ones outside, the ones in the world, the ones that connect us to infinity.  Concentration on ourselves prevents this connection. It cuts us off from the world, literally. It locks us into a square meter in which only we and our human condition exist.  Warning. It is energetic, not mental or physical or anything else. It depends on the arrangement of internal emanations. Warriors take care to deploy their internal emanations in such a way that they balance with their extended emanations and coincide, and this is closely related to flawlessness, the correct use of energy.  Warriors achieve this change through practices that engage attention and perception in ways that are not ordinary, that are outside the ordinary human context. And this is also something that has to do with, or that we can relate back to, the idea of harmony. Then there is a final point, which is the question of discipline. As the Toltecs understand it, it is nothing ironclad or militaristic. Exercising discipline for the Toltecs means remaining serene in circumstances totally beyond our control.  This also has a lot to do with harmony. To exercise this kind of discipline requires a great deal of internal harmony, I mean among the emanations that make up us, they too must be balanced with each other.  Balancing internal emanations develops true inner strength. **PAA: Can you discuss the significance of shamanic journeying and altered states of consciousness in your teachings?** It is necessary to make a premise. The question is interesting because it gives me a chance to clarify some fundamental differences between what is considered classical shamanism and instead nagualism, Toltec shamanism.  The premise I want to make is that Toltec shamanism, has no real affinity with shamanism as it is commonly known, which then. basically is Siberian shamanism as a structure or, in some respects that of North American peoples.  One of the differences is that in Nagualism the concept of shamanic journeying does not exist. Nor is there any mention of altered states of consciousness.  The latter term by the way comes much more from a Western culture of the second half of the 20th century. It also has little to do with shamanism, classical shamanism, in short, precisely Siberian shamanism, or the peoples of North America. It is related to modern, Western culture as terminology.  However, here we first need to understand what an altered state of consciousness means, because the term is very vague, in fact it can be anything and therefore also nothing. In the sense that any condition in which I am not what I commonly am can become an altered state of consciousness.  We often associate it with taking drugs, especially psychedelic-type drugs, even the so-called power plants. In reality, of course, there are plenty of other ways to induce "altered states of consciousness," and certainly we can also equate what is called shamanic journeying with an altered state of consciousness.  In this case, however, it is a very precise altered state, with a domain of the state of consciousness that is very well defined thanks precisely to the practices of shamanic traditions.  The shamanic journey leads exactly to certain places, let's call them that, it goes in precise directions and arrives at certain precise places in the state of awareness.  Altered states of consciousness in modern conception, are something so vague that you don't even know what you are really talking about.  In Nagualism, there is no such term, and there is no concept of an altered state of consciousness. First of all, because what warriors seek is something very precise and highly conscious, while instead we often associate the condition of altered state of consciousness, even with a condition of total loss of control, actually loss of discipline, of sobriety, of ability to guide this altered state of consciousness.  Such a condition is totally opposite to what the Toltecs seek. We try to be very clear about what direction we are moving in and where we want to go, whatever practices we put in place, starting from contemplation, to dreaming, to recapitulation, to practices related to the art of ambush, in short, everything that is done within Nagualism is very precise and, in most cases, has definite purposes.  There are reasons why warriors move from the ordinary state of consciousness. They certainly do not do it to achieve an altered state of consciousness. That from our point of view makes no sense. Also because, what does "altered" mean?  When we move to another time mode, to another assemblage point location, we are in a different state of awareness than the ordinary one, but what we want is for this new state of awareness to function well, not to be "altered." There is no reason to randomly go anywhere. This for warriors is indeed something to be avoided completely, because the universe, or rather the universes in which we find ourselves are neither inert nor harmless. And so to go so randomly is not at all something recommendable. It is potentially deadly. All the more so if you go very far, which is what warriors try to do, developing all their skills and abilities, over time.  These skills and abilities are attained through the application of discipline and deep dedication to work on attention and awareness that is not done haphazardly, but is carried out within a system of knowledge that has very deep roots, that has developed over at least 12,000 years, and that has therefore produced very exact ways of obtaining these skills, these abilities.  Then if we really want to make an equation, we could say that, in nagualism, what is called the altered state of consciousness is actually the movement of the assemblage point beyond the limit defined by the ordinary condition. That is, this non-ordinary condition is the whole area that the assemblage point can reach when it leaves the area in which it moves normally.  I clarify, however, that the area in which the assemblage point moves, or potentially can move in ordinariness, is broader than what we think is ordinariness. That is, this area that we call ordinariness, which in nagualism is called first attention, is all the area that can reach the assemblage point while still remaining in an area where we are still able to perceive the world as we know it and to act and interact in the ordinary world. This also includes areas that are not ordinarily attended by our assemblage point, by our awareness.  However, warriors also frequent these areas, which are very valuable because they enable them to deal with ordinary existence under conditions of heightened attention and to see possibilities and spaces for action that escape the normal condition.  Then there is everything outside of there as well. An immense area, almost infinite practically, and that is called second attention. This second attention corresponds to all the positions, the areas that the assemblage point can reach, as well as those that we can reach while maintaining correspondence with the world in which we ordinarily live.  They are innumerable. Over thousands of years the Toltecs explored an incredible amount of them, but it is always a tiny fraction. Maps for reaching these locations in the second attention span are also described, for example, in many pre-Columbian constructions that still exist today, even though they have been profoundly altered by time and human intervention.  However, in nagualism it is casually referred to as second attention, not altered state of consciousness.  There are also areas of intersection between first and second attention, which are those that correspond, for example, to the hunter's dream, which is an intermediate condition that weaves together, in an orderly form, characteristics of first and second attention and allows one to act in a state of heightened awareness (here, perhaps "heightened attention" may be a better term to describe what warriors seek) while still maintaining the coherence of the world in which we live.  This is a position that is used a lot in the art of ambush. We could also say that for warriors there is the state of heightened awareness that makes one reach limiting positions, positions that are close to the ordinary one and that allow one to use one's awareness and attention with enormously greater effectiveness and efficiency than the ordinary one.  But such a condition is diametrically opposed to what is commonly understood as an altered state of consciousness, in which one usually has the idea instead of losing cognitive capacity or even the ability to interact with the world. You are jolted into a realm where perhaps you have very profound insights, but we are then unable to derive pragmatic consequences with respect to our existence. I mean consequences that can intertwine with our even everyday, everyday existence. If there is not this pragmatic aspect, it means that that is not an interesting, useful position. [See Part 2 here](https://staging13.perseusarcaneacademy.com/post/the-practice-of-recapitulation/) --- ## 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 ---