Parallel Perception

photo credit: h.koppdelaney

Click here to read part 1 of The Nagual Knocked on the Door.

The Nagual came to my table and sat directly across from me, the only time I ever saw him do that. He placed both his hands on mine and I couldn’t even attempt to mask my inner turmoil. I was completely fragmented. He left without saying a word. I switched tables and had to force myself to eat breakfast. Suddenly the Nagual reappeared, this time standing next to me beside the table.

“This thing is very persistent in you, it doesn’t want to let you go, but you have to face it,” he said.

He then took my hand and placed a small white flower in it. He told me that whenever I feel it, release it into the flower. But by now I was absorbed by it and there where no longer waves or intervals. When he left I raised the flower to my nose and inhaled its pleasant fragrance.

Moments later he returned and told me that when I smelled the flower it tried to enter him, as he rotated his hand in front of his solar plexus. This was something he mentioned more than once while I was there, that something from me was trying to enter him, but he told me that because of his emptiness there was no entrance.

I felt his intensity as he spoke and I averted my gaze, but he demanded that I look at him. He then told me that we can deal with this the whole time I’m there if we have to, but by doing so it was successfully diverting us from more important work. He then told me that he was given a mantra as a gift of power, and that its use invokes inner silence. He shared this gift with me, and asked me to repeat it along with him.

Once I had it down and I said it on my own he asked, “Where do you feel it?”

I closed my eyes and repeated the mantra but I couldn’t feel it anywhere. He repeated with urgency, “Quick, quick, where do you feel it?”

“Nowhere” I replied.

“That’s right, it is composed of nothing.” And with that he left.

I tucked the flower behind my ear, slung my rucksack over my shoulder, and began my daily walk into town. I repeated the mantra to myself with each step that I took. I felt the mantra itself was the dam that prevented me from being washed away.

The men I had started to become familiar with on my walks, the ones asking, “Taxi, transport, motorbike?” were like thieves attempting to distract and steal the mantra. I was hypersensitive to people’s presence, and avoided them like the plague. If someone got too close I would flinch and recoil. I walked directly to the call center to make my daily phone call to my wife.

Next I proceeded to my favorite coffee shop to order a spinach smoothie, since I wasn’t doing a good job chewing that day. I had not stopped repeating the mantra except for the phone call.

Across the street from the table I sat at, there was a statue that stood in the middle of a courtyard. My gaze remained fixed on that statue, while I repeated the mantra, ignoring everything and everyone around me. The only time I broke my gaze was when I took notice of a large flowerpot hanging above a storefront over the walkway across the street. A moment later, the flowerpot came crashing down and shattered on the sidewalk, narrowly missing a woman.

After finishing the smoothie, I proceeded straight back to the room. My steps were labored and heavy as gravity itself became an intolerable obstacle, and by the time I reached the room I was exhausted.

When I opened the door to the room, I saw that my favorite worker was cleaning it. I always enjoyed interacting with him, but I avoided him and wished at that moment that he wasn’t there. He mentioned how early my return was, and I replied that I wasn’t feeling well. He came into the kitchen to let me know he was finished.

He took one look at me and commented, “Howard, you don’t look so good.”

He left; I took a shower, and then lay down on the bed realizing I had lost the mantra. I scrambled to get it back, tried sounding it out, writing it down, pulling my hair – but it was gone.

At that point the dam of my sanity broke wide open as I spent some of the most grueling hours of my life. I had no clue what was happening to me, or how to stop it. I was going fucking mad and every cell in my body hurt, and I just couldn’t slow the avalanche. I grabbed my notebook and began writing a garbage list of the worst things I’d ever done, and had ever been done to me. Since there was no escaping what was happening I figured I’d just rip the scab off and dig as deep as I could.

I felt like I was dying, and if that were indeed the case, I didn’t want to take this shit I was writing down with me. The one thing I would not give in to was this incessant needling desire to quit. It was as if something was saying to me, “If you just stop this nonsense we can get back to normal. Hop on a motorbike, head to the beach and lets go have a beer and check out bikinis.”

As the time approached to visit the Nagual I went to the bathroom. He was the best laxative I’d ever encountered. Before each meeting with him I would completely empty my bowels. By this point I felt as lifeless as I ever have and it took every ounce of what little strength I had left just to dress, step out the door and walk that green mile to the Nagual.

I sat down in front of him and wept, prepared to confess all of my sins. I brought my garbage list with me. I was going to share all the reasons I had no business being there, and believe me, it was a long list. I never hated the Nagual because he was uncompromising, I hated myself because I was so compromising and it was time to fess up to my mistake for ever going to see him.

But the Nagual’s warmth and kindness led me through an impromptu shamanic healing session. He deftly guided me out of the dark tunnel of crisis that had absorbed and battered me and left me feeling near death.

At one point I experienced some kind of multi-perspective. First, my vision became choppy (like tracers under the influence of a hallucinogenic) and while in this state the Nagual explained something about a multi-lateral perspective that had to do with time, and I clearly grasped at that moment what he said and showed me, yet afterwards was unable to put it into words.

He effortlessly guided me in a very short time to a catharsis from my inner turmoil. Without knowing exactly when or how, the whole thing just fell apart, and left without me ever realizing. That whirlwind of madness was replaced by a very calm and deep silence.

Click here to read part 3 of The Nagual Knocked on the Door.