The Nagual Knocked on the Door - Part 3
photo credit: JPhilpson
Click here to read part 1 of The Nagual Knocked on the Door
Click here to read part 2 of The Nagual Knocked on the Door
When I left our session that day I hugged the Nagual and thanked him. Back in my room I sat out on the balcony and for the first time in Bali watched the sunset. Up until that point I had barricaded myself in my room. The nightmare of the last 24 hours seemed like a distant memory, and while sitting on that balcony, I don’t think I’ve ever felt so empty. I was in no hurry, had no thoughts to contend with, just right there in that moment watching the fading light.
The Nagual walking by noticed me, and he came up and sat with me. He mentioned something about the sunset, and I saw as he spent time with me that he was sensing if I were really free of entanglements. Such a realization was impossible during my torment, but now seemed very clear. What I recognized was that for the first time I was at complete ease in his presence, and enjoyed being with him then very much. We went over a sequence from ‘Dragon’s Tears’ as I was woefully behind in my study.
The nightmare was not just 24 hours; it was my entire adult life. The last day was so intense, everything coming to a head, that it felt like losing a limb, a part of myself. Some interfering part of myself had been removed, well not exactly. I knew that the thing that was so persistent in me was gone, but I also realized that this was less of an accomplishment than a beginning. And perhaps this was the most precious of the many gifts I received from the Nagual - this new beginning.
It had been days since I’d been visited by the Nagual for breakfast. I never got over a degree of unease when I would see him unexpectedly, because he was completely unpredictable. On this morning I sat alone eating breakfast with my old familiar typewriter mind - tap tap tap tap brrrinnggg! That back and forth incessant yammering polluting my mind.
I continued with this useless chattering as I ate when suddenly I looked up and saw the Nagual looking down at me as he held the back of my chair. I nearly fell out of my seat as my reaction to his presence was like that of an exaggerated actor. I dropped my fork on the table and tried to collect myself; whereas he remained motionless watching my antics.
With his hands still holding the back of my chair, he looked up to the horizon toward the sunrise and said, “Strange, isn’t it? You can’t feel me, but I sure can feel you!”
He then took a seat to my left and after a long pause pronounced each syllable slowly and asked, “What the fuck are you doing here?” And he repeated that question the same way a couple of times. I didn’t say a word, as I felt his words sink into me.
“The longer you are here, the heavier and heavier I get,” he continued. “A certain threshold should have been reached by now, but instead you keep compressing your anger and pushing it further and further down.”
I stared intently at him as he spoke, feeling each word as a blow in my chest. The longer he spoke, the warmer my chest got, as if he were searing and activating that region in me with each word. My yammering mind had gone silent the moment he began talking. When he began speaking again, his hands were in front of him and he made the gesture of something running into a wall as he brought his hands together forming a “T”.
Simultaneous to making this gesture he said, “Instead of reaching this threshold and releasing, you have plugged yourself up.”
When he said the last word, as he brought his hands together, the Buddha fountain that had been running unimpeded the entire time I’d been there suddenly stopped. We both sat silent for a moment, and then he finally looked at me.
“You can’t see the magic as it appears right before your very eyes. The fountain stopped at the precise moment of my gesture to you.”
Though I saw his gesture, and recognized the fountain stopping, it was true that the undeniable magic of that moment eluded me - even though it slapped me right in the face.
He continued, “Without allowing the magic within, the magic that surrounds is ever elusive.”
He left and returned a short time later. He told me that a brown poisonous snake had crossed his path, but he came back anyway. “I bought this fountain as a gift for the owner to reflect on what they are not - and yet someone else tends to it. Strange, isn’t it?” he said.
The more he spoke, the more activity I felt in my chest. He then looked at my chest and tilted his head and said, “This compression of anger in you that keeps getting pushed down confines a child, and that child is crying.”
These words felt like a fatal blow to my heart region, like releasing a pressure valve. He then looked me in the eyes and said, “I think what has been done here has been more effective than all our previous conversations.” He shook his head as if in agreement with what he had said, as if to make sure I was aware of it myself.
When he left, I turned my head towards the rice fields so that the Balinese in the kitchen would not see the flood of tears that streamed down my face. They were a wellspring, as they came from a very deep place. I didn’t feel emotion, just release.
A memory followed them to the surface, and I recalled that as a child my father coached one of my baseball teams. During practice I had been hit by the ball while running the bases and laid on the field writhing in pain. He came out to me and told me, “you are a leader on this team, as a man you can never show this kind of weakness.” From that time forward, I never did. I had taken those words to heart and I never complained and never explained.
That afternoon I sat in bed meditating and dozed off. When I awoke I felt the deepest pain in my heart I’d ever felt. As I slowly phased from sleep to consciousness, lying with that layered hurt in my chest, I soon realized that it was not the deepest pain I’d ever felt. Rather, it was a hurt that I’d protected myself against for a very very long time.
That pain brought up more childhood memories, times that I clearly recalled that old familiar hurt. That pain felt so good, so alive, I wondered why I’d ever constructed walls to stop it in the first place. There was nothing wrong with that hurt, that pain, the penetrating heartache. What was wrong was my false sense of protection, the barriers I’d constructed to prevent it. Protecting oneself from ones own heart is no protection at all, it is mere delusion.
As a result of the incessant hammering of the Nagual, the last couple of days in Bali I had finally reached a point where I could have long and fruitful conversations with him. But believe me, the intensity of conversing with the Nagual equals the physical intensity of ‘Energy Tapping’. What blew me away was how he would bring up a topic without any prompting on my part that resonated with my current circumstance - and he did so time and time again.
Walking down the stairs for the last time to leave the compound, tears filled my eyes. As I took the last step to the walkway, I turned and faced Lujan’s house while placing my hand on my chest. I bowed my head and from my heart I voiced a most sincere thank you.
By now, I have forgotten whatever reasons I had for going to see the Nagual. Reason gets trumped by truth, and I left with an undeniable one. In Bali I recovered my own heart. I never even knew it was missing until I had the good fortune to meet Lujan Matus. In my life I had aimlessly sought heart, but Lujan redirected me to seek and find all the barriers within myself that I had constructed against it.
