The Long Futile Journey to Ixtlan

We can always return to where we have come from; like a homecoming of an expatriate to his fatherland, of a college student to his old hometown, of a son to his ancestral home. But the question is: Is the coming back coming back to the same place, to the same old place?

Most probably, yes; save from aged faces of acquaintances and some physical changes in the streets where most likely a building or a house or store has been built here and there to replace the old ones. But the place is the same old memorable place.

This we expect and believe to be true.

But in Carlos Castaneda’s Journey to Ixtlan: Lessons of Don Juan, this is not the case.

The name of writer Carlos Castaneda rings a special tone in my ears. I have heard of him, as far back as college days, for his more familiar work The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge. I have been fascinated by stories of how he recorded his mystical encounter with the use of peyote, which can give you a thirteen-hour-long hallucinatory experience.

Nevertheless, there is none of that adventurousness in trying peyote in Journey to Ixtlan. If there ever was, it is rare and only through suspicious suggestive hints by Castaneda.

Instead, Journey to Ixtlan deals with the initiation of Carlos Castaneda as an apprentice under Don Juan Matus, a Yaqui Indian, to sorcery.

Castaneda, under the guidance of Don Juan, undergoes different stages of achieving the ring of power to stop the world. Don Juan, who never runs out of reason to laugh of what he sees as idiocy and simple mindedness of Castaneda, is one weird of an old man. To start, he thinks the world talks to him; say, when he declares something and the kettle whistles, he would say the kettle is agreeing with him.

When one is able to stop the world (and this Castaneda is able to achieve and through his words: I saw the ‘lines of the world’… the lines were constant and were superimposed on or were coming through everything in the surroundings. I turned around and examined an extraordinary new world) it only validates one of the teachings of Don Juan that “the world is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable.”

Don Juan teaches that a sorcerer is a warrior; though this does not mean warrior against evil per se, but a warrior against those who also know sorcery and with the intent to harm you. And when one is learning sorcery, there is always a ready worthy opponent that will wrestle you to teach you the greatest and painful lesson of sorcery.

Yet, the greatest and painful lesson of sorcery is not exclusively bound to sorcerers. It is also true to regular thinking people like you and me.

So what is the lesson then?

Even if the whole book is full of instances where Don Juan doubles up and sometimes kicks in the air as he laughs his old mystic man’s gaiety don’t be misled that he’s a happy chap. Knowing a lot is a tragedy and one cannot help in the end to see the world as one comic reality. Yet, deep within the heart, there is a sad nostalgia for the old world because being a sorcerer is faced with the fact that he can no longer return to his old place. After the debacle with the worthy opponent that throws him several mountains away, he can never return again. Every place from then on is part of a long futile journey to go home.

For us regular people, the worthy opponent can come to us through enormous personal problems. The knowledge and wisdom and experience and everything that we have seen throughout the process can lead us for the shedding of our old self, for a re-birth. And from then on, our life will be a long journey to go back to our old understanding of the world.

Thinking about this, I cannot deny that Journey to Ixtlan is the poignant life of a sorcerer and those who have achieved a higher understanding of the world we live in. It is lonely out there sitting on the top of the mountain; the wind is harsh and it is severely cold.

And even if you reached your old country, your old hometown, your old place, it is never been the same old one but a different one. Consciously or unconsciously you try to go home but you know that it is only an endless journey since you have known and seen and felt and understood a lot already.

And from then on, we take our own journey to Ixtlan.

Dizzy Learning

The itch is still there to describe and narrate a descriptive bodily position we usually find ourselves in. The energy to say that this experience is something to take note and from that create an essay (or a story) all from a subjective point of view is still there.

But for sometime now, the itch has somehow begun to falter on its pre-destined course of eventual failure. Yes, I call my life-long effort of wanting to say what I know about this world as something doomed from the very beginning. In the first place, I talk more about wanting to write something than writing that damned thing. I’m more of a worrier anxious that time is ticking away and I still have to start somewhere (as an ardent believer used to say ‘kulang lang praxis’). I guess that would sum up my effort in becoming a ‘real’ writer.

Somehow, during that time I died. Or rather I was dead in the conventional logic of how the world judges the inaction. The big term ‘Purpose in Life’ and lifelong ‘Dream’ suddenly came into a halt; stopped by the nature of inaction that produces nothing for the practical world.

Yet, with all humility, I learned a lot during that inactivity. My mind or consciousness or self or ego or whatever you would call it, just expanded (shrunk?) that I could not describe will surgical precision the experience. My attempt to describe it is that it gave me a new vantage place where to see the world and the universe within. Previous preconditioned idea and beliefs have been challenged and obliterated, asking for a brand new beginning.

Though I could hardly say that I learned ever basics that I should know, the tidbits of knowledge about what ‘real’ is is too much for my intellect to churn in. Probably, I failed to empty myself that the water that have been pouring in just spill out inevitably. I could not contain it, sad to say.

Right now, I still can not say whether I will be back on my previous journey of becoming a ‘real’ writer. A lot have been learned and experienced on taking the refuge of the shore and just watch the river that I had been (and still) drifting along run its course.

I can see now the people whom I used to share the same dream and what kind of dream or purpose in life we vigorously pursued. I can see with a clearer perception where it is leading to. I also see, probably even hear, those people whom I shared the ‘Dreams’ muttered in disapproval of my action or inaction.

Learning is a painful thing.

While I’m overwhelmed because of all the learning that I’m getting, it is good to thing that there is Lil Feather (though whom I know does not fully in accord with my study and practice) beside me , wherein in her lap I could rest, rest my tired eyes and body; and say ‘higa lang ako, maya pa flight mo.’