The Event Horizon

Castaneda talked a lot about the role of Intent in his works. This simple definition dosen’t help much because the topic of “will” unpacks into a whole new direction, which I want to explore later.

Intent is the purposeful guiding of will, the energy of alignment. Fire, 171

The topic of Intent is primarily addressed in The Power of Silence where Don Juan talks about his life, his return to ordinary life after leaving the Nagual Julian’s house. Here he says he felt as though he were failing without an abstract purpose. His sense of detachment and aloofness waned, and he became embroiled once more in poverty and the mindset of need and necessity.

Failing without an abstract purpose, Silence, 187-188

Don Juan goes on to talk about how the purpose of the new seers was Freedom — but what does that mean? I always ask Freedom from what or, better yet, Freedom to what? And  I come up with, “Freedom to perceive.” I don’t know if this is where Don Juan is going. Freedom from the confines of our trappings in the first attention? I don’t feel an “unbending intent” regarding the abstract purpose of “Freedom,” so I guess I question it. Should I have my own abstract purpose? Maybe focusing on just impeccability again is enough. I feel I made a lot of progress focusing on that. But, regression here, what is my intent to focus on impeccability?

…set up a new intent, sorcerer’s intent, the intent of joining something already established though thousands of years of human toil. TSC, 212

Intent seems to be pushed aside in a lot of what I read on the internet. It doesn’t seem it is ever mentioned, where dreaming is talked about too much. Probably because it is a sexier topic, where intent is more nebulous, which brings me back to this.

He explained that what the new seers saw in the glow of awareness resulted in the sequence in which they arranged the new seers’ truths about awareness. This is known as the Mastery of Awareness. From that, they developed three sets of techniques. The first is the Mastery of Stalking, the second is the Mastery of Intent, and the third is the Mastery of Dreaming. Fire, 168

Note that these are techniques–more than teachings. I think that is important to say. I want to understand how all of this fits together.

…in the sorcerer’s intent there isn’t room for defeat, for sorcerers only have one path open to them: to succeed in whatever they do. But in order to have such a powerful and clear clear view, sorcerers have to reset their total being, and that takes both understanding and power. Understanding comes from recapitulating their lives, and power gathers from their impeccable acts. TSC, 212

So, for me, this is what I’ll focus on: recapitulation and impeccability. But I am still interested in adding to my practice in other ways.

I think where I am getting hung up here is by equivocating “abstract purpose” with an overarching intent. Thinking about it, they are not the same.

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The Fire from Within, Chapter 11, “Stalking, Intent, and the Dreaming Position”