Perceiving, or assembling the world into meaningfulness in particular ways, Don Juan told Castaneda, is accomplished from particular locations in the energy body. The usual position of the “assemblage point,” the commonly rooted position that translates the world into its ordinary, mundane, rational appearance, is behind the right shoulder blade.
That didn’t make much sense to me at the time that I read it, years ago, but yesterday, as I sat quietly in my living room, I focused on that point. It seemed I knew exactly where it was. I took note of how I was perceiving the room. In an ordinary, rational way. There’s a chair. There’s the woodstove. Then, just by thinking that I could, I moved the assemblage point, which felt like a flattened sphere of reddish light energy about two inches in diameter, from behind my right shoulder over to somewhere behind my left shoulder, and as I did, even though my eyes were still reading objects, my perception shifted so noticeably that it seemed I’d just jolted my left side open with a tiny electric shock. Everything seemed transparent. All the objects I was looking at consisted of layers of motion. Atoms and molecules existed at their own rates of motion, or time, and the space between them at another. But what I was excited about was what had happened when I moved the assemblage point. The sensation was that my energy body was a gridwork of lines of light – picture a computerized three-dimensional ovoid blueprint, circumscribed with lines of light. When I shifted the flattened sphere from the right to the left, it didn’t slide over the grid, it stayed attached to it, like a knob, and the entire gridwork was shifted, as if I’d just opened the air-conditioning vent in my car, all the little slats moving at the same time. What I had been experiencing before, I could tell by the contrast of what I was experiencing now, had been a reception of information all over, not just through eyes and ears, but now there was a different slant, a polarized retake, of the information that was being received by the entire surface of my energy body. I had a vast spherical awareness of the spaciousness behind me, beneath me, of the energy levels and frequencies of everything around me, with no sense of up or down, gravity or disconnectedness.
I shifted the point of awareness back to my right shoulder, and the grid slid with it, closing off the x-ray-vision as if I’d turned the rod on the window blinds. Wow, cool, I thought. I sat there like a kid, sliding myself open and shut, as if I’d just learned how to wink both eyes, one at a time, to make my raised finger move back and forth without moving it.
Then it occurred to me that I could slide my energy grid into yet another position. So, with a thought, I slid the knob to the top of my head. Whoa. Roller coaster upside-down swirl, but then, whee, I was out, my eyes closed themselves off from seeing the room and I was out of my body, flying somersaults over my own head, zooming up and diving and spiraling into a multidimensional dance of freedom.
Okay, that was fun, slide the knob back to the right shoulder blade and catch my breath. This kind of discovery makes me feel like an infant discovering that my arms are attached to me. It’s very much like that. I still don’t know how I move my arm. I just use a glance to let it know where I want it to go, and it goes there. I don’t have to use a glance, though, I can reach behind me by using a mental image. But I can also use no image at all. I can just desire that my arm reach up and wave, and it does! This is magic.
So I took a walk this evening and noticed that my little knob of perception was somewhere behind my right shoulder, and everything looked normal, the trees fluttering their autumn-colored leaves in the cool breeze, the tall paper-dry corn plants in long rows, the clusters of Queen Anne’s Lace, the long-needled pines beyond, all was the same landscape through which I have taken evening walks for years.
Then, the same way that I move my arm, by magic, I shifted my sphere of perception over to behind my left shoulder, and instantly I sensed the immensity of the planet, the vastness of space beneath, behind, and all around me, the transparency of the trees and the fields, the dream-like energy of it all. I felt so sensitive to the subtleties of energy shifts that I was suddenly positive there was something alive and mobile just past the last row of corn. I took a few more soft-shoed steps, and two startled fawns bolted across the alfalfa field, slowing to an easy bounce when they sensed my lack of interest. I wondered where their points of perception are in their energy bodies, and whether they can shift them. I suspect that if I were to exercise this position of perception, I might be able to answer such questions with direct awareness.
I walked on, and decided to move the knob into my heart.
I become the trees; they are me, loving myself as their rootless explorer self. The breeze is me, caressing myself. The planet is me, smiling beneath and behind it all. It is all the same loving presence, dressed in different colors, presenting different faces and textures out of a love of creating, creating differences, subtle ones, powerful ones, all the same, differences for the sake of having more to love.
I begin to understand.
So what happens when I move my point of perception into my root chakra, which has to do with material survival, groundedness, aggression and passion, self before tribe? What would happen for someone else, I’m sure, would be different from what happened for me. I was taken aback. With my point of perception located in my root chakra, I saw the trees as objects — in my case, objects that I wanted to paint. I wanted to possess them, objectify them, preserve them in my own way, for my own purposes. I was surprised at how aggressive that felt. (I was also rather relieved – at least I didn’t want to chop them down and turn them into objects I could use or sell.) But my perception was most definitely in terms of objects that I could use for my own ends, for my own survival. My awareness of the different shades of color had to do with greed and was accompanied by a sub-human growl of pleasure. I wanted to capture the colors, manipulate them, add my own desires and intentions to them. I wanted to make the colors mine and sell them. The word enslave comes to mind. I understood a way of perceiving that permeates materialistic and imperialistic societies as I never had before.
This was about the extent of my attention span for the evening, but it gave me plenty to think about. It’s a little like the story of the six blind men and the elephant. It’s also, like, man, our human cultures argue over who is right about what color the grass is on the other side of the fence and we don’t even notice that we’re all wearing different colored sunglasses. It’s like being an infant, too, who doesn’t get it yet, that’s my fist holding that blanket. Oh! You mean I will also be able to pick up a rattle, turn myself over, walk like they do?
How come nobody ever told me I could do this?
You have been told that you can do this, and you have been doing this.
Yeah, that’s the other thing. I was going to say that. I’ve been doing it. I just didn’t know what I was doing. This is another kind of freedom, another kind of fluidity. What we think of as normal percep… by the way, who was that talking to me just now?
That was what happens to your perception when you move that knob to yet another point on or within your energy body. You have an unlimited number of points of perception.
I don’t think I would have understood that remark quite the way I do right now, without having just taken that walk. But I was probably getting a very low impact reception of what is possible to receive.
Yes, you were. What is possible to perceive is the sensation of having changed the dream scene, having shifted the reality entirely, having created another world. But you don’t need to worry about that just yet. Just get the hang of what you’re doing now, and each new skill will follow. All humans will eventually recognize themselves as beings of infinite flexibility, if they so desire. You are one of many assisting the greater mindset to adjust to this potential. There are many realities. We cannot tell you in ways that you can understand as yet, but you can, truly, with the freedom you are developing, change your experiences, and experience your changes, as painlessly as you do when you move your hand to grasp your cup of coffee.
So you’re available to me because I’ve shifted my little knob?
You could call it your point of referral.
Oh.
Or your translator. Or your polarized magnifying glass. Information can be translated for you and by you from the energy matrix – which is not the same as portrayed in the movie The Matrix, by the way, although that movie was making an excellent point about the general belief system concerning reality. All interpretations have their validity. It is impossible to translate the ultimate reality into any system of communication that is less than the entire ongoing self-creating experience. The purpose of the experience includes interpretations, as it includes awareness of the miracle and mystery of itself. Your interpretations are your stories, as are those of every aware being, and they color, transmute, augment, and enhance the One Story. You have the choice of interpretation as well as of creation of your contribution to the Story.
I can just touch that dial! Use my imagination as one of my extra senses. Know that I am a miracle. Bask in the miraculous.
The miraculous is simply that which is not yet understood or experienced as part of yourself.
Thank you.
You are welcome. It is with infinite devotion that we depart.
You sound familiar.
You have heard from us before.
And I will again?
Most assuredly.
*Exerpt from the book “Somewhere Between Here and Perfect”.