The Sorcerers' Crossing: Chapter 08.

The Sorcerers' Crossing - A Woman's Journey ©1992 by Taisha Abelar.

Chapter 8.

Clara now habitually, and without a word of warning, would leave me alone in the house for days at a time with only Manfred for company.

Although I had the whole house to myself, I never dared to venture beyond the living room, my bedroom, Clara's gymnasium, the kitchen, and of course, the outhouse.

There was something about Clara's house and grounds, especially when Clara was away, that filled me with an irrational fear.

The result was that when I was alone, I kept a strict routine; which I found comforting.

I used to wake up around nine, and make my breakfast in the kitchen on a hot plate; because I still did not know how to light the wood-burning stove. Then I would pack a light lunch, and I would either go to the cave to recapitulate, or I would take a long hike with Manfred.

I returned in the late afternoon to practice kung fu forms in Clara's martial arts gymnasium.

The gym was a big hall with a vaulted ceiling, a varnished wooden floor, and a standing black-lacquer rack on which a variety of martial arts weapons were displayed.

Along the wall opposite the door was a raised platform covered with straw mats.

I had once asked Clara what the platform was for.

She said it was where she did her meditation.

I had never seen Clara meditate because whenever she went into the building by herself, she always locked the door.

Every time I asked her what kind of meditation she practiced, she refused to elaborate on it.

The only thing I had ever found out about her meditation was that she called it 'dreaming'.

Clara had allowed me free access to her gymnasium whenever she was not using it herself.

And when I was alone at the house, I gravitated to that gym room; and there I found emotional solace; for it was imbued with Clara's presence and power.

It was there that she had taught me a most intriguing style of kung fu.

I had never been interested in Chinese martial arts because my Japanese karate teachers had always insisted that its movements were too elaborate and cumbersome to be of any practical value.

Systematically my Japanese teachers belittled the Chinese styles, and elevated their own. They said that although karate had its roots in the Chinese styles, its forms and applications were thoroughly altered and perfected in Japan.

Since I had no prior knowledge of martial arts, I accepted my teachers' beliefs, and I totally discounted all non-Japanese karate styles.

Consequently, I did not know what to make of Clara's kung fu style.

But in spite of my ignorance, one thing became obvious to me. Clara was an indisputable master of her style.

After I had worked out for an hour or so in Clara's gymnasium, I would change clothes and go to the kitchen to eat.

Invariably, my food would be set on the table. But I had always been so famished after exercising, that I just wolfed down whatever was prepared without speculating how it got there.

When I later questioned Clara about it, she had told me that when she was gone, a male caretaker came to the house to cook my meals.

He must have also done the laundry because I would find my clothes neatly folded in a pile at the door of my bedroom. All I had to do was iron them.

Now, some mysterious errand had kept Clara away and I had not seen her for two days.

That evening after a heavy workout, which Manfred looked on growling critically from time to time, I had such a surplus of energy that I decided to break my routine by returning to the cave in the darkness to continue recapitulating.

I was in such a hurry to get there that I forgot to bring my flashlight.

It was a cloudy night, and yet, despite the total darkness, I did not stumble on anything along the path to the cave.

In my recapitulating, I visualized and breathed in all the memories of all my karate instructors; and every demonstration and tournament I had also participated in.

It took me most of the night, but when I finished I felt thoroughly cleansed of the prejudices that I had inherited from my teachers as part of my training.

The following day Clara still had not returned, so I went to the cave a bit later than usual.

It occurred to me that it was unusual for me to have walked all the way to the cave the night before without tripping in the darkness.

So, as I walked home in the daylight, I tried a deliberate exercise.

I walked on the same path I had walked every day, but this time I kept my eyes shut to simulate darkness.

I wanted to see if I could walk without stumbling.

But with my eyes shut, I fell several times over stumps and rocks, and I badly bruised my shin.

I was on the living room floor putting bandages on my abrasions when Clara unexpectedly walked in the door. With a look of surprise, she asked, "What happened to you? Were you and the dog fighting?"

At that very instant, Manfred ambled into the room. He barked gruffly, as if offended.

I was convinced that Manfred had understood what Clara had said.

Clara stood in front of him, and she bowed slightly from the waist the way an Oriental student bows to his master.

Clara then voice a most convoluted bilingual apology.

She said, "I am extremely sorry, my dear sir for having spoken so lightly about your irreproachable behavior and your exquisite manners; and above all, your superior consideration that makes you a lord among lords; the most illustrious of them all."

I was absolutely bewildered. I thought Clara had lost her mind during her three days' absence.

I had never heard her speaking like this before, and I wanted to laugh, but her serious expression made my laugh stick in my throat.

She was about to begin another barrage of apologies when Manfred yawned, looked at her bored, turned around, and left the room.

Clara sat down on the couch, her body shook with muffled laughter. She confided to me, "When he is offended, the only way to get rid of him is to bore him to death with apologies."

I hoped that Clara would tell me where she had been for the past three days. I waited for a moment in case she would bring up the subject of her absence, but she did not.

I told her that while she was gone, Manfred had come every day to visit me at the recapitulation cave; and that it was as if he went there from time to time to check if I was all right.

Again I wanted Clara to say something about the nature of her trip, but instead she calmly replied, "Yes. He is very solicitous, and extremely considerate of others.

"Therefore he expects the same treatment from them. And if he even suspects that he is not getting it, he becomes rabid.

"When he is in that mood, he is deadly dangerous.

"Remember that night he nearly snapped your head off when you called him a toad-dog?"

I wanted to change the subject since I did not like to think of Manfred as a mad dog.

Over the past months, Manfred had become more a friend than a beast.

He was so much a friend, that an unsettling certainty had taken possession of me. I felt sure that he was the only one who truly understood me.

Clara reminded me, "You have not said what happened to your legs,"

I told her about my failed attempt at walking with my eyes shut, and I explained that I had had no difficulty walking in the dark the night before.

She looked at the scratches and welts on my legs, and patted my head as if I were Manfred.

Clara said, "Last night, you were not making a project out of walking.

"You were determined to get to the cave, so your feet automatically took you there.

"This afternoon, you were consciously trying to replicate last night's walking, but you failed miserably because your mind got in the way."

She thought for a moment then added, "Or perhaps you were not listening to the voice of the spirit that could have guided you safely."

Clara puckered up her lips in a childish gesture of impatience as I told her that I had not been aware of any voices; except that sometimes in the house I thought I heard strange whisperings, although I was convinced that those sounds were only the wind blowing through the empty hallway.

Clara reminded me sternly, "We have agreed that you would not take anything I say literally, unless I tell you beforehand to do so.

"By emptying your warehouse, you are changing your inventory.

"Now there is room for something new, such as walking in darkness. So I thought that perhaps there might also be room for the voice of the spirit."

I was trying so hard to figure out what Clara was saying, that my forehead must have been furrowed.

Clara sat down In her favorite chair and patiently began to explain what she meant.

"Before you came to this house, your inventory had nothing on dogs being more than dogs.

"But then you met Manfred and meeting him forced you to modify that part of your inventory."

Clara shook her hand like an Italian, and said, "Capisce?"

Dumbfounded, I asked, "You mean Manfred is the voice of the spirit?"

Clara laughed so hard that she could barely speak. She mumbled, "No. That it is not quite what I mean. It is something more abstract."

Clara suggested I take out my mat from the closet.

As Clara was getting some salve from a cabinet, she said, "Let us go to the patio and sit under the zapote tree. The twilight is the best time to listen for the voice of the spirit."

I unrolled my mat under the huge tree covered with peach-like green fruits.

Clara massaged some salve into my bruised skin. It hurt fearsomely, but I tried not to wince.

When she had finished, I noticed that the biggest welt had almost disappeared.

Clara leaned back, and propped her back against the thick tree trunk.

She explained, "Everything has a form, but besides the outer shape, there is an inner awareness that rules things. This silent awareness we call the spirit. It is an all-encompassing force that manifests itself differently in different things. And this energy communicates with us."

Clara told me to relax, and to take deep breaths because she was going to show me how to exercise my inner hearing.

She said, "It is with the inner ear that we are able to discern the spirit's biddings. When you breathe, allow the energy to flow out of your ears."

I asked, "How do I do that?"

Clara replied, "When you exhale, fix your attention on the openings of your ears, and use your intent and your concentration to direct the flow."

She monitored my attempts for a while; correcting me as I went along.

Clara instructed me, saying, "Exhale through your nose with your mouth closed and the tip of your tongue touching your palate. And exhale noiselessly."

After a few attempts, I could feel my ears pop and my sinuses clear.

Then Clara instructed me to rub the palms of my hands together until they were hot and then place them over my ears with my fingertips almost touching at the back of my head.

I did as she instructed.

Clara suggested I massage my ears using a gentle circular pressure.

Then, with my ears still covered and my index fingers crossed over the middle fingers, I was to repeatedly tap behind each ear by snapping my index fingers in unison.

As I flicked my fingers, I heard a sound like a muffled bell reverberating inside my head.

I repeated the procedure eighteen times as she had instructed. When I removed my hands I noticed I could distinctly hear the faintest sounds in the surrounding vegetation, while before, everything had been undifferentiated and muffled.

Clara said, "Now, with your ears clear, perhaps you will be able to hear the voice of the spirit."

"But do not expect a shout from the treetops. What we call the voice of the spirit is more of a feeling.

"Or it can be an idea that suddenly pops into your head.

"Or sometimes it can be like a longing to go somewhere vaguely familiar, or a longing to do something also vaguely familiar."

Perhaps it was the power of her suggestion that made me hear a soft murmur around me.

As I began paying closer attention to it, the murmur turned into human voices speaking in the distance.

I could distinguish women's crystalline laughter, and a man singing with a rich baritone voice.

I heard the sounds as if the wind was carrying them to me in spurts.

I strained to make out what the voices were saying, and the more I listened to the wind, the more elated I became.

Some ebullient energy inside me made me jump up.

I was so happy that I wanted to play, to dance, and to run around like a child.

And without realizing what I was doing, I began to sing and leap and twirl around the patio like a ballerina until I had completely exhausted myself.

When I finally came to sit down next to Clara, I was perspiring, but it was not a healthy physical sweat.

It was more like the cold sweat of exhaustion.

Clara, too, was out of breath from laughing at my antics.

I had succeeded in making an utter fool of myself by jumping and cavorting around the patio.

"I do not know what came over me," I said at a loss for an explanation.

Clara said in a serious tone, "Describe what happened."

When I refused out of embarrassment, Clara added, "You must tell me or I will be forced to view you as being a bit... well, batty in the belfry, if you know what I mean."

I told her that I had heard the most haunting laughter and singing, and that it actually drove me to dance around.

Concerned, I asked her, "Do you think I am going crazy?"

"If I were you, I would not worry about it," she said. "Your cavorting was a natural reaction to hearing the voice of the spirit."

I corrected her, saying, "It was not 'a' voice. It was lots of voices,"

Clara scoffed, "There you go again; the literal-minded Miss Perfect."

She explained that literal-mindedness is a major item of our inventory and that we have to be aware of to bypass.

She said, "The voice of the spirit is an abstraction that has nothing to do with voices, and yet we may at times hear voices."

Clara then told me that in my case, since I was raised a devout Catholic, my own way of re-adapting my inventory would be to turn the spirit into a sort of guardian angel; a kind, protective male that watches over me.

Clara continued by saying, "However, the spirit is not anybody's guardian. It is an abstract force; neither good nor evil.

"The spirit is a force that has no interest whatsoever in us, but that nevertheless responds to the power of our awareness.

"And not to your prayers, mind you, but to your energetic power.

"Remember that the next time you feel like praying for forgiveness!"

I asked, alarmed, "But is the spirit not kind and forgiving?"

Clara said that sooner or later I was going to discard all my preconceptions about good and evil, and God and religion. I would think only in terms of a completely new inventory.

I was armed with the ready-made barrage of logical arguments about free will, and the existence of evil that I had learned throughout my years of Catholic schooling when I started off with the question, "Do you mean good and evil do not exist?"

But before I could even begin to present my case, Clara said, "This is where my companions and I differ from the established order.

"I have told you that for us freedom is to be free from humanness.

"That includes God, good and evil, the saints, the Virgin and the Holy Ghost.

"We believe that a nonhuman inventory is the only possible freedom for human beings.

"If our warehouses are going to remain filled to capacity with the desires, feelings, ideas and objects of our human inventory, where is our freedom then?

"Do you see what I mean?"

I understood her, but not as clearly as I would have liked to. I was still resisting the idea of relinquishing my humanness; plus, I had not yet recapitulated all the religious preconceptions handed down to me by the Catholic school system.

I was also accustomed to never thinking about anything that did not pertain to me directly.

As I tried to find flaws with her reasoning, Clara jolted me out of my mental speculations with a tap on my ribs.

She said that she was going to show me another exercise for stopping thoughts and for feeling energy lines.

Clara declared that otherwise I would be doing what I had always done; being enthralled with the idea of myself.

Clara told me to sit in a cross-legged position and to lean sideways as I inhaled, first to the right, then to the left; and to feel how I was being pulled by a horizontal line extending out of the opening of my ears.

She said that, surprisingly, the line did not sway with the motion of one's body but remained perfectly horizontal, and that this was one of the mysteries she and her cohorts had uncovered.

Clara explained, "Leaning in this manner moves our awareness, which normally is always directed to the front, to the side."

She ordered me to loosen my jaw muscles by chewing and swallowing saliva three times.

I asked, "What does this do?" and I swallowing with a gulp.

Clara replied, "The chewing and swallowing brings some of the energy lodged in the head down to the stomach, thereby lessening the load on the brain."

She said with a chuckle, "In your case, you should do this maneuver often."

I wanted to get up and walk around because my legs were falling asleep, but Clara demanded that I remain seated for a while longer and practice this exercise.

I leaned to both sides, trying as hard as I could to feel that elusive horizontal line, but I could not feel it.

I did manage, however, to stop my thoughts from their usual avalanche.

Perhaps an hour passed with me sitting in total silence without any thoughts at all.

Around us, I could hear crickets chirping and leaves rustling, but no more voices were brought by the wind.

For a while I listened to Manfred's barking coming from his room at the side of the house.

Then, as if moved by an unvoiced command, thoughts rushed in my mind again.

I became aware of what had been their complete absence, and how peaceful total silence had been.

My restless body movements must have cued Clara, for she began to speak again.

She said, "The voice of the spirit comes from nowhere.

"It comes from the depth of silence; from the realm of not-being.

"That voice can only be heard when we are absolutely quiet and balanced."

She explained that two opposing forces move us. And whether we consider those forces male and female, or positive and negative, or light and dark, they have to be kept in balance so that an opening is created in the energy that surrounds us.

Then, through this opening in the energy encompassing us, our awareness can seek to align with the spirit.

It is through this opening that the spirit manifests itself to us.

Clara said, "Balance is what we are after. But balance does not only mean an equal portion of each force.

"As the portions are made equal, the new, balanced combination gains momentum and begins to move by itself."

Clara searched my face in the darkness, I supposed, for signs of comprehension.

Finding none, she said almost cuttingly, "We are not that intelligent, are we?"

I felt my whole body tense at her remark.

I told her that in all my life nobody had ever accused me of not being intelligent. My parents, my teachers had always praised me for being one of the brightest students in the class. When it came to report cards, I nearly made myself ill by studying to make sure I had better grades than my brothers.

Clara sighed, and listened patiently to my lengthy reaffirmation of my intelligence.

Before I had exhausted my arguments to convince her that she was wrong, she conceded, "Yes, you are intelligent, but everything you have said refers only to the world of everyday life. More than intelligent, you are studious, industrious and cunning. Would you not agree?"

I did agree with her in spite of myself, because my own reason told me that if I had truly been as intelligent as I claimed, I would not have had to nearly kill myself studying.

Clara explained, "In order to be intelligent in my world, you must be able to concentrate; to fix your attention on any concrete thing as well as on any abstract manifestation."

I asked, "What kind of abstract manifestations are you talking about, Clara?"

She said, "An opening in the energy field around us is an abstract manifestation.

"But do not expect to feel it or see it in the same manner you feel and see the concrete world. Something else takes place."

Clara stressed that for us to fix our attention on any abstract manifestation, we have to merge the known with the unknown in a spontaneous amalgamation.

In this way, we can engage our reason, yet at the same time be indifferent to it.

Clara then told me to stand up and walk around. She said, "Now that it is dark, try walking without looking at the ground. Not as a conscious exercise, but as a sorcery 'not-doing'."

I wanted to ask her to explain what she meant by a sorcery not-doing.

But intuitively I knew that if I asked and she tried to explain, I would consciously be thinking about her explanation, and I would undoubtedly gauge my performance against my own understanding of this new concept

I also knew I would do all that regardless of whether or not I even understand what she would say by way of explanation.

I did recall, though, that she had used the term "not-doing" before; and spurred on by my self-imposed reluctance to ask questions, I tried to remember what Clara had told me about not-doing.

For me, explanations, even if they were minimal or faulty, had always been better than a void.

Others' knowledge gave me my desired sense of understanding and control. On the other hand, no knowledge left me feeling completely vulnerable.

Clara, obviously aware of my need for explanations, said, "Not-doing is a term that comes to us from our own sorcery tradition."

"Not-doing refers to everything that is not included in the inventory that was forced upon us.

"When we engage any item of our forced inventory, we are 'doing'.

"Anything we do that is not part of that inventory is not-doing."

Any degree of relaxation I had achieved was abruptly disrupted by the first of the statements she had just made.

I demanded, "What did you mean, Clara, when you referred to your tradition as sorcery?"

"You catch every detail when you want to, Taisha. No wonder your ears are so big," Clara said laughing, and she did not answer me right away.

I stared at her, waiting for her reply.

Finally Clara said, "I was not going to tell you about this yet, but since it slipped out, let me just say that the art of freedom is a product of sorcerers' intent."

"What sorcerers are you talking about?"

"There have been people here in Mexico, and there still are, who are concerned with final questions. My magical family and I call them sorcerers.

"From them we have inherited all the ideas I am acquainting you with.

"You already know about the recapitulation. Not-doing is another of those ideas."

"But who are these people, Clara?"

"You will know all there is to know about them soon," she assured me. "For now, let us just practice one of their not-doings."

Clara said that not-doing at this particular moment would be, for example, to force myself to trust the spirit implicitly by letting go of my calculating mind.

Clara warned me, "Do not just pretend to trust while secretly harboring doubts.

"Only when your positive and negative forces are in perfect accord will you be capable of feeling or seeing the opening in the energy around you; or being capable of walking with your eyes closed, and being assured of success."

I took a few deep breaths and began walking.

I was not looking at the ground, but I had my hands outstretched in front of me in case I bumped into things.

For a while I kept stumbling, and on one occasion I tripped over a potted plant and I would have fallen had Clara not grabbed my arm.

Gradually I began to stumble less and less, until I had no trouble walking smoothly.

It was as if my feet could clearly see everything on the patio and knew exactly where to step, and where not to step.