“Ordinarily, if an average man comes face to face with the nagual the shock would be so great that he would die. The goal of a warrior’s training is not to teach him to hex or to charm, but to prepare his tonal not to crap out ... You call it explaining. I call it a sterile and boring insistence of the tonal to have everything under it’s control. Whenever it doesn’t succeed, there is a moment of bafflement and then the tonal opens itself to death. What a prick! It would rather kill itself than relinquish control. And yet there is very little we can do to change that condition.”
Carlos Castaneda

Tales of Power

Christopher Alexander on Holding the Feeling Constant

“… our ability as artists depends very largely on our ability to experience, formulate, and carry such a feeling – first to feel it and witness it, then to carry it forward, remember it, keep it alive within us, and insist on it …

… you hold the feeling constant … you keep it alive in you, this formless feeling which is so vivid, so particular, that you can judge all your form-making as you make the thing, by matching it against that feeling …. emotional substance – something more solid than a feeling, but less formed than a thing – is guiding the process of design and making at every step.”

Christopher Alexander – The Nature of Order – Book 2: The Process of Creating Life

Nature of Order - Table of Contents"

Leave a Reply