Testimonial
It’s three months since I’ve arrived home from a visit to nagual Lujan. I can see beyond a shadow of a doubt now, my life before and after this visit. There was a particular moment while visiting Lujan that I almost lost his attention, caused by a surreptitious holding I, myself, would not let go.
“I’m not going to do this,” he said, and he moved to stand up from our sitting place. What he was going to do, or where he was going, I don’t know. But in that simple statement, I felt more fear than I’ve ever felt in any interaction with another human. Only physical danger comes close to matching the intensity of that moment.
I can’t even recall the words Lujan used next, to describe what I was doing, to explain to me what I knew was going on, but wouldn’t admit. I was in a tunnel, and my eyes were locked on the view outside the window. I was so paralyzed, I couldn’t even move my eyes!
After those painful moments — which I think to myself now as a literal birth process of a new me — I was able to move my body, but my voice simply would not express anything. As the moments continued and I regained my voice, Lujan was careful to point out to me how this shadow that covered the true me was regaining its control, as well. It was so obvious, I don’t know how I gave into it in the first place: ME, ME, ME! Control, control, control, of everyone and everything.
“How do you think it is that Mizpah can so quickly come up with interpretations? It’s because I leave her alone,” Lujan said as we discussed the control of the shadow’s mind. I had no idea what he meant then, when he said this; my shadow told me it was not a comfortable thing, leaving someone alone, that’s not what (I) should do. Yet now that this opening of thought has been created, and I have practiced “leaving others alone,” I easily can understand what he meant: Don’t engage in determining someone else’s thoughts; allow them the space to think freely.
In trying to explain what Lujan showed me, my first thought is: Over and Under.
The real me is “under” a shadow. It’s the shadow that fights to be presented first, last, and in-between. The real me has had very little practice at speaking, presenting itself; as a result, it’s painfully shy.
I went to Lujan in search of a physical relief of pain. What I received was a mental relief as well. Physically, something continues to grow through practiced discipline. My left eye is actually viewing something on its own, while the right eye continues to hold a view the physical world; a frozen rotater cuff in the shoulder is releasing its grip; I’m breathing with my entire torso; I can sense immediate reactions in different parts of my body to actions occuring in the world outside. The sky is not flat! I can view the distance between stars!
And I am intimately becoming familiar with how One draws to one’s Self that which is mirrored. I am immensely grateful for Lujan’s directness with me. For whatever it was that he pulled out of me, and we left it to die there on the floor, it has allowed an understanding that I still cannot voice, cannot put into words, but leaves my heart happy. Truly, a physical reality, like in dreams, that simply floats along its merry way.
With deep affection,
Sugrue, USA