What is a Nagual?

Student: What is a nagual?

Barbara: The concept of a nagual is that which is non-material. In Toltec teachings, tonal is all that is material and can be known. So, from the legend of Smokey Mirror, seeing the night sky, seeing the stars and the space between the stars, we can say that the stars are the tonal. That would be reflected in us as cells, atom, material parts of our body, and what forms us in terms of flesh and blood and ideas.

The nagual is all that we cannot know, that gives life to that form. So when you refer to someone, a man or woman, as a nagual, you are talking about someone who is in touch, aligned with the unknowable; who perceives life, from that point of view.

Student: We have a few mottos that we say. One of them is to remember that we are dreaming all the time. You alluded to this when you were talking about remembering the past; that remembering our personal story is a story.

Barbara: “We are dreaming all the time” can be broken down into a common sense explanation. As we perceive light, or the light is brought into our brains and our eyes, we interpret the meaning of it.

We are literally dreaming what life means, we aren’t just perceiving. We are telling stories about it. Just as we do when we are asleep at night, the brain is taking in information and it is creating symbols. We wake up and give meaning to that.
In the course of a day, the brain is doing the same thing. Taking in information as light and translating it into symbols. And we give great meaning to that. It is all dreaming.

Student: Is it important to wake up in your dream?

Barbara: Well, to be conscious that you are dreaming when you are asleep is interesting. But I am much more interested in seeing someone become conscious that they are dreaming in the course of their waking dreams.

Student: Let’s talk about meditation. There are some schools that give very specific instructions regarding what to do inside your head, what to do inside your body, or the opposite. Don’t do anything whatsoever! Do these specifics have value?

Barbara: You can restrict the movement and distraction of the body, simply in order to concentrate on what the mind is doing. In a lot of disciplines, it is important to quiet the mind, it is important to mesmerize the mind through mantras.

From my point of view, all you really are wanting to accomplish is to understand what the mind is doing. We are never turning our attention inward. Everything that we do in terms of dialoguing and behavior is reflexive. We don’t know who the commander is. Let see what the mind is doing, and that doesn’t mean to shut it up, to quiet it, to censor it. It means to listen and to look, to see where the thoughts are going. And to pull it back into nothingness, as much as possible.

Then the mind begins to be conscious of itself, to self-correct, or modify. The mind has been described as the galloping horse. It takes us wherever it goes. In fact there is someone in charge of the mind.

We don’t have a description or a definition of it. It is called the force of life itself. From that point of view, we can see that the mind is just a child who can be re-instructed, the way it was instructed since the time it first learned to communicate. We learned how to instruct it, to obsess over the same thoughts and ideas. This is the basis of the story we call our personal existence.

Now we can re-instruct it. It doesn’t need to go to the same beliefs, the same fears, the same reflex responses. But we have to listen to it in order to modify it. Any quiet, still position, and inward looking will get us there.