Sweeping the Island of the Tonal
B
ecoming comfortable with the feeling that I don’t know where I came from or where I am supposed to be going goes against the grain of modern life. Curiously, it has been said among the masters that inner tranquility in the face of chaos is to taste the truth of being.
This Toltec workshop explores the island of the tonal—all that we cling to, all that we know in the physical, emotional and intellectual bodies. That island is swept resulting in our increased presence in the nagual, the place of grace and union.
Ordinarily, we tend to operate in the tonal, the right side awareness where we are held by our self description and our habitual activities. The influence of the modern world directs us there to the tonal, as if we could defy the unknown. This is a cause of a great deal of unnecessary suffering and illusion.
Our individual island of the tonal is what is known to us, it is where we are subject to comfort, but also to discomfort; it is where we are happy but also sad, it is the place of duality, where we seek that which we like and avoid that which we do not like.
It is clear that on the island of the tonal we cannot avoid duality. It is here where yin and yang seek to balance themselves and it is from here that we must seek escape, if only momentarily, if we are to experience real happiness.
It is clear that on the island of the tonal we cannot avoid duality. It is here where yin and yang seek to balance themselves and it is from here that we must seek escape, if only momentarily, if we are to experience real happiness.
The nagual operates and exists in the space beyond and surrounding the tonal island. It can also be described as the space in between all phenomena. Describing where it is serves us only for the purposes of helping us find it. It is in the individual experience of the nagual that we find truth.
This truth has not and cannot be transmitted—it is a matter of individual direct perception. This workshop establishes the conditions for that perception to arise; we then realise we can take the truth with us in all conditions, in our ordinary life. This is a long process, a life process.
Once understood, it becomes a joy to realise there is no scale, there is no attainment, there is no goal, no real teachings. But these are relative concepts that we struggle with. Sweeping the island of the tonal gives us the energetic experience, the memory to remind us of the deeper truth. This work is not concerned to make us retreat, to hide from the pernicious influence of the modern world; instead it is real meditation in the being, designed to help us begin to live life in the knowledge that truth and light can be contributed even in small measure, by all beings whose hearts are touched by what the ancient Toltecs would have simply called the fire.
This workshop follows the work undertaken in the Jump into Being. It will consist of continuous work in the field over the course of the workshop. The group will seek to work as one. There will be exercises and activities that directly address and highlight our enslavement to mechanical behaviour which we take to be spontaneous as well as opportunities to experience simple joy through forgotten techniques.
The design of the workshop is to give each participant in their own way, the opportunity to feel the existence and extent of the habitual patterns that hold us individually; to see that our uniqueness does not lay where we ordinarily believe it to be; to experience the uniqueness where it can truly be felt—as we approach awareness of the nagual, as we begin to feel being within the nagual, the all expansive realm which we long to embrace.
When's the next Sweeping the Island of the Tonal?
To be confirmed – please contact us for more information.
For bookings and pricing information please go to Workshop Dates & Bookings
For more workshops in Toltec Shamanism, G.I. Gurdjieff, The Fourth Way and Taoist Chi Gung and meditation please go to Workshop Dates & Bookings
