February 19, 2012
I came to meet Lujan Matus trying to let go of my expectations for what was going to happen, but after reading his books, and looking on the forum I had unintentionally built up a very intellectual idea of what this man was going to be like. Everything I had expected was completely blown away, and as I quickly learned, this will always be the case, in every single moment, for as long as I know Lujan.
When we first met in person, the meaning of being empty became immediately clear as we met eyes. I realized for the first time that almost everyone you meet has a sense of identity and a personality that they are projecting. When you look at them, they are subconsciously sending you a message of who they are. Looking into Lujan's eyes is more like looking into a mirror than looking at a man. His being is frictionless, and if your energy tries to define him, its like trying to grab onto running water. This is because of the fact that Lujan himself has no idea who he is, and is completely comfortable with discovering his own truth moment by moment, intend of desperately trying to cling to some social imposed sense of self.
He is a different person in every moment that is constantly escaping him, and he allows his truth to surface from within the depths of heart, straight into the now, without taking the slow and diluted route through the mind that most of us have been taught to do. When we are children, we speak with an unhampered purity, then we're told that we have to censor ourselves and steer our lives with analysis and reflection. Then the rest of society pats itself on the back that another human has been rightly brought to order. But we've lost our Truth.
The heart knows everything that it needs to know in every moment that we encounter, if we can get the mind to shut up and take the back seat. Lujan operates on a level that transcends thought, where realization and understanding bubble up with totally uncontrolled spontaneity from the limitless void of potential that exists within all of us. The affect that he has on anyone who enters his energy field is that their own void is summoned to open up, this is why people break down into tears and have their lives seemingly uprooted from only a few minutes of encountering a nagual. Their emptiness hears itself being called forth, and all of the other baggage being carried simply cannot withstand the pressure.
I came in the room trying to figure out and analyze what was going on, trying to not be involved. There was another man who was already going through a huge personal upheaval, and I was a little frightened to be honest. When Lujan asked me how I was feeling, I instinctively tried to figure out what would be the best thing to say to keep myself safe (although I didn't consciously think about what I was doing until later). He immediately recognized things about me, and what I was presenting energetically that I never would have said about myself, in utmost honesty. He said that I was full of violence.
This confused me because I've never hurt anyone physically, or felt like I wanted to. Even manipulating people is something that I've always considered to be deeply wrong. What I came to realize about myself, and the deep violence that I was holding on to was that it was a violence towards my circumstances. I have always strategized and plotted and taken aggressive actions towards accomplishing my goals, and goals that had the best intentions for all mankind, and with methods that would never compromise other people or any living things. However, energetically my approach was extremely violent.
After two weeks with Lujan, my being has been completely transformed, and not by him. He simply created the space for my own true resources to come forth and gave me tools that allowed me to transform myself. He shows a way to live that is very foreign to most of us, and it wakes you up to remembering very deep levels of what we are as human beings. You can fight it, but once your body knows what real truth feels like, it will try to come to the surface. Letting go and accepting this process can be done quickly with grace, or take a lifetime of struggle. The choice belongs to each of us individually, but once we witness that level of integrity, there is no going back. Every aspect of our lives are destined to be transformed.
This is the level of subtlety and power by which Lujan lives, and by which we all need to live. We are dynamic energy that is constantly in flux with our environment, and everything that we manifest internally has an affect on the environment around us.
Quantum physics tells us that the act of observation changes the outcome of the movement of atoms, and this palpably true within our daily experience. When we walk into a room and observe, we fundamentally change the structure of what we are observing, even if we stand perfectly still and do nothing. The interactions between our bio-electric or photonic energy field and our surroundings are an ever evolving dialogue of light signatures. This simple fact has vast ramifications in terms of responsibility.
We have no choice but to be active participants in the universe, and we can choose to either live that truth with a fluidity and innocence of a heart unencumbered by self importance and preoccupations, patiently allowing the presence of eternity to present its mysteries without trying to dominate our circumstances, or we can choose to stay asleep, and continue wondering why all of our strongest efforts and best ideas on how to grapple with a world of preconceived outcomes do not bear the fruit of true happiness.
Michael Armstrong
Filmmaker
mkarmstr@usc.edu
Photo courtesy of H.Koppdelaney
