The disciple through devotion and discipline strives to become a Witness of their humanity and its self-awareness. Seeking the state of unified awareness, the 8th state of beingness, often simply called Enlightenment.

Mindfulness transforms how we relate to events and experiences, one could say that it creates a more spacious way of being in the world that is less reactive.

Meditation can certainly be challenging, and even more so if we are uncertain as to why we are doing it. It can seem very odd to sit there just listening to the incessant chatter in our head, and we easily get bored if we do nothing for too long, even if it’s only 10 minutes.

Don Juan explained to Carlos in “Journey to Ixtlan”, that stopping the world was a technique practiced by those who were hunting for power, a technique by virtue of which the world as we know it was made to collapse.

The concept of the “man of knowledge” is a person who lives an examined life and progresses through stages of awareness, connection, and ego dissolution. A man of knowledge is one who has followed truthfully the hardships of learning, a man who has, without rushing or without faltering, gone as far as he can in unraveling the secrets of power and knowledge. To become a man of knowledge one must challenge and defeat his four natural enemies.

There is a lot of attention paid to the ego in modern society and while we are often told that having an ego will advance our place in the world, very few talk about the humbleness of being ‘ego-less’ and of the many great people, who every day without recognition or respect, silently bring greatness into our ego focused world.

The practice of meditation is widely used for spiritual and religious purposes. But over the years, other uses for meditation, like relaxation and stress management, have emerged.

Hara character is common to Chinese and Japanese. Abdomen should not be translated as "stomach" to avoid confusing it with the organ. In the Japanese medical tradition and in Japanese martial arts traditions, the word Hara is used as a technical term for a specific area or energy field of the body. An alternative Japanese reading of the character is Hufu, the Chinese reading is Fu.