If you have come this far, you may have noticed that this work is not aimed at people: these are the creation of the ego, which manages to turn the mystery that we are into the social being that shouts, kicks and cries for freedom, while its main activity remains the manufacture and sale of chains and shackles. This work is directed at the magical being that we are and the miracle that has the power to encapsulate a part of infinity within a cocoon of luminosity.
Generally, the average human being is born with a significant amount of consciousness in his or her luminous cocoon. But, for reasons unknown to almost everyone, the individual is forced to come into this world and immediately become intoxicated and addicted to the poison of personal importance. This egoic pattern is inherited and handed down from generation to generation in a persistent and unrelenting way, being nourished and sustained by the omnipresent patterns of emotional dependence. This poison of the veneration of one's own reflection will spread its darkness throughout the individual's life, sometimes loudly and overtly, and other times so quietly that neither the bearer nor his or her fellow human beings will notice it. In any case, the individual consciousness will be practically given over to and consumed in its entirety by the construction and maintenance of the ego, leaving aside our collective and individual possibilities as navigators of infinity. However, in this paradoxical world, there has always been an opportunity to be more than just a mirage. The true sages and masters of all ages have come again and again to reveal the existence of an antidote to such darkness – impeccability.
In addition to being born with an ego, every human being brings within themselves the seed of impeccability, which requires special nutrients and adequate terrain in order to develop. Its cultivation is extremely delicate, requiring, to begin with, large doses of the essential virtues (motivation, prudence, patience, persistence, kindness and temperance). Virtues are an option that every human being can foster, making appropriate use of interest, intention, intent and will.
Through the upholding of impeccability and its expression through thoughts, words and deeds, love and admiration for life and for the Spirit appear as rays of light from within: authentic devotion. Only a handful of human beings develop this to the point of displaying its hidden glow. Devotion is pure hope, a radiance that, combined with impeccability, serves to gradually weaken personal importance. Thus, the space occupied by the ego can be re-conquered little by little, allowing, as the usurper withdraws, the emergence of authentic human splendor, a force that can lead to the state called the realization of the original being, which is a rarity and yet nowadays could be within the reach of many if they so wished. If they are genuine, impeccability and devotion must develop detachment in the individual.
Detachment is the ability to act by focusing on the process, rather than on the results.
The power of someone who is and lives in a way that is so empty of personal importance as to be full of impeccability, devotion and detachment is such that even though their body may be injured, their soul may never be harmed.
Let us not fool ourselves, the necessary effort for the development and maintenance of impeccability throughout life is truly epic, even more so when the ego is designed to never stop pursuing, with true interest, either the attachment to results and the anxious pursuit of profit and having more, or the fanciful idea of salvation, which harbours the desire to live without working, or to exist in a nirvana in which there is neither effort nor responsibility.
The psychological concept of effort is parallel to the concept of work in physics. Work is energy in motion and all that exists is energy that moves. As a consequence, there is no such thing as no effort, since the entire universe operates on account of it. However, there are useful and useless, efficient and inefficient, symmetrical and entropic efforts – it is an art to be able to distinguish between them.
We know that our emotional core is formed by a painful and a joyful core, organized in the image and likeness of the six foundations that give life to the universe. Emoenergetica asserts that half of Creation is composed of pain and that part of this is experienced as effort. Accepting that pain is part of existence is not the same as favouring it or seeking it, as some seem to do (such as when one turns to sadism, masochism, or self-harm). The warrior accepts the challenge of freeing him or herself from the chains of ignorance and learns to use his or her efforts impeccably, instead of shunning them.
The existential problem of human beings consists in remaining trapped in a perceptual and interpretative framework that excludes them as the energetic beings that they truly are. Thus, they are not interested or simply feel alienated from the possibilities of expanding their perception and consciousness beyond the ordinary senses, living in their corner of the universe, constantly fearful of expanding their vision of existence, or of going beyond the known world.
The bizarre thing is that, nowadays, many people use all kinds of drugs that, by their very nature, have the power to modify, alter or momentarily rupture the perception of the ordinary world. Drugs are used for a variety of reasons, sometimes out of simple curiosity, or within a recreational and social context, or with the aim of anesthetizing physical or emotional pain and, very often, to escape from the reality of everyday life. The problem is that drugs damage both the physical body and the energetic body as well as the mind, and they also take away the user's control over the state of consciousness they provoke and, therefore, rather than freeing the user, they subject them to yet another form of slavery. Moreover, without impeccability, it makes no difference whether one has an ordinary experience or an extraordinary one, since the effect on the individual's evolution is the same: zero.
In languages with Latin roots, the word impeccability literally means the inability to sin (peccare in Latin). Religions and philosophy have tried to define this term from a moral and social standpoint. However, the social order is the collective manifestation of the ego. For this reason, both in Nagualism and in Emoenergetica impeccability has had to be redefined in order to serve as a guiding thread on the path towards total freedom.
In shamanism, the process of excellence and impeccability in which the warrior had to restructure the relationship between their inner and outer worlds was called ordering the tonal. Both the ordinary human being and the warrior of consciousness face the same problem: the world is an interpretation constructed by means of systems of images. The bad thing about interpretations is that they can be of poor quality, the good thing about them is that they can be refined and improved. In any case, the path consists in refining the ego on a daily basis, accepting that it is there and making it more benevolent, kinder, wiser, less pitiful, less fearful, more just, less narcissistic, less lazy, less idle, less dependent, more refined, more disciplined, more conscious... Only a sublimated ego can withdraw; and only at the end of the road, not at the beginning, nor in the middle. One has to deceive the ego by making it crystalline, which goes against its dark nature, so that ultimately it will break. First of all, it is necessary to have lived a life full of impeccability, which basically consists in thinking correctly, speaking minimally and doing what is necessary. In the end, impeccability is nothing more than the strategy that seeks to release the enormous amount of energy that we devote to upholding personal importance, so that this can then be injected into the consciousness and the original mind. If the ego were to die before the maturation of the original mind, we would simply die trying.
Often, in the path of development, the practitioner makes a mistake of interpretation in thinking that he or she has cast off personal importance and ego. In the worst case, this has only acquired a different disguise and, at best, it may have shrunk slightly. Some students try to focus all their resources on vertical development, believing themselves to be sufficiently evolved, or important, to put horizontal development aside, since dealing with the everyday world is tiresome. This is perhaps one of the worst mistakes that can be made on the journey towards increased awareness. We must understand that it is crucial to order and heal the everyday world and our relationship with it. Horizontal development can form the necessary foundations without which it is extremely difficult to rise beyond the level of the mire. How can we be prepared to face the Infinite if we have not even managed to deal with the everyday world? A seeker of light uses horizontal abilities to identify and correct the problems, excesses, shortcomings and vices that have accumulated throughout his or her life. Otherwise, one can end up living in a bubble of spirituality in which the ego, instead of becoming smaller, becomes camouflaged and fattened under a deceitful appearance, making vertical development unviable. There are no shortcuts, all debts must be paid and all balances in the everyday world must be left at zero. On the other hand, disconnecting from the external world and from the needs generated by existing in it leads some people not only to stupidity and incompetence, but also to mental imbalance. The sobriety and intent achieved in the battles and lessons of the ordinary world will indirectly serve the warriors of consciousness on their way to the extraordinary. We come to this world to find treasures, and once we obtain them, that is when we can continue the journey.
We can also define impeccability as the tendency or pattern that guides the individual's behavior when trying to balance the following three premises:
- Minimum energy expenditure.
- Protection of own and other resources belonging to the systems connected to our actions.
- Precision in the execution of strategies with the aim of maximizing their effective performance.
Spending the minimum amount of energy does not mean investing less than necessary. The protection of resources is not the same as the attachment to dead weights. Maximizing returns cannot be a matter of greed, but of pure strategy.
The only freedom that we truly have is that of choosing whether we are going to face this existence impeccably as the unfathomable mystery that it is, or whether we are going to use this precise and precious moment to pursue the satisfaction of our desires or to feed our rejections. Thinking, speaking and acting impeccably is a very personal choice. Despite what many believe, impeccable action has nothing to do with adverse or favourable circumstances, or with others, or with the world, or with whether or not you are fulfilling your goals or desires. Impeccability is acting well just for the sake of it, it is having an adequate vital attitude.
Detachment and impeccability are, in reality, two sides of the same coin: they are not authentic without each other. Impeccability without detachment is obsession and detachment without impeccability is indifference.
From an energetic point of view, detachment is a state of expansion of consciousness that allows energy-information flows in the subtle body, the nervous system and the emotional core to remain relatively free of blockages, regardless of the circumstances and the level of interaction that is being established with other people or situations.
Although it may seem contradictory, detachment is a state of abandonment that is full of control. From an emotional point of view, one could say that detachment occurs when you detach yourself from the need to dominate and possess, and yet you can control or impeccably dispose of anything or everything present. Your experience remains fluid, easily integrating the events and emotions in progress, making it easier to react in a favourable manner, at the right time and with the right intensity.
The effort and impeccability that someone undertakes in order to turn their life into a path with heart must result in a progressive increase in detachment. A warrior of conscience fights to rid themselves of the social mandate that proclaims that the world and its actors have enough power to break the connection with oneself. When life itself is a path with heart, that connection is indestructible.
Don't demand so much of yourself and at the same time be impeccable. If you solve this conundrum, you will see yourself resplendent again and again.
Detachment should lead to a reduction in the need to blame oneself and others. Complaints then cease to make any sense. Definitive detachment is a milestone reached only by the realization of the original being, a state in which the human being embodies the myth of liberation, while still physically alive. This is possible by completely and definitively eliminating both the patterns of emotional dependence (need for attention, affection and support) and the pillars of the ego (feeling of personal importance, feeling of offense, feeling of superiority and feeling of inferiority), which leads to the disconnection of the collectivized egoic mind, the death of the individual ego and the rebirth in life of the original mind. Long before you reach that point, you are absorbed by the feeling of detachment for moments or instants, eventually even for days. When you connect with this state, even if you then return to ordinary, attached, consciousness you can bring back the understanding of what it is and then act as if you were truly detached – this is impeccability.
Detachment was called the place where there is no compassion in shamanism. This is because, when there, one no longer feels sorry for oneself, nor does one feel sorry for others. The understanding is reached that each being is a challenge of consciousness, a complete but unresolved puzzle that has come into the world with what it needs to face its destiny – self-knowledge. Non-compassion is one of the fundamental components of forbearance, so this one, together with impeccability and acceptance are the true components of detachment. Forbearance is a metavirtue which we will address in the chapter devoted to introspection.
The truth is that it is quite difficult to make energy flow in complicated circumstances, however, it is perfectly possible to do so. Increased emotional symmetry is one way to approach this possibility. Another fundamental step is to practice recapitulation. This "forces" the blocked energy in the issue or relationship being recapitulated to move and become fluid, if only for a moment. Systematic and repetitive recapitulation of stagnant or distorted cognitive content encourages the energy cocoon to learn to remain more fluid in the circumstances related to the work it has been doing. Recapitulating with the right intent leads to impeccability and vice versa. We will deal extensively with recapitulation and emotional symmetry at a later stage.
Sometimes spiritual aspirants attempt detachment by means of aloofness and disinterest. However, whoever takes this attitude is not truly detached, but rather evades or pretends to remain neutral as an act of emotional defense. That is why I have mentioned how complicated it is to speak of true surrender or detachment, since in reality we need to use common words in the absence of more precise terms, when at heart we are in a context that has to do with states of consciousness that are different from the habitual. The terms used are no more than an attempt to convey in words what can only be understood through the controlled and repeated experimentation of such states. True detachment produces an increase in consciousness and therefore an intensification in the wealth of nuances that the perceiver is able to grasp. Detachment comes about by means of renunciation, which has little to do with having nothing, but rather with discarding what hurts you or is in excess, both in the external and the internal world. This, instead of poverty, generates true abundance. Most people don't know where to go, but they almost certainly know where not to go. The principle of renunciation is to give up the paths that you know you are not doing you any good. Attachment can be of thought, word or deed, material or immaterial, towards something that serves you or to something that harms you.
For the aspirant, the most immediate battle is to organize their everyday world in a favourable way, renouncing attachment, complaint, self-pity and personal importance. At the same time, with the aim of generating inner silence, they become aware of each breath while tempering their impeccability. Then, they often feel flooded with a deep sense of well-being. They must remain alert so that this does not take them away from their vital purpose, which is not well-being but the enhancement of their consciousness of being and devotion to life.
Impeccability, Devotion and Detachment by Chema Sanz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.