JOSE LUIS

Don Jose Luis is young. And he is a great preacher, whereas don Miguel is primarily a teacher. Don Jose Luis can hold an audience spellbound for hours. His talks are peppered with pop culture references. He quotes Bruce Banner, after a spree as the Incredible Hulk. “My God! What have I done?” He quotes Homer Simpson, G.I. Joe, and Back to the Future. But it’s always relevant. It hooks the audience, and they laugh, and learn. English is a second language for don Jose Luis, and sometimes the audience loses the flow; but they hang in there because what Jose Luis is actually communicating is a recommendation and example of unconditional love.

He and his wife, Judy Segal, have a house in an upscale neighborhood of Chula Vista CA. It’s front is very plain, but inside it’s a roomy two-story house with a two-story atrium living room. I sat on a couch, and Judy, slender, big-eyed, dark and intense, sat on another, across a huge glass coffee table. To my left was a large print of a Klimpt painting, The Kiss, a stylized couple, standing embraced under a black blanket, shot through with gold. On the far wall, across the living and dining rooms, next to glass doors to the back yard, was an enormous Buddha, lacquered deep maroon. On the right wall of the dining room was a small table with a large statue of the Chinese goddess Kwan Yin.
Jose Luis sat against the wall, on a low stool that curved upward around his hips, a stocky young man of about twenty-five. His mahogany face is both innocent and strong, and his hair is long and thick, to the middle of his back. He has his father’s liquid eyes.
Judy and I looked like we were in San Diego. Jose Luis looked like a holographic projection from another time and place.

“So, I wanted to ask you, Jose Luis, did you grow up in San Diego?” “No, I grew up in Tijuana. I was born in Mexico, and when I was about three months old, my parents moved to Tijuana. My father staged back and forth, went to medical school.” “Here in the States?” “In Mexico City, to be a doctor. My mom lived in Tijuana. I basically grew up in Tijuana, and about seven years ago I completely moved to San Diego, ’98, about that time. So, I was going, before that, back and forth. I’d spend the week with my mom, and week-ends with my dad, when he was available, because he was traveling all the time.” “I wanted to ask you how it was, growing up as the son of a Toltec nagual?” “It was very magical. Magic happened all around us, all the time.” “Could you give me an example?”

“Well, growing up, for example, coming from school, my grandma, she grabbed an egg, and a glass of water. And when she breaks that, she does an egg reading. She reads your life, so whatever you do, it appeared there. So me, going to school, coming back, there was nothing I could hide. My grandmother always, ‘Come here.’ I’m always hiding from the egg. “At night, when I Dreamed, first, I started experiencing, like, fear, ‘cause I woke up and my body was paralyzed, in sleeping time. So, I was very aware, because I knew I was Dreaming, yet I didn’t have control of the dream.”  “Did your father kind of explain what was happening to you, as you went along?”

“Yes, many of the times. Many of the times he left it for me to figure out. He just smiled, looked at me and smiled. When I was like eleven years old, we went to Mata Grande. Mata Grande is some mountains, like an hour from here, near Tecate. So, there, he did the initiation, with my brother and me, my older brother. “Before that, before we went up there, I had a dream. I had a dream that I was coming up there with my father, in the high mountains. Then, all of a sudden, in the dream, he fell, in the mountains. And I looked down, and I could see he was sleeping, and I was so scared. So, in the dream, I started to run, run for safety. “Looking for safety, I went where it was actually safe. I went to my mother’s home. I went, ‘Mom, mom! My father is dead. He fell down the mountain.’ And in the dream, he came up from the back, and he said, ‘No, I was only playing with you.’ And in that moment I woke up.
“So, from that, like a week later, I said, ‘Would you take me to Mata Grande?’ It was strange for him that I would ask to go to that place.  I was so little. He saw it as a sign of power, a sign of power in the Toltec tradition. It’s a sign from God. The doors are opening. And it gives you a signal, to take action.

“So, in that, he took us to Mata Grande, my brother and I, and he gave the initiation. That initiation was very very difficult. Very magic happened, and we took a walk in this place of male energy.” “Male energy?” “Yes, I remember him saying at that time about male energy. It was all between the three of us. “So, in the mountains, he put us to see the beauty around. And to see his shadow, because he was behind us. The sun was hitting, so you could see his shadow, and all of a sudden, his shadow turned to like a serpent form. And, all around the mountains you could see rattlesnakes. Lots of noise, high up, rattlesnakes, all round the mountains. It was a very powerful personal feeling of having the communication of nature.

“That was the initiation, which bring many dreams. So, that was a lot of discovery, and I’m learning, from discovery.” “So, how do you feel about stepping into your father’s footsteps, to teach this stuff now?” “Right now, I feel it’s so normal, it’s a way of life. I get excited. But before it was a lie to think…You know how a kid always resists what the parents want. I don’t want to be a doctor. The parent says, ‘I’ll think of everything. You’re gonna step in.’ And I’m going, ‘Oh, no, I don’t want to be a sissy.’ “Your father did that as well.” “Yes, he did. And the Dream, many times I can escape and resist. But it came to a day where there was nothing to resist. What is all this noise I am believing, all these lies? And so it came to a completely joyful moment.”

“How do you like teaching gringos up here? I mean, how do they handle it?” “It’s about sharing love. We are children of God, so when I teach I don’t see color, I just go into heightened love. It’s very beautiful, to share that love, if whoever wants to receive it.”  “Do you teach these seminars south of the border also?” “Yes. Yes. When I was little, when I was going in junior high school, in high school, I always had an altar, wherever I lived, I had an altar. For my friends, it was kind of weird to see these things, because in Mexico, normally you have just Catholic and Pentecostal.

“So, when I used to do that, they say, ‘What religion is your father?’ I say, ‘Oh, he’s a nagual.’ We’re at my grandma’s, so they have to listen.
“So, at one point, I’m at a party.  They come to me, and say, ‘Okay, you want to show us what you can do. Teach us something.’ It was very funny. When I start talking, the noise got little, lower, lower, and then all my friends, all the people from the party were in front of me. So, I started sharing what my father had been sharing, and my grandmother.
“To them, my father and grandmother, it was quite extraordinary. How everyone, with no practice at all on my part, received a message. And, is so beautiful. So, that happened a lot in my life. I’m going someplace, and they’re saying, this guy is okay.” I wanted to talk to Judy for awhile. “You came into this…How?”  “I met a person who had just been working with Mother Sarita (Jose’s paternal grandmother, a noted curandera). The feeling of this person’s energy…I had to meet Mother Sarita. I ran to the phone to call. I said, I’d like to come meet you.

“There was a workshop coming up in two weeks, and I went up and met Miguel and Mother Sarita. Very shortly after that Miguel asked me to start working with him, and to teach yoga at his workshops. So, I’d been working with him for a year, and I became one of his students, one of his Dream students. I was traveling around, pretty much everywhere Miguel went. And on the way to New York to catch a flight to Egypt I finally met Jose, a year later.” “Let me ask you a little about Dreaming, because, I’ve tried it, just based on the instructions in the Castaneda books. And it took me a month, but finally I found my hands in my dreams. They didn’t look like my hands, actually. They looked like the Incredible Hulk’s hands. “And then I did a few things, consciously. I used to fly, like I was riding a motorcycle. I’d just be right down on the ground, goin’ flat out. But I never got good at it.

“Well, actually, what you’re describing, being able, with a sleeping brain, to enter into another dream, is very advanced. There are many of us that are four-year Dreamers who haven’t been able to do that. What Dreaming’s been for a lot of us thus far, is preparing the mind for awareness in all moments, (awareness of) all the lies, and the personalities, and the characters that we make our (waking dream) images from.” “Have you guys ever Dreamed together, you know, shared the same dream?” “Mm-hmm.” “You have?”

“In the beginning of our relationship, always, every night, every morning we’d wake up and share our dreams, and they’d be very much the same experience. “When I met Jose’, he was in that point of resistance he shared with you. And when I saw him at the airport in New York, with his father, he intimidated me so much. He had these headphones on, that were so loud with heavy metal, and on his head was like a gangster hat, with bug-eyed glasses.” “Oh, yeah, that’s resistance all right.” “And this huge shield that said, ‘Don’t mess with me.’ In fact his character was so good, if you could see the face, he had on this mask, he was the type of fellow that if I saw him on the street I would have crossed the street. If not, I’d just walk by him.  “And after I got over the shock that Miguel was with this character -- it took my breath. I almost didn’t want to, but I couldn’t not go over and say hi to Miguel.  “And Miguel said to me, ‘This is my son, Jose.’ I’d heard that name forever. So, I pushed up these little bug-eyed glasses, and the moment I saw the eyes, I went, ‘Oh, my God! You’re the same as your father. I love you. You are my family.’

“I saw him, and I saw his mask, and what he was doing, and I saw his beauty. We’ve been together ever since.  “The second part of that is that he really didn’t speak English very well at all. And for the first three or four months of our relationship we really spoke with our eyes. So, I thought it would be smart and helpful if we started teaching each other English. Every night for a year, we would read in bed, have him read out loud, and he started speaking almost fluently, within a few months. “We did great until the spoken word got in there. We never had a problem until the corruption of the word, with all the opinions. So I said, could we go back to eyes. He does silence so well, and I just don’t do so well. He does silence beautifully.”

I turned back to Jose. “Do you have anything that you would like to say, to add, on your own, without answering questions?”  “It was like two years ago, I came down for the dentist, and I go back to Malibu (where they lived at the time), and when I was coming back, I noticed that my eyes started hurting, hurting in the lens, and I removed them, because it was hurting in the lens, for two and a half hours, in the rain. “I got to the house in Malibu. I said, ‘Oh, Honey, I’m very tired. My eyes hurt very much. I’m going to go to sleep, and tomorrow will be better.’ So, I went to sleep, and the next day I saw everything blurry. My eyesight was gone. I could just see a little light coming from here. It was very scary, because the pressure kept increasing. The pressure in my eyes, and I couldn’t see.

“So, I went to Tijuana. My family, all my uncles are doctors. So, they took me there, and in the beginning, when I see my aunt--she’s an eye doctor--and she was very scared. She put light in my eyes, and asked me if I could see this. And I know there was bad trouble, when I know that she was accidentally showing her fear. This looks bad. “So, we went to another doctor, and he said, ‘Well, if you’re gonna see again, if you’re gonna see again. We’re thinking you might have brain damage.’ So after awhile, they put in an IV, and the pressure went away.  “So, in the process of having my eyes like that, at first I was feeling bad, feeling scared. But then I see loved ones having suffering and pain, feeling like crying. Feeling these things. And I said to myself, ‘Wow! I’m the one who’s supposed to be like that. I’m here taking care of them, and I’m the blind one.’

“But I loved to…I like to watch eyes. But, when that was taken away, I knew I had to proceed. And I could perceive the whole... It was like the whole infinity inside, the whole time, I was in this space. “So, one night I dream…I’m walking with my beloved, and we see a line of souls going into a cave. I say to my beloved, take these people into the light, into the sun. And I go inside the cave. Inside the cave is Lucifer, and he is all red, with horns and a tail, and he says, ‘Who are you to take the souls that are my food?’ “And I say, ‘They are not your people, or my people. They are their people, God’s people.’ “And Lucifer grabbed me and bit my neck, and I pushed him back and saw his face. It was my face. And, in that moment, I knew I could be the greatest victim or the greatest warrior.

“So, next day I wake up, and finally start making peace. And accepting, this is the way I’m going to live now. And I go to the mirror, and I see for the first time, I see my sideburns. The first thing I see was my sideburns, and, in that, I was so happy. “I know the gift of God that was given to us, everything, life. So, from that experience, it is so amazing, so amazing to see, that we don’t need a sign of God to know that he is listening to us. The very moment that we wake up in life, every morning we open our eyes and take a deep breath, it’s a sign of power to know that He is there. And from that we receive all gifts, a true love for the Creator, and the creation, that is one.

“And from that you fall in love more and more with this stuff, and you fall more and more in love with God. And everything starts making more sense, to listen to yourself, and see the whole dream around you. And see wherever you put your attention, you will perceive. “Whenever you go to church, and see the altar, you know that’s a house of God. You go to a Buddhist temple and see the Buddha, you know that’s a house of God. And also, I know, that when I open my eyes and could see I know the world is a house of God. So, going beyond the language, and going beyond the way of being, is a complete accepting of the way life is. And it’s so beautiful, to surrender to that.”

“Thank you.”

TO BE CONTINUED...

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After careers as a professional soldier, war correspondent, magazine and book editor, novelist, non-fiction writer and television producer Jim Morris has turned his attention to esoteric subjects. He is a member of the Special Operations Association and the Cherokee Nation of Arkansas and Missouri.  Questions or comments for Jim, email: gymmo@earthlink.net.