Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy

INTRODUCTION

When I speak of creativity, I am referring to a complete change in ourselves. If I never wanted to reflect aloud about this subject, it is because what you are going to hear is very strange. Without creativity, the world goes all wrong. I am sure that the majority of illnesses come from a lack of creativity, and the social problems we have in the world are due to this shortage. Misunderstood creativity provokes war and crimes.

To work with creativity, you must be a critic of yourself and all that you represent. When I look at a person, I can see the state of his body. I can also see his mental pressures, as if his spirit is withdrawn into himself. In others, I perceive the doubts they have about themselves, or rather I observe their upbringing like a heavy scab, that they were raised in rationality. Others dance all the time with the things of the past. When I look, I don’t do it with a critical eye but with a creative one. If I read the tarot to someone, I see the person completely, because I release any restrictions. This is only an example of creativity.

I want to explain what creativity is as a whole and why creativity is so rare. Creativity is so strange that with it one can become Christ, Buddha, the Virgin, or Athena. Creativity is related to religion and also to mythology. It has saved my life. For this reason, I am going to begin this course by recounting things of my past.

I will tell you that I was born in a working-class neighborhood, that my father had a store, and he was a shopkeeper. I talk about this in a book called La Danza de la Realidad [Reality Dance]. My world was very limited, and I thought that creativity was the only key I had. The truth is that I liked to study. I was a good student, but school bored me a little. Since my uncles, whom I hated, were graduates, I abandoned the university. So I said to myself: “The only key that can save my life is imagination.”

But how does one develop the imagination? In my case, it was not difficult. I had learned to read at five years old, and I spent a large part of my time between the covers of books: fairy tales, stories of all kinds. . I developed my imagination through reading. Visions formed through books are always intellectual visions, because they arise from words. But the imagination is much more than that. Creativity pushes words out.

One of the biggest enemies of creativity is morality. One must be amoral to develop the imagination. Morality imprisons the imaginary in us. One must be courageous and throw away this crutch.

HISTORY OF THE IMAGINARY

The human being, historically, began to live enclosed within himself. Later, he realized that he could stop allowing himself to be influenced by elements that were not part of himself, that were outside of his body. We put ourselves in nature, and it turns out that we are nature! In the beginning, however, the world proved foreign to us.

For example, let’s suppose I am a savage: I know that the world is not me, but I realize that there are trees, vegetation, flowers, moss. . By means of witchcraft, one day I incorporate a tree into my persona. I create a vegetable totem. I am united with the tree, with the totem. When one plants a tree, this tree is I; when the trunk is cut, I die. When I die, they deposit seeds in my mouth, and another marvelous tree grows. From my corpse, a tree emerges. Later I am a seed. Incorporating the trees, I begin to work the earth, because I identify with the plants. What is at the foundation of my imagination is the vegetable world, and this has been passed on to today in the use by phytotherapists of healing plants. To cure, it’s necessary to enter into the spirit of the plants, but the inverse is also true: it’s necessary to open a door so that the spirit of the plants can enter me. Until the spirit of the plants has permeated me, I will not be creative.

Where the spirit of the plants ends is the Om Mani Padme Hum, or the diamond in the lotus. Here, all of the Tibetan religion is concentrated. From the swamp comes the lotus in which the Buddha rises. All Egyptian or Buddhist religion settles on the incorporation of a plant. Because this opens to the sun and extends her perfume, God emerges. I am a plant that grows from the mud that grows from the unconscious; I grow from the conscious, from knowledge, and the Being of Light springs from me. All this has a remote origin. The plant that I incorporated into me has opened my doors. There is a Zen koan that says: “Opened door to the north, opened door to the south, opened door to the east, opened door to the west.” It is the reply to what is Buddha. You may not understand what this means, but at least you understand that something is opened. The person who is not an initiate in creativity devotes himself to the search, but it’s going to take a lot to open himself. To be creative, you must let loose of yourself. And, in this way, you enter Zen, because the essential currency of Zen is to let loose of what is tied up, to liberate yourself.

As humankind continued its advance, he began to incorporate the animal. Man absorbs animals: insects, frogs, tigers, lions, leopards, spiders. . in other words, the animal totem. From the animal totem, all the gods will be born: Apollo is a frog, for example. In many cultures they wear animal masks: leopards in Mexico, crocodiles in Africa. The zodiac is symbolized by animal figures, and even today the incorporation of the animal totem persists in our daily life: we use expressions like “to be predatory” or “make war like predators.” We have incorporated the animal in us.

This is how, from the beginning, human beings produced creativity. From each thing man incorporates, God emerges. With each incorporated dimension, our being grows. After incorporating the animal, man becomes a hunter; he can raise cows, sheep. . If he incorporates a tiger, he can hunt a tiger; if he introduces an elephant, he can dominate an elephant. That’s where the god Ganesh of India came from, the head of an elephant. To the Indian culture, the spider is Maya, the one that weaves the universe; and this universe is a dream, a dream woven in the form of a spider web. In the tarot, we see that the Arcana VIII is Justice, and Justice is a descendant of the spider. The number eight descends from the spider: eight legs, the symbol of the infinite and other references.

But we must go further. Human beings contemplate the movements of the moon, the movements of the sun; looking at the stars, man incorporates the rhythms of the cosmos. From there law is born, and royalty; all of the organization of society is born of the incorporation of the cosmic rhythms. For example, there was a king who on full moon nights made gifts to his village; when the moon disappeared, he was demoted, following the moon’s conduct. Man thinks in cycles. The inclusion of the heavenly body in social organization still persists. We are governed by a president who symbolizes the sun, and by the wife of the president who symbolizes the moon. The emperor is the solar symbol; the high priestess is the lunar symbol. The assimilation of cosmic rhythms is important for us. Illumination is attained with reference to these cycles. We say: “I am going to illuminate myself. I am going to become the sun.” And we shine like the sun. That is to say, that our supreme end is to convert ourselves into the sun (Amon-Ra), because the moon reflects the light of the sun. That means the I has to be like the moon, that humble, to reflect in its totality the light of the sun. When we gave the sun a masculine signification, our society began to degenerate. In Germany there are traces of an ancient civilization in which the moon was masculine and the sun feminine, the remnants of a matriarchal society in which converting oneself into the sun meant converting oneself into a woman. Today it would mean converting oneself into a man, unconsciously speaking. All of this is not to say that we should understand the sun as a paternal representation or anything like that. Deep down the sun is essentially androgynous.

So in the Enlightenment, man decides to be intellectual, purely intellectual. And the mechanic begins to produce machines: gas motors and tools that operate with manual energy, like watches. And man incorporates these machines. He imitates the conduct of these machines! He arrives at rational thought. Even today there are traces of this rationalism of the Enlightenment. When I go with a Frenchman to the cinema, he says: “But it is not logical. It is not possible.” If we are going to see Kubrick’s The Shining, when the protagonist is locked up then suddenly bursts out with an ax, we say: “That is not possible. It is not logical. Who opened the door for him?” Because it does not appear possible to us, it does not appear acceptable. Everything that is not logical is worthless to us! This example reveals the introduction of the machine into the imaginary world, because machines are absolutely and totally logical. They have a very clear purpose, therefore; man has to have a clear focus. Buddhism, by contrast, seeks illumination without purpose. We are marred by rationalism. To be rational is good, but to be only rational is a leprosy, an epidemic, a sickness. When sexuality took a rational turn by way of religion, for example, it produced a catastrophe. It created a rational morality, which has spread out into all of society and which is profoundly destructive. Incorporating the rational into sex creates a problem, which is precisely what has driven us to smashing rationality.

In reaction to this illness, Freud and the surrealists appeared. Surrealism was very important, because we began to identify ourselves with dreams; we revived the reign of the dream as a part of ourselves. The Greeks believed that dreams were of the gods, not of human creation. But to incorporate the dream, I am the dream creator.

One more example: Now, in the twenty-first century, we have computers. This supposes a complete change in our mentality, because in ten years we have taken on all the information systems. Now we can look at a house from all sides. You know, with this imagery, you can enter through the window, visit an apartment, and leave. We can look at a person’s brain; go through all of her veins and all of her body to get to what we want to look at. We are beginning to have a computer attitude. This is the mutation that we are suffering at the moment. We process data differently. What will come next? So I have given a brief history of the development of the imaginary.

What I want to explain is that, if I look at my shoes, which were made in the rational era, I see the vegetable, shoes as roots. I see the animal, shoes as leather, the material used to make them. And also I can glimpse where they take me, shoes as objects, and this is rational. Surrealist: I see that all of my childhood is there inside! And in the actual time period, shoes can be red, can be green, yellow; I can change their color, I can change their form; there are ten million shoes that I can have on my feet at the same time. I am free to leave my mental prison.

LEAVING OUR PRISONS

I begin this part of the course with the word “prison.” I hope this is a clue for you all. For me, this reflection has been very important. I live in reality. Here’s the story: I have been born in a limited body; I feel impotent. All of us have four elements: the intellect, the emotional, the sexual, and the physical body. We live in ideas, emotions, desires, and needs. These four elements are represented in Tibetan, Indian, and Hindu mandalas, in the World tarot card, and so forth. It is a division into four parts, with a fifth element in the center. This is the true path through all of the history of the art of humanity. In each of the four parts, we have dragons as guardians. Each tower is firmly protected. We recall the image of the lions that guard the door of the temple, or the gargoyles of Notre Dame. We have within ourselves some excellent guardians, which keep us restricted and well shielded. My intellect is locked, guarded; my emotions, shuttered; my sexuality and my needs, watched over. Everything is protected, and these very jailers that we have created are precisely what prevent us from being creative. For this reason, what I am saying is a little revolutionary, because to be creative one must defeat the guards and throw open the doors, even though one neither sees them nor identifies them. They are like the bad witch who had to be defeated in the stories of Hades; they are the ogres, the fear. . They are our babysitters. We have been shaped by the history of humanity, by the development of the planet, by society, by government, by the family. All of this lives inside us. Our guards are prehistoric. Little by little, they have become strong; they have been pigeonholed. We need to attack these guards in order to liberate ourselves. The problem is that attacking them makes us feel threatened, unprotected — it’s scary.

The final limitation to vanquish in order to be creative is our human waste. We are a body that expels decomposing matter. Urine, saliva, sperm, menses. . We are talking only about the body. A person who deeply guards his excretions cannot be creative. In Ayurvedic medicine there is a school that uses urine for medicinal purposes. In Mexico, I found a healer who treats with all types of animal excrement, and according to him each animal’s excrement has its own different medicinal capacity.

When creative people sometimes get blocked, I use Psychomagic and have them paint a square with their excrement. This block usually has its origin in infancy, in families that were very demanding about cleanliness and who prohibit their children from getting dirty or eating with their fingers. They’ve been prohibited from being free.

BE CREATIVE

If you want to be creative, you must practice the following exercise: stand over an absorbent surface, drink a liter or two of water, and then urinate making designs with the traces the water leaves. It is very important to remember that in order to be creative, we must allow the dirty child to exist within ourselves. In excretion, there cannot be limits. I became very good friends with the surrealist painter Leonora Carrington, who had been Max Ernst’s partner. I met her in Mexico. She told me that she had also been Buñuel’s lover but that he had suddenly abandoned her. So one day when she had her period, she used the blood to make handprints all over his apartment. It was her creative reaction, a psychomagic act in which she used the menstrual blood as an element of transformation. I have prescribed a lot of psychomagic acts like this one. In the magic of love, menstrual blood is very useful. Excretions, in general, are used in all kinds of spells. Magic functions, a lot of times, with excretions: the dribbles of toads, snakes, spiders. . All that we consider personal, like excretion, is used creatively.

If you want to be prolific, you cannot have any sexual limits, like what happened with the first great pioneer in this, the Marquis de Sade. This is why surrealism adopted him: because he could imagine all sorts of sexual relations. In his 120 Days of Sodom, Sade proves to be like a scientist investigating all the possibilities of sex without limits. You can go from cannibalism to sadistic crime, to incest — try anything. To be able to wake up the creativity, you must have a sexual imagination free of all morality, free of all religious imagery. You must free yourself. An artist needs to be able to imagine the greatest aberrations. We need to develop all the possibilities in our minds.

When someone has an imagination that is out of balance, he can assassinate a million Jewish people, like what happened with Hitler, or make an atomic bomb explode. In these cases, people are controlled by the dark side that lives inside us.

One of the most insurmountable guards that keeps watch over us is the superego. Having been molded by our parents, it permanently tells us: “This you do, this you do not do, this or that is prohibited.” You must incorporate the superego, dominate it, and destroy it.

A creative being cannot have any emotional limits. This means that we have to be conscious of the fact that we can kill or betray, be greedy, conceited, avaricious, or quick-tempered. . Emotionally I can and should imagine everything in me. I can be a saint, or I can be perhaps the best benefactor of humanity, while at the same time I can be the kind of person who poisons the water supply to eliminate life. In my emotional imagery, I must break all the limitations, defeat them.

We have now seen aspects that refer to creativity and to the mind. The first thing I must defeat is the empire of words. If I am drowning in words, I cannot be creative. This is what I have done internally: I have visualized all of the degeneracy of the world. I am not a degenerate, but when I am creating something, I must have all the elements at my disposal. When I see a person, I eliminate any limitations. That way, the person can tell me what is wrong, and it is not going to surprise me. One of the biggest stumbling blocks in therapeutic creativity is surprise. A therapist cannot be surprised; she must be prepared to hear anything. Nothing will ever surprise her because she has imagined everything. Now, wonderment is something very distinct from surprise.

I have said that words are the first limiting factor — the most essential — in creating our prisons. It is generally true in our society that “I am what I say.” This idea still persists, in spite of the fact that Freud, Lacan, and others, following surrealism, smashed the idea that one is what one says. Yet we tell ourselves things all day long. “Dimwitted” friendships involve meeting up to tell things, not do things. We tell ourselves things clucking like chickens. We educate ourselves by talking, not by doing things. This is the reason for the saying, “There is a lot of distance between talking and doing.” We spend our lives saying, “But you told me” or “Take back what you said, immediately.” It is very childish; it is the childishness of verbal education, where only words mean anything. And attempting to be creative in this state is useless. A world where there are only words is one where there is no creativity. Words become hysterical when the objective is the words themselves. Creativity grows outside of words. When the poet works essentially with words, then they explode. They are scattered and broken.

FIFTEEN

EXERCISES FOR THE IMAGINATION

We’ve just completed a short, more or less theoretical, introduction to the imagination. But, what do we do with all this material? Are we able to disabuse ourselves of these old ideas? This is the basis of our work.

The first thing to do to be creative is the following: We live within spatial limitations. The intellect is compressed by the skull, and when your eyes are closed, it’s dark. To close the eyes is to be in a prison. Each time I close my eyes, I enter into a dungeon. This impression of space comes from the concept of private property. Society has created private property, the right to a particular space that pertains to me and to no one else. We are accustomed to not occupying too much space, to being narrow-minded. In our families, we’re each assigned a particular place at the table. In school, I have my own bench; I cannot leave my place. This is what they teach us.

“Who are you to tell me this?”: people who express themselves this way do it because they do not have their own space. They think that we are nothing. We must then, apparently, be in an absurd space. We are not big. Beginning this exercise, we are not yet big. What we have to do is tell ourselves: “This blackness that I see is the blackness of the universe, so that each time I close my eyes, I enter cosmic space.” We must give up this idea! We must create the space! I felt limited, mentally, and I said to myself, “How can I be more intelligent or more perceptive?” Then I closed my eyes, and I imagined myself as a light, and I put the light as far as possible into this infinite universe where I could not reach. I began with a rectangular universe. That is to say, I projected myself forward. I advanced and advanced. Each time further, lost in the space. Then I went to the right, each time further, reaching infinity. And to the left, each time further, to no one knows where. And then backwards, into remoteness. I put myself in a universe that had an in front of and a behind, a right and a left. And then I went up, each time higher, as high as possible, and then down, each time deeper down, into the deep abyss. This says that forward space is infinite, backward space is infinite, space to the right is infinite, space to the left is infinite, the space above is infinite, and the space below is infinite. I like the infinite a lot. I do not have mental fear. And now do this exercise: uncross your legs, sit straight up, and guide yourself with a light or simply think of yourself going forward. You have to do it. Even if you do not feel capable of doing it, you must try to get there. We are going to close our eyes and begin again.

GROW

Another exercise: imagine that you are looking at me. Look at me. There is the rectangular look: to the right, to the left, up, down. But also there is another look. When I concentrate on the center of myself, little by little, I grow. My whole being grows like a sphere. To do this well, you have to be completely straight. You will see that this is the posture of meditation. I grow like a sphere. I cover the whole planet and then the whole universe. I grow; I fill the universe. I feel that I am a sphere that occupies the entire universe. This describes a guru. I receive you into my sphere. Do you want me to hug you? When I hug you, it is the whole universe that hugs you. I have occupied all possible space to the infinite. I can tell you that if you do this, you will become a master. Still, to be a complete master is much more than this.

Now the far-off comes to me: the right comes to me, the left comes to me, that from below comes to me, that from above comes to me. The sphere comes to me. Doing this exercise, I am I and each is his own. This summarizes all the oriental disciplines. I occupy the entire universe, and then the universe comes to me. That is everything. One does not have to meditate for twenty years. Start doing this exercise, practice until you get good at it. You must sit upright and think with all your might about what you have imagined, in order to recognize all this power in yourself. When I am like that, I am invincible. Nothing can knock me down. I am a Buddha of stone. Nothing can knock me down, because I have recognized infinite space inside me. And I have the possibility to go to infinity. You are going to go as far as possible, and then you will reclaim everything. You are going to become completely creative.

The being that I perceive is not exactly the being that I am, because I have a sense of myself. My parents told me that I was ugly; so I saw myself as they saw me. And at times I saw myself according to the looks of others. But I really do have a sense of myself. And the sense of my own self changes! When I am depressed, all my physical senses are distorted by the depression I have. But I can see myself in different ways. I am not obligated to see myself the same way all the time. I can change my perception of myself. That is what shamanic magic is.

EXPAND

Now let’s consider shamanism. What we just talked about proceeded from Buddhism. I grow like the entire universe, and then I gather inside myself. I am a mountain, but which mountain? What am I?

Now we are going to work with the senses. Imagine that you look at me. Look at me a little. I am big, without limits. I am in the space. Then all of this space is completely inside me. Great comprehension, great compassion. I am reality. All of this strength — because to create space is to create strength — enters into you. Like they say in Star Wars: “May the force be with you.” I am going to create strength; the strength is in me. And when the strength is inside someone, it is like a sword. It is possible to draw it out through the ten fingers. I concentrate on myself; my fingers project out into infinity. My fingers have indeterminate power. And I strengthen my heart. In this concentrated body, I have a heart that grows to infinity. Now I do not need to grow like a sphere. A part of me can grow. I gather into myself, and my heart fills the world. And now that I have a solid base, my heart returns to me. That way, my sexuality can fill the world, my mind can fill the world, my strength can fill the world. This means I can do with the feeling of my body whatever I want to. Understood? You can do whatever you want to.

This I have applied, for example, to an initial massage. If one can open a heart, why not open it with the hand? Thus I make the body concentrate, and then it begins to open. And people begin to cry. Because they were living in a limited space.

SHINE

As you see, feelings can change. The idea of living in a prison prevails. For exactly this reason, I can remove what I want to from myself; I can release all that is heavy. Anything that is not clear, I do not allow. Now protect a part of yourself. You must protect only a bit of your body and move away any depressing nits. When we feel like we cannot do anymore, we act like boxers: “I am not defeated!” Like a dog, I expel the fleas, I expel everything that slows me down; and I will do what I have to do, simply that. Because the guards bother us, we must expel them. And we continue. You must grow like a sphere, return to your state, and then, when you feel solid — because this state gives a feeling of great solidity — let it out through whatever part of your body. Without limits! Your torso, your heart, your intestines, whatever you want. Fortify what you want.

Now you are going to illuminate yourselves right away, you are going to feel yourself a Buddha; you are going to know what it is. This will serve you. You must not get depressed thinking that you are doing it wrong. You begin by doing it, and you do what you can. I take in one hand the strength, the energy, and I begin to accumulate all the energy of the universe. It is the complete universe coming to me. . The energy is going to arrive, and my energy is going to arrive. . That’s it! This is strength. It is letting yourself go. Once you do this exercise, you can accumulate strength in your hands and communicate it to whatever or whomever you want: to your work, to yourself. Imagine that you have it; imagine it here, create it here. Masculine, feminine, right, left, all collaborate together. Father, mother, the two hands. . Like a prayer! God help me! I am like this, praying, and when I am like this, the cosmic energy truly comes, it expands. I believe. I am the creator of my energy. Creativity exists in this.

At times there is a child inside us who has been punished. A child that is tormented because they have put him in a corner. They have annoyed him and put him on the defensive. This child rejects everything. And this child, who has been abused, abuses you, abuses the adult, abuses your strength, and does not let you be yourself. Enough already! We leave his whims aside. Right now we make him grow up. Let the young victim grow up, until it no longer bothers him. I leave myself, and I fill myself with strength. I am capable of filling myself with strength. All the energy we call space comes to me.

BE WEIGHTLESS

Another exercise: the noncreative person obeys the force of seriousness. We feel the seriousness inside us. The earth tells us all the time: “You are earth. You are going to end in me.” Every moment we’re feeling that we must fall. Everything points to our vanishing, we become depressed, and little by little, we fall. We cannot imagine that there is another force that can defeat the sorrow. It’s true. If I have a feeling of sorrow, I will feel heavy. But if I begin to expel the sorrow from me, if I remove all the weight from me, I will feel light. I can dominate this feeling. I am creative when I do what I want with it. I can feel very heavy, or I can be weightless! In the same way that my body is dark on the interior but can be full of clarity. This is to be illuminated. An illuminated being will feel that her body is weightless. It has just as much weight as she wants, and it has the light she wants: it is all controlled. I am no longer prisoner of anything, of any feeling. I can weigh millions of kilos or none. I control this feeling of darkness and of light. I control the feeling of hot and cold. This brings us to the yoga of the Himalayas, and you don’t have to go there or to be a yogi. You just have to do it. Remember Chinese kung fu, where the battles take place in the air? You can do this, feel that light. This also has to do with illumination. When we are illuminated, it means the shadows are gone. And when we go toward the light, it’s possible to come into a shadow. We are not prisoners of the light. We may arrive at lightness and then return to being heavy; we do not have to be prisoners of lightness either.

We work. Once this feeling is acquired, gather the force and fill the body with this force. You have power now. This is what the gurus do, with all kinds of conjuring tricks. Symbolically, it can be translated like this: “I can give energy incessantly.” Doing this gives infinite strength. The guru has worked with all of this and takes the imaginary side, which is unlimited. And people think he has produced a miracle, but each one of us can perform this miracle. It is simply working with the feeling we have of ourselves. Every minute I can change what I feel about myself. I can be big, I can be small. It is the feeling of myself that varies, that’s all. I can give and I can also take. Pick up the world’s energy and take it from yourself. All of this is the work of reaching infinity and returning.

THE GAME OF TIME AND SPACE

We are not limited by time. The Sufis say: “Before God, we must live as if we had one minute, before men as if we had a thousand years.” That is to say, one second is eternity, and what is important is to expand it.

In India there lives a woman who hugs everyone who comes to her, and these people receive an incredible illumination. This same thing can be achieved if you feel and you concentrate in space. Create the force, an infinite force. Strengthen your heart. Then let the infinite and the eternal enter you. I am the one who does the hugging, but there are millions and millions of beings in my spirit, millions of worlds, millions of activities in my arms. And all future time comes: I stand beside infinity, and I stand beside eternity. Being in the moment explodes our prison.

When you go in search of a guru, you are searching for what you yourself cannot do: you want someone else to do for you what you should do yourself, because you think you cannot do it alone. But the guru has not received this gift from the sky, he has made it himself, he has created it. He has worked to achieve it. You too can achieve it!

We cannot remain the little capricious child who says: “You have hurt me, you have hit me, for this I do nothing. I have nothing inside me, I am not creative.” ENOUGH! We let the child we have inside us grow up. This being is a millionaire being; I am a millionaire. Before me there was all this, and after me there is much more. Here are all the separated human beings. But I am able to perform a union. When I move, all human beings move. It is like a yoke that represents the feeling of space and of time. And it all moves — this is important. Instead of asking others to move me, I have to move me myself. This is I, this is time, this is space. It is a sacred yoke. I am united. This is what I call a point of traction. From this point, everything moves. I can consider myself a point of strength. What I do, everyone does. That is to say, it is important that I do so everyone can do. When we do this exercise, we do it in the middle of eternity, in the middle of the infinite; we are the point of traction of humanity. Of humanity past and humanity future. All of the dead follow us; all of the unborn follow us. All of this will seem very strange, but in reality it is Buddhist thought! It is what Buddha has felt, simply. Our brains are made like this. When you open your brain, in a natural way, you arrive at this.

These are not just words, they are exercises in creativity. We cannot be cowards or be afraid to truly enter into what human beings are. We are beings with all these capacities, but we’ve allowed ourselves to be limited. We are in this moment, here and now. I. But it is not like this! It is the Everything that is here and now. All of humanity is within me. I am everyone who has been and everyone who will be. I live in the middle of all of space. This is when we can understand the symbolic gesture where the palm of the hand faces forward: “I am here, and I stop the world.” An artist should think like this and consider these problems in making her work.

BLESS THE WORLD

Another exercise: I am in eternity, feeling myself in the middle of the infinite future and the infinite past. I open my hands and close my hands. I make a benediction. That is to say, I am in eternity, and I bless the world. This is all. You have to do it like this, because a creator is absolutely paranoid. God is created. And we don’t have to be afraid of taking ourselves for gods or goddesses. I bless you: I have a lot to give. I am strong. I possess everything that I need in order to bless the world. Enough with the inferiority complexes! With all of this you already have the means that the founders of sects usually deploy. They brainwash you so that you admire in them a superior power that you don’t imagine you have in yourself, but you can have it also. Just clean out all the darkness, because we are full of spider webs. Push that child inside, get him good and clean, make him grow up. Because we have a guard, the mind, that makes us react the same way all the time. But by doing this exercise, you are converted into a creator. No one can do anything to you, except kill you, and not even that, because there is eternal life. That is to say, you are invincible. And everything that exists you can have. If talent exists, I can have talent. Look now how I lift my hands to the infinite; they are going to infinity: I take life. In the same way that I can give energy, I can take it. All of creativity, I can have. All the money in the world, I can have. Everything another has. Beauty? I can have beauty. Energy? I can have energy. All of this is for me. I can take and I can give. It is easy to imagine. It is like a game.

But to take is also difficult, because we have limits on receiving. When they ask us, “Who are you to have this?” “Why you?” This is what my parents said when I left Chile to study with the mime Marcel Marceau. In my case the answer was: “Why not?” And I did it. I knocked on his door, and I worked with him. I challenged the prohibition. And that’s it. If you feel beautiful, you will be. You will be beautiful! You will be fascinating! You can fascinate people! But you don’t conceive of yourself as a fascinating being. You come here to learn to be fascinating, because you can be. People simply see you as you see yourself. If I consider myself inferior, others will see me as inferior. But if I see myself as a god or goddess — that is the way others will see me! Not everyone, but a lot of people, the necessary ones. For example, we observe famous musicians. The whole world believes they are geniuses because they have previously felt they were geniuses. Then, with time, the myth stops because others start to realize it isn’t so. It can work for a certain period of time, but then we must have the spirit to sustain this, “to feel beautiful.” If this interior feeling ceases and we haven’t truly incorporated it, everything undoes itself. Therefore, we must continue with patience, constancy, and perseverance. If we do not persevere, we are not creators. Creation is, before everything else, voluntary. Our creative action is an accumulation of strength and patience.

DISSOLVE THE I

We have already created the space. The space is the here; the time is the now. In the here and in the now am I. What remains is to attack the I. We have seen the prisons of time and space in which we live, prisoners of the I. And here is the most difficult part: to make the I jump. This is the most difficult of all. Because we identify so much with this I that we defend and because we anchor onto it, we do not want to change. We are stubborn, we are recalcitrant, we are impossible, we are a monster. Purely and simply, we are a monster that we do not want to let go of. We say: “This is the way I am.”

The Romans and the Greeks said that the I was in the stomach; from there ideas are born, and they then take refuge in the brain. Other civilizations have put the I in the chest or in the nose. The I is hard to find. We entered into the work of shamans: the dissolution of the I. Actually, we see ourselves morphing, to use the terms of modern digital technology; we can animate ourselves and turn one image into another. That is to say, we must work to accept all the different changes in I, which is very difficult. Actors do this when they interpret a character, but they do not go very far because the actor is always the I and the character he interprets. But here we wish to enrich the I. And it is very easy. But no one can tell you how. If I open myself to the personality of everything, everything will talk through me. I convert myself into you; I convert myself into another. But how? In what way? I let you enter me and I express you. In this moment, I convert myself absolutely into the creator, because everything talks through me.

I am going to give an example. There is Cristóbal, my son, sitting in a wooden chair. I convert myself into him: “I am here sitting like a receptor of light, knowing that in infinite time, eternally before me, I am going to shine; that the light is going to show; that I am connected with everything.” Creativity consists in absorbing the other and expressing it — and not only in another, also in things. I convert myself into a chair: “I am happy because I like having someone seated on me. I play my role by being straight, and I am not weary; thanks to me he is here. Furthermore, my wood is not dead. There is not even one termite in me. I’ve preserved myself well. I maintain my strength, even though I am old. I am going to last a long time. Maybe I am going to last longer than him. He will disappear and I will still be here. There is no need to throw me out. I will support him. With my four legs, I am the material base upon which he can sit.”

When I began to study pantomime, the first thing they taught us was that to make gestures there is no need to make gestures. The principal of pantomime is to remain neutral. Later they will make all the gestures they want. At the same time, the basis of the imagination is to not have an imagination; it is to arrive at breaking everything imaginary. Then you can do what you want. If you do not crush the imaginary, there will always be parasites. Things are always moving in our imaginary worlds. We must cut off the internal dialogue and bring order to the emotional chaos, the invasion of desires, the undisciplined body. We must learn to dominate all of this.

BE A DOT

You can do a very simple exercise: the simplest thing we can think about is a dot. Correct? Suppose we have a pencil or a pen, and we are going to draw a dot. We have to truly create a dot with all of our spirit, with all of our emotion, as if we are opening a dot in space. We make a dot. If it is possible to create the dot, we will do many things with it later. But we must truly concentrate on creating a dot. It is the first thing one does in karate. Karateists are capable of creating a dot, a point of mental and emotional concentration. We create an intense dot, as if this dot were all the energy of the universe: a dot of total energy. Everything should be there. We must use a lot of force to create a dot. We must do it with our whole being. All concentration is on the dot, a dot, a dot. . That is all! Well, can we make a good dot, a perfect dot, a concentrated dot? Bravo, it is a good effort. Now, we observe. I have a dot here in my forehead. My whole mind is a dot. I am concentrated on only one dot. I have an emotional dot, I have a dot here in my chest, and in my privates, all over. I can move the dot. I can put it in my mouth, here, there, in my eyes. . My will is a dot! That is all! Do this exercise. Work with the dot. Concentrate on the energy of the dot. Introduce the dot into your bodies. It is like the exercise with space. Here all directions are concentrated at a point, the dot. All thoughts, all feelings, all desires. Once we’ve learned to make a dot, we can carry out any movement we want to. Whatever discipline we want to practice — dance, theater, karate, martial arts — everything is in place. Because it is no more than this: I make a gesture, and my intention goes there. I do what I do. Everything is concentrated, all my attention goes there, all my concentration is clear, precise. At heart, karate consists of creating a concrete point where one can hit, and that way one can break a table. But to develop the point takes years.

FINE ARTS

Now we are going to sing, but in an imaginary way, without the voice. We will sing the most marvelous song. Sing the most beautiful song without sound! Imagine that you sing with a marvelous voice. Let’s go. This is creativity. You have to sing like birds. That’s how one learns. With concentration, with strength — do it! We’re not just acting here. . You can move, advance; don’t be quiet. Sing! Put all the intensity of a great singer into it. Put all your talent into singing. You like it, right? It’s wonderful. You can sing all you want in the most complete silence, with the mouth closed.

Okay, we’ve sung. Now we are going to create. Do what you can; I cannot give you what you do not do. As you sing, do it from deep within, with feeling, and everyone will do well, because you sing for the unconscious. Your unconscious is going to consider you singers if you sing like you know how to sing. The message goes to your unconscious, and it will be satisfied. You already know how to sing. Do you understand? Now, in my imagination, I can play the piano. You can use other instruments, but they are more difficult. We begin with the piano, using two hands, and then you can move to whatever instrument you want. Relax, play the invisible piano passionately and try to imagine that you are performing. Whatever you want, but play the piano. This exercise is wonderful. And when you tire of the piano, move to another instrument. And you will become your best. Go to the sublime with the music!

(An aside: Until now it was a child’s game. Children play like that. But now it is going to be your profession. Now, be the best that you can be! Not like a diversion. When you play, feel only the best of your soul, so that the best of your self does the playing. Give the music a limitless spirituality. Play that. I ask you for the best spiritual beauty, the sublime. You are the most beautiful. You can seduce all of humanity with your music. It’s no good to underestimate yourself; to the contrary, you must value yourself. This happens on its own. Begin, and then this happens. The concert could last all day. It’s best to do these exercises until you master them. Little by little, with practice, they begin to awaken your creative capacities, until you achieve the sublime.)

HAVE TALENT

Now I am going to propose a very simple exercise that will stimulate your talent. You do not have talent? Well, you’re going to have it right away. There is no need to doubt yourself. I have talent when I have power. And I have power when I have the right to life or death over others. From this moment on, I have power. God is all-powerful, because he can kill when he wants to. And because he can create me when he wants to. And if I am alive, it is because he pardoned me. Then the capacity to kill, to pardon, is going to create the talent. It is simple. I imagine that I am a cobra, that I have venom and that in front of me there is a monkey. I am in front of the monkey, concentrating, completely engrossed. I move, I look at it, I hypnotize it, and the monkey does what I want. It is an attitude of talent. I tell you the truth. I cause you to look at me. I cause you to be here. I have created you. There is no need for you to convert yourself into a cobra. Instead of always being a victim, the little rat that is always hypnotized, we pass to the other side. We are those who hypnotize others, okay? For this, we need to relax. Create a dot; make it rise. Then we balance ourselves because we are ready to jump, but we do not jump. We make like we are going to jump, but we do not jump. This is how we hypnotize the monkey. We do not bite it either. We only hypnotize it. You have to develop this capacity of the hypnotizing look. It is not to seduce; it is very different from seduction. With my mental concentration, I have the other in my power. Work this. This is talent. We are not attending a meeting of cobras, but a brotherhood of the wise who are like cobras, who respect one another because they know their knowledge is mortal.

Now try to go beyond your head to expel the force. Try to exceed the interior of your head: imagine that your eyes are thirty centimeters higher than the cranium and, feeling that you are a cobra, think about what we have below the belly button, two or three fingers lower, a point of concentration and that there is a force that exits from there toward the exterior, a force that can enter into others. In the belly. This is the Emperor tarot card. It is seated like that, and the force is there.

DRAW

Now we will do an applied creativity exercise. Now that you have all the mental tools necessary — concentration, strength, all that we have studied in this course — you are going to imagine that you have a canvas of any size that you like. You have a paintbrush that changes colors according to your desire. And you are going to make a painting, an imaginary painting. You can draw, you can make large marks, you can change the colors — whatever you like. Then, seated in groups and making gestures, describe the painting you have painted. Okay? Begin! While you paint, you can put on imaginary music to guide you. If you want to be creative, create! And if someone has creative potential, may he continue, go along until something appears. To your unconscious, it is as if you have made a painting, you know? To the unconscious, what one has done in the imagination is the same as what is carried out in reality. In the nervous system, when one imagines something, the same connections are activated. What happens is that normal people do not propose to do such things, because they do not believe it. Really, if you want to be creative, you need to just do it. If I paint ten or twenty paintings like this, imaginary ones, then I will be able to do a real painting; I will be mentally prepared to paint. You see?

SCULPT

And now, to finish with this series of exercises, make a sculpture. In space, the sculpture becomes. You can use whatever material: marble, gold, bronze, whatever you want. And create a figure, or if you want to go further, you can turn it into an abstract. Think about what sculpture you want to make. Be sculptors. We are going to be able to manipulate space creatively. It is important, because if you do not do this, you will have an undeveloped dimension. It is necessary to move around the object. Sculpture makes us abandon the fixed glance; it lets us develop our spirit as it spins around the created object. Once finished, we will describe it, because the commentaries are also important. Before starting to sculpt, really think about the material you are going to choose, it should be a material that you like. You can also color it. .

FASHION DESIGN

In this exercise, we will create clothes. You can make a suit individually or else in a group. If you do it in a group, each one should make three pieces for the others. Take a good look at the other person and observe what clothing could call attention to him. It is not a criticism. Be daring and infuse the shape with strength, like in a carnival. Create imaginary suits. And you will see that, just as you can paint and sculpt or play music, you can create fashion. Daring to do it is all it takes. If after this exercise, they put you in charge of a fashion show, you can do it! It has to do with seeing how the other is. You can change the clothes, change the appearance; you can fill, take away; you are the owner of the other’s look. You are his owner. We begin.

THE RAINBOW

We are going to become more creative with a fundamental exercise. What I am going to do is count from nine to zero to concentrate your attention. You must pay attention, really listen. The best way to concentrate, the most simple, is to imagine the colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. As I am counting, I first submerge myself in the red; then I see the red converting itself into orange, the orange converts itself into yellow, the yellow turns into green, the green turns into blue, then dark blue, then violet. The purpose of this is to occupy the mind and to not think with words. Feel the arrival of each color. Nine. . eight. . each time more concentrated. Seven. . more concentrated. Six. . deeper, deeper. Five. . deeper, deeper. Four. . deeper. . Three. . deeper, the listening, the concentration, the receptivity. Two. . deeper. . Now we are going to use the unconscious. . one. . we are going to use the unconscious. .

YOUR SPACE

In your interior you have space, the territory that you love. There is a territory that is yours. It can be at the foot of the mountain, in the country, by the ocean; it can be fertile ground, sand; whatever you want. Let your terrain arrive; imagine the ideal place for you. Do you see it? What is there? Is there shade? What does it smell like? Are there little insects? Other animals? Whatever there is, let it arrive. And in your territory, be happy, happy: because finally you have a territory the size you want. Small, large, each one has his own. It is crucial that the unconscious give you your plot. The land that belongs to you. The slice of the planet that is yours. The landscape in which you live. Do not choose the landscape of others. Do not choose that of your parents. Choose yours alone. Take the joy of your plot and observe how the house emerges, the interior that is yours. It is your ideal house, where you want to live and develop yourself, accompanied or not, all your life. What is the house you want? What size? Made from what? What is it like? Think about what your ideal space is. Without limits. When you’re able to conceive this ideal house, walk around it, take a good look at it, go inside it and create everything: bathrooms, beds, the kitchen, the cups, the spoons — you are going to create all the objects in your ideal house and in all its rooms. Go for a walk and create your house once and for all! So you truly know what you want, without limits! There are no limits on money, there is not one prohibition, you do not have to be small or mediocre. Choose in your creativity what you really want, so that later you can carry it out in real life. Take your time. . Think about what activities you wish to do in your house. . the materials. . you are the Great Architect. Your own architect. Your own creator. . Take all the time you need, because it is fundamental for you to know your territory. Your house is your ego, it is your true I. Think also about how you are going to be dressed in your house. What clothing corresponds to you? How do you want to present yourself? In the kitchen, dream up everything you wish to eat. What is your ideal nourishment? And concentrate on the ideal company. With whom do you desire to be? If you want to be with anyone at all. There can be a reading room, a movie theater, music, books, animals — all that you desire. Without limits. Imagine your bed in this ideal house.

And this part of the exercise is also fundamental, essential, so do it well. You are in the bed, lying down, but your life has ended. You are dead. And from your corpse your new being comes out and is reborn. How do you want to be reborn? You are lying down, a being, a body that has stopped, and you get up with a new body. With what physique? What gender? What age? What would be your ideal I? Imagine yourself as an ideal I. The I that we have is not our ideal I. We have an ideal, although it is still far away. Give yourself permission to imagine it. All these exercises are designed to eliminate the lack of confidence, to enrich yourself. If you have a plot, if you have a house, if you have an ideal being, you have enriched yourself.

Now criticize yourself the way a person in your family would. Your mother, your father, your brother. Talk with their voice. Put yourself in the position of someone who opposes you. Because if until now you had not imagined any of this, it is because inside you there are forces working against what you imagine. What are these forces? Embody them. For example, talk as your mother would talk. Or your father. And criticize. All of the new medicine talks of territory, saying that a loss of territory creates illnesses. Because the brain, they say, acts like an animal that needs its territory. Even though I do not believe that this is absolute. Therefore, when we know what territory corresponds to us, we take a big step toward creativity. And the house is the development of our individual I. And if I invent the house that I want for me, I allow myself to exist as myself. Outside of parents. For this reason, to talk with your parents or create a new body is a move of creative freedom that you make. Creativity comes from an interior freedom, from an internal appreciation. I know that I have all of this in my interior, so I can put myself into action. The imagination works on very simple principles.

FREE YOURSELF FROM LANGUAGE

This will be a quick exercise in liberation from language. We are accustomed to always talking like normal beings. We are afraid of madness. However, the rivers that fall from the rooftops covered with doves will forever be white and dark, open to the tunnel of all delight. . Did you understand? No? Yes? This is how you should speak; you should allow yourself to talk in a completely outrageous language to try to explain a feeling. You must create a conversation, communicate with a language that is verbal, that is not conceptual. Ready? You can raise whatever Samson you want, preventing Delilah from cutting his hair and, atop the table, declare three or four stories that will be deliciously sweetened. Okay? And what you have done with words, you can do to invent words, like this: Fai faias naracola ke. Costrigunsun tostecki batcherome quelarranamanda droi pretcho apandep ketackka kieugal pathcu! Reabutchis Kara miop. This is liberating. You can do it. Free yourself from the language. When you start doing this, you are going to like it. In the beginning you are going to feel cut off, because the largest prison is the articulate language, the logical language. It is a surrealist exercise. But it breaks the normal language to allow creative freedom. Maybe some things that come out will be in bad taste, but it doesn’t matter. Idiotic things, childish things. But beautiful things will also come out, suddenly. Try to do it, and then we will get into techniques for the imagination.

SIXTEEN

TECHNIQUES FOR THE IMAGINATION

The imagination operates on very simple principles. Some creators have used it to exhaustion. The basis of the imagination has four elements, which are like mathematical elements: addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication. These are the four elements of the imagination. First, there is addition and subtraction. Then division, next multiplication. And then, a mixture. And with these five things, you have the imaginations of crazy people. It is very simple. Using subtraction, you must take away from everything, in the imaginary, until everything becomes small. For example, one day you see someone pass by with a package, and in this package he carries his entire birthplace. You have an enormous imagination, because you have taken away from everything. You can miniaturize everything. In my left pocket, I can carry my mother; in my right pocket, I have my father. I make them talk, and then I look at them. This happened in the movie Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, so re-create this game.

One subtracts, subtracts — and one has to fight with the spiders. These are, to me, easy elements for the imagination. And they are very useful! But we also have the giants: this could be addition. You can enlarge a pumpkin. The typical example could be the pumpkin that grows and grows and reaches the size of the planet, converting itself into a planet. And then it is so big it occupies the galaxy. Inside the pumpkin, there is all of history; all of humanity is born. Anything can be enlarged this way. It is simple. Make whatever you want grow, make art. In architecture, you take three boxes of cherries; you raise them to make a building. This is how architects work. This is addition.

The imagination can increase or reduce. The Japanese imagination has created the small dwarf trees, or bonsai; the Jivaros shrink heads; the atomic bomb is an expansion of a small bomb; and cinema makes, for example, a monkey grow into King Kong or Godzilla. In my case, I have a comic strip called Megalex, about a city that occupies the whole planet, although I was not the first to do this.

Also the expansion of force is possible (Superman). All of the superheroes increase themselves in some way: for example, Flash Gordon is the fastest. A character who crosses over everything just with a look, or he who hears everything: this happens in fairy tales, too. Or the person who has the loudest voice and makes the buildings fall. There is the man who can sleep with three hundred women in a night, and so forth.

Imagine this: A horse passes in the street, and you think that there is an invasion, that horses are everywhere, that they are multiplying, that it is an epidemic. Now there are so many horses that we have to flee, because we are invaded. And at this point we can add another element: mixture. The horses convert themselves into carnivores, and it is necessary to escape because they are devouring the humans. This is the imagination. That is to say, the imagination has used the mixture. (But we were still talking about addition and subtraction.)

A person becomes very weak, very weak, so much so that it is necessary to tie her up with thread, like a marionette: she is the president, and she has to make a speech like that. Another example: a person loses power and her bones turn into liquid, like water. We can imagine it.

There is a story in which a young woman has such long hair that her lover can climb up her braids. This could be addition to a gentlewoman. Expand. Reduce.

(Many of Ionesco’s works are very simple. In one of them there is a woman who serves a cup of tea, and then another, and another — thousands of cups of tea. In another, there are mushrooms that grow — until the entire house is full of them. In another, a dead body grows and grows and occupies the whole stage. And in The Chairs, there is a chair, then another chair — until the entire stage is full of chairs. This is to say, the author does not have to have much imagination, because he simply uses the make-things-grow trick. In all of his works, there is something that he multiplies. This becomes the norm!)

Another element of the imagination is where something begins to decrease. Fuel is scarce, water is scarce. Dune is a planet where there is no water. Here is an entire work about a planet that does not have water. An element has been split. And in splitting an element of nature, you make an imaginary world. I am showing you the processes of the imagination, formulas that you can apply anytime to your world and be able to create. Expand, reduce. You can do it.

A telephone call, ten telephone calls, all over the planet the telephones begin to ring, the buildings fall, and there is a catastrophe. Through multiplication. By magnification. Then, division steps in: There is a hand that walks alone, it jumps on your neck and strangles you. And it escapes as if it were a spider. This is division. You are walking on the street, and you see two legs that walk without a body. In a study by Jung of the stories of Native Americans, he talks about a hero who wanted to make love to the chief ’s daughter. So, he sent his phallus through the water and the phallus alone made love to the girl, leaving her pregnant. In this way, he managed to marry her.

Multiplication. Some Hindu goddesses have multiple arms. And each hand has an eye. Multiplication of the arms. Ganesh has four arms. There is also a Greek god with three heads. In the Odyssey, the cyclops has only one eye, on the forehead. That is reduction. In the case of the third eye, there is one eye more. That would be multiplication.

And then, with these four elements, one produces a mixture: the Egyptian sphinx. It has a human head, a lion’s body, an eagle’s wings, a cow’s tail. It is a monster. There are a number of examples in the paintings of El Bosco (Hieronymus Bosch), who often mixed elements. A centaur is a mixture of man and animal. You take an element of one and an element of another and join them. That is how monsters are created. An angel is a mixture of a human being and a bird with wings.

For a long time, I have been developing such mixtures. I imagined, for example, integrating the head of an elephant with a body that is a cloud, with four staircases for legs. This ability to mix elements presents interesting artistic possibilities, and the imagination uses them. These are techniques that we have at our disposal. Notice how we are always witnessing applications of this technique, in art, in publicity. If you master this technique, you can work in any advertising agency.

And there is another form of imagination, which is imaginary time. Time travel. On this trip, I can go into the past. But the problem is that, if I modify the past, I modify the “present” point from which I departed. This is called temporal paradox, and it has been developed extensively in science fiction. It is one of the great themes. If I go into the past and kill my mother, then I would not have been born, because she could not have had me. Time travel is a main theme in many films, popular films, like the Back to the Future series. In these, the imagination plays with time. But this has a very strong oedipal foundation, because if I go into the past, I can seduce my mother and make her my girlfriend, and in this case I could father myself with my mother. Or I can seduce my father in the past. This is one purpose of time travel imagery. Interfering with the past signifies interfering with our parents.

Then there is eschatology, which is the imagined end of the world. In what shape does the world end: fire, water, epidemic, or ascending into another dimension? There is a large part of the imaginary that has to do with the end of the world. This I am not recommending to you, although I do it intensely: I imagine various ways to die. I have imagined myself dying in a drowning suicide, being thrown from a building, being cut in two. I have projected myself a lot in suicides, in death, to free myself a bit from myself. I repeat to you that I do not recommend this to you. If you are distressed, do not do it. It is hard. Above all, imagine the death of loved ones. It is hard, because the possibility of a loved one disappearing always exists, and also we fear the possibility of our ceasing to exist.

To eliminate this, I have imagined a lot. I have turned myself into nothing: that is what happens when one enters darkness. I have made myself imagine the blackness, deep blackness that dissolves my I into emptiness. And then, the emergence toward existence and light.

SEVENTEEN

THERAPEUTIC APPLICATIONS

We are going to work with feelings. Think about how you feel. What feeling do you have of yourself? Well, we live with feelings that sometimes are a little distressing. That is why I am going to show you how to work with feelings of distress. Does anyone here have a feeling?

“I feel as if I had a wall in my chest.” Listen hard, this is imagination. What is this wall like: made of stone, metal, cement? Concentrate, try to tell me what it’s like. Red bricks? Imagine that there are bricks at your disposal. It is a material that is yours; you can do what you want with this material. In the first place, it defends you: a wall can defend. Against what do you need to be defended? Look for the feeling. No need to think; just feel the feeling. This wall is completely useful. Now meditate on the red bricks. They are pretty. Think that they are pretty. Instill beauty into the bricks. Each time put more beauty into the wall, okay? It is yours; it pertains to you. You can do what you want with it. Build with it whatever you want. Make a walled-off place. But imagine it completely. Imagine what this place is like, with those bricks. See it as a friendly place. You can go inside. There, you have created a door. I have a solution: there is no need to eliminate the wall, only to open the door. And now, imagine the wall inside you, with a little door by which you can exit and enter. It is a part of you that preserves your individuality. This wall preserves your individuality because, for the moment, it is still weak. Okay? Now fortify your individuality. The red bricks are going to give you strength. If you make yourself strong, you will lose your fear. No one will be able to invade you. Do you understand? You must take the imaginary and incorporate it, work with the feeling. Because feelings that present themselves to us are like symbols, we can work directly with them.

A person told me that he feels that he has excrement in his heart, and I answered that the excrement is fertilizer, that he should think of adding earth to it and that anything can grow there. If the person can make something grow there, then the feeling changes.

“I feel like I have something on my shoulders, something that is crushing me.” Okay, someone feels like something is crushing her. Let it come. Do not defend yourself, okay? Change the feeling. Think that this comes from the interior and goes toward the exterior. Modify yourself. This emerges from your interior. Do you know what it is? Growing wings. So, let them grow. Push them! Push the wings that are going to allow you to go where you want to go. Create your wings and move your wings. Go where you like. Toward the earth, toward your territory, toward yourself, toward your fulfillment. This is how feeling works.

“I feel like there’s a ball of lead in my solar plexus.” Wonderful. Imagine that your body is an oven, an alchemist’s cauldron. Imagine: in another incarnation you are an alchemist. The ball of lead is the first material that is going to change you into gold. So, let this fall so it gets to the fire in the belly. The belly is the seat of the Great Work. Work, let the ball descend, instead of defending yourself, let it heat the fire of your sexuality, okay? Little by little, go about making it rise toward where it was, and as it is rising make it change colors, until it changes to golden, and gets to the center of your chest. And then, let it shine — project its rays to all sides. Make it rise. And this way you make gold. What will you do with the gold? Currency, money. It is the acceptance of money in your heart. The negation of money turns into a knot. Do you have problems with money? Yes? Well, now you are going to have to make your money. If, upon making this ball rise, that weight, you feel too materialistic, convert the money into love. Love is the only creativity that gives you this kind of currency. Through the use of creativity, the feeling of distress will go.

“I have an itch in my head, thorns that plunge into me.” We are not going to ask what the thorns are. Simply accept the feeling, but without asking yourself why or what it means, because it can be the critical thoughts that they threw at you when you were a child, things like that. You are going to think that this leaves your head, not that it enters into your head. But you still need to really work with this feeling. And what leaves from your head is going to change into roses, because roses have thorns. And when you imagine that you have roses coming out of your head, imagine that insects come to pollinate them. And with the pollen, you are going to pollinate other plants in the world. And then you can write poems; you can do what you want.

All of us have to stop with this game of “Look what you did to me” or “You don’t love me.” It is a lack of creativity. We should not delight ourselves in the feeling of not being loved. Precisely, if I have a feeling of not being loved, I must change this feeling and feel myself loved. And what can I do? Well, to begin with, stop asking. If I stop asking for love, I am in a position to give it. So we say: “You do not love me, but I adore you.” And instead of spending my life angering myself and annoying others and suffering, I will say “Enough,” and the problem ends. I love you. I am not going to live as a victim all of my life. No. I love you, and this stops. If you do not love me, it is your problem not mine. There is the cure. When we are creative, we are not centered on asking for something; on the contrary, we make it ourselves. We should put love there where there is not love, and we will find it. Because, if you use another like a mirror of your lack of capacity to love, it is because you have looked to someone who does not love you, and this is because you cannot love. You are incapable of loving, and your problem of not loving you deposit on another, you project it like a mirror. Love. And if you love, the other is going to love you, because you are going to project your love to him.

We begin by loving things: art, people, our work, everything. We dedicate ourselves to creating and to loving. Because the other attitude drove me to do nothing, to being foiled at every turn. Creativity, on the other hand, drives you toward what you do, what you should do. And what you do, you project. And if you project it, you receive it back. Everything you give to the world, the world gives to you. Everything you do not give to the world, the world does not give to you. You need to free yourself, using creativity, from the appeal. Instead of saying “I want to have talent,” we should say, “I have talent!” Why would I want to have talent, if I have it? I want to have success. But if I have success, everything I want, I have. So, I stop asking, and I start doing my work. That is it! If I want to play music, I play it. If I want to sing, I sing. If I want to write, I write. If I want to gain money, I gain it. Period.

Because at our side are always the barriers that prevent us from fulfilling ourselves. Father, mother, true? It is this damn mind-set that has said to us: be a victim, live like a victim, and make yourself a victim. Pester another. But this is already the subject of another less accelerated course.