Biography

Mark E. Crowe, M.M. is available at Healing Earth Resources and various other locations for private consultations and readings. Through a twenty seven year ongoing relationship with indigenous "medicine elders" in America and Mexico, he provides a unique form of intuitive spiritual guidance and direction.

Additionally, Mr. Edwards has been a student of Victor Sanchez, Don Miquel Ruiz, Robert Moss, James Van Praagh and Lillian Celic. He has appeared on the Rolanda Show, Network News, Wild Chicago, the M.U.F.O.N. lecture series and channel 5 news. His numerous articles have appeared in the Monthly Aspectarian, the Roosevelt Journal, the Suntimes, Magical Blend magazine and the Hyde Park Herald. His book, "Art of the Toltec Warrior/Sorcerer, will be available in 2006.

Articles

Toltec: Earth-Walking 101 By; Mark E. Crowe (Crow) M.M. c. 2000

www.edwardsees.com

"The Earth does not give up her secrets easily, only through hard work and respect for all living things will this knowledge be gained".
Don Juan Matus :Toltec / Navaho Elder

As explored in previous articles, the modern Toltecs are the contemporary practitioners of an ancient body of shamanic practices, dating back to the Toltec empire in the 10th Century. These practices were handed down orally, until finally documented by Carlos Castaneda in the 1960s. and further developed by Don Miguel Ruiz, Victor Sanchez, myself and various others.

EARTH AS SHAMAN

Many a spiritual aspirant have searched wide and hard for Gurus, Masters, Naguals and medicine men to "apprentice" them and teach them to be "Shamans", or "persons of power"/ healing, etc.

It is strictly forbidden in every indigenous culture we worked in, for anyone to annoint themselves a "Shaman", as only the people in the culture can do that. The reason being is, Shamans are only humble mediators, with knowledge and power on loan, from the spirit world,they dont own it and never will.

The greatest "Shaman" or "Medicine Person" is the one we walk on everyday, the earth. There is no more powerful elder or healer, teacher or mother. Spiritual systems fall into two great categories:

1) Those stemming from books, and man made laws , mythologies etc.
2) Those Stemming from the earth and the spirits around the Earth.
The second is the oldest ways on the earth and the one which will survive all others. To me, Nature is my bible, religion guru and church.

NATURAL INTELLIGENCE
The Natural World is nonlinear, yet has a cohesive, integrated, wholistic balance. Nature is the very face of spirit and creation. There is nothing"wild" about the natural world, only mans"wild" destructive behavior towards the earth and each other.
Everything in Nature has a physical and non physical side and a function. Every tree, body of water, rock, animal has a song attached to it and a unique vibrational frequency that modern Toltecs are trained in listening to and interpreting.Natural intelligence goes around in a circle and is a whole,it does not need to be analyzed ,divided or even understood in any logical way.

The natural world is also the Major source of energetic renewal and cleansing for modern Toltecs, as water, fire sun and woodlands are pure chi.(power).

POWER SPOTS
In all of nature there are specific areas that have a centralized convergence of natural powers that are set up in a grid around the earth like a Chakra system. Each power spot has a unique kind of power that a warrior needs to be very aware of ,before treading on. There are alot of natural does and donts in theses areas, as spirits have their own way of protecting them and maintaining their power. One goes to these areas for vision quests,power,prayers healings and visions. One must follow certain natural protocols in these areas, as "power" is a double edge sword and can go in varios directions. If one is weak or ill,my advice is to stay away from these ares. Power spots can be any of the following; The Grand Canyon,Mount Shasta,Mount Fuji,Hawain Volcanos,Sedona Arizona area,Teotihuacan Pyramids., Machu Picchu,rainforests, etc

I've taken many a group out into Natural areas and power spots, only to hear some people say "Its boring out here, to quiet". Oh Contrar, To me, there is endless mystery, hidden knowledge, adventure, healing and love that bestows a warrior, from the Grandmother earth. Those who are bored, forgot how to listen. ..Conversley, ive seen others in these areas become agitated as their self importance is pushed out of their body by mother earths power. Then there are others , moved to tears as grandmother cradles their open hearts and reminds them what is real.

NATURES DOORWAYS
To work with Nature directly, we need to erase this euro-centric concept we have of dominion over her. The earth, and all her inhabitants are our family. All living things are on an equal web of life, and one affects the next. Humans, arent that intelligent, there is a great deal to learn from all forms of Natural life. Humility is the first key to learning from Nature, as Humans are the most dependent species in nature!!

The Toltecs, as well as, all indigenous cultures learned their knowledge over time, directly from the earth and spirits of the earth. There is no substitute, spiritually, for direct experience. The natural world speaks to us in symbols, feelings, subtle psychic impressions and silent knowledge. There are spirtual and dimensional doorways/gateways in nature,and as a warrior, one can move in and out of these. The more your soul is purified ,the easier it is to enter these doorweays, as nature does not care about our titles, achievements, money or intelligence, only the purity of our hearts. Its that simple.We are her children, we go to the mother with our hearts and cradle her as she cradles us.

The Hunter of Silent Knowledge

There is a basic exercise I have in my Toltec Earthwalking courses and it is called" The Hunter of Silent Knowledge". Here are a few tips, for the next time you take a walk in the woods or lakefront, these exercises will help optimize any energetic encounters you have in nature. It prepares you to be "Energetically available", to feel and aquiesse the indications of spirit, interwoven in the mystical tapestry of Mother Earth.

(Before entering into nature, always leave an offering of Tobacco, sage, hair or food for the spirits that live there):

1) Silent the mind, and inner chatter
2) Let go of any sense of Linear time
3) Slow down everything (Thinking, walking, breath etc)
4 Sit down for long periods and really listen.
5) Try to blend into your surroundings
6) Dont analyze what you feel, sense, see smell, etc
7) No Talking, only use hand gestures/sounds
8) Dont label what you see, in words, see it as energy
9) Open your heart to your family in nature
10) Dont complain about small discomforts,ignore them (Cold, heat, bugs)
11) Listen from within, not from your mind.

After your earthwalks, Journal what you felt, seen, and intuited and Grandmother earth will reveal mysteries to you, no human could possibly do. This is the heart of being a Modern Toltec.

" Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished."
- Lao Tzu

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As explored in earlier articles on erasing personal history and Toltec warriorship, the ancient Toltecs were a culture of powerful warriors, astronomers and sorcerers. Their disciplines of astrology, medicinal herbs, shamanistic and dreaming/energetic practices had to go underground, hidden from European and spanish dominator cultures from 750 ad to around 1966, when author Carlos Castaneda and later Don Miguel Ruiz, revealed them in books and lectures. Many a bewildered anthropologist have conjectured as to how the Toltecs disappearance from history happened. The Toltecs left no trace of bones, personal artifacts or where they went to. All that was left was the ruins of the Teotihuacan temples and ruins in Cancun and other areas in Mexico. Similar to the vanishing of the Anasazi in the southwest. Where did they go? Where did they disappear to? Where are there bodies? How did they leave? The answer is; DREAMING .

The ancient Toltecs and Anasazi people were not stupid, primitive, "injuns" living in archaic myths before" modern civilization". No, they were supreme Jaguar warriors, highly skilled astronomers and very advanced dreamer-shapeshifters. So much so, they could leave this world without a trace and go to another one. Sound unbelievable, well read on, you decide!!

DREAMING 101 In Western society, we've been trained by psychoanalysis and science to perceive our dreams as offshoots of electrical impulses, shooting off in the synapses of our brains. Dreams to psychoanalysis, is a form of wish fullfillment and subconcious functions of the ego, processing conflicting sexual and egoic desires through metaphoric imagery. Unfortunatley, this explanation is tradgically lacking in substance, application and scope. It is also a minority perception globally. Most indigenous cultures worldwide condider dreaming to encompass a whole lot more than brain functioning and wish fulfillment. To these cultures and the Toltecs, their whole life is based around dreams and dreaming abilities. We spend one third of our life sleeping, roughly 178.000 hours. Obviously dreaming is a signifigant part of our living experience. Whats happening when we sleeep? Where do we go when we dream? What is the nature and messages of these dreams we have? Why do some dreams seem like real life events, with total clarity? In indigenous cultures, dreams are discussed and explored daily. Dreams are seen as a sort of psychic antenna that gives them symblic lessons and meanings to their life experiences, much like reading a Tarot deck. Dreams also forsee upcoming events and help navigate around trouble and used for healing, advice and "seeing". For the Toltecs and their decendants, Dreaming is as real and practical as planting crops, having a family, constructing a home, music or anything else in their lives. To them, dreams are a real and vital area of experience, continuity and spiritual connection that western cultures cannot even imagine. The real illusion is that we as human beings were meant to live within reason , logic and materialism.

THE THREE LEVELS OF ATTENTION In Toltec lingo, their is what is described as; The First, Second and Third Attention. These terms can be found all through Carlos Castanedas works as well as Don Miguel Ruiz and others. Lets examine them closer; 1) THE FIRST ATTENTION :This is the social order, the world of reason, logic and linguistic explanations. The "Matrix", as the popular movie defines it. The world of the known. 2) THE SECOND ATTENTION; The realm of dreaming,out of body experiences, "psychedelic" experiences, sorcery, magick lucid dreaming,visions,spirits etc 3) THE THIRD ATTENTION; This is completely outside language, off the island of the self and the social order and literally impossible to describe as it is enormous in mass and intensity. It is the totality of ourselves, it is eternity, if you will. These worlds of energetic possibilities are what both ancient and modern Toltec practitioners train to enter at will, with full conciousness. Specific training sequences and daily practices help us navigate sucsessfully between these three areas of assemblage points (points of energetic awareness or energetic clusters or worlds)..

MEDICINE DREAMING The elders and Toltec shamans of Mexico,including their living decendants the Huichols, Aztecs, Mayans, use dreaming for practical daily challenges and healing. Medicine men (Naguals) consult dreams for health diagnosis, finding a marriage partner for someone, finding lost people and objects, plant identification, naming babies etc. Visions, songs and symbols acquired from dreaming are intergrated all through the culture. Its drawn on their homes, rattles, drums, sacred objects and their bodies. Humans are thus always interacting with the dreaming guides and spirits. Dream songs, when sung, reconnect Naguals to the spirit world. The dream radar is a consistent tool for all aspects of life , and reality, to the Toltecs, is seen as having two sides;The Tonal (ordinary reality) and the Nagual (the unknown).These two sides need to be in balance with each other for a human to be healthy. Together, the Tonal and Nagual provide proper eguilibrium. Even in our modern western society art, poetry, and music come inspired to artists from the second attention. Billy Joel, the famous musican said 70 % of his music came from dreams. Physical reality as we know it,is filled with sounds and imagery from the dreamtime.

SORCERY DREAMING Don Juan Matus, teacher of Carlos Castaneda and many others, defined a Toltec as " a modern practioner of Toltec practices,not limited to gender and race. A man (or woman) who is a master of coyote shape shifting-a dreamwalker." At this level of dreaming, there is total lucidity in the dreaming worlds. For a dreamwalker, being awake or dreaming while asleep, is the same. The universe is set up like an onoion, with multiple worlds overlapping within each other. A master dreamwalker can move freely from one layer in the onion to another, at will. Sometimes you see them, sometimes you don't. This requires of course a lifetime of saving energy, living as a warrior and erasing ones personal history. To gain fluidity in dreaming, it is also necessary to erase our self importance and ego. Erasing the dead weight of the ego leads to our energetic freedom. The Anasazi, Toltecs and aboriginal people were and are master dreamers in a dreaming culture. If you visit the pyramids of Mexico today, you get an eerie feeling that you are never alone and are being watched. The eyes of the ancient dreamwalkers are still there, just at another layer of the onion. Remember the childrens song" row row your boat, merrily down the stream...merrily merrily, life is but a dream..". The Toltecs would agree. Keep fighting and keep dreaming!!

Mark E. Crowe 2007

 

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Freedom From Personal History: A Toltec View
By Mark E. Crowe, MM

Who do you trust, your ego or the universe?

In several coastal and inland areas of Mexico, there was an empire of indigenous people called the Toltecs. They lived from about 100 B.C. to 700 A.D. and had vibrant, thriving communities. The powerful pyramids of Teotihuacan were their honoring to a multitude of spirits and forces that came and went through different doorways of reality. The pyramids, translated in English to “where men become Gods,” were a center for community, blood sacrifices, extraterrestrial visitations, and energetic transformation.

When the Spanish invaded this area, many of the Toltecs spread and integrated with other cultures, possibly fleeing even as far as the Anasazi ruins area in Arizona.

Many potent shamanic practices went underground with them, carried on by elders and sorcerers of this tradition. Some of their practices were related in the books of Carlos Castaneda, Miguel Ruiz, Victor Sanchez, etc., as first revealed by Navajo/Toltec elder Don Juan Matus.

The “Modem Toltecs” — were not necessarily Indians or Mexicans — are today the practitioners those beliefs. Of a series of eleven distinct practices of the ancient Toltecs, one deserves reviewing at present, which is erasing personal history.

All through the seventies and up until today, Carlos Castaneda and his band of sorcerers (including Taisha Abelar and Florinda Donner) have been repeatedly questioned as to whether Don Juan ever existed. If Carlos seems fraudulent in his claims because of a lack of consistent, verifiable personal data, and bizarre teaching practices, this is because critics still don’t understand the teachings of Don Juan Matus or the Toltecs.

Having worked with members of Carlos’ circle, coordinating stalking/dreaming circles in Chicago for over fifteen years, and traveling extensively in the mountains of Mexico with descendants of the Toltec people, I will attempt to explore this dynamic for the reader.

The practice of erasing personal history is unique to the Toltec path. The modern Toltec’s concern is not with healing others or being gurus, it is with energetic transformation and dreaming. To gain the fluidity and energy to dream, however, the self, or ego, must be slowly erased. The reason that Carlos changed his date of birth, name, and age so often is not that he is lying, it is that he is erasing.

Our modern technological culture is obsessed with the details of each others’ lives. Look at the barbaric media exploitation of celebrities, or even the everyday people featured in the local news. It is a compulsive, obsessive preoccupation with each other’s life chronology, personal data, sexual and legal history, beliefs, religious views, etc. It is an illusion we worship; a mosh pit of self importance!

Talk shows, dating shows, celebrity magazines, pop songs, chat rooms all talking about “me,” “me,” “me.” The world of “me,” all about and everything to do with “me.” “I’m the best, he’s the worst. I’m the victim, he’s a hero. He’s a bad guy. Who slept with who, who’s in court today, who said what?” Blah, blah, blah.

From the practices of the Toltecs, we see that our personal history is like a heavy, burdening anchor that keeps us rooted and entrenched in the muck of everyday, ordinary reality and pettiness. A feeling of solidified, personal history leads to static energy blocks in our physical and subtle bodies. Memories, especially traumatic ones, are stored in the energy cells of our bodies, which leads to mental disorders, addictions, psychic/astral entity attachments, and physical illness. It is the root of all diseases and disharmony.

In our daily lives we incessantly talk to others and ourselves about the details of our personal lives, romantic encounters, beliefs, complaints, and self image. This repetitive, routinary fixation on the personal inventory of our ego and self importance keeps us trapped within a bubble of perception through which we not only see the world, but experience it. Once we spell out and reinforce our personal history to others, they get their claws into us and expect us to act, feel, and talk a certain way. We are then in a trap we have set for ourselves.

Through “personal history” we move from a holistic consciousness to a very selective one; paying compulsive attention to memories, characteristics, reinforcements, objects, beliefs, and defenses associated with the “me,” the “I,” our names, and even work titles, cultures, etc. We come to believe we are our name, personal history, title, inventory of memories, and so on. Once we have identified with the ego, our conciousness is locked into a world of separation and struggle.

There is an intelligence, a massive field of energy and awareness, outside the self. As modern Toltecs, we call it Intent, or just Infinity. If we can be brave enough to drop our reliance and addiction to the “self,” we can connect with this greater intelligence that lives in and animates all living things. The question is, who do you trust, your ego or the universe as a whole? How can we expect to “see” the universe when we are in the middle of the picture?

There are many ways in our practice to disentangle from the human form (personal history), primarily through a set of practices called Not Doings, Recapitulation, and Cord Cutting. These practices are out of the scope of this article and require personal guidance and time to develop.

Here are a few practical ways, however, to get started on erasing your personal history:

1. Get rid of old photos and memorabilia. They keep you rooted in the past.

2. Change your name and address often, if possible.

3. Stop using the words “I,” “me,” and “myself” as much as possible. This will free up your awareness.

4. Stop talking about your past, age, culture, degrees, job, titles, etc. Don’t reinforce the illusion.

5. Change your appearance periodically (hair, clothes,etc.). This deters having a fixed self image.

6. Stop having pictures taken of you.

7. Avoid getting too enmeshed with other people. Keep your relationships fluid and open.

8. Stop explaining all your comings and goings to others. Their expectations will imprison your energy.

9. Study water. It is how our spirit moves — fluidly.

We have a choice: spend our time here obsessing over our self image, victim/hero posture, personal history, and self importance, or pull our energy away from these things and connect with the mystery of Infinity. No “God” or religion will save us from the hell of our lives, we must choose to walk away from the mess we have made of ourselves. Keep fighting and keep dreaming.

Mark E. Crowe has been directly involved with Toltec teachings for over fourteen years and has undergone other intensive rites of passage within the path proposed by Don Juan Matus, Carlos Casteneda, and the Toltec lineage of sorcery/shamanism. Contact Healing Earth Resources (phone 773-EARTHLY) for information on E. Crowe’ “Introduction to Practical Shamanism” April 22, 2004, and his four-week course “Art of the Warrior” beginning May 13, 2004.