Three abilities you were born with.Awareness, perception, intention. Not words, not levels.
The last time you used them, you didn't have a calendar yet. They're there like eyes and hands. Everything that happens in a ritual, in a conversation or in a life happens through one of them. I'll tell you what each one is, what it can do, and in what order you find them again.
Awareness is knowing, directly, that you are and where you are. Perception is the sense that reads reality, filtered and able to focus. Intention is direct seeing, nothing in between, and it never stops.
They are abilities, not words. You say a word, you practise an ability. No stages, no levels. And in the end the three are one.
Three questions, one per ability.
Someone who sat at the fire for a long time asks them. He explains nothing. Whoever has answered the three for themselves reads their own life differently. Each of the three books leads up to one of them. And the short form, the same on every page here: awareness takes you to where you are. Perception shows you what is really there. Intention sets where it goes.
One line, three points.
Awareness, perception, intention. No stages, one order: whoever doesn't know where they are sees nothing. Whoever sees nothing aligns no line. Intention from the head. Intention from the heart.
- Awareness: Where are you? The wings
- Perception: What do you see? The eyes
- Intention: Where does your line go? The flight path
- No stages: an order, one makes the other visible
Where are you? Awareness.Awareness, the eagle's wings
Awareness is direct knowing: that you are, and where you are. It's the base sense. Without awareness there's no communication, no learning, nothing. And it's the only one of the three senses that stays abstract: everywhere and nowhere, and yet it can be gathered into one point.
It's the sense that notices the other two in the first place. That's why it comes first on the path. And it can't be handed over: only you can know what you know. Nobody can take your awareness from you or hold it for you. That's why there is no space holder.
It never leaves the body, and it expands. The deer in the clearing is calm because its awareness knows where it's safe. Not because it thinks about it. Every animal on this earth lives like that. Only we started believing someone else has to do that for us.
Where your awareness is, that's where you are. Completely.
It senses in layers, constantly, like hands in the dark. It knows immediately who is present, whether something is complete, where it's safe. You can bring it deliberately to where you need it: into a hand, to a place, onto a line. And at some point everything is awareness.
What do you see? Perception.Perception, the eagle's eyes
Perception is the reading channel: the sense that reads reality. If you want to know something, you have to perceive it. But it's always filtered. It's a lens that shapes what you see; whatever comes through it has passed through you.
It can focus, and that's its secret. Not the width: the sharpness. An eagle focuses on a single mouse from a thousand metres. And it can stop, at a mountain, at an image, at an interpretation. That's its strength and its limit. It's the channel through which we dream, rich and alive and full of in-between layers, and that's exactly why it's the practice ground that comes before intention.
Perception isn't a window. It's a finger.
Because it filters, the interpretation belongs to the person who perceives, or to nobody. Whoever tells you what you saw ("I see something around you") puts their perception into your reality. Keep the image, give back the interpretation. And: seeing is quiet. It stands. Embellishing is loud.
Where does your line go? Intention.Intention, the eagle's flight path
Intention is direct seeing. Nothing in between: no dream, no filter, one to one. It never stops. It appears as fine lines that run through everything and end nowhere; the old ones called them the lines of the world. It sits in the heart, and its origin lies outside you.
You don't make it. You find it, and it was there first. The flight path doesn't begin at the wings and doesn't end at the prey. It was there before the eagle and stays after it. Flying means stepping in. And the eagle only steps in when it sees.
The head knows a hundred ways. The heart knows one.
The most important difference here is where an intention comes from. From the head, or from the heart. They are opposites.
No stages. An order.
There's no ranking among the three. There's only an order in which you find them again, because one makes the next visible in the first place. That's how I learned it, and that's how I pass it on.
Waking awareness
Going out, feeling, naming. Without that, you don't notice the other two.
Training perception
Reading, focusing, dreaming. Awareness and perception work as a team: one feels where it gets interesting, the other goes there and reads.
The transition
Pulling awareness away from perception and lifting it into the heart. Aligning a line, one is enough. Where the mind falls silent, intention shows itself.
The union
In the end the three are one. And beyond that: at some point everything is awareness.
Common questions.
Who writes this.
Andy Dittrich spent his working life in learning and development for organisations, in around thirty countries. He found the answer to his question somewhere else: with two indigenous shamans, in North America and in Mongolia, and with a teacher in the Moroccan desert. Around a hundred workshops, many years, always as a student.
The three abilities are what was given to him there. He passes them on in the only form they ever had: as a story.
My intention with these pages: I share my knowledge so you can find the difference yourself. Between shamanic bullshit and something truly special.
The head knows a hundred ways. The heart knows one.
Three books, the same three questions. Told at the fire.
FIRE leads up to all three questions, over four days in the mountains. TROMMELSCHLAG tells where it all began. RITUALE shows what you bring with you before you go.
Discover the books