Carlos castaneda sayings. Carlos Castaneda: wise quotes about life from the most mysterious writer. A journey without a heart is never a joyful one.

We present 15 very deep lessons from Carlos Castaneda that will allow you to look at the world from a different angle.

- It is useless to spend your whole life on one single path, especially if this path has no heart.

- Don't explain too much. Every explanation hides an apology. So when you explain why you can't do this or that, what you're really doing is apologizing for your shortcomings, hoping that those listening to you will be kind and forgive them.

- To get the most out of life, a person must be able to change. Unfortunately, a person changes with great difficulty, and these changes occur very slowly. Many people spend years on this. The hardest thing is to truly want to change.

- I'm never angry with anyone. There is nothing anyone can do that deserves such a reaction from me. You get angry with people when you feel that their actions are important. I haven't felt anything like this for a long time.

- You must always remember that the path is just a path. If you feel that you should not walk on it, then you should not stay on it under any circumstances.

- In order to realize the reality familiar to another, you first need to free yourself from your own reality; but it is not at all easy for a person to get rid of his usual picture of the world; this habit must be broken by force.

- Act as if it were a dream. Act boldly and don't look for excuses.

- The main hindrance of most people is internal dialogue, this is the key to everything. When a person learns to stop it, everything becomes possible. The most incredible projects become feasible.

- People, as a rule, do not realize that at any moment they can throw anything out of their lives. Anytime. Instantly.

- The only truly wise adviser we have is death. Every time you feel, as often happens to you, that everything is going very badly and you are on the verge of complete collapse, turn to the left and ask your death if this is so. And your death will answer that you are mistaken, and that apart from its touch there is nothing that really matters. Your death will say: “But I haven’t touched you yet!”

- Everyone goes their own way. But all roads still go nowhere. This means that the whole point is in the road itself, how you walk along it... If you walk with pleasure, then this is your road. If you feel bad, you can leave it at any time, no matter how far you go. And it will be right.

- We need all our time and all our energy to defeat the idiocy in ourselves. This is what matters. The rest is of no importance...

- The whole trick is what to focus on... Each of us makes himself either unhappy or strong. The amount of work required in both the first and second cases is the same.

- The art of a warrior is to maintain a balance between the horror of being human and the miracle of being human.

- To become a man of knowledge, you need to be a warrior, not a whining child. Fight without giving up, without complaining, without retreating, fight until you see. And all this only to understand that there is nothing in the world that matters.

About Castaneda's biography: "The true biography of Carlos Castaneda was known only to himself; it is the lot of everyone else to try to reconstruct it."

Carlos Castaneda can easily be considered one of the greatest mysteries of the twentieth century. All that is known for certain about him is that he is the author of ten best-selling books and the founder of the Cleargreen company, which now owns the rights to Castaneda’s creative heritage. Everything else is nothing more than assumptions, if not speculation.

Castaneda carefully maintained his “secret identity”, practically did not give interviews and categorically refused to be photographed (however, by coincidence, several photographs of Castaneda still exist). He even denied that he had ever been married, although Margaret Runyan, the author of a book of memoirs about this man, claims that Castaneda was her husband. Castaneda loved hoaxes. His acquaintance, Jose Bracamonte, described Carlos as follows: “A big liar and a loyal friend.”

Each time Carlos enthusiastically invented a new homeland, new parents, etc. He, apparently, simply enjoyed it, just as a child enjoys telling him that his dad is an astronaut.

Most often, Carlos told everyone that he was born in Brazil, in Sao Paulo, on Christmas Day 1935, into a very respectable family, and his father was an academician. He liked to vaguely hint that Osvaldo Arana, diplomat, revolutionary, well-known figure of the time, was his uncle. He told someone else that he was born in 1931, someone else that it happened in Brazil, but not in Sao Paulo, but in the city of Juyuery, etc.

In other words, the true biography of Carlos Castaneda was known only to himself; the lot of everyone else is to try to reconstruct it.

One such attempt was made in 1973 by Time magazine.

So, Carlos Cesar Arana Castaneda (that’s his full name) was born on December 25, 1925 in Sao Paulo, Brazil.

His father was a watchmaker and goldsmith, and his father's name was Cesar Arana Castaneda Burungari. When Castaneda was born, his father was 17 years old and his mother was only 15-16. Mother, Susanna Castaneda Navoa, at that time was a fragile, pretty girl and, apparently, was not in great health. She died when Carlos was 24 years old.

The stories that Castaneda told about himself combine fictional and true facts. In some interviews, Castaneda mentions his grandparents, with whom he lived for some time when he was a child.

The grandmother was of foreign origin, perhaps Turkish, and was a very large and not beautiful, but kind woman, and Carlos loved her. But Carlos’s grandfather, apparently, was a truly extraordinary figure. He was a small reddish man with blue eyes, a native of Italy, who told little Carlos all kinds of stories and was always inventing something. Once, in order to demonstrate a new invention, he convened the entire Arana-Castaneda clan. When the old man finally showed the fruits of his labors, the whole family experienced a slight shock: “This is a home toilet,” the grandfather boasted, beaming with joy, “well, who wants to try it first?”

Later, during spiritual training in Mexico, don Juan demanded that Carlos say goodbye to his grandfather. The fact that his grandfather died did not matter - he continued to influence Carlos, his views and life - the man who raised Castaneda was too powerful. Carlos recalls that saying goodbye to his grandfather was one of the most difficult shocks in his life. He introduced his grandfather in great detail and said goodbye to him...

In 1951, Carlos Castaneda emigrated to the United States, and in 1960 an event occurred that radically changed the life of Carlos Castaneda himself and thousands of his followers - Castaneda, then a student at the University of California, came to Mexico for “field materials” for his thesis, met don Juan Matus, a Yaqui Indian. Don Juan became Castaneda's spiritual teacher and for twelve years passed on the secret knowledge of his tribe to his ward.

Don Juan's main task was to destroy all the frameworks already formed in Castaneda's brain and make him see not a narrow strip of reality, but the entire huge and infinitely diverse world. At first, to remove blockages in the brain of young Carlos, it was necessary to resort to very harsh measures and use herbal psychotropic drugs, which gave Castaneda’s opponents a reason to accuse him of promoting drugs. The prosecutors were provided with counterarguments:

a) psychedelics are not drugs, they are not addictive;

b) experiences experienced under the influence of mescaline, etc. Castaneda describes only in the very first books, and these descriptions are more likely to push the reader away from such experiments than to attract them - in any case, the author himself, recognizing that he needed this experience, never voluntarily agreed to repeat it;

c) in subsequent books, Castaneda repeatedly emphasizes that psychotropic drugs can only serve as an initial impetus and nothing more, while sustainable results in managing states of consciousness should be achieved using completely different methods, which he talks about.

With don Juan's permission, Castaneda began to write down his words; This is how the first of Carlos Castaneda’s world-famous books was born - “The Teachings of Don Juan. The Way of the Yaqui Indians,” published in 1968. This book instantly became a bestseller, as did the nine that followed. All of them are recordings of don Juan's conversations with Castaneda, and the chain of events in them ends in 1973, when don Juan mysteriously disappeared - “melted like fog.”

People still argue whether Don Juan was real person, or was it invented by Castaneda? M. Runyan writes that the name Juan Matus is as common in Mexico as the name, say, Petya Ivanov is in Russia. In his coursework, Castaneda first simply mentioned an elderly Indian who agreed to teach him. The name Don Juan Matus came up later.

According to Castaneda, the modest old Indian was a real magician-shaman, the last representative of a line of Toltec magicians going back centuries. Moreover, Don Juan discovered the corresponding inclinations in Castaneda and taught him the incomprehensible art of ancient magic for 13 years.

Castaneda's desire to elude any certainty and fixation directly follows from the basic requirement for the Toltec magicians of the school of Don Juan Matus - his spiritual teacher: to be fluid, flexible, elusive, not to allow anyone to push themselves into the tight framework of patterned behavior and stereotypical reactions. In the terminology of the Toltec magicians or warriors, as they prefer to call themselves, the warrior magician must “erase his personal history.”

So we can be sure that we will never know whether Don Juan was a real person. If his student was so successful in erasing personal history, then the teacher certainly tried not to leave any traces of his presence on this planet.

Castaneda stated that Don Juan did not die, but was “burnt from the inside,” but he had no doubt about his own mortality. "Because I'm an idiot, I'm sure I'll die," he told the Times. “I would like to find the integrity to leave this world in the same way he did, but there is no guarantee.” Legend has it that Castaneda himself left our world in a similar way - as if he had disappeared into thin air. A less poetic version of the obituary reports that he died on April 27, 1998 from liver cancer and that after cremation, Castaneda's ashes were sent to Mexico, according to his will.

Thinker, writer and ethnographer Carlos Cesar Salvador Aranha Castaneda dedicated a series of books to shamanism and the presentation of a worldview that is unusual for Western people.

For some they became a revelation, for others - a door to a new world, others simply read with interest about a new point of view on the world.

Castaneda himself used the term “magic” for this approach, however, according to him, this concept does not fully convey the essence of the teaching based on the traditions of the ancients.

selected 15 profound lessons from Castaneda's teachings:

Everyone goes their own way. But all roads still go nowhere. This means that the whole point is in the road itself, how you walk along it... If you walk with pleasure, then this is your road. If you feel bad, you can leave it at any time, no matter how far you go. And it will be right.
The only truly wise adviser we have is death. Every time you feel, as often happens to you, that everything is going very badly and you are on the verge of complete collapse, turn to the left and ask your death if this is so. And your death will answer that you are mistaken, and that apart from its touch there is nothing that really matters. Your death will say: “But I haven’t touched you yet!”
It is useless to spend your whole life on one single path, especially if this path has no heart..
Don't explain too much. Every explanation hides an apology. So when you explain why you can't do this or that, what you're really doing is apologizing for your shortcomings, hoping that those listening to you will be kind and forgive them.
To get the most out of life, a person must be able to change. Unfortunately, a person changes with great difficulty, and these changes occur very slowly. Many people spend years on this. The hardest thing is to truly want to change.
I'm never angry with anyone. There is nothing anyone can do that deserves such a reaction from me. You get angry with people when you feel that their actions are important. I haven't felt anything like this for a long time.
People, as a rule, do not realize that at any moment they can throw anything out of their lives. Anytime. Instantly .
You must always remember that the path is just a path. If you feel that you should not walk on it, then you should not stay on it under any circumstances.
You should not confuse loneliness and solitude. Loneliness for me is a psychological, mental concept, while solitude is physical. The first dulls, the second calms.
Act like it's a dream. Act boldly and don't make excuses.
If you don't like what you get, change what you give.
We need all our time and all our energy to overcome the idiocy in ourselves. This is what matters. The rest is of no importance...
The trick is what to focus on... Each of us makes ourselves either unhappy or strong. The amount of work required in both the first and second cases is the same.
Art is about maintaining a balance between the horror of being human and the wonder of being human.
To become a man of knowledge, you need to be a warrior, not a whining child. Fight without giving up, without complaining, without retreating, fight until you see. And all this only to understand that there is nothing in the world that really matters.

Carlos Castaneda "Tales of Power" quotes from the book:

The self-confidence of a warrior and the self-confidence of an ordinary person are two different things. An ordinary person seeks recognition in the eyes of others, calling it self-confidence. A warrior seeks perfection in his own eyes and calls it humility. An ordinary person clings to those around him, but a warrior relies only on himself. The difference between these concepts is huge. Overconfidence means you know something for sure; The humility of a warrior is impeccability in actions and feelings. An ordinary person clings to a person similar to himself, a warrior clings to infinity.

If a warrior achieves success in something, then this success should come gently, even with great effort, but without shocks and obsessions.

It is internal dialogue that pins people to the ground in Everyday life. The world for us is such and such or such and such only because we tell ourselves about it that it is such and such or such and such. The entrance to the world of shamans opens only after the warrior learns to stop his internal dialogue.

The key to shamanism is changing our idea of the world. Stopping internal dialogue is the only way to achieve this. Everything else is just talk. Nothing you do, short of stopping your internal dialogue, will change anything about you or your idea of the world.

The main obstacle for a warrior is internal dialogue: this is the key to everything. When a warrior learns to stop it, everything becomes possible. The most incredible projects become feasible.

The warrior takes his destiny, whatever it may be, and accepts it in absolute humility. He humbly accepts himself as he is, but not as a reason for regret, but as a living challenge.

The humility of a warrior and the humility of a beggar are incredibly different things. A warrior does not lower his head to anyone, but at the same time he does not allow anyone to lower their head to him. The beggar, on the contrary, falls to his knees and sweeps the floor with his hat in front of the one he considers superior to himself. But he immediately demands that those below him sweep the floor in front of him.

Comfort, heaven, fear - all these are words that create moods that a person learns without even asking about their value. This is how black magicians capture his devotion.

The weakness of words is that they make us feel aware, but when we turn around to look at the world, they always betray us, and we again look at the world as usual, without any enlightenment. Therefore, a warrior prefers to act rather than talk. As a result, he receives a new description of the world, in which conversations are not so important, and new actions have new reflections.

The warrior views himself as already dead, so he has nothing to lose. The worst has already happened to him, so he is clear and calm. If you judge him by his actions, then you can never suspect that he notices everything.

Knowledge is the most frightening thing, especially for a warrior. But if the warrior once accepts the frightening nature of knowledge, then he abandons the very possibility of being horrified. For a warrior, knowledge is something that comes immediately, absorbs him and passes through.

Whenever the internal dialogue stops, the world collapses, and unfamiliar facets of ourselves come to the surface, as if previously they were kept under the intense protection of our words.

The world is immeasurable. Like us, like every creature that exists in this world.

Warriors win their battles not because they bang their heads against walls, but because they take them on. Warriors jump over walls; they don't destroy them.

The warrior must cultivate the feeling that he has what it takes for this extravagant journey that is his life. In the case of a warrior, all that is needed is to be alive. Life is a small walk that we take now, life in itself is sufficient, explains itself and fills itself.

Understanding this, the warrior lives accordingly. Therefore, we can safely say that the experience of all experiences is to be alive.

The average person believes that indulging doubts and hesitations is a sign of sensitivity and spirituality. The truth is that the average person is very far from being sensitive. He does not deceive himself intentionally, but his little mind turns himself into a monster or a saint, but in fact he is too small for such a large form as the monster or saint fills.

Being a warrior doesn't just mean wanting to be one. It is rather an endless battle that will last until the last moment. No one is born a warrior, just like no one is born an ordinary person. We make ourselves this or that.

A warrior dies the hard way. His death must be fought against him. A warrior does not give in to death so easily.

Human beings are not objects. They are round, luminous beings, not objects, but pure awareness, without density or boundaries. The idea of the dense world only makes our journey on earth easier; this is a description we created for convenience, but nothing more.

Our minds make us forget that a description is only a description, and before we realize it, human beings imprison themselves in a vicious circle from which they rarely escape during their allotted lifetime.

Humans are perceptive beings. However, the world they perceive is an illusion - an illusion created by the description that was instilled in them from the moment they were born.

We luminous beings are born with two rings of power, but we only use one of them to create the world. This ring, which closes on us in the first years of life, is the mind and its companion, speech. It was they who, having come to an understanding among themselves, concocted this world with the help of a description and its dogmatic and unshakable rules, and now they support it.

The secret of luminous beings is that they have something that is almost never used - will. The trick of shamans is the same trick of an ordinary person. Both have a description of the world. An ordinary person maintains his own with the help of his mind, and a shaman - with the help of his will. Both descriptions have their own laws, and these laws are perceptible. But the description of the shaman says that the will is more comprehensive than the mind.

The warrior allows himself to perceive and support both descriptions - the world of the mind and the world of the will. This is the only way to use the everyday world as a challenge and as a means to accumulate enough personal power to find wholeness within yourself.

Only a warrior can stand on the path of knowledge. A warrior does not complain and does not regret anything. His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot be good or bad. Challenges are just challenges.

The main difference between a warrior and an ordinary person is that a warrior accepts everything as a challenge, whereas an ordinary person accepts everything as a blessing or a curse.

A warrior must be fluid and change in harmony with the world around him, be it the world of the mind or the world of the will. The real danger for a warrior arises when it turns out that the world is neither one nor the other. It is believed that the only way out of this critical situation is to continue to act as if you believe. The secret of a warrior is that he believes without believing. Of course, a warrior cannot simply say that he believes and leave it at that. It would be too easy. Simple faith would remove him from analyzing the situation. In all cases where a warrior must associate himself with faith, he does so by choice. A warrior does not believe, a warrior must believe.

Death is a necessary addition to “must believe.” Without the awareness of death, everything becomes ordinary, insignificant. The world is an immeasurable mystery because death is constantly stalking us. Without awareness of the presence of our death there is no power or mystery. The duty to believe that the world is mysterious and incomprehensible is an expression of the warrior's deepest predisposition.

Strength always opens a cubic centimeter of chance to a warrior. The art of a warrior is to be continuously fluid, otherwise he will not have time to seize this chance.

An ordinary person is accustomed to being aware only of what he considers important to himself. But a real warrior must be aware of everything at all times.

The integrity of oneself is a very mysterious matter. We need only a small part of it to complete life's most complex tasks. But when we die, we die whole. The shaman asks the question: if we die with the integrity of ourselves, then why not live with it?

For a warrior, the most important rule in life is to carry out his decisions so carefully that nothing that happens as a result of his actions can surprise him, much less deplete his strength.

When a warrior makes a decision, he must be prepared to die. If he is ready to die, then there will be no traps, no unpleasant surprises and no unnecessary actions. Everything must fall gently into place because he expects nothing.

A warrior, as a teacher, must first of all teach his student one possibility - the ability to act without believing, without expecting rewards. Act only for the sake of action itself. The success of a teacher’s work depends on how well and how competently he leads his student in this particular direction.

To help erase personal history, the warrior, as a teacher, must teach his student three techniques. They consist of letting go of self-importance, taking responsibility for one's actions, and using death as an advisor. Without the beneficial effects of these techniques, erasing personal history can create in the student instability, unnecessary and harmful ambivalence about himself and his actions.

There is no way to get rid of self-pity, to free yourself from it with benefit. It occupies a certain place and has a certain character in the life of an ordinary person - a certain façade that is visible from afar. Therefore, every time an opportunity presents itself, self-pity becomes active. This is her story. If a person changes the façade of self-pity, then he also removes its prominence. Facades are modified by changing the use of elements of the facade itself. Self-pity is useful for the one who uses it, because he feels important and believes that he deserves better conditions, better treatment. It also matters because a person does not want to accept responsibility for actions that prompt him to feel sorry for himself.

Changing the façade of self-pity only means that the warrior is relegating formerly important components to the background. Self-pity is still a feature of his character, but now it takes a place in the background - just as ideas about impending death, about the humility of a warrior, or about responsibility for one’s actions once also existed in the background and did not used until the warrior became a warrior.

The warrior acknowledges his pain, but does not indulge in it. Therefore, the mood of a warrior who enters the unknown is not sadness. On the contrary, he is cheerful because he feels humbled by his good fortune, confident that his spirit is invulnerable, and, above all, fully aware of his effectiveness. A warrior's joy comes from his acceptance of his destiny and his truthful assessment of what lies before him.

This was my personal TOP on the topic of Carlos Castaneda Tales of Power Warrior Quotes.

I've told you many times: being a warrior is the most effective method live. A warrior doubts and reflects before he makes a decision. But when it is accepted, he acts without being distracted by doubts, fears and hesitations. There are millions more decisions ahead, each of which is waiting in the wings. This is the way of the warrior.

This is just one of a million ways. And anything is just one way out of a million possible ones. Therefore, you must always remember that the path is only a path; if you feel that you are not into him, you should leave him at any cost.

To gain such clarity, you must lead a right life. Only under this condition will you know that any path is just a path and nothing prevents you or anyone else from leaving it if your heart tells you to do so. But I warn you: your decision must be free from fear and ambition. Look at any path directly and without hesitation. Try it as many times as you find necessary...

Death is the only wise adviser we have. Whenever you feel, as you usually feel, that everything is going wrong and that you are about to disappear, turn to your death and ask it - is this so? Your death will tell you that you are wrong, that nothing but her touch really matters. Your death will tell you: “I have not yet touched you.”

Sometimes it makes sense to persist even when you realize it is futile. But first you need to understand that your actions are useless, and then act as if you don’t know this.

All that matters is that you looked everywhere for her. This makes her a special person in your life. And for special people we should only have good words.

You, unlike me, behave as if you were immortal, and an immortal person can allow himself to cancel his decisions, regret that he made them, and doubt them. In a world where death is after everyone, buddy, there is no time for regret or doubt. There is only time to make decisions.

Of course, I can explain everything,” he said, laughing, “but can you understand it?”

You have no time at all, and at the same time you are surrounded by eternity.

It’s stupid to waste your life on one single path, especially if it doesn’t have a heart...

What cripples the spirit is to always have someone on your back, pounding on you and telling you what to do and what not to do.

Anyone who has once overcome fear is free from it for the rest of his life.

Things are real only after you learn to accept their reality.

You must always remember that the path is just a path. If you feel that you should not walk on it, then you should not stay on it under any circumstances.

A man of knowledge lives by action, and not by the thought of action. He chooses the path of the heart and follows this path.

To regard someone's actions as base, vile, disgusting, or vicious is to attach unjustified importance to the personality of the person who committed them, that is, to indulge his sense of self-importance.

Self-restraint is the worst and most malicious type of self-indulgence. By doing this, we force ourselves to believe that we are doing something significant, almost a feat, but in reality we are only delving deeper into narcissism, giving food to pride and a sense of self-importance.

A person goes to knowledge as they go to war - awakened and filled with fear, reverence and unshakable confidence. To go to knowledge or to war differently - blunder. Anyone who commits it will regret it sooner or later.

It takes little to die, but to seek death means to seek nothing.

Death is steadily pursuing us, and every second it is getting closer and closer. Death never stops. She just turns out the lights sometimes.

The desire to learn is not ambition. The desire for knowledge is our destiny, because we are human.

A man becomes courageous when he has nothing to lose. We are only cowardly when there is something else we can cling to.

For the will to become an active principle, the body must be perfect.

It is useless to spend your whole life on one single path, especially if this path has no heart.

Everyone goes their own way. But all roads still go nowhere. This means that the whole point is in the road itself, how you walk along it... If you walk with pleasure, then this is your road. If you feel bad, you can leave it at any time, no matter how far you go. And it will be right.

“You take yourself too seriously,” he said slowly. “You’re too damn important in your own eyes.” This must be changed! You're so damn important that you feel entitled to be annoyed by everyone. You are so damn important that you can afford to walk away if things don't work out the way you want them to. I suppose you think all this shows that you have character. This is nonsense! You are weak and suspicious!
I tried to feign protest, but he didn’t budge. He pointed out that in my entire life I had never completed anything because of the feeling of misplaced importance that I associated with myself.

A journey without a heart is never a joyful one. Just to get there you have to work hard. On the contrary, the path that has a heart is always easy; It doesn't take much effort to love him.

Every time you feel obligated to explain your actions, as if you are the only one in the whole world who lives wrong.

You get angry with people when you feel that their actions are important. I haven't felt anything like this for a long time.

You yourself said that knowledge is power.
“No,” he said with feeling. - Strength rests on the type of knowledge you possess. What is the use of knowing things that are useless?

A person lives only to learn, and what he learns - good or bad - depends only on his nature and on his fate.

..It doesn’t matter what anyone says or does... You yourself must be an impeccable person...

You should not confuse loneliness and solitude. Loneliness for me is a psychological, mental concept, while solitude is physical. The first dulls, the second calms.

To regard someone's actions as base, vile, disgusting or vicious is to attach unjustified importance to the personality of the person who committed them, that is, to indulge his sense of self-importance.

Twilight is a crack between worlds.

Taking responsibility for your decisions means being willing to die for them.

All paths are the same - they lead nowhere. I can admit: in my life I have walked many paths, but I have never arrived anywhere. Now the question of the benefactor made sense to me. Does this path have a heart? If there is, the path is good; if not, it is useless. All paths lead nowhere, but one has a heart and the other does not. One path brings joy, and while you walk along it, you are inseparable from it; and the other way makes you curse your whole life. One path gives you strength, the other deprives you of it.

Seek and see miracles all around you. You get tired of looking at yourself, and this fatigue makes you deaf and blind everywhere to everything else.

— What is a “correct life”?
- A life lived in full consciousness and with full responsibility is a good, strong life.

In a world where death hunts everyone, there can be no small or big decisions. There are only decisions that we make in the face of our inevitable death.

Why won't he like me? I didn’t do anything like that to him.
- And it is not at all necessary to “do” something in order to be liked or disliked.

It's a pity that life is short, it's a pity that you can't achieve everything. It's just a pity - that's all...

You have never been truly humiliated, so there is no anger in you. You have never experienced defeat.

You'd be surprised at how well you can perform when your back is against the wall.

If you can succeed at anything, then success should come easily, with a small amount effort, but without stress or obsession.

The most difficult thing on the path of a warrior is to understand that the world is a feeling.

By ceasing to act, a man of knowledge returns to a state of peace and balance. Whether his action was good or bad, whether he managed to complete it, he has nothing to do with that.

Nothing matters much, so a man of knowledge simply chooses an action and performs it. But he does it as if it matters.

– Do you think it’s possible to quit smoking or drinking so easily? – I asked.
- Certainly! – he said with great conviction. – smoking and drinking are nothing, nothing at all, if we want to quit them.

The trouble is that no one asks themselves this question; Usually a person realizes too late that he has chosen a path without a heart, when he is already on the verge of death. At this point, only very few have the strength to abandon their aspiration and move away.

... in relations with human beings there can be nothing worse and more useless than direct confrontation.

Power is something a warrior deals with. At first, it seems to a person as something completely incredible, unnatural, the existence of which is impossible to believe, which is difficult to even think about, let alone imagine... But then it turns into something serious, and the attitude towards it changes accordingly. A person may not possess it, he may not even be fully aware of its existence, but he already feels, he already knows that there is something in the world that he had not noticed before. And then the force makes itself felt, it comes to the person, and he cannot do anything about it, since the force remains uncontrollable for him. There are no words that can describe how it comes and what it really is. She is nothing, and at the same time she is capable of miracles, and a person sees these miracles with his own eyes. And, finally, power becomes something inherent in the person himself, turns into something that controls his actions from the inside and at the same time obeys his commands, subject to his decisions.

Teaching always turns out to be not what is expected of it.

You can only be persistent to show it properly. And act with full dedication, knowing that your actions are useless. This is the controlled stupidity of a magician.

…the humility of a warrior is not the humility of a beggar. A warrior does not lower his head in front of anyone, but at the same time he will not allow anyone to lower their head in front of him. The beggar, on the contrary, falls to his knees as soon as his hat falls and sweeps the floor in front of anyone he considers superior to himself. But at the same time, he demands that someone below him sweep the floor in front of him.

I'm afraid you're confusing the topics, he said. the self-confidence of a warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man.Average person looks for certainty in the eyes of the one who looks at him and calls it self-confidence. The warrior seeks invulnerability in his own eyes and calls it humility. The average man is connected with the people around him, while the warrior is connected only with himself. Perhaps you are chasing rainbows, you are chasing the self-confidence of the average man, when you should be striving for the humility of a warrior. The difference between this and that is significant. Overconfidence means that you know something for sure. Humility includes being invulnerable in either your actions or your feelings.

Actions are power,” he said. - especially when a person acts knowing that these actions are his last battle. There is a special all-consuming happiness in acting with the full knowledge that this act may very well be your very last act on earth. I recommend that you reexamine your life and view your actions in that light.

Don't explain too much, sorcerers say that in every explanation there is an apology hidden. So when you explain why you can't do this or that, what you're really doing is apologizing for your shortcomings, hoping that those listening to you will be kind and forgive them.

The average person is too concerned with loving people and being loved. A warrior loves, that's all. He likes everyone he likes and everything he likes, but he uses his controlled stupidity to not worry about it. Which is completely the opposite of what the average person does. Loving people or being loved by them is not all that is available to a person.

Be ruthless but charming,” he repeated. - Be cunning, but delicate. Be patient but proactive. Be gentle but deadly. Only a woman is capable of this. If a man could act like this, he would be perfect.

A sense of self-importance makes a person hopeless: heavy, clumsy and empty.
A man of knowledge must be light and fluid.

To be at your best, you always need to choose the path suggested by your heart. Maybe for some it will mean always laughing.

As long as you feel that the most important and significant phenomenon in the world is your person, you will never be able to truly experience the world around you.

The best thing is to erase all personal history,” he said, as if giving me time to write, “because this will make us free from the enveloping thoughts of other people.

“It doesn't matter what anyone says or does,” he said. “You yourself must be an impeccable person.” The battle takes place right here, in this chest...
We need all our time and all our energy to overcome the idiocy in ourselves. This is what matters. The rest is of no importance.

If a person has a child, then this child takes the edge of his spirit. For a woman, having a girl means the end of the line. Having two like me means the end of me. My best strengths and illusions went to the girls. They stole my blade, as the Nagual said, just as I stole it from my parents. This is our destiny. The boy steals most of his father's tip, and the girl steals most of it from her mother.

You're too busy with yourself. That's the problem. Hence your terrible fatigue.

You're chained! You are chained to your common sense.
The same leaf falls again and again from the same tree, only for you to give up trying to understand.

Right here, in front of us, lie countless worlds. They are superimposed on each other, they penetrate each other, there are many of them, and they are absolutely real.

A warrior can be wounded, but it is impossible to offend him. As long as the warrior is in the appropriate mood, no action of any person can offend him.

What you call an accident is in most cases very easy to avoid, unless you are an idiot living carelessly.

Will is what allows a person to win a battle, being doomed to lose.

In that weak side words They always make us feel enlightened, but when we turn around to look at the world, they always betray us and we end up looking at the world the same way we always did, without any enlightenment.

When a person begins to learn, he never has a clear idea of the obstacles. Its purpose is vague and illusory; his aspiration is unstable. He expects a reward that he will never receive because he is not yet aware of the upcoming trials.
Gradually he begins to learn - at first little by little, then more and more successfully. And soon he becomes confused. What he learns never matches what he imagined, and he is overcome with fear. Teaching always turns out to be not what is expected of it. Every step is a new challenge, and the fear that a person experiences grows mercilessly and steadily. His goal turns out to be a battlefield.
And thus his first eternal enemy appears before him: Fear! A terrible enemy, treacherous and unforgiving. He lurks around every turn, creeping up and waiting. And if a person, trembling before his face, takes to flight, his enemy will put an end to his search.

The difference between a warrior and an ordinary person is that he accepts everything as a challenge, whereas an ordinary person accepts everything as a blessing or a curse.

- What should you do to overcome fear?
“The answer is very simple: don’t run away.”

Therefore, you must always remember that the path is only a path; if you feel that he is not for you, then you should leave him at any cost. To have such clarity, you must lead a disciplined life.
Only under this condition will you know that any path is just a path, and nothing prevents you or anyone from leaving it, if this is your heart. But I warn you: your decision must be free from fear or ambition.
Look at any path directly and without hesitation. Try it as many times as you see fit. Then ask yourself, and only yourself, one question. Only very old people ask this question. My benefactor asked it to me once when I was young, but my too hot blood prevented me from understanding it then. Now I understand him.
I will ask this question to you: does your path have a heart?

- And how much are you going to pay me?
A note of greed crept into his voice.
- As much as you deem necessary.
“Then you will pay me with your time for my time,” he said.

You think about yourself too much, and this gives you a strange fatigue that makes you close yourself off from the world around you and cling to your arguments. So problems are all you have.

The trick is what to target,” he said. - Each of us either makes himself unhappy, or makes himself strong. The amount of work required in both the first and second cases is the same.

Learning through talking is not only a waste of time, but also a rare stupidity.

I also heard you say that your parents hurt your spirit. I think that the spirit of man is something that can be easily wounded, although not by the means that you yourself call wounding. I believe that your parents crippled you by making you self-indulgent, soft, and vegetative.

If I told you to stop asking questions, you might damage your will by trying to do so. Indulging in denial is much worse; it makes us believe that we are doing a great thing when, in reality, we are simply frozen inside ourselves.

Will is what makes you win when your thoughts tell you that you are defeated. Will is what makes you invulnerable. Will is what allows the magician to go through a wall, through space, to the moon if he wants.

A person is able to overcome fear only by being face to face with it.

All personal history must be erased in order to free ourselves from the restrictions that other people impose on us with their thoughts.

There are three kinds of bad habits that we use again and again when we encounter unusual situations in life. First, we may deny what is happening or happened, and feel as if it never happened. This is the path of the fanatic. Second, we can take everything at face value, as if we know what's going on. This is the path of a godly person. Third, we may become confused before an event because we cannot reject it and cannot accept it wholeheartedly. This is the path of the fool... The warrior acts as if nothing had ever happened because he does not believe in anything. And yet, he takes everything at face value. He accepts without accepting and throws away without throwing away. He never feels like he knows and at the same time he never feels as if nothing had ever happened. He acts as if he is in complete control, even though he may be heartbroken. If you act in this way, then confusion dissipates.

Five conditions for a lonely bird: first - it flies to the highest point, second - it does not suffer from company, even birds like it, third - its beak is directed to the sky, fourth - it does not have a specific color, and fifth - it sings she is very quiet.

That’s the weakness of words,” he said encouragingly. “They always make us feel enlightened, but when we turn around to look at the world, they always betray us, and we end up looking at the world the same way we always did, without any enlightenment.”

There are a lot of things you do now that would have seemed crazy to you ten years ago. These things themselves have not changed. Your idea of yourself has changed. What was impossible then is completely possible now.

“I am so worried about the fate of my neighbors,” don Juan continued, “that I will not lift a finger for one of them.” I just won't know what to do. And I will always be gnawing at the thought that with my gifts I am imposing my will on them.

Having learned to see, a person discovers that he is alone in the world, and he has nothing but stupidity.

Nothing strengthens the spirit of a warrior more than the need to deal with unbearable types who have real power and strength. This is the ultimate challenge, and only in such conditions does a warrior gain poise and clarity, without which it is impossible to withstand the onslaught of the unknown.

For a warrior, the most important rule in life is to carry out his decisions so carefully that nothing that happens as a result of his actions can surprise him, much less deplete his strength.

The art of the warrior is to maintain a balance between the horror of being human and the wonder of being human.

“If you decide something, you need to go to the end,” he said, “but at the same time you need to take responsibility for what you do.” What exactly a person does does not matter, but he must know why he is doing it and act without doubts and regrets.

He said that controlled stupidity is not outright deception, but a complex artistic way of detaching oneself from everything and at the same time keeping oneself an integral part of everything.

You must wait patiently, knowing your waiting and knowing what you are waiting for. This is the way of the warrior.

A sense of self-importance, don Juan explained, is not something simple and straightforward. On the one hand, it is the core of all the best that is in us. And on the other hand, the core of all our internal rot.

“A warrior is one who seeks freedom,” she told me. - Sadness is not freedom. We must free ourselves from it.

Today, for example, we caught a snake. I had to apologize to her for ending her life so suddenly and so completely. I did this knowing that my own life would one day be cut short just as suddenly and completely. So, ultimately, we and snakes are equal.

In a world where death stalks everyone, buddy, there's no time for regret or doubt. There is only time to make decisions.

A person is defeated only when he has given up all attempts and renounced himself.

With a charming smile, she asked if I understood don Juan properly when he said that anything becomes possible if a person wants it with unbending intention.

There are many ways to say goodbye, he said. - The best way- is to hold on to a specific memory of joy... This is a warrior’s way of saying goodbye.

The point is that there is either bad or a good choice, - he said. - When you didn't right choice, your body knows this for sure, as does everyone else's body. But if you made the right choice, then the body knows it and relaxes, completely forgetting that there was a choice.

…If you don’t think about death, then there will be no meaning or order in your life […]. What else does a person have besides life and death?

A warrior is not a leaf left to the wind. Nobody can push him. No one can force him to act against himself or against what he considers necessary.

Our difficulties on this simple path are due to the unwillingness of most of us to accept the fact that it actually takes so little to walk it. We expect instructions, training, guides, teachers, and when we are told that we don't need any of them, we don't believe it. We become nervous, then lose faith, and end up angry and disappointed. The real help that we really need is not in methods, but in the right direction. If someone gives us the opportunity to realize that we need to free ourselves from the feeling of self-importance, this is real help.

Our greatest enemy is that we never believe what happens to us.

Remember: when you feel and act like an immortal being, you are not flawless. Your idea that you have time is idiotic. There are no immortals on this earth.

Nothing matters to me, but perhaps everything matters to you. Now you must understand: a man of knowledge lives by action, and not by the thought of action. He chooses the path of the heart and follows this path. When he looks, he rejoices and laughs; when he sees, he knows. He has no honor, no dignity, no family, no name, no homeland. There is only life to be lived. In such conditions, controlled stupidity is the only thing that can connect him with his neighbors. So he acts, sweats and puffs. And looking at him, anyone will see an ordinary person living the same way as everyone else. The only difference is that the stupidity of his life is under control. Nothing matters much, so a man of knowledge simply chooses an action and performs it. But he does it as if it matters. Controlled stupidity makes him say that his actions are very important and act accordingly. At the same time, he understands perfectly well that none of this matters. So, by ceasing to act, the man of knowledge returns to a state of peace and balance. Whether his action was good or bad, whether he managed to complete it, he has nothing to do with that.

Nothing in the world awaits its decision. Nothing is final, but nothing is unresolved.

And I realized that the life I was leading was not worth living. So I changed it.

A warrior spends his whole life practicing strategy, but you want to find the meaning of life.

Only a warrior is able to survive on the path of knowledge. For the art of a warrior is to balance the horror of being a man with the wonder of being one.

I have learned that all the endless paths a person crosses in life are equal. The oppressor and the oppressed meet at the end, and the only thing that prevails is that life was too short for both of them.

— Do you know anything about the world around you? - he asked.
- Well, I know a lot...
- No, I mean something else. Do you ever feel the world around you?
- As far as I can.
- This is not enough. It is necessary to feel everything, otherwise the world loses its meaning.

You care too much about pleasing people or liking them yourself,” he said. - a man of knowledge loves everything. He loves what he wants or whoever he wants, but he uses his controlled stupidity to not care about it. The opposite of what you're doing now. Loving people or being loved by people is not all there is to do as a human being.

Grieve and think before you make any decision, but if you have made it, then be free from worries and thoughts on your way. There will be a million other decisions still waiting for you. This is the way of the warrior.

“You sometimes remind me funny of myself,” he continued. “I didn’t want to take the path of a warrior either.” I thought that no one needed all this work. If we have to die anyway, what difference does it make whether we die as a warrior or not as a warrior? But I was wrong. However, I had to come to this conclusion on my own. Only when a person himself is convinced that he is wrong and that the difference is unimaginably huge, then he is convinced. And then he can continue on his own. And even become a person of knowledge yourself.

Strengthening the spirit is the only thing that truly makes life worth living. Not to act for the sake of strengthening the spirit means to strive for death, and to strive for death means not to strive for anything at all, because each of us falls into its clutches regardless of anything.

A warrior does not feel remorse for anything he has done, since to evaluate his own actions as low, disgusting or bad means attributing unjustified significance to himself.

Education doesn't matter. What determines our path is called personal power. A person’s personality is the total volume of his personal power. And only this total volume determines how he lives and how he dies.

There is nothing more difficult in the world than to embrace the mindset of a warrior. There is no use in being sad and whining, feeling entitled to it, and believing that someone else is doing something to us. No one does anything to anyone, least of all to a warrior.

A warrior must learn to be accessible and inaccessible at the turning points of the path. It makes no sense for a warrior to unintentionally make himself available at any time, just as it is completely pointless to hide when everyone around him knows that he is now hiding.

For a warrior, being inaccessible means touching the world around him carefully. Eat not five quails, but one. Don't damage plants just to make a roasting pan. Do not expose yourself unnecessarily to the force of the wind. And, above all, do not under any circumstances exhaust yourself and others. Don’t take advantage of people, don’t squeeze every last drop out of them, especially those you love.

Shamans exposed the sense of self-importance and established that it is self-pity masquerading as something else.

Excellence begins with some simple action that must be purposeful, precise and carried out with steadfastness. By repeating this action long enough, a person acquires an unbending intention. And unbending intention can be applied to anything. And once it is achieved, the path is clear. Each step will lead to the next, and this will continue until the full potential of the warrior is fully realized.

It may seem natural that a warrior who can remain himself in a confrontation with the unknown is guaranteed to be able to cope with petty tyrants. But in reality this is not the case. It was because of this mistake that many magnificent seers of antiquity perished. Nothing strengthens the spirit of a warrior more than the need to deal with unbearable people who have real power and strength. This is the perfect challenge. Only in such conditions does a warrior gain balance and clarity, without which it is impossible to withstand the onslaught of the unknown.

For a person to understand that he has something to live for, he must have something worth dying for.

Questions of truth and lies trouble the common man; it is important for him to know what is true and what is not. The warrior has absolutely nothing to do with this. The average person acts differently in relation to what he considers to be true and what he considers to be false. They tell him about something: “This is true.” And he acts with faith in what he does. They tell him: “This is not true.” And he doesn't try to act or doesn't believe in what he's doing. The warrior, on the other hand, operates in both cases. If he is told about something that it is true, then he acts in order to do it. If he is told that this is not true, then he will still act, but in order to commit non-doing.

Only a warrior can stand on the path of knowledge. A warrior does not complain and does not regret anything. His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot be good or bad. Challenges are just challenges.

You need to look for and see the miracles that are abundant around you. You will die of fatigue, not interested in anything but yourself; It is precisely because of this fatigue that you are blind and deaf to everything else.

When we lose our sense of self-importance, we become invulnerable.

How can you feel like an important person when you know that death is steadily following your trail?

— Does he dance the same as me? I mean, the way they dance?
- Let's say that he dances the same way as I see, and not the way you can dance.
- Does he also see the same way as you?
- Yes, but he also dances.
— How does Zacateca dance?
- It is hard to explain. It's a special kind of dance that he does when he wants to know.
But all I can tell you about this is that if you do not understand the ways of a person who knows, then it is impossible to talk about vision or dance.

-What was your mother's name?
“I called her ‘Mom,’” he answered with disarming naivety.
Restraining myself and trying to be polite, I formulated the question differently:
-What did others call her? How did they even address her?
With a stupid smile, the old man looked at me and scratched behind my ear:
- Yeah... That's where you caught me. Need to think…

The warrior treats the world as an endless mystery, and what people do as endless stupidity.

Don't explain too much. Every explanation hides an apology. So when you explain why you can't do this or that, what you're really doing is apologizing for your shortcomings, hoping that those listening to you will be kind and forgive them.

Fear is the first inevitable enemy that a person must defeat on the path to knowledge.

When you are impatient or irritated, look to your left and ask your death for advice. A mass of petty husks will instantly fly away if death gives you a sign, or if you catch its movement out of the corner of your eye, or simply feel that your traveling companion is always nearby and is carefully watching you all the time.

The more others know who you are and what to expect from you, the more it limits your freedom.

You should not confuse loneliness and solitude. Loneliness for me is a psychological, mental concept, while solitude is physical. The first dulls, the second calms.

You get angry with people when you feel that their actions are important. I haven't felt anything like this for a long time.

Every time you feel obligated to explain your actions, as if you are the only one in the whole world who lives wrong.

To get the most out of life, a person must be able to change. Unfortunately, a person changes with great difficulty, and these changes occur very slowly. Many people spend years on this. The hardest thing is to truly want to change.

When you are angry, you always feel that you are right.

We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong - the amount of effort expended remains the same.

Things are real only after you learn to accept their reality.

It is easy to calculate what a person will do in any situation, since he lives according to a certain routine. Having no routines in anything makes you less vulnerable to enemies.

It doesn't matter what anyone says or does. You yourself must be an impeccable person.

The world cannot be measured. Like us, like every creature that exists in this world.

The trick is what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.

A journey without a heart is never a joyful one. Just to get there you have to work hard. On the contrary, the path that has a heart is always easy; It doesn't take much effort to love him.

All that matters is that you have been looking for it for a long time! And that makes her a special person in your life. And for special people... we should only have good words.

As long as a person feels that the most important and significant phenomenon in the world is his person, he will never be able to truly experience the world around him. Like a blinkered horse, he sees nothing in him but himself.

Anyone who has once overcome fear is free from it for the rest of his life.

You need to look for and see the miracles that are abundant around you. You will die of fatigue, not interested in anything but yourself; from this fatigue you are deaf and blind to everything else.

To realize the reality familiar to another, you first need to free yourself from your own reality; but it is not at all easy for a person to get rid of his usual picture of the world; this habit must be broken by force.

People, as a rule, do not realize that at any moment they can throw anything out of their lives. Anytime. Instantly.

Desire is what makes us suffer, but once we learn to destroy our desires, every little thing we receive will turn into a priceless gift.

To become a man of knowledge, you need to be a warrior, not a whining child. Fight without giving up, without complaining, without retreating, fight until you see. And all this only to understand that there is nothing in the world that really matters.