Carlos Castaneda

“Feeling important makes one heavy, clumsy and vain. To be a warrior one needs to be light and fluid.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Eventually I saw that the path of the heart requires a full gesture, a degree of abandon that can be terrifying. Only then is it possible to achieve a sparkling metamorphosis.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“It doesn’t matter how one was brought up. What determines the way one does anything is personal power.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“When a warrior learns to stop the internal dialogue, everything becomes possible; the most far-fetched schemes become.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“To ask me to verify my life by giving you my statistics is like using science to validate sorcery. It robs the world of its magic and makes milestones out of us all.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“This very rock where we’re sitting is a rock because we have been forced to give out attention to it.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length – and there I travel looking, looking breathlessly.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“A warrior considers himself already dead, so there is nothing to lose. The worst has already happened to him, therefore he’s clear and calm; judging him by his acts or by his words, one would never suspect that he has witnessed everything.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Once it has learned to dream the double, the self arrives at this weird crossroad and a moment comes when one realizes that it is the double who dreams the self.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Warriors do not win victories by beating their heads against walls, but by overtaking the walls. Warriors jump over walls; they don’t demolish them.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if you feel you should not follow, you must not stay with it under any circumstances.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“There is a flaw with words, they always force us to feel enlightened, but when we turn around to face the world they always fail us and we end up facing the world as we always have, without enlightenment.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“A man of knowledge chooses a path with a heart and follows it and then he looks and rejoices and laughs and then he sees and knows.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“The warrior: silent in his struggle, undetainable because he has nothing to lose, functional and efficacious because he has everything to gain.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“I’m never angry at anybody! No human being can do anything important enough for that. You get angry at people when you feel that their acts are important. I don’t feel that way any longer.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“We hardly ever realize that we can cut anything out of our lives, anytime, in the blink of an eye.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“All paths are the same, leading nowhere. Therefore, pick a path with heart!” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Seeing energy as it flows is an imperious need on the path of knowledge. Ultimately, all the effort of sorcerers is guided to that end. It is not enough for a warrior to know that the universe is energy; he has to verify it for himself.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Seek and see all the marvels around you. You will get tired of looking at yourself alone, and that fatigue will make you deaf and blind to everything else. – Don Juan.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“La lucha que cada uno libra contra su antiguo ser dura toda la vida.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“The hardest thing in the world is for a warrior to let others be.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“A warrior must learn to make every act count, since he is going to be here in this world for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“You have little time left, and none of it for crap. A fine state. I would say that the best of us always comes out when we are against the wall, when we feel the sword dangling overhead. Personally, I wouldn’t have it any other way.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Only a warrior can survive the path of knowledge because the art of the warrior is to balance the pain of being a man with the wonder of being a man.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Self importance is man’s greatest enemy.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“It is important to do what you don’t know how to do. It is important to see your skills as keeping you from learning what is deepest and most mysterious. If you know how to focus, unfocus. If your tendency is to make sense out of chaos, start chaos.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“A warrior never worries about his fear.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Crows are not always available to give warning.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“When you need an answer, look over your left shoulder and ask your death.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“If your tendency is to make sense out of chaos, start chaos.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“You are like you are, because you tell yourself that you are that way.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Before you embark on it you ask the question: Does this path have a heart? If the answer is no, you will know it, and then you must choose another path.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“As long as a man feels that he is the most important thing in the world he cannot really appreciate the world around him.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“I’m afraid you will have to fly holding the rock with its heavy chain.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Things don’t change, only the way you look at them.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“There is no beginning, the beginning is only in your thought.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“All paths lead nowhere, so it is important to choose a path that has heart.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Man has a dark side, yes, and it is called stupidity.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Intent is what sends a shaman through a wall, through space, to infinity.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“A warrior chooses a path with heart, any path with heart, and follows it; and then he rejoices and laughs. He knows because he sees that his life will be over altogether too soon. He sees that nothing is more important than anything else.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“For a sorcerer, reality, or the world as we all know it, is only a description.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Leave Jesus on the cross. He’s very happy there!” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Nothing can temper the spirit of a warrior as much as the challenge of dealing with impossible people in positions of power. Only under those conditions can warriors acquire the sobriety and serenity to withstand the pressure of the unknowable.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Any path is only a path, and there is no affront to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“An average man is too concerned with liking people or with being liked himself. A warrior likes, that’s all. He likes whatever or whomever he wants, for the hell of it.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“It is important to have a perspective then only through seeing the world is it possible to transcend ideas such as the Flyers, and other aberrant thought forms. With ruthlessness, cunning patience and sweetness, it can be cracked.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“We don’t need more to be thankful for, we just need to be more thankful.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Never take a path that has no heart in it. You can’t lose if your heart is in your work, but you can’t win if your heart is not in it.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“The world is incomprehensible. We won’t ever understand it; we won’t ever unravel its secrets. Thus we must treat the world as it is: a sheer mystery.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must assume responsibility for being here…” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Nobody is born a warrior in exactly the same way that no one is born an average man.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“You see all of us go through the same doubts. We are afraid of being mad; unfortunately for us, of course, all of us are already mad.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“A warrior, or any man for that matter, cannot possibly wish he were somewhere else; a warrior because he lives by challenge, an ordinary man because he doesn’t know where his death is going to find him.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Do you know at this very moment you are surrounded by eternity? And do you know that you can use that eternity if you so desire?” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“We are men and our lot in life is to learn and to be hurled into inconceivable new worlds.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“A warrior seeks to act rather than talk.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“I am already given to the power that rules my fate. And I cling to nothing, so I will have nothing to defend. I have no thoughts, so I will see. I fear nothing, so I will remember myself. Detached and at ease, I will dart past the Eagle to be free.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Learn to see, and then you’ll know that there is no end to the new worlds of our vision.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“The secret is not in what you do to yourself but rather in what you don’t do.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Human beings are on a journey of awareness, which has momentarily been interrupted by extraneous forces.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Think about it: what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow men. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“To compare Tensegrity with yoga or t’ai chi is not possible. It has a different origin and a different purpose. The origin is shamanic, the purpose is shamanic.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“We’re a feeling, an awareness encased here.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Burn your bridges every 2 years.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“For a human being, sadness is as powerful as terror. Sadness makes a warrior shed tears of blood.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“One can say that the nagual accounts for creativity. The nagual is the only part of us that can create.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Heightened awareness is a mystery only for a reason.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Inner silence works from the moment you begin to accrue it. What the old sorcerers were after was the final dramatic, end result of reaching that individual threshold of silence.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“But we must know first that our acts are useless and yet we must proceed as if we didn’t know it. That’s a sorcerer’s controlled folly.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Warriors are incapable of feeling compassion because they no longer feel sorry for themselves. Without the driving force of self-pity, compassion is meaningless.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“There’s no emptiness in the life of a warrior. Everything is filled to the brim. Everything is filled to the brim, and everything is equal.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for decisions.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Nothing in this world is a gift. Whatever must be learned must be learned the hard way.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“A warrior takes his lot, whatever it may be, and accepts it in ultimate humbleness. He accepts in humbleness what he is, not as a grounds for regret but as a living challenge.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Fright never injures anyone. What injures the spirit is having someone always on your back, beating you, telling you what to do and what not to do.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“The things shamans deal with are extremely practical. They break down parameters of normal historical reality. Magical passes are just one aspect of that.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Power rests on the kind of knowledge one holds. What is the sense of knowing things that are useless?” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“To meet an ally a man must be a spotless warrior or the ally may turn against him and destroy him.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Dwelling upon the self too much produces terrible fatigue. A man in that position is deaf and blind to everything else. The fatigue itself makes him cease to see the marvels all around.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“A warrior, on the other hand, is a hunter. He calculates everything. That’s control. But once his calculations are over he acts. He lets go. That’s abandon.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Only the idea of death makes a warrior sufficiently detached so that he is capable of abandoning himself to anything. He knows his death is stalking him and won’t give him time to cling to anything so he tries, without craving, all of everything.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“If a warrior is to succeed at anything, the success must come gently, with a great deal of effort but with no stress or obsession.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“There are lots of things a warrior can do at a certain time which he couldn’t do years before. Those things themselves did not change; what changed was his idea of himself.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to infinity.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Nobody knows who I am or what I do. Not even I. Don Juan Matus.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“The sorcerer’s description of the world is perceivable. But our insistence on holding on to our standard version of reality renders us almost deaf and blind to it.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“It takes all the time and all the energy we have to conquer the idiocy in us.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“We have to balance the lineality of the known universe with the nonlineality of the unknown universe.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“A warrior takes responsibility for his acts, for the most trivial of acts. An average man acts out his thoughts, and never takes responsibility for what he does.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Beware of those who weep with realization, for they have realized nothing.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“The body must be perfection before the will is a functioning unit.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“You say you need help. Help for what? You have everything needed for the extravagant journey that is your life.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“A warrior acts as if he knows what he is doing, when in effect he knows nothing.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“To worry is to become accessible, unwittingly accessible. And once you worry you cling to anything out of desperation; and once you cling you are bound to get exhausted or to exhaust whoever or whatever you are clinging to.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“It is best to erase all personal history because that would make us free from the encumbering thoughts of other people.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“When one has nothing to lose, one becomes courageous. We are timid only when there is something we can still cling to.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“For my teachers, unfortunately, certain things were, as they are for you, only tales of power.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Modern man has left the realm of the unknown and the mysterious, and has settled down in the realm of the functional. He is turned is back to the world of the foreboding and the exulting and has welcomed the world of boredom.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“The ego is like a tired old dog. We can never kill it, so put it out on the back porch, let it rest there, and step around it.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Your problems is that you think you have time.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Men have to be hooked. Women don’t need that. Women go freely into anything. That’s their power and at the same time their drawback. Men have to be led and women have to be contained.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Well being is a condition one has to groom, a condition one has to become aquainted with in order to seek it.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“A guardian is broad-minded and understanding. A guard, on the other hand, is a vigilante, narrow-minded and most of the time despotic.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge while an ordinary man takes everything as a blessing or a curse.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“It was stupidity that forced us to discard anything that did not conform with ourself – reflective expectations.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“In the universe there is an immeasurable, indescribable force which shamens call intent, and absolutely everything that exists in the entire cosmos is attached to intent by a connecting link.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“We don’t need anyone to teach us sorcery, because there is really nothing to learn. What we need is a teacher to convince us that there is incalculable power at our fingertips. What a strange paradox!” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Intent is what can make a man succeed when his thoughts tell him that he is defeated.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Only as a warrior can one withstand the path of knowledge. A warrior cannot complain or regret anything. His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“A warrior lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“To achieve the mood of a warrior is not a simple matter. It is a revolution. To regard the lion and the water rats and our fellow men as equals is a magnificent act of a warrior’s spirit. It takes power to do that.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“A warrior doesn’t know remorse for anything he has done, because to isolate one’s acts as being mean, or ugly, or evil is to place an unwarranted importance on the self.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Tonight in your dreams you must look at your hands.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Self-importance requires spending most of one’s life offended by something or someone.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Forget the self and you will fear nothing, in whatever level or awareness you find yourself to be.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“A warrior knows that he is only a man. His only regret is that his life is so short that he can’t grab onto all the things he would like to. But for him, this is not an issue; it’s only a pity.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Only as a warrior can one survive the path of knowledge.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Whenever the internal dialogue stops, the world collapses, and extraordinary facets of ourselves surface, as though they had been kept heavily guarded by our words.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“A warrior thinks of death when things become unclear. The idea of death is the only thing that tempers our spirit.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“Look at every path closely and deliberately, then ask ourselves this crucial question: Does this path have a heart? If it does, then the path is good. If it doesn’t, it is of no use.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“I had been experiencing brief flashes of disassociation, or shallow states of non-ordinary reality.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“The aim is to balance the terror of being alive with the wonder of being alive.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“The fate of all of us here has been to know that we are prisoners of power. No one knows why us in particular, but what a great fortune!” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“A rule of thumb for a warrior is that he makes his decisions so carefully that nothing that may happen as a result of them can surprise him, much less drain his power.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war, wide awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance.” ~ Carlos Castaneda

“The third point of reference is freedom of perception; it is intent; it is spirit; the somersault of thought into the miraculous; the act of reaching beyond our boundaries and touching the inconceivable.” ~ Carlos Castaneda