Carlos castaneda quotes

Conclusions arrived at through reasoning have very little or no influence in altering the course of our lives.

What is wrong with us human beings, and has been wrong since time immemorial, is that without ever stating it in so many words, we believe that we have entered the realm of immortality. We behave as if we are never going to die - an infantile arrogance. But even more injurious than this sense of immortality is what comes with it : the sense that we can engulf this inconcievable universe with our minds.

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.

"Dreaming is the vehicle that brings dreamers to this world," the emissary said, "and everything sorcerers know about dreaming was taught to them by us. Our world is connected to yours by a door called dreams. We know how to go through that door, but men don't. They have to learn it."

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

It isn't that a warrior learns shamanism as time goes by; rather, what he learns as time goes by is to save energy. This energy will enable him to handle some of the energy fields which are ordinarily inaccessible to him. Shamanism is a state of awareness, the ability to use energy fields that are not employed in perceiving the everyday-life world that we know.

A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war, wide awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance.

Don Juan assured me that in order to accomplish the feat of making myself miserable I had to work in the most intense fashion, and that it was absurd. I had now realized I could work just the same in making myself complete and strong. "The trick is in what one emphasizes," he said. "We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same."

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

... everything in the world is a force, a pull or a push. In order for us to be pushed or pulled we need to be like a sail, like a kite in the wind. But if we have a hole in the middle of our luminosity, the force goes through it and never acts upon us.

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

The humbleness of a warrior is not the humbleness of the beggar. The warrior lowers his head to no one, but at the same time, he doesn't permit anyone to lower his head to him. The beggar, on the other hand, falls to his knees at the drop of a hat and scrapes the floor to anyone he deems to be higher; but at the same time, he demands that someone lower than him scrape the floor for him.

Nothing in this world is a gift. Whatever must be learned must be learned the hard way.

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.

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.

Intent is what sends a shaman through a wall, through space, to infinity.

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.

Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that is so. Your death will tell you that you're wrong; that nothing really matters outside its touch. Your death will tell you, 'I haven't touched you yet.

...to tune the spirit when someone is trampling on you is called control

Things don't change, only the way you look at them.

Learn to see, and then you'll know that there is no end to the new worlds of our vision.

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.

Whenever a warrior decides to do something, he must go all the way, but he must take responsibility for what he does. No matter what he does, he must know first why he is doing it, and then he must proceed with his actions without having doubts or remorse about them.

Intent is not a thought, or an object, or a wish. Intent is what can make a man succeed when his thoughts tell him that he is defeated. It operates in spite of the warrior's indulgence. Intent is what makes him invulnerable. Intent is what sends a shaman through a wall, through space, to infinity.

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.

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

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.

You are like you are, because you tell yourself that you are that way.

A warrior never worries about his fear.

All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. ... Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn't. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.

If your tendency is to make sense out of chaos, start chaos.

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.

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.

We don't need more to be thankful for, we just need to be more thankful.

The world is such-and-such or so-and-so only because we tell ourselves that that is the way it is.

The spirit of a warrior is not geared to indulging and complaining, nor is it geared to winning or losing. The spirit of a warrior is geared only to struggle, and every struggle is a warrior's last battle on earth. Thus the outcome matters very little to him. In his last battle on earth a warrior lets his spirit flow free and clear. And as he wages his battle, knowing that his intent is impeccable, a warrior laughs and laughs.

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.

Things don't change. You change your way of looking, that's all

For a warrior, to be inaccessible means that he touches the world around him sparingly. And above all, he deliberately avoids exhausting himselfand others. He doesn't use and squeeze people until they have shriveled to nothing, especially the people he loves.

Tonight in your dreams you must look at your hands.

To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives. Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born an average man. We make ourselves into one or the other.

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.

Self-importance requires spending most of one's life offended by something or someone.

It doesn't matter what one reveals or what one keeps to oneself. Everything we do, everything we are, rests on our personal power. If we don't have enough personal power the most magnificent piece of wisdom can be revealed to us and it won't make a damn bit of difference.

When a warrior has put an end to his routines, when he doesn't care anymore whether he has company or is alone, because he has heard the silent whisper of the spirit; then you can say that, truly, he has died. From that point on, even the simplest things in life become extraordinary for him.

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.

It doesn't matter how one was brought up. What determines the way one does anything is personal power.

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.

Our normal expectations about reality are created by a social consensus. We are taught how to see and understand the world. The trick of socialization is to convince us that the descriptions we agree upon define the limits of the real world. What we call reality is only one way of seeing the world, a way that is supported by social consensus.

If you were a warrior, you would know that the worst thing one can do is confront human beings directly.

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.

When you need an answer, look over your left shoulder and ask your death.

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.

The hardest thing in the world is for a warrior to let others be.

Will is what can make you succeed when your thoughts tell you that you're defeated.

Intent is a force that exists in the universe. When sorcerers (those who live of the source) beckon to intent, it comes to them and sets up the path for attainment, which means that sorcerers always accomplish what they set out to do.

"Only if one loves this earth with unbending passion can one relieve one's sadness," don Juan said. "Warriors are always joyful because their love is unalterable and their beloved, the earth, embraces them and bestows upon them inconceivable gifts. The sadness belongs only to those who hate the very thing that gives shelter to their beings." Don Juan again caressed the ground with tenderness. "This lovely being, which is alive to its last recesses and understands every feeling, soothed me, it cured me of my pains, and finally when I had fully understood my love for it, it taught me freedom."

The hardest thing in the world is to assume the mood of a warrior. It is of no use to be sad and complain and feel justified in doing so,believing that someone is always doing something to us. Nobody is doing anything to anybody, much less to a warrior.

We talk to ourselves incessantly about our world. In fact we maintain our world with our internal talk. And whenever we finish talking to ourselves about ourselves and our world, the world is always as it should be. We renew it, we rekindle it with life, we uphold it with our internal talk. Not only that, but we also choose our paths as we talk to ourselves. Thus we repeat the same choices over and over until the day we die, because we keep on repeating the same internal talk over and over until the day we die. A warrior is aware of this and strives to stop his internal talk.

There is nothing more lonely than eternity. And nothing is more cozy for us than to be a human being. This indeed is another contradiction-how can we keep the bonds of our humanness and still venture gladly and purposefully into the absolute loneliness of eternity?

The reason you keep on coming back to see me is very simple; every time you have seen me your body has learned certain things, even against your desire. And finally your body now needs to come back to me to learn more. Let's say that your body knows that it is going to die, even though you never think about it. So I've been telling your body that I too am going to die and before I do I would like to show our body certain things, things which you cannot give to your body yourself... So let's say then that your body returns to me because I am its friend

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.

The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to infinity.

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

The most effective way to live is as a warrior. A warrior may worry and think before making any decision, but once he makes it, he goes his way, free from worries or thoughts; there will be a million other decisions still awaiting him. That's the warrior's way.

A 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 . . . Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself alone, one question . . . Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't it is of no use.

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.

In the Art of Dreaming Don Juan tells Carlos, "... most of our energy goes into upholding our importance... if we were capable of losing some of that importance, two extraordinary things would happen to us. One, we would free our energy from trying to maintain the illusory idea of our grandeur; and two we would provide ourselves with enough energy to ... catch a glimpse of the actual grandeur of the universe."

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

The secret is not in what you do to yourself but rather in what you don't do.

The aim is to balance the terror of being alive with the wonder of being alive.

Feeling important makes one heavy, clumsy and vain. To be a warrior one needs to be light and fluid.

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

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.

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

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.

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

The path to knowledge is a forced one. In order to learn, we must be pushed. On the path of knowledge we are always fighting something, avoiding something, preparing for something; and that something is always inexplicable, greater and more powerful than us.

Once a man worries, he clings to anything out of desperation; and once he clings he is bound to get exhausted or to exhaust whomever or whatever he is clinging to. A warrior-hunter, on the other hand, knows he will lure game into his traps over and over again, so he doesn't worry.

Within these premises, the only thing one can be is an impeccable mediator. One is not the player in this cosmic match of chess, one is simply a pawn on the chessboard. What decides everything is a conscious impersonal energy that sorcerers call intent or the Spirit.

One ,must have something to die for in order to have something to live for

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.

Personal history must be constantly renewed by telling parents, relatives, and friends everything one does. On the other hand, for the warrior who has no personal history, no explanations are needed; nobody is angry or disillusioned with his acts. And above all, no one pins him down with their thoughts and their expectations.

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.

A warrior must cultivate the feeling that he has everything needed for the extravagant journey that is his life. What counts for a warrior is being alive. Life in itself is sufficient, self-explanatory and complete. Therefore, one may say without being presumptuous that the experience of experiences is being alive.

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.

A warrior is a hunter. He calculates everything. That's control. Once his calculations are over, he acts. He lets go. That's abandon. A warrior is not a leaf at the mercy of the wind. No one can push him; no one can make him do thingsagainst himself or against his better judgment. A warrior is tuned to survive, and he survives in the best of all possible fashions.

Intent is what can make a man succeed when his thoughts tell him that he is defeated.

Your problems is that you think you have time.

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.

It takes all the time and all the energy we have to conquer the idiocy in us

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.

You're in a terrible spot. It's too late for you to retreat but too soon to act. All you can do is witness. You're in the miserable position of an infant who cannot return to the mother's womb, but neither can he run around and act. All an infant can do is witness and listen to the stupendous tales of action being told to him. You are at that precise point now. You cannot go back to the womb of your old world, but you cannot act with power either. For you there is only witnessing acts of power and listening to tales of power.

When a warrior learns to stop the internal dialogue, everything becomes possible; the most far-fetched schemes become attainable.

The self-confidence of the warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man. The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence. The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness. The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to infinity.

Man has a dark side, yes, and it is called stupidity.

The difficulty is to learn to perceive with your whole body, not with just your eyes and reason. The world becomes a stream of tremendously rapid, unique events. So you must trim your body to make it a good receptor. The body is an awareness; and it must be treated impeccably.

Power rests on the kind of knowledge one holds. What is the sense of knowing things that are useless?

Self importance is man's greatest enemy.

The world doesn't yield to us directly, the description of the world stands in between. So, properly speaking, we are always one step removed and our experiences of the world is always a recollection of the experience. We are perennially recollecting the instant that has just happened, just passed. Re recollect, recollect, recollect.

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.

Discipline, as understood by a warrior, is creative, open, and produces freedom. It is the ability to face the unknown, transforming the feeling of knowing into reverent astonishment; of considering things that exceed the scope of our habits, and daring to face the only war that is worthwhile: The battle for awareness.

One day I found out that personal history was no longer necessary for me and, like drinking, I dropped it... Little by little you must create a fog around yourself; you must erase everything around you until nothing can be taken for granted, until nothing is any longer for sure, or real. Your problem now is that you're too real. Your endeavors are too real, your moods are too real. Don't take things so for granted. You must begin to erase yourself.

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.

Beware of those who weep with realization, for they have realized nothing.

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.

...that was the way human beings are; they love to be told what to do, but they love even more to fight and not do what they are told, and thus they get entangled in hating the one who told them in the first place.

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.

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, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous desert, in this marvelous time. I want to convince you that you must learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it.

A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting.

Forget the self and you will fear nothing, in whatever level or awareness you find yourself to be.

The internal dialogue is what grounds people in the daily world. The world is such and such or so and so, only because we talk to ourselves about its being such and such and so and so. The passageway into the world of shamans opens up after the warrior has learned to shut off his internal dialogue

Burn your bridges every 2 years.

Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore, a warrior must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if he feels that he should not follow it, he must not stay with it under any conditions. His decision to keep on that path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition. He must look at every path closely and deliberately. There is a question that a warrior has to ask, mandatorily: 'Does this path have a heart?'

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?

We chose whether to be warriors or to be ordinary.

The greatest flaw of human beings is to remain glued to the inventory of reason. Reason doesn't deal with man as energy. Reason deals with instruments that create energy, but it has never seriously occurred to reason that we are better than instruments: we are organisms that create energy. We are bubbles of energy.

A warrior lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting.

The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to himself. Perhaps you are chasing rainbows. You're after the self-confidence of the average man, when you should be after the humbleness of a warrior. The difference between the two is remarkable. Self Confidence entails knowing something for sure; humbleness entails being impeccable in one's actions and feelings.

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.

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.

The dying sun will glow on you without burning, as it has done today. The wind will be soft and mellow and your hilltop will tremble. As you reach the end of your dance you will look at the sun, for you will never see it again in waking or in dreaming, and then your death will point to the south. To the vastness.

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.

To seek freedom is the only driving force I know. Freedom to fly off into that infinity out there. Freedom to dissolve; to lift off; to be like the flame of a candle, which, in spite of being up against the light of a billion stars, remains intact, because it never pretended to be more than what it is: a mere candle.

The spirit listens only when the speaker speaks in gestures. And gestures do not mean signs or body movements, but acts of true abandon, acts of largesse, of humor. As a gesture to the spirit, warriors bring out the best of themselves and silently offer it to the abstract.