Carlos Castaneda

If we choose to recondition our interpretation system, reality becomes fluid, and the scope of what can be real is enhanced without endangering the integrity of reality.

Желание — вот что заставляет нас страдать, но, как только мы научимся уничтожать свои желания, любая полученная нами мелочь превратится в бесценный дар.

"Nestor said to me. "A
row of Hussars on horseback will come to take me. What will it be for you?"
I remembered don Juan telling me once that death might be behind anything imaginable, even
behind a dot on my writing pad. He gave me then the definitive metaphor of my death.
I had told him that once while walking on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles I had heard
the sound of a trumpet playing an old, idiotic popular tune. The music was coming from a
record shop across the street.
Never had I heard a more beautiful sound. I became enraptured by it. I had to sit down on the
curb. The limpid brass sound of that trumpet was going directly to my brain. I felt it just
above my right temple. It soothed me until I was drunk with it.
When it concluded, I knew that there would be no way of ever repeating that experience, and I
had enough detachment not to rush into the store and buy the record and a stereo set to play it
on.
Don Juan said that it had been a sign given to me by the powers that rule the destiny of men.
When the time comes for me to leave the world, in whatever form, I will hear the same sound
of that trumpet, the same idiotic tune, the same peerless trumpeter."

"Our way of perceiving is a predator's way," he said to me on one occasion.

"A very
efficient manner of appraising and classifying food and danger. But this is not the only
way we are able to perceive. There is another mode, the one I am familiarizing you with:
the act of perceiving the essence of everything, energy itself, directly.

"To perceive the essence of everything will make us understand, classify and describe
the world in entirely new, more exciting, more sophisticated terms." This was don Juan's claim. And the more sophisticated terms to which he was alluding were those he had been taught by his predecessors, terms that correspond to sorcery truths, which have no rational foundation and no relation whatsoever to the facts of our daily world but which are self-evident truths for the sorcerers who perceive energy directly and see the essence of everything.

For such sorcerers, the most significant act of sorcery is to see the essence of the
universe."

Мы также выбираем свои пути в соответствии с тем, что мы говорим себе.

We know that 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 stand the pressure of the unknowable.

Nothing is pending in the world…nothing is finished, yet nothing is unresolved…Everything is filled to the brim.

If a warrior is to succeed in anything, the success must come gently, with a great deal of effort but with no stress or obsession.

Not to fix the spirit was to seek death, and that was the same as to seek nothing, since death was going to overtake us regardless of anything.

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.

Poco sabía yo en ese tiempo que don Juan no me estaba dando solamente una descripción intelectual atractiva; me estaba describiendo algo que él llamaba un hecho energético. Para él, los hechos energéticos eran las conclusiones a las que él y los otros chamanes de su linaje llegaron a involucrarse en una función que llamaban ver: el acto de percibir energía directamente como fluye del universo.

"When a man starts to learn, he is never clear about his objectives. His purpose is faulty. His intent is vague. He hopes for rewards that will never materialize, for he knows nothing of the hardships of learning.
"He slowly begins to learn- bit by bit at first, then in big chunks. And his thoughts soon clash. What he learns is never what he pictured, or imagined, and so he begins to be afraid. Learning is never what one expects. Every step of learning is a new task, and the fear the man is experiencing begins to mount mercilessly, unyieldingly. His purpose becomes a battlefield.
"And thus he has tumbled upon the first of his natural enemies: Fear! A terrible enemy- treacherous, and difficult to overcome. It remains concealed at every turn of the way, prowling, waiting. And if the man, terrified in its presence, runs away, his enemy will have put an end to his quest."

La lucha que cada uno libra contra su antiguo ser dura toda la vida.

A man of knowledge has no honor, no dignity, no family, no name, no country...

When man fell to his knees he became the asshole he is today.