Quotes from Carlos Castaneda

My worrying, for instance, was a scene in which I looked at myself while I had the sensation of being boxed in. I call that worrying, It has happened to me a number of times after that first time.

Leave Jesus on the cross. He's very happy there!

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.

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.

I know now that human beings are creatures of awareness, involved in an evolutionary journey of awareness, beings indeed unknown to themselves, filled to the brim with incredible resources that are never used.

The awakening to serious, sober consciousness, was genuinely shocking. I had forgotten I was a man! The sadness of such an irreconcilable situation was so intense that I wept.

You are a serious person, but your seriousness is attached to what you do, not to what goes on outside you. You dwell upon yourself too much. That's the trouble. And that produces a terrible fatigue. But what else can anyone do, don Juan? Seek and see the marvels all around you. You will get tired of looking at yourself alone, and that fatigue will make you deaf and blind to everything else.

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

Don Juan said that everybody that knew me had an idea about me, and that I kept feeding the idea with everything I did. "Don't you see?" he asked dramatically. "You must renew your personal history by telling your parents, your relatives, and your friends everything you do. On the other hand, if you have no personal history, no explanations are needed; nobody is angry or disillusioned with your acts. And above all no one pins you down with their thoughts.

When nothing is for sure, we remain alert, perennially on our toes. It is more exciting not to know which bush the rabbit is hiding behind than to behave as though we knew everything.

Detached and at ease, I will dart past the Eagle to be free.

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.

That is no metaphorical statement, he said. I mean what I say. Big animals like that have the capacity to read thoughts. And I don't mean guess. I mean they know everything directly.

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... Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself, and 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.

Seers can see, for instance, the light of the scarabs' emanations expanding to great size.

He patted me vigorously on the back and laughed. "Wish him well, Carlitos," he said. "Wish him well." I was very tired. I had a strange surge of happy sadness. I told him that I came from a place where people rarely if ever wish one another well. "I know," he said. "The same thing happened to me. But I'm a warrior now and I can afford to wish him well.

You are a serious person, but your seriousness is attached to what you do, not to what goes on outside you. You dwell upon yourself too much. That's the trouble. And that produces a terrible fatigue." But what else can anyone do, don Juan? Seek and see the marvels all around you. You will get tired of looking at yourself alone, and that fatigue will make you deaf and blind to everything else.

I said to don Juan that it was not generosity that made me give away the packages but cold fury. I had to do something to calm myself, and that was the first thing that occurred to me. But that's exactly what I've been telling you. Your generosity is not genuine, he retorted and began to laugh at my dismay.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Self-importance is our greatest enemy. Think about it - what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellowmen. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.