Carlos Castañeda Quotes

The only possible course that a warrior has is to act consistently and without reservations. At a certain moment, he knows enough of the warriors' way to act accordingly, but his old habits and routines may stand in his way.

Don Juan had always said to me that our great enemy is the fact that we never believe what is happening to us.

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.

Don Juan had said that any habit was, in essence, a “doing,” and that a doing needed all its parts in order to function. If some parts were missing, a doing was disassembled. By doing, he meant any coherent and meaningful series of actions. In other words, a habit needed all its component actions in order to be a live activity. La Gorda then described how she had stalked her own weakness of eating excessively. She said that the Nagual had suggested she first tackle the biggest part of that habit, which was connected with her laundry work; she ate whatever her customers fed her as she went from house to house delivering her wash. She expected the Nagual to tell her what to do, but he only laughed and made fun of her, saying that as soon as he would mention something for her to do, she would fight not to do it. He said that 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. For many years she could not think of anything to do to stalk her weakness. One day, however, she got so sick and tired of being fat that she refused to eat for twenty-three days. That was the initial action that broke her fixation. She then had the idea of stuffing her mouth with a sponge to make her customers believe that she had an infected tooth and could not eat. The subterfuge worked not only with her customers, who stopped giving her food, but with her as well, as she had the feeling of eating as she chewed on the sponge. La Gorda laughed when she told me how she had walked around with a sponge stuffed in her mouth for years until her habit of eating excessively had been broken. “Was that all you needed to stop your habit?” I asked. “No. I also had to learn how to eat like a warrior.” “And how does a warrior eat?” “A warrior eats quietly, and slowly, and very little at a time. I used to talk while I ate, and I ate very fast, and I at

I asked him if there was a way in which he could accept just my desire to learn, as if I were an Indian.

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 that to behave as though we knew everything.

The memorable events of a shaman's album are affairs that will stand the test of time because they have nothing to do with him, and yet he is in the thick of them. He'll always be in the thick of them, for the duration of his life, and perhaps beyond, but not quite personally.

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

"Ljutiš li se na mene, don Huane?", upitah ga kada se vratio. Izgledao je iznenađen mojim pitanjem. "Ne! Nikada se ni na koga ne ljutim. Niko na ovom svetu ne može da učini ništa toliko značajno da bih se ja naljutio. Ljutiš se na ljude onda kada misliš da su njihovi postupci važni. Ja tako više ne mislim."

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.

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.

I had been reared, perhaps like everyone else, to have a readiness to accept man as an essentially weak and fallible creature.

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.

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

If you have the same vision in dreaming three times, pay extraordinary attention to it. When a dreamer dreams that he sees himself asleep he must avoid sudden jolts or surprises, and take everything with a grain of salt. The dreamer has to get involved in dispassionate experimentations. Rather than examining his sleeping body, the dreamer walks out of the room.