Carlos Castañeda Quotes

An average man doesn’t do this, though. The world is never a mystery for him, and when he arrives at old age he is convinced he has nothing more to live for. An old man has not exhausted the world. He has exhausted only what people do. But in his stupid confusion he believes that the world has no more mysteries for him. What a wretched price to pay for our shields!

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.

Cuando estés impaciente, lo que debes hacer es voltear a la izquierda y pedir consejo a tu muerte. Una inmensa cantidad de mezquindad se pierde con solo que tu muerte te haga un gesto, o alcances a echarle un vistazo, o nada más con que tengas la sensación de que tu compañera está ahí vigilándote. Cada vez que sientas, como siempre lo haces, que todo te está saliendo mal y que estás a punto de ser aniquilado, vuélvete hacia tu muerte y pregúntale si es cierto. Tu muerte te dirá que te equivocas; que nada importa más que su toque. Tu muerte te dirá: todavía no te he tocado.

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.

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

Moć počiva na vrsti znanja koje čovek poseduje. Kakvog ima smisla znati ono što je beskorisno? To nas neće pripremiti za neizbežan susret sa nepoznatim.

Неуязвимость означает делать лучшее, что можешь во всем, во что ты вовлечен.

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

A warrior may choose to remain totally impassive and never act, and behave as if being impassive really mattered to him; he would be rightfully true at that too, because that would also be his controlled folly.

- Birds fly like birds and a man who has taken the devil's weed flies as such.
- As birds do?
- No, he flies as a man who has taken the weed.

Warriors have an ulterior purpose for their acts, which has nothing to do with personal gain. The average man acts only if there is the chance for profit. Warriors act not for profit, but for the spirit.

Solace, haven, fear, all of these are words which have created moods that one has learned to accept without ever questioning their value.

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.

To be a sorcerer means to reach a level of awareness that makes inconceivable things available.

"No!" he said emphatically. "Power rests on the kind of knowledge one holds. What is the sense of knowing
things that are useless?"