Carlos Castaneda: The Art of Dreaming

 

You have everything needed for the extravagant journey that is your life.

We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves strong.

The amount of work is the same.

The trick is in what one emphasizes.

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 aim is to balance the terror of being alive

with the wonder of being alive.

In a world where death is the hunter

there is no time for regrets or doubts.

There is only time for decisions.

Aa man of knowledge lives by acting

not by thinking about acting.

We hardly ever realize that we can cut anything out of

our lives anytime in the blink of an eye.

For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart

and the only worthwhile challenge

is to traverse its full length.

There I travel, looking breathlessly.

For me, the world is weird because it is stupendous,

awesome, mysterious, unfathomable.

You must assume responsibility

for being here in this marvelous world,

in this marvelous desert,

in this marvelous time.

Make every act count

since you are going to be here for only a short while,

too short for witnessing all the marvels of it.

To seek freedom is the only driving force I know...

freedom to fly off into infinity,

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 world holds a million paths,

therefore you must always keep in mind

that a path is only a path.

If you feel you should not follow it,

you must not stay with it under any conditions.

To have such clarity you must lead a disciplined life.

Only then will you know that any path is only a path

and there is no affront to oneself or to others

in dropping it if it is what your heart tells you to do.

But your decision to keep on the path or leave it

must be free of fear or ambition.

Look at every path closely and deliberately.

Try it as many times as you think necessary.

Before you embark on any path

ask the question, does this path have a heart?

If the answer is no, you will know it.

And then you must choose another path.

The trouble is no one asks that question.

When a man finally realizes

he has taken a path without heart

the path may kill him at any point.

Few people can stop to deliberate and leave a path.

A path without heart is never enjoyable.

You have to work hard even to take it.

On the other hand, a path with heart is easy.

It does not make you work at liking it.

All paths are the same.

They lead nowhere.

They are paths going through the bush or into the bush.

I have traversed long paths,

but i am not anywhere.

Death is the only advisor we have.

Whenever you feel that everything is going wrong

and you're about to be annihilated,

turn to your death and ask it if it 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.

A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war...

wide awake with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance.

Going to knowledge or going to war

in any other manner is a mistake.

And whoever makes it might never live to regret it.

Forget the self,

and whatever level of awareness you find yourself to be in

and you will fear nothing.

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.

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.

You have little time left and none of it for crap.

The best of us always comes out when we are against the wall

when we feel the sword dangling overhead.

i wouldn't have it any other way.

The average man is hooked to his fellow men

while the warrior is hooked only to infinity.

All of us, whether or not we are warriors,

have a cubic centimeter of chance that pops from time to time.

The difference between an average man and a warrior

is that the warrior is aware of this

and one of his tasks is to be alert,

deliberately waiting so that when his cubic centimeter pops out,

he has the necessary speed and the prowess to pick it up.

Seek and see all the marvels around you.

You will get tired of looking at yourself alone.

That fatigue will make you deaf and blind to everything else.

Life in itself is sufficient, self-explanatory and complete.

For an instant, I saw the loneliness of man as a gigantic wave

which had been frozen in front of me,

held back by the invisible wall of metaphor.

We are human and our lot in life is to learn

and be hurled into inconceivable new worlds.

I have no routines or personal history.

One day i found out that they were no longer necessary for me

and like drinking, i dropped them.

One must have the desire to drop them

and then one must proceed harmoniously

to chop them off little by little.

If you have no personal history, no explanations are needed.

Nobody is angry or disillusioned with your axe,

and above all, no one can pin you down with their thoughts.

It is best to erase all personal history

because that makes us free

from the encumbering thoughts of other people.

I have little by little created a fog around me and my life

and nobody knows for sure who i am or what i do.

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 it being that way.

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 on your hilltop,

and you will tremble as you reach the end of your dance.

You will look at the sun,

for you will never see it again in the waking or dreaming.

And then your death will point to the south to the vastness.

Asking me to verify my life by giving you my statistics

is like using science to validate sorcery...

it robs the world of its magic and makes milestones out of us all.

If one is to succeed in anything

the success must come gently

with a great deal of effort but no stress or obsession.

The art of a warrior is to balance the terror of being a man

with the wonder of being a man.

A warrior is aware of the unfathomable mystery that surrounds him

and aware of his duty to try to unravel it.

He takes his rightful place among mysteries

and regards himself as one consequently.

For a warrior, there is no end to the mystery of being,

whether being means being a pebble or an ant or oneself.

That is a warrior's humbleness.

One is equal to everything.

In the universe, there is an unmeasurable, indescribable force

which sorcerers call intent

and absolutely everything that exists in the entire cosmos

is attached to intent.

By a connecting link, sorcerers or warriors were concerned

with discussing, understanding, and employing that connecting link.

Sorcerers therefore divide their instruction into two categories:

One is for everyday life state of awareness.

The other is for the states of heightened awareness

in which sorcerers obtain knowledge directly from intent

without the distracting intervention of spoken language.

from YouTube @LovevolutionFoundation on March 2, 2022