Carlos Castaneda quotes:

Seek and see all the marvels around you. You will get tired of looking at yourself alone, and that fatigue will make you deaf and blind to everything else. - Don Juan

We hardly ever realize that we can cut anything out of our lives, anytime, in the blink of an eye.

The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.

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

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

Your thoughts and your actions are fixed forever in their terms. That is slavery. I, on the other hand, brought you freedom. Freedom is expensive, but the price is not impossible. So, fear your captors, your masters. Don't waste your time and your power fearing me.

The self-confidence of the warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man. The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence. The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness. The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to infinity.

Nobody knows who I am or what I do. Not even I. Don Juan Matus

Forget the self and you will fear nothing, in whatever level or awareness you find yourself to be.

It is important to have a perspective then only through seeing the world is it possible to transcend ideas such as the Flyers, and other aberrant thought forms. With ruthlessness, cunning patience and sweetness, it can be cracked.

The spirit listens only when the speaker speaks in gestures. And gestures do not mean signs or body movements, but acts of true abandon, acts of largesse, of humor. As a gesture to the spirit, warriors bring out the best of themselves and silently offer it to the abstract.

It is important to do what you don't know how to do. It is important to see your skills as keeping you from learning what is deepest and most mysterious. If you know how to focus, unfocus. If your tendency is to make sense out of chaos, start chaos.

Within these premises, the only thing one can be is an impeccable mediator. One is not the player in this cosmic match of chess, one is simply a pawn on the chessboard. What decides everything is a conscious impersonal energy that sorcerers call intent or the Spirit.

A warrior takes his lot, whatever it may be, and accepts it in ultimate humbleness. He accepts in humbleness what he is, not as a grounds for regret but as a living challenge.

We have to balance the lineality of the known universe with the nonlineality of the unknown universe.

A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting.

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.

Things don't change, only the way you look at them.

When a warrior has put an end to his routines, when he doesn't care anymore whether he has company or is alone, because he has heard the silent whisper of the spirit; then you can say that, truly, he has died. From that point on, even the simplest things in life become extraordinary for him.

We have to balance the lineality of the known universe with the nonlineality of the unknown universe."

Feeling important makes one heavy, clumsy and vain. To be a warrior one needs to be light and fluid.

Death is the only wise advisor that we have. Whenever you feel, as you always do, that everything is going wrong and you're about to be annihilated, turn to your death and ask if that 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.

Personal history must be constantly renewed by telling parents, relatives, and friends everything one does. On the other hand, for the warrior who has no personal history, no explanations are needed; nobody is angry or disillusioned with his acts. And above all, no one pins him down with their thoughts and their expectations.

One cannot enter don Juan's world intellectually, like a dilettante seeking fast and fleeting knowledge. Nor, in don Juan's world, can anything be verified absolutely. The only thing we can do is arrive at a state of increased awareness that allows us to perceive the world around us in a more inclusive manner.

Things don't change. You change your way of looking, that's all

A rule of thumb for a warrior is that he makes his decisions so carefully that nothing that may happen as a result of them can surprise him, much less drain his power.

To be a warrior is not a simple matter of wishing to be one. It is rather an endless struggle that will go on to the very last moment of our lives. Nobody is born a warrior, in exactly the same way that nobody is born an average man. We make ourselves into one or the other.

Modern man has left the realm of the unknown and the mysterious, and has settled down in the realm of the functional. He is turned is back to the world of the foreboding and the exulting and has welcomed the world of boredom.

If you were a warrior, you would know that the worst thing one can do is confront human beings directly.

A warrior knows that he is only a man. His only regret is that his life is so short that he can't grab onto all the things he would like to. But for him, this is not an issue; it's only a pity.

To achieve the mood of a warrior is not a simple matter. It is a revolution. To regard the lion and the water rats and our fellow men as equals is a magnificent act of a warrior's spirit. It takes power to do that.

Man lives only to learn. And if he learns it is because it is the nature of his lot, for good or bad.

The hardest thing in the world is to assume the mood of a warrior. It is of no use to be sad and complain and feel justified in doing so,believing that someone is always doing something to us. Nobody is doing anything to anybody, much less to a warrior.

A guardian is broad-minded and understanding. A guard, on the other hand, is a vigilante, narrow-minded and most of the time despotic.

You say you need help. Help for what? You have everything needed for the extravagant journey that is your life.

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

The ego is like a tired old dog. We can never kill it, so put it out on the back porch, let it rest there, and step around it.

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.

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.

It doesn't matter how one was brought up. What determines the way one does anything is personal power.

It doesn't matter what one reveals or what one keeps to oneself. Everything we do, everything we are, rests on our personal power. If we don't have enough personal power the most magnificent piece of wisdom can be revealed to us and it won't make a damn bit of difference.

A hunter that is worth his salt does not catch game because he sets his traps, or because he knows the hunting routines of his prey, but because he himself has no routines. This is his advantage. He is not at all like the animals he is after, fixed by heavy routines and predictable quirks; he is free, fluid, unpredictable

Things are only real after one has learned to agree on their realness. What took place this evening, for instance, cannot possibly be real to you, because no one could agree with you about it. 'Do you mean that you didn't see what happened?'. Of course I did. But I don't count. I am the one who's lying to you, remember?

Intent is what can make a man succeed when his thoughts tell him that he is defeated.

I wanted to convince you that you must learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it

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

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.

Think about it: 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.

Self-importance requires spending most of one's life offended by something or someone.

To ask 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.

A man of knowledge chooses a path with a heart and follows it and then he looks and rejoices and laughs and then he sees and knows.

Only the idea of death makes a warrior sufficiently detached so that he is capable of abandoning himself to anything. He knows his death is stalking him and won't give him time to cling to anything so he tries, without craving, all of everything.

What is a truthful life? A life lived with deliberateness, a good, strong life.

A warrior takes responsibility for his acts, for the most trivial of acts. An average man acts out his thoughts, and never takes responsibility for what he does.

A warrior lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has finished acting.

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.

A warrior seeks to act rather than talk.

A warrior must learn to make every act count, since he is going to be here in this world for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it.

The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to infinity.

The things shamans deal with are extremely practical. They break down parameters of normal historical reality. Magical passes are just one aspect of that.

A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war, wide awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance.

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.

Look at every path closely and deliberately, then ask ourselves this crucial question: Does this path have a heart? If it does, then the path is good. If it doesn't, it is of no use.

The only thing that is real is the being in you that is going to die.

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.

In the Art of Dreaming Don Juan tells Carlos, "... most of our energy goes into upholding our importance... if we were capable of losing some of that importance, two extraordinary things would happen to us. One, we would free our energy from trying to maintain the illusory idea of our grandeur; and two we would provide ourselves with enough energy to ... catch a glimpse of the actual grandeur of the universe."

Once a man worries, he clings to anything out of desperation; and once he clings he is bound to get exhausted or to exhaust whomever or whatever he is clinging to. A warrior-hunter, on the other hand, knows he will lure game into his traps over and over again, so he doesn't worry.

For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must assume responsibility for being here, in this marvelous world, in this marvelous desert, in this marvelous time. I want to convince you that you must learn to make every act count, since you are going to be here for only a short while, in fact, too short for witnessing all the marvels of it.

As long as a man feels that he is the most important thing in the world he cannot really appreciate the world around him.

The greatest flaw of human beings is to remain glued to the inventory of reason. Reason doesn't deal with man as energy. Reason deals with instruments that create energy, but it has never seriously occurred to reason that we are better than instruments: we are organisms that create energy. We are bubbles of energy.

One day I found out that personal history was no longer necessary for me and, like drinking, I dropped it... Little by little you must create a fog around yourself; you must erase everything around you until nothing can be taken for granted, until nothing is any longer for sure, or real. Your problem now is that you're too real. Your endeavors are too real, your moods are too real. Don't take things so for granted. You must begin to erase yourself.

For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length--and there I travel looking, looking breathlessly.

What is wrong with us human beings, and has been wrong since time immemorial, is that without ever stating it in so many words, we believe that we have entered the realm of immortality. We behave as if we are never going to die - an infantile arrogance. But even more injurious than this sense of immortality is what comes with it : the sense that we can engulf this inconcievable universe with our minds.

A warrior considers himself already dead, so there is nothing to lose. The worst has already happened to him, therefore he's clear and calm; judging him by his acts or by his words, one would never suspect that he has witnessed everything.

The path to knowledge is a forced one. In order to learn, we must be pushed. On the path of knowledge we are always fighting something, avoiding something, preparing for something; and that something is always inexplicable, greater and more powerful than us.

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.

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.

Never take a path that has no heart in it. You can't lose if your heart is in your work, but you can't win if your heart is not in it.

In the universe there is an immeasurable, indescribable force which shamens call intent, and absolutely everything that exists in the entire cosmos is attached to intent by a connecting link.

The spirit of a warrior is not geared to indulging and complaining, nor is it geared to winning or losing. The spirit of a warrior is geared only to struggle, and every struggle is a warrior's last battle on earth. Thus the outcome matters very little to him. In his last battle on earth a warrior lets his spirit flow free and clear. And as he wages his battle, knowing that his intent is impeccable, a warrior laughs and laughs.

The aim is to balance the terror of being alive with the wonder of being alive.

Your problems is that you think you have time

We don't need more to be thankful for, we just need to be more thankful.

Self importance is man's greatest enemy.

Beware of those who weep with realization, for they have realized nothing.

Fright never injures anyone. What injures the spirit is having someone always on your back, beating you, telling you what to do and what not to do

It takes all the time and all the energy we have to conquer the idiocy in us

The world is such-and-such or so-and-so only because we tell ourselves that that is the way it is.

The secret is not in what you do to yourself but rather in what you don't do.

For a warrior, to be inaccessible means that he touches the world around him sparingly. And above all, he deliberately avoids exhausting himselfand others. He doesn't use and squeeze people until they have shriveled to nothing, especially the people he loves.

The only thing we all have in common is that we play tricks in order to force ourselves to abandon the quest. The counter-measure is to persist in spite of all the barriers and disappointments.

A warrior never worries about his fear.

The sorcerer's description of the world is perceivable. But our insistence on holding on to our standard version of reality renders us almost deaf and blind to it.

To seek freedom is the only driving force I know. Freedom to fly off into that infinity out there. 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.

I'm never angry at anybody! No human being can do anything important enough for that. You get angry at people when you feel that their acts are important. I don't feel that way any longer.

Sorcerers are convinced that all of us are a bunch of nincompoops. We can never relinquish our crummy control voluntarily, thus we have to be tricked

A 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 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.

Dwelling upon the self too much produces terrible fatigue. A man in that position is deaf and blind to everything else. The fatigue itself makes him cease to see the marvels all around.

For a sorcerer, reality, or the world as we all know it, is only a description.

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. There is a question that a warrior has to ask, mandatorily: 'Does this path have a heart?'

The humbleness of a warrior is not the humbleness of the beggar. The warrior lowers his head to no one, but at the same time, he doesn't permit anyone to lower his head to him. The beggar, on the other hand, falls to his knees at the drop of a hat and scrapes the floor to anyone he deems to be higher; but at the same time, he demands that someone lower than him scrape the floor for him.

Nothing in this world is a gift. Whatever must be learned must be learned the hard way.

Only a warrior can survive the path of knowledge because the art of the warrior is to balance the pain of being a man with the wonder of being a man.

Men have to be hooked. Women don't need that. Women go freely into anything. That's their power and at the same time their drawback. Men have to be led and women have to be contained

When a warrior learns to stop the internal dialogue, everything becomes possible; the most far-fetched schemes become.

...to tune the spirit when someone is trampling on you is called control

An average man is too concerned with liking people or with being liked himself. A warrior likes, that's all. He likes whatever or whomever he wants, for the hell of it.

All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. However, a path without a heart is never enjoyable. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy-it does not make a warrior work at liking it; it makes for a joyful journey; as long as a man follows it, he is one with it.

... everything in the world is a force, a pull or a push. In order for us to be pushed or pulled we need to be like a sail, like a kite in the wind. But if we have a hole in the middle of our luminosity, the force goes through it and never acts upon us.

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 withstand the pressure of the unknowable.

You are like you are, because you tell yourself that you are that way.

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.

Conclusions arrived at through reasoning have very little or no influence in altering the course of our lives.

There is a flaw with words, they always force us to feel enlightened, but when we turn around to face the world they always fail us and we end up facing the world as we always have, without enlightenment

Our senses perceive the way they do because a specific feature of our awareness forces them to do so...because we learn what to perceive.

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.

A warrior must cultivate the feeling that he has everything needed for the extravagant journey that is his life. What counts for a warrior is being alive. Life in itself is sufficient, self-explanatory and complete. Therefore, one may say without being presumptuous that the experience of experiences is being alive.

When you need an answer, look over your left shoulder and ask your death.

For me the world is weird because it is stupendous, awesome, mysterious, unfathomable; my interest has been to convince you that you must assume responsibility for being here...

Let's say that when every one of us is born we bring with us a little ring of power. That little ring is almost immediately put to use. So every one of us is already hooked from birth and our rings of power are joined to everyone else's. In other words, our rings of power are hooked to the doing of the world in order to make the world.