A warrior must focus his attention on the link between himself and his death . . .. He must let each of his acts be his last battle on earth. Only under those conditions will his acts have their rightful power.
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.
We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.
The journey by itself was sufficient; any hope of arriving at a permanent position was outside the boundaries of his knowledge.
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.
A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting.
A man of knowledge has no honor, no dignity, no family, no name, no country...
Remember what I've told you, he said. Don't count on emotional realizations. Let your assemblage point move first, then years later have the realization.
You have everything needed for the extravagant journey that is your life.
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.
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 aim is to balance the terror of being alive with the wonder of being alive.
Power rests on the kind of knowledge one holds. What is the sense of knowing things that are useless?
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.
What makes us unhappy is to want. Yet if we would learn to cut our wants to nothing, the smallest thing we'd get would be a true gift.
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 fine power is always heralded by great pain.
Learn to see, and then you'll know that there is no end to the new worlds of our vision.
To meet an ally a man must be a spotless warrior or the ally may turn against him and destroy him.
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.
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.
Don Juan had always said to me that our great enemy is the fact that we never believe what is happening to us.
We hardly ever realize that we can cut anything out of our lives, anytime, in the blink of an eye.
Forget the self and you will fear nothing, in whatever level or awareness you find yourself to be.
You say you need help. Help for what? You have everything needed for the extravagant journey that is your life.
It isn't that as time goes by you're learning sorcery; rather, what you're learning is to save energy. And this energy will enable you to handle some of the energy fields that are not employed in perceiving the ordinary world we know. Sorcery is a state of awareness.
Nobody is born a warrior in exactly the same way that no one is born an average man.
We are men and our lot in life is to learn and to be hurled into inconceivable new worlds.
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.
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.
Only as a warrior can one withstand the path of knowledge . . ..
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.
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.
I asked him if there was a way in which he could accept just my desire to learn, as if I were an Indian.
In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for decisions.
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 hunter knows he will lure game into his traps over and over again, so he doesn't worry. 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.
We don't need anyone to teach us sorcery, because there is really nothing to learn. What we need is a teacher to convince us that there is incalculable power at our fingertips. What a strange paradox!
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.
You have little time left, and none of it for crap. A fine state. I would say that the best of us always comes out when we are against the wall, when we feel the sword dangling overhead. Personally, I wouldn't have it any other way.
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.
I had been reared, perhaps like everyone else, to have a readiness to accept man as an essentially weak and fallible creature.
The average man is either victorious or defeated and, depending on that, he becomes a persecutor or a victim. These two conditions are prevalent as long as one does not see. Seeing dispels the illusion of victory, or defeat, or suffering.
He explained that the leaf had fallen over and over from that same tree so I would stop trying to understand.
You must wait patiently, knowing that you're waiting, and knowing what you're waiting for. That is the warrior's way. And if it is a matter of fulfilling your promise then you must be aware that you are fulfilling it. Then a time will come when your waiting will be over and you will no longer have to honor your promise.
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.
Only if they remain totally detached can they have the energy to be free. Theirs is a particular type of detachment which is born not out of fear or indolence, but out of conviction.
The aim of sorcerers is to reach a state of total awareness in order to experience all the possibilities of perception available to man. This state of awareness even implies an alternative way of dying.
A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war, wide awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance.
