Carlos Castaneda (December 25, 1925[nb 1]–April 27, 1998) was an American author with a Ph.D. in anthropology.
The fate of all of us here has been to know that we are prisoners of power. No one knows why us in particular, but what a great fortune!
A warrior acts as if he knows what he is doing, when in effect he knows nothing.
Whenever the internal dialogue stops, the world collapses, and extraordinary facets of ourselves surface, as though they had been kept heavily guarded by our words.
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 third point of reference is freedom of perception; it is intent; it is spirit; the somersault of thought into the miraculous; the act of reaching beyond our boundaries and touching the inconceivable.
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.
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.
Nobody knows who I am or what I do. Not even I. Don Juan Matus
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.
Leave Jesus on the cross. He's very happy there!
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.
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.
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.
A warrior, or any man for that matter, cannot possibly wish he were somewhere else; a warrior because he lives by challenge, an ordinary man because he doesn't know where his death is going to find him.
All of us, whether or not we are warriors, have a cubic centimeter of chance that pops out in front of our eyes 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, the prowess, to pick it up.
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.
The hardest thing in the world is for a warrior to let others be.
This very rock where we're sitting is a rock because we have been forced to give out attention to it
My worrying, for instance, was a scene in which I looked at myself while I had the sensation of being boxed in. I call that worrying, It has happened to me a number of times after that first time.
When a warrior learns to stop the internal dialogue, everything becomes possible; the most far-fetched schemes become attainable.