In this article, we want to share 30 Carlos Castaneda quotes with you. If you’ve read his books, these quotes will remind you about the basic ideas of Don Juan’s teachings. And if you have never read his books, these quotes will give you a brief idea about this mysterious author and may even inspire you to read his books.
Who is Carlos Castaneda?
Carlos Castaneda is one of the greatest mysteries of the XX century. All we know for sure about this man is that he is the author of ten bestselling books and the founder of the publishing company “Cleargreen Inc.“, which currently owns the rights to all his writings. Any other information represents only conjectures, riddles, and assumptions.
Carlos Castaneda hid his personal history throughout his life, forbade himself to be photographed (although a few photos of Castaneda are still there), and has given only a few interviews.
Carlos Castaneda was a master of hoaxes. Every time he spoke about himself, he came up with a different place of birth, different information about who his parents were, and a new “legend” about himself.
His desire to escape from the human eye and avoid any certainty, stems from the basic requirement that applies to the magicians of the line of Don Juan – always remain flexible, elusive, not limited to any framework, stereotypes, and opinions of people, as well as to avoid any behavioral patterns and reactions. In the terminology of Toltec magicians, this is called “erasing personal history.” Based on this basic premise, we can say for sure that humanity will never know the whole truth about Carlos Castaneda’s life and whether Don Juan actually existed.
Carlos Castaneda Quotes
#1
“We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.” – Carlos Castaneda
#2
“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.” – Carlos Castaneda
#3
“Self-pity is the real enemy and the source of man’s misery. Without a degree of pity for himself, man could not afford to be as self-important as he is. However, once the force of self-importance is engaged, it develops its own momentum. And it is this seemingly independent nature of self-importance which gives it its fake sense of worth.” – Carlos Castaneda
#4
“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.” – Carlos Castaneda
#5
“A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting. ” – Carlos Castaneda
#6
“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.” – Carlos Castaneda
#7
“You have everything needed for the extravagant journey that is your life.” – Carlos Castaneda
Carlos Castaneda Quotes
#8
“Forget the self and you will fear nothing, in whatever level of awareness you find yourself to be.” – Carlos Castaneda
#9
“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!” – Carlos Castaneda
#10
“The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to infinity.” – Carlos Castaneda
#11
“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.” – Carlos Castaneda
#12
“In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for decisions.” – Carlos Castaneda
#13
“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 acts. And above all, no one pins 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 now nobody knows for sure who I am or what I do. Not even I. How can I know who I am, when I am all this?” – Carlos Castaneda
#14
“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.” – Carlos Castaneda
#15
“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.” – Carlos Castaneda
Carlos Castaneda Quotes
#16
“The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same.” – Carlos Castaneda
#17
“The world is incomprehensible. We won’t ever understand it; we won’t ever unravel its secrets. Thus we must treat the world as it is: a sheer mystery.” – Carlos Castaneda
#18
“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.” – Carlos Castaneda
#19
“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 obtained knowledge directly from intent, without the distracting intervention of spoken language.” – Carlos Castaneda
#20
“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.” – Carlos Castaneda
#21
“The most effective way to live is as a warrior. A warrior may worry and think before making any decision, but once he makes it, he goes his way, free from worries or thoughts; there will be a million other decisions still awaiting him. That’s the warrior’s way.” – Carlos Castaneda
#22
“Upon learning to see a man becomes everything by becoming nothing. He, so to speak, vanishes and yet he’s there. I would say that this is the time when a man can be or can get anything he desires. But he desires nothing, and instead of playing with his fellow men like they were toys, he meets them in the midst of their folly. The only difference between them is that a man who sees controls his folly, while his fellow men can’t. A man who sees has no longer an active interest in his fellow men. Seeing has already detached him from absolutely everything he knew before.” – Carlos Castaneda
#23
“There is no beginning, the beginning is only in your thought.” – Carlos Castaneda
Carlos Castaneda Quotes
#24
“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.” – Carlos Castaneda
#25
“My benefactor told me that my father and mother had lived and died just to have me and that their own parents had done the same for them. He said that warriors were different in that they shift their assemblage points enough to realize the tremendous price that has been paid for their lives. This shift gives them the respect and awe that their parents never felt for life in general, or for being alive in particular.” – Carlos Castaneda
#26
“A man of knowledge has no honor, no dignity, no family, no name, no country, but only life to be lived, and under these circumstances, his only tie to his fellow men is his controlled folly.” – Carlos Castaneda
#27
“He said that I was a man. And like any man I deserved everything that was a man’s lot – joy, pain, sadness, and struggle – and that the nature of one’s acts was unimportant as long as one acted as a warrior. Lowering his voice to almost a whisper, he said that if I really felt that my spirit was distorted I should simply fix it – purge it, make it perfect – because there was no other task in our entire lives which was more worthwhile. Not to fix the spirit was to seek death, and that was the same as to seek nothing since death was going to overtake us regardless of anything. He paused for a long time and then he said with a tone of profound conviction, “To seek the perfection of the warrior’s spirit is the only task worthy of our manhood.” – Carlos Castaneda
#28
“Self-importance is our greatest enemy. Think about it – what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellowmen. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.” – Carlos Castaneda
#29
“You take yourself too seriously, ” he said slowly. “You are too damn important in your own mind. That must be changed! You are so goddamn important that you feel justified to be annoyed with everything. You’re so damn important that you can afford to leave if things don’t go your way. I suppose you think that shows you have character. That’s nonsense! You’re weak and conceited!” – Don Juan” – Carlos Castaneda
#30
“Nobody is born a warrior in exactly the same way that no one is born an average man.” – Carlos Castaneda
We hope you are inspired by these Carlos Castaneda quotes as much as we are!
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