We have been trained to live and die meekly, following unnatural codes of behavior which soften us and make us lose that initial impulse, until our spirit is hardly noticeable. We are born as a result of a fight. By denying our basic tendencies, the society we live in eradicates the warring heritage that transforms us into magical beings.
Don Juan was always moving, coming or going, supporting this or rejecting that, provoking tensions or
discharging them in a burst, shouting his intent or remaining silent; doing something. He was alive, and his
life reflected the ebb and flow of the universe.
Don Juan told me that, from the moment when the explosion which gave us origin occurred, until the
moment of our death, we live within a flow. And what aligns us with that flow? An incessant battle, which
only a warrior will attempt. Because of that, he lives in profound harmony with everything.
For a warrior, to be harmonious is to flow, not to stop in the middle of the current and try to make a space of
artificial and impossible peace. He knows that he can only give the very best of himself under conditions of
maximum tension.
Ask yourselves these questions: What am I doing with my life? Does it have a purpose? Is it tight enough? A
warrior accepts his destiny, whatever it may be.
A warrior knows that what gives sense to his life is the challenge of death, and death is a personal matter. It
is a challenge for each one of us, and one which only sincere warriors accept.
We are beings who are going to die. We were programmed to live like beasts, carrying loads of customs and
other people’s beliefs until the very end; but we can change all that! The freedom which the warrior’s way
offers us is within the reach of your hand; take advantage of it!
The tragedy of today’s man is not his social condition, but the lack of will to change himself.
Sorcerers say that true rebellion, and humanity’s only way out as a species, is to stage a revolution against
their own stupidity. As you can understand, this is solitary work.
The goal of sorcerers is this sorcerers’ revolution: The unrestricted unfolding of all our perceptual
possibilities. Don Juan demonstrated that it is possible!
I cannot guide you, but I can put you in front of an abyss which will test all your abilities. It depends on you,
whether you hurl yourself off it to fly, or run to hide in the security of your routines.
After experimenting for millennia with situations that alter our ways of perceiving the world, the sorcerers
from ancient Mexico discovered a portentous fact: We are not forced to live in a single reality, because the
universe is constructed according to very fluid principles which can accommodate almost infinite forms,
producing countless ranges of perception.
Don Juan claimed that what limits human perception is timidity. To be able to manage the world which
surrounds us, we have had to give up our perceptual gift; that is, the possibility of witnessing everything. We
sacrifice the flight of awareness in exchange for the security of the known. We can live strong, audacious,
healthy lives; we can be impeccable warriors; but we don’t dare!
Of all the gifts we have received, self-importance is the cruelest. It converts a magical, vivid creature into a
poor, arrogant, graceless devil.
When a warrior learns how to toss self-importance aside, his spirit unfolds, jubilant, like a wild animal
liberated from its cage and set free.
On the cosmic scale, the strength of a being is not measured by its physical capability, but by its capacity
to manipulate awareness. It follows that if we are to take the next evolutionary step, it must be done by
means of discipline, determination, and strategy.
A warrior considers the world we live in to be a great mystery, and he knows that the mystery is there to be
revealed to those who deliberately look for it.
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 accepts with humility what he is, and he doesn’t squander his power on lamenting because things
are not otherwise.
If we learn how to curb our self-pity, and at the same time make room for the authentic ‘me’, we will become
drivers of cosmic intent, and conduits for torrents of energy.
Impeccability is born of a delicate balance between our internal being and the forces of the external world.
It is an achievement that requires effort, time, dedication, and being permanently attentive to the objective,
so that the final purpose is never lost from sight.
The warrior’s final challenge is to balance all the attributes of his path. Once he does that, his purpose
becomes inflexible. He is no longer moved by a desperate desire for gain.
Take a risk! Get out of the trap of self-reflection and dare to perceive all that is humanly possible! A warrior
of knowledge makes an effort to be authentic, and he won’t accept any compromises, because the object of
his fight is total freedom.
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.
For modern man absolutely everything that exists is put into definite categories. We are labeling machines.
We classify the world, and the world classifies us.
We have become perceptual jailers of each other. The chain of human thought is powerful.
The reality of our condition is that we are energetically blocked, due to what sorcerers call the collective
fixation of the assemblage point.
Sorcerers maintain that talking about ourselves makes us accessible and weak, while learning how to be
quiet fills us with power. A principle of the path of knowledge is to turn your own life into something so
unpredictable that not even you yourself knows what’s going to happen.
The sorcerer’s objective is to break the fixation of social interpretations, and to see energy directly. To see
is a total perceptual experience.
Seeing energy as it flows is an imperious need on the path of knowledge. Ultimately, all the effort of
sorcerers is guided to that end. It is not enough for a warrior to know that the universe is energy; he has to
verify it for himself.
Sorcerers have discovered the most refined form of love, because they love themselves. They know that all
we give out is a reflection of what we have inside.
Warriors recapitulate when they are walking down the road, in the bathroom, when working or when eating;
whenever it is possible. The important thing is to do it.
Recapitulation starts from inside and sustains itself. It is matter of silencing the mind, and our energy body
will take control, doing what is a delight for it to do. You feel well, comforted; far from draining you, it gives
you rest. Your body perceives it as an inexplicable energy bath.
Sorcerers abide by their experience. They have changed ‘believing’ for seeing.
Silence is a passageway between worlds. When our mind stays silent, incredible aspects of our being
emerge. Starting from that moment, a person becomes a vehicle of intent, and all his acts begin to ooze
power.
When his path no longer corresponds to human expectations, when it takes him to situations that challenge
his reason, then we can say that a warrior has begun an intimate relationship with knowledge.
Sorcerers love the purity of the abstract. For them, the value of the path with heart is not so much where it
takes us but how intensely we enjoy it.
To move the fixation of the planet is the only way out from the dramatic state of slavery to which we have
been reduced. The course of our civilization has no exit, because we are isolated in a remote location of the
cosmos. If we don’t learn how to travel along the avenues of awareness, we will come to such a state of
frustration and despair that humanity will end up destroying itself. Our options are the way of the warrior, or
extinction.
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.
If a warrior is to succeed in anything, the success must come gently, with a great deal of effort but with no
stress or obsession.
Knowledge is a most peculiar affair, especially for a warrior. Knowledge for a warrior is something that
comes at once, engulfs him, and passes on.
Human beings are not objects; they have no solidity. They are round, luminous beings; they are boundless.
The world of objects and solidity is only a description that was created to help them, to make their passage
on earth convenient.
The warrior’s way offers a man a new life and that life has to be completely new. He can’t bring to that new
life his ugly old ways.
Everybody has enough personal power for something. The trick for the warrior is to pull his personal power
away from his weaknesses to his warrior’s purpose.
There is no completeness without sadness and longing, for without them there is no sobriety, no kindness.
Wisdom without kindness and knowledge without sobriety are useless.
Once inner silence is attained, everything is possible. The way to stop talking to ourselves is to use exactly
the same method used to teach us to talk to ourselves; we were taught compulsively and unwaveringly, and
this is the way we must stop it; compulsively and unwaveringly.
Impeccability begins with a single act that has to be deliberate, precise and sustained. If that act is
repeated long enough, one acquires a sense of unbending intent, which can be applied to anything else. If
that is accomplished the road is clear. One thing will lead to another until the warrior realizes his full
potential.
The mystery of awareness is darkness. Human beings reek of that mystery, of things which are inexplicable.
To regard ourselves in any other terms is madness. So a warrior doesn’t demean the mystery of man by
trying to rationalize it.
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.
Man has a dark side. It’s called stupidity. In the same measure that ritual forced the average man to
construct huge churches that were monuments to self-importance, ritual also forced sorcerers to construct
edifices of morbidity and obsession. As a result, it is the duty of every nagual to guide awareness so it will
fly toward the abstract, free of liens and mortgages.
On the Path of Knowledge there are four natural enemies: fear, clarity, power and old age.
When the Knock of the Spirit sounds we follow or perish.
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.
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.
A warrior chooses a path with heart, any path with heart, and follows it; and then he rejoices and laughs. He
knows because he sees that his life will be over altogether too soon. He sees that nothing is more important
than anything else.
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.
Be fluid, at ease in whatever situation you find yourself. Your challenge is to deal with people with ease
regardless of what they do to you. Remember what I have said, that 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 warrior is a hunter. He calculates everything. That’s control. Once his calculations are over, he acts. He
lets go. That’s abandon. A warrior is not a leaf at the mercy of the wind. No one can push him; no one can
make him do things against himself or against his better judgment. A warrior is tuned to survive, and he
survives in the best of all possible fashions.
A warrior lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has
finished acting.
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.
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.
A warrior is never concerned about his fear.
A warrior takes responsibility for his acts; for the most trivial of his acts. He waits patiently, knowing that
he is waiting, and knowing what he is waiting for. That is the warrior’s way.
A warrior thinks of death when things become unclear. The idea of death is the only thing that tempers our
spirit.
A warrior-hunter knows that his death is waiting, and the very act he is performing now may well be his last
battle on earth. He calls it a battle because it is a struggle. Most people move from act to act without any
struggle or thought. A warrior-hunter, on the contrary, assesses every act; and since he has intimate
knowledge of his death, he proceeds judiciously, as if every act were his last battle. Only a fool would fail to
notice the advantage a warrior-hunter has over his fellow men. A warrior-hunter gives his last battle its due
respect. It’s only natural that his last act on earth should be the best of himself. It’s pleasurable that way. It
dulls the edge of his fright.
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.
A warrior seeks to act rather than talk.
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: ‘Does this path have a heart?’
Death is our eternal companion. It is always to our left, an arm’s length behind us. Death is the only wise
adviser that a warrior has. Whenever he feels that everything is going wrong and he’s about to be
annihilated, he can turn to his death and ask if that is so. His death will tell him that he is wrong, that
nothing really matters outside its touch. His death will tell him, ‘I haven’t touched you yet.’
Do you know at this very moment you are surrounded by eternity? And do you know that you can use that
eternity if you so desire?
Feeling important makes one heavy, clumsy and vain. To be a warrior one needs to be light and fluid.
For a warrior, to be inaccessible means that he touches the world around him sparingly. And above all, he
deliberately avoids exhausting himself and others. He doesn’t use and squeeze people until they have
shriveled to nothing, especially the people he loves.
If his spirit is distorted he should simply fix it—purge it, make it perfect—because there is no other task in
our entire lives which is more worthwhile…To seek the perfection of the warrior’s spirit is the only task
worthy of our temporariness, our humanity.
Inner silence works from the moment you begin to accrue it. What the old sorcerers were after was the final
dramatic end result of reaching that individual threshold of silence. Some very talented practitioners need
only a few minutes of silence to reach that coveted goal. Others, less talented, need long periods of silence,
perhaps more than one hour of quietude, before they reach the desired result. The desired result is what the
old sorcerers called “stopping the world”, the moment when everything around us ceases to be what it’s
always been. This is the moment when sorcerers return to the TRUE nature of man. The old sorcerers
always called it “total freedom”.
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.
It doesn’t matter how one was brought up. What determines the way one does anything is personal power.
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.
No person is important enough to make me angry.
Nothing in this world is a gift. Whatever must be learned must be learned the hard way.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 for anyone he deems to be higher; but at the same time,
he demands that someone lower than him scrape the floor for 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.
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.
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.
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 trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The
amount of work is the same.
The warrior: silent in his struggle, undetainable because he has nothing to lose, functional and efficacious
because he has everything to gain.
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.
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.
There’s no emptiness in the life of a warrior. Everything is filled to the brim.
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.
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.
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.
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.
We hardly ever realize that we can cut anything out of our lives, anytime, in the blink of an eye.
We talk to ourselves incessantly about our world. In fact we maintain our world with our internal talk. And
whenever we finish talking to ourselves about ourselves and our world, the world is always as it should be.
We renew it, we rekindle it with life, we uphold it with our internal talk. Not only that, but we also choose
our paths as we talk to ourselves. Thus we repeat the same choices over and over until the day we die,
because we keep on repeating the same internal talk over and over until the day we die. A warrior is aware
of this and strives to stop his internal talk.
When a warrior learns to stop the internal dialogue, everything becomes possible; the most far-fetched
schemes become attainable.
An immortal being has all the time in the world for doubts and bewilderment and fears. A warrior, on the
other hand, cannot…because he knows for a fact that the totality of himself has but a little time on this
earth.
The things that people do cannot under any conditions be more important than the world.
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.
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.
We are a feeling, an awareness encased here.
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.
It’s better to get something worthwhile done using deception than to fail to get something worthwhile done
using truth.
Impeccability is nothing else but the proper use of energy.
Whenever a warrior decides to do something, he must go all the way, but he must take responsibility for
what he does. No matter what he does, he must know first why he is doing it, and then he must proceed
with his actions without having doubts or remorse about them.
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.
There’s no way to put a limit on what one may accomplish individually if the intent is an impeccable intent.
Don Juan’s teachings are not spiritual. I repeat this because the question has come to the surface over and
over. The idea of spirituality doesn’t fit with the iron discipline of a warrior. The most important thing for a
shaman like don Juan is the idea of pragmatism.
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.
A warrior lives by acting, not by thinking about acting, nor by thinking about what he will think when he has
finished acting.
A warrior acts as if he knows what he is doing, when in effect he knows nothing.
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.
We choose only once. We choose either to be warriors or to be ordinary men. A second choice does not
exist. Not on this earth.
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.
A warrior takes his lot, whatever it may be, and accepts it in ultimate humbleness. He accepts in
humbleness what he is, not as grounds for regret but as a living challenge.
For me there is only the traveling on the paths that have a heart, on any path that may have a heart. There I
travel, and the only worthwhile challenge for me is to traverse its full length. And there I travel–looking,
looking, breathlessly.
You must understand that knowledge cannot be turned into words. That knowledge is there for everyone. It
is there to be felt, to be used, but not to be explained. One can come into it by changing levels of
awareness, therefore, heightened awareness is an entrance. But even the entrance cannot be explained.
One can only make use of it.
Only as a warrior can one survive the path of knowledge, because the art of a warrior is to balance the
terror of being a man with the wonder of being a man.
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.
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.
When a man has fulfilled all four of these requisites—to be wide awake, to have fear, respect, and absolute
assurance—there are no mistakes for which he will have to account; under such conditions his actions lose
the blundering quality of the acts of a fool. If such a man fails, or suffers a defeat, he will have lost only a
battle, and there will be no pitiful regrets over that.
If we don’t learn how to travel along the avenues of awareness, we will come to such a state of frustration
and despair that humanity will end up destroying itself. Our options are the way of the warrior, or extinction.
When a man embarks on the paths of knowledge, he becomes aware, in a gradual manner, that ordinary life
has been forever left behind; that knowledge is indeed a frightening affair; that the means of the ordinary
world are no longer a buffer for him; and that he must adopt a new way of life if he is going to survive. The
first thing he ought to do, at that point, is to want to become a warrior. The frightening nature of knowledge
leaves one no alternative but to become a warrior.
A warrior takes his lot, whatever it may be, and accepts it in ultimate humbleness. He accepts in
humbleness what he is, not as grounds for regret but as a living challenge.
In his day-to-day life a warrior chooses to follow the path with heart. It is the consistent choice of the path
with heart which makes a warrior different from the average man. He knows that a path has heart when he
is one with it, when he experiences a great peace and pleasure traversing its length. The things a warrior
selects to make his shields are the items of a path with heart. You must surround yourself with the items of
a path with heart and you must refuse the rest.
The world is incomprehensible. We won’t ever understand it; we won’t ever unravel its secrets. Thus we
must treat it as it is, a sheer mystery!
Only as a warrior can one survive the path of knowledge, because the art of a warrior is to balance the
terror of being a man
with the wonder of being a man.
To be a warrior you have to be crystal clear.
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 countless paths one traverses in one’s life are all equal. Oppressors and oppressed meet at the end, and
the only thing that prevails is that life was altogether too short for both.
Everything is meaningful for a warrior. The sounds have holes in them and so does everything around you.
Ordinarily a man does not have the speed to catch the holes, and thus he goes through life without
protection. The worms, the birds, the trees, all of them can tell us unimaginable things if only one could
have the speed to grasp their message.
People hardly ever realize that we can cut anything from our lives, any time, just like that. For example,
smoking and drinking are nothing. Nothing at all if we want to drop them. Only one thing is indispensable for
anything we do; the spirit. One can’t do without the spirit.
Think of your death now. It is at arm’s length. It may tap you any moment, so really you have no time for
crappy thoughts and moods. None of us have time for that. The only thing that counts is action, acting
instead of talking.
When a man decides to do something he must go all the way, but he must take responsibility for what he
does. No matter what he does, he must know first why he is doing it, and then he must proceed with his
actions without having doubts or remorse about them.
Acts have power. Especially when the person acting knows that those acts are his last battle. There is a
strange consuming happiness in acting with the full knowledge that whatever one is doing may very well be
one’s last act on earth.
The world is a mystery. This, what you’re looking at, is not all there is to it. There is much more to the world,
so much more, in fact, that it is endless.
A warrior should not have remorse for anything he has done, because to isolate one’s acts as being mean, or
ugly, or evil is to place an unwarranted importance on the self.
There are infinite numbers of lines that join us to things. They are real lines. You can feel them. The most
difficult part about the warrior’s way is to realize that the world is a feeling. When one is not-doing, one is
feeling the world, and one feels the world through its lines.
The instant one begins to live like a warrior, one is no longer ordinary. It is meaningless to complain. What’s
important from this point on is the strategy of your life.
If one is to succeed in anything, the success must come gently, with a great deal of effort but with no stress
or obsession.
A nagual man or woman is someone flexible enough to be anything. To be a nagual, among other things,
means to have no points to defend.
The internal dialogue is what grounds us. The world is such and such or so and so, only because we talk to
ourselves about its being such and such or so and so. The passageway into the world of the warrior opens
up after the warrior has learned to shut off the internal dialogue.
A warrior is always ready for anything. 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 a reasonable being. We make ourselves into one or the other.
A man of knowledge cannot possibly act towards his fellow men in injurious terms.
There is no flaw it the warrior’s way. Question without fear, without suspicion and without draining yourself.
Assemble what you learn, without presumptuousness and without piousness.
Never dwell on past events except in reference. To emphasize them would mean to take away from the
importance of what’s taking place now. A warrior cannot possibly afford to do that.
It is not so difficult to let the spirit of man flow and take over; to sustain it, however, is something that only
a warrior can do.
You are aware of everything only when you think you should be; the condition of a warrior, however, is to be
aware of everything at all times.
One of the acts of a warrior is never to let anything affect him. Thus, a warrior may be seeing the devil
himself, but he won’t let anyone know that. The control of a warrior has to be impeccable.
There’s no future. The future is only a way of talking. For a warrior there is only the here and now.
A warrior acknowledges his pain but he doesn’t indulge in it. Thus the mood of a warrior who enters into the
unknown is not one of sadness; on the contrary, he’s joyful because he feels humbled by his great fortune,
confident that his spirit is impeccable, and above all, fully aware of his efficiency. A warrior’s joyfulness
comes from having accepted his fate, and from having truthfully assessed what lies ahead of him.
A warrior’s love is the world. He embraces this enormous earth. The earth knows that he loves it and it
bestows on him its care. That’s why his life is filled to the brim and his state, wherever he’ll be, will be
plentiful. He roams on the paths of his love and, wherever he is, he is complete.
Everything in a warrior’s world depends on personal power and personal power depends on impeccability.
Part of being impeccable for a warrior is never to hinder others with his thoughts.
I am already given to the power that rules my fate. And I cling to nothing, so I will have nothing to defend. I
have no thoughts, so I will see. I fear nothing, so I will remember myself. Detached and at ease, I will dart
past the Eagle to be free.
A warrior knows that he is waiting and knows also what he is waiting for, and while he waits he feasts his
eyes on the world. The ultimate accomplishment of a warrior is joy.
Self-importance is our greatest enemy. 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.
Every one of us human beings has two minds. One is totally ours, and it is like a faint voice that always
brings us order, directness, purpose, the other mind is a foreign installation. It brings us conflict, self-
assertion, doubts, hopelessness: it’s ourselves as the me-me center of the world.
A nagual never lets anyone know that he is in charge. A nagual comes and goes without leaving a trace.
That freedom is what makes him a nagual.
cybershamans (karmapolice) / CC BY-NC-ND 3.0
VENITI CU NOI IN ISRAEL!
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