15 Deep Lessons from Castaneda’s Teachings

is useless to spend your entire life on a single path, especially if that path has no heart.

Don’t explain too much. Every explanation hides an excuse. When you explain why you cannot do something, you are really apologizing for your shortcomings, hoping others will be kind and forgive them.

To get the most out of life, a person must be able to change. Unfortunately, people change with great difficulty, and these changes happen very slowly. Many spend years on this. The hardest part is truly wanting to change.

I never get angry at anyone. No one can do anything that would deserve such a reaction from me. You get angry at people when you feel their actions matter. I stopped feeling that long ago.

You must always remember that a path is only a path. If you feel that you should not follow it, you must not stay on it under any circumstances.

To perceive the reality familiar to another person, one must first free oneself from one’s own reality. But it is not easy for a person to abandon their habitual picture of the world; this habit must be broken with force.

Act as if this were a dream. Act boldly and do not seek excuses.

The main obstacle for most people is their inner dialogue — this is the key to everything. When a person learns to stop it, everything becomes possible. Even the most incredible projects become achievable.

People generally do not realize that at any moment they can throw anything out of their lives. At any time. Instantly.

The only truly wise adviser we have is death. Whenever you feel, as often happens, that everything is going terribly wrong and you are on the verge of complete collapse, turn to your left and ask your death if this is so. And your death will answer that you are mistaken, and that nothing really matters except its touch. Your death will say: “But I haven’t touched you yet.”

Everyone follows their own path. Yet all paths lead nowhere. Therefore, the meaning lies in the path itself — in how you walk it. If you walk with joy, it is your path. If you feel bad, you can leave it at any moment, no matter how far you’ve gone. And that will be right.

We need all our time and all our energy to overcome the stupidity within ourselves. That is what truly matters. Everything else is of no importance at all.

The whole trick is in what you choose to focus on. Each of us makes ourselves either miserable or strong. The amount of work required in both cases is exactly the same.

The art of the warrior is to maintain balance between the terror of being human and the wonder of being human.

To become a person of knowledge, one must be a warrior, not a whining child. To fight without giving up, without complaining, without retreating — to fight until one sees. And all of this only to understand that there is nothing in the world that truly matters.