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.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Success, Stress, Effort, Action, Warrior
In the universe there is an immeasurable, indescribable force which shamans call intent, and absolutely everything hat exists in the entire cosmos is attached to intent by a connecting link.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Universe
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.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: People, Love, Warrior, Friendship
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
Topics: Wisdom, Mystery
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
Topics: Perception, Attitude, Warrior, Challenges
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.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Knowledge, Fear, Growth, Courage
There’s no emptiness in the life of a warrior. Everything is filled to the brim. Everything is filled to the brim, and everything is equal.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Wisdom, Life, Experience, Warrior
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.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Wisdom, Death, Warrior
All paths lead nowhere, so it is important to choose a path that has heart.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Heart
All paths are the same, leading nowhere. Therefore, pick a path with heart!
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Heart
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.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Friend, Warrior, Parents, Individuality, History, Courage
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 to anyone he deems to be higher; but at the same time, he demands that someone lower than him scrape the floor for him.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Warrior, Attitude, Humility
The only thing we all have in common is that we play tricks in order to force ourselves to abandon the quest. The counter-measure is to persist in spite of all the barriers and disappointments.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Power
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 it us. Nobody is doing anything to anybody, much less to a warrior.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Warrior, Wisdom
When a warrior learns to stop the internal dialogue, everything becomes possible; the most far-fetched schemes become attainable.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Attitude, Warrior
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, mandatorily: ‘Does this path have a heart?’
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Vision, Purpose, Warrior, Fear, Heart
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 manhood.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Courage, Warrior, Growth
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.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Warrior, Wisdom, Win
A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Knowledge, Action, Warrior
A warrior doesn’t know 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.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Attitude, Warrior
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.’
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Warrior, Wise, Death, Wisdom
A warrior acts as if he knows what he is doing, when in effect he knows nothing.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Action, Warrior
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.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Attitude, Warrior, Doubt
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.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: People, Warrior, Friendship, Love
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.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Warrior, Courage
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.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Defeat, Courage, Fear, Growth
It is important to do what you don’t know how to do. It is important to see your skills as keeping you from learning what is deepest and most mysterious. If you know how to focus, unfocus. If your tendency is to make sense out of chaos, start chaos.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Creativity, Change, To Be Born Everyday
A warrior never worries about his fear.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Worry, Attitude, Warrior, Fear
It doesn’t matter how one was brought up. What determines the way one does anything is personal power.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Action, Power
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.
—Carlos Castaneda
Topics: Decide, Power, Courage, Warrior
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Margaret Mead American Cultural Anthropologist
- William Graham Sumner American Polymath
- Wayne Dyer American Self-help Author
- Ram Dass American Hindu New Age Pioneer
- Shakti Gawain American Author
- Ray Charles American Singer
- Ernest Holmes American New Thought Writer
- Deepak Chopra Indian-born American Physician
- Dan Millman American Children’s Books Writer
- Neale Donald Walsch American Spiritual Writer
Leave a Reply