“A warrior knows that he is only a man. His only regret is that his
life is so short that he can’t grab onto all the things he would like to. But
for him, this is not an issue; it’s only a pity.”
Don Juan Matus
|
“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.”
- Don Juan Matus
|
“When a warrior learns to see
he sees that a man is a luminous
egg whether he’s a beggar or a king, and that there’s no way to change
anything; or rather, what could be changed in that luminous egg? What? ”
-Don Juan Matus
|
“The tonal is the organizer of the world. Perhaps the best way of
describing it…is to say that on its shoulders rests the task of setting the
chaos of the world in order. …everything we know and do as men is the work of
the tonal.”
“I would say that the tonal as a guardian that protects something
priceless, our very being. Therefore an inherent quality of the tonal is to be
cagey and jealous of his doings. Since its doings are by far the most important
part of our lives, it is no wonder that it eventually changes, in every one of
us, from a guardian into a guard.”
“I explained (that)
what offended me about my fellow men was that they acted maliciously…”
“I know; to achieve the mood of a warrior is not a simple matter. It is
a revolution. To regard the lion and the water rat and our fellow men as equals
is a magnificent act of a warrior’s spirit. It takes power to do that.”
“That’s the problem with talking, it always makes one confine the
issues. If one starts talking about doing,
one always ends up talking about something else. It is better to just act.”
“Take that rock for instance. To look at it is doing, but to
‘see’ it, is not-doing.”
“The world is the world because you know the doing involved in
making it so. If you didn’t know it’s doing, the world would be
different.”
“In the case of this little rock, the first thing that doing
does is shrink it in size. So the proper thing to do, which a warrior does if
he wants to stop the world, is to enlarge a little rock,
or any other thing by not-doing.”
“Is this true don Juan?”
“To say yes or no to your question is doing, but since you are
learning about not-doing I have to tell you that it really
doesn’t matter whether or not all this is true. It is here that a warrior has a
point of advantage over the average man.”
“An average man proceeds in a specific way with things he knows are
true, and in a different way with things he knows are not true. If things
are said to be true he acts, and believes in what he does.”
“But if things are said to be untrue, he doesn’t care to act, or he
doesn’t believe in what he does. A warrior on the other hand, acts in both
instances.”
“If things are said to be true, he would act to be doing. If
things are said to be untrue, he would act to be not-doing.”
“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.”
 |
| no fear |
“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 have
enough of it, one word uttered to us may be sufficient to change the course of
our lives; but, if we don’t have enough personal power, the most magnificent
piece of wisdom can be revealed to us, and that revelation won’t make a damn
bit of difference.”
“Do you know that at this very moment you are surrounded by eternity?
And do you know that you can use that eternity if you so desire?”
“Do you know that you can extend
yourself forever in …any direction? This is not a riddle; it’s a fact, but only
if you mount that moment and use it to take the totality of yourself forever in
any direction. ”
“Only the nagual has the energetic capacity to
be responsible for the fate of his cohorts. Every one of his cohorts knows
this, and this is why they accede. The nagual can be a man or a woman.” 
“In the time of the sorcerers who were the founders of my lineage,
women were, by rule, the naguals. Their
natural pragmatism; the product of their femaleness; led my lineage into pits
of practicalities from which they could barely emerge. Then the males took
over, and led my lineage into pits of imbecility from which we are barely
emerging now.”
“To be a sorcerer doesn’t mean to practice witchcraft, or to work to
affect people, or to be possessed by demons. To be a sorcerer means to reach a
level of awareness that makes inconceivable things available.”
