Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Carlos Castaneda on self-importance and petty tyrants
Richard wrote: EVERYTHING IS SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL! my ques: if EVERYTHING is spinning out of control, how can you really tell ha ha? Anyway, I enjoyed the article about white racism. And I think we need to get more SpaceShipTwos ready like yesterday. Francis Lucille, an advaita teacher I like says that all that matters is the sincerity of the seeker, that a sincere seeker will get something even out of a bad teacher. From: Richard J. Williams rich...@rwilliams.us To: FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com Sent: Wednesday, April 17, 2013 2:37 PM Subject: [FairfieldLife] Re: Carlos Castaneda on self-importance and petty tyrants His books always had a deep influence on me, and this is one of the reasons why. The subsequent revelations about who he was etc., really didn't diminish that effect. turquoise: Me, too. As I say often about Rama, the fact that Carlos was a charlatan does NOT negate the value of some of the things he taught. :-) Every living being is psychicDid you know that the vast majority of thoughts you think and emotions you feel aren't even your own? Master Fwap asked with a wry smile on his face. 'Surfing the Himalayas' Conversations and Travels with Master Fwap By Frederick Lenz St. Martin's Griffin (December 15, 1994 p. 55.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Carlos Castaneda on self-importance and petty tyrants
This is great Barry. His books always had a deep influence on me, and this is one of the reasons why. The subsequent revelations about who he was etc., really didn't diminish that effect. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb wrote: Just in case anyone finds his words relevant to life on Fairfield Life: 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 effort should be made to eradicate self-importance from the lives of warriors. Without self-importance we are invulnerable. Self-importance can't be fought with niceties. Seers are divided into two categories. Those who are willing to exercise self-restraint and can channel their activities toward pragmatic goals, which would benefit other seers and man in general, and those who don't care about self-restraint or about any pragmatic goals. The latter have failed to resolve the problem of self-importance. Self-importance is not something simple and naive. On the one hand, it is the core of everything that is good in us, and on the other hand, the core of everything that is rotten. To get rid of the self-importance that is rotten requires a masterpiece of strategy. In order to follow the path of knowledge one has to be very imaginative. In the path of knowledge nothing is as clear as we'd like it to be. Warriors fight self-importance as a matter of strategy, not principle. Impeccability is nothing else but the proper use of energy. My statements have no inkling of morality. I've saved energy and that makes me impeccable. To understand this, you have to save enough energy yourself. Warriors take strategic inventories. They list everything they do. Then they decide which of those things can be changed in order to allow themselves a respite, in terms of expending their energy. The strategic inventory covers only behavioral patterns that are not essential to our survival and well-being. In the strategic inventories of warriors, self-importance figures as the activity that consumes the greatest amount of energy, hence, their effort to eradicate it. One of the first concerns of warriors is to free that energy in order to face the unknown with it. The action of rechanneling that energy is impeccability. The most effective strategy for rechanneling that energy consists of six elements that interplay with one another. Five of them are called the attributes of warriorship: control, discipline, forbearance, timing, and will . They pertain to the world of the warrior who is fighting to lose self-importance. The sixth element, which is perhaps the most important of all, pertains to the outside world and is called the petty tyrant. A petty tyrant is a tormentor. Someone who either holds the power of life and death over warriors or simply annoys them to distraction. Petty tyrants teach us detachment. The ingredients of the new seers' strategy shows how efficient and clever is the device of using a petty tyrant. The strategy not only gets rid of self-importance; it also prepares warriors for the final realization that impeccability is the only thing that counts in the path of knowledge. Usually, only four attributes are played. The fifth, will , is always saved for an ultimate confrontation, when warriors are facing the firing squad, so to speak. Will belongs to another sphere, the unknown. The other four belong to the known, exactly where the petty tyrants are lodged. In fact, what turns human beings into petty tyrants is precisely the obsessive manipulation of the known. The interplay of all the five attributes of warriorship is done only by seers who are also impeccable warriors and have mastery over will . Such an interplay is a supreme maneuver that cannot be performed on the daily human stage. Four attributes are all that is needed to deal with the worst of petty tyrants, provided, of course, that a petty tyrant has been found. The petty tyrant is the outside element, the one we cannot control and the element that is perhaps the most important of them all. The warrior who stumbles on a petty tyrant is a lucky one. You're fortunate if you come upon one in your path, because if you don't you have to go out and look for one. If seers can hold their own in facing petty tyrants, they can certainly face the unknown with impunity, and then they can even stand the presence of the unknowable. Nothing can temper the spirit of a warrior as much as the challenge of dealing with impossible people in positions of power. Only under those conditions can warriors acquire the sobriety and serenity to stand the pressure of the unknowable. The perfect ingredient for the making of a superb seer is a petty tyrant with unlimited prerogatives. Seers have to go to extremes to find a worthy one. Most of the time
[FairfieldLife] Re: Carlos Castaneda on self-importance and petty tyrants
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, seventhray27 wrote: This is great Barry. His books always had a deep influence on me, and this is one of the reasons why. The subsequent revelations about who he was etc., really didn't diminish that effect. Me, too. As I say often about Rama, the fact that Carlos was a charlatan does NOT negate the value of some of the things he taught. :-) As you probably remember, I met him once, and he was as fast on his feet verbally in person as he was in his writing -- *very* bright man. His value for me was that he invented (or stole...the jury is still out on that one) a vocabulary with which to discuss working with energy in the relative worlds, and how conserving energy and utilizing it wisely can help one to access the non- relative worlds. His stuff on petty tyrants I always liked, because it was about 1) viewing them as an opportunity rather than a curse, 2) learning detachment (or non-attachment if you prefer) from them, by not allowing their taunts or worse to trigger your own sense of self-importance, and 3) defeating them by allowing them to defeat them- selves -- effectively hoisting themselves on the petard of their *own* self-importance. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb wrote: Just in case anyone finds his words relevant to life on Fairfield Life: 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 effort should be made to eradicate self-importance from the lives of warriors. Without self-importance we are invulnerable. Self-importance can't be fought with niceties. Seers are divided into two categories. Those who are willing to exercise self-restraint and can channel their activities toward pragmatic goals, which would benefit other seers and man in general, and those who don't care about self-restraint or about any pragmatic goals. The latter have failed to resolve the problem of self-importance. Self-importance is not something simple and naive. On the one hand, it is the core of everything that is good in us, and on the other hand, the core of everything that is rotten. To get rid of the self-importance that is rotten requires a masterpiece of strategy. In order to follow the path of knowledge one has to be very imaginative. In the path of knowledge nothing is as clear as we'd like it to be. Warriors fight self-importance as a matter of strategy, not principle. Impeccability is nothing else but the proper use of energy. My statements have no inkling of morality. I've saved energy and that makes me impeccable. To understand this, you have to save enough energy yourself. Warriors take strategic inventories. They list everything they do. Then they decide which of those things can be changed in order to allow themselves a respite, in terms of expending their energy. The strategic inventory covers only behavioral patterns that are not essential to our survival and well-being. In the strategic inventories of warriors, self-importance figures as the activity that consumes the greatest amount of energy, hence, their effort to eradicate it. One of the first concerns of warriors is to free that energy in order to face the unknown with it. The action of rechanneling that energy is impeccability. The most effective strategy for rechanneling that energy consists of six elements that interplay with one another. Five of them are called the attributes of warriorship: control, discipline, forbearance, timing, and will . They pertain to the world of the warrior who is fighting to lose self-importance. The sixth element, which is perhaps the most important of all, pertains to the outside world and is called the petty tyrant. A petty tyrant is a tormentor. Someone who either holds the power of life and death over warriors or simply annoys them to distraction. Petty tyrants teach us detachment. The ingredients of the new seers' strategy shows how efficient and clever is the device of using a petty tyrant. The strategy not only gets rid of self-importance; it also prepares warriors for the final realization that impeccability is the only thing that counts in the path of knowledge. Usually, only four attributes are played. The fifth, will , is always saved for an ultimate confrontation, when warriors are facing the firing squad, so to speak. Will belongs to another sphere, the unknown. The other four belong to the known, exactly where the petty tyrants are lodged. In fact, what turns human beings into petty tyrants is precisely the obsessive manipulation of the known. The interplay of all the five attributes of warriorship is done only by seers who are also impeccable warriors and have mastery over will . Such an
[FairfieldLife] Re: Carlos Castaneda on self-importance and petty tyrants
turquoiseb: Carlos Castaneda on self-importance and petty tyrants Everyone knows that Castaneda and Rama got most of their ideas from reading books like the Bhagavad Gita and the Ramayana epic. Some of these ideas they wrote about are almost pure Buddhism and Hinduism. In the latter case, Rama got most of his stuff from Blavatsky. But, neither was apparently a real warrior. Go figure. Bhagavad Gita 3.12: 'istan bhogan hi vo deva dasyante yajna-bhavitah tair dattan apradayaibhyo yo bhunkte stena eva sah' In charge of the various necessities of life, the demigods, being satisfied by the performance of yajna [sacrifice], will supply all necessities to you. But he who enjoys such gifts without offering them to the demigods in return is certainly a thief. 'Introduction to Bhagavad Gita' By Sri A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada http://tinyurl.com/2wgxpkr
[FairfieldLife] Re: Carlos Castaneda on self-importance and petty tyrants
Read: Barry is the warrior. Judy is the petty tyrant. That is why Barry wrote his post on porta potties- so we can see how real warriors respond in times if personal challenges in the face of those pesky petty tyrants. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb no_reply@... wrote: Just in case anyone finds his words relevant to life on Fairfield Life: 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 effort should be made to eradicate self-importance from the lives of warriors. Without self-importance we are invulnerable. Self-importance can't be fought with niceties. Seers are divided into two categories. Those who are willing to exercise self-restraint and can channel their activities toward pragmatic goals, which would benefit other seers and man in general, and those who don't care about self-restraint or about any pragmatic goals. The latter have failed to resolve the problem of self-importance. Self-importance is not something simple and naive. On the one hand, it is the core of everything that is good in us, and on the other hand, the core of everything that is rotten. To get rid of the self-importance that is rotten requires a masterpiece of strategy. In order to follow the path of knowledge one has to be very imaginative. In the path of knowledge nothing is as clear as we'd like it to be. Warriors fight self-importance as a matter of strategy, not principle. Impeccability is nothing else but the proper use of energy. My statements have no inkling of morality. I've saved energy and that makes me impeccable. To understand this, you have to save enough energy yourself. Warriors take strategic inventories. They list everything they do. Then they decide which of those things can be changed in order to allow themselves a respite, in terms of expending their energy. The strategic inventory covers only behavioral patterns that are not essential to our survival and well-being. In the strategic inventories of warriors, self-importance figures as the activity that consumes the greatest amount of energy, hence, their effort to eradicate it. One of the first concerns of warriors is to free that energy in order to face the unknown with it. The action of rechanneling that energy is impeccability. The most effective strategy for rechanneling that energy consists of six elements that interplay with one another. Five of them are called the attributes of warriorship: control, discipline, forbearance, timing, and will . They pertain to the world of the warrior who is fighting to lose self-importance. The sixth element, which is perhaps the most important of all, pertains to the outside world and is called the petty tyrant. A petty tyrant is a tormentor. Someone who either holds the power of life and death over warriors or simply annoys them to distraction. Petty tyrants teach us detachment. The ingredients of the new seers' strategy shows how efficient and clever is the device of using a petty tyrant. The strategy not only gets rid of self-importance; it also prepares warriors for the final realization that impeccability is the only thing that counts in the path of knowledge. Usually, only four attributes are played. The fifth, will , is always saved for an ultimate confrontation, when warriors are facing the firing squad, so to speak. Will belongs to another sphere, the unknown. The other four belong to the known, exactly where the petty tyrants are lodged. In fact, what turns human beings into petty tyrants is precisely the obsessive manipulation of the known. The interplay of all the five attributes of warriorship is done only by seers who are also impeccable warriors and have mastery over will . Such an interplay is a supreme maneuver that cannot be performed on the daily human stage. Four attributes are all that is needed to deal with the worst of petty tyrants, provided, of course, that a petty tyrant has been found. The petty tyrant is the outside element, the one we cannot control and the element that is perhaps the most important of them all. The warrior who stumbles on a petty tyrant is a lucky one. You're fortunate if you come upon one in your path, because if you don't you have to go out and look for one. If seers can hold their own in facing petty tyrants, they can certainly face the unknown with impunity, and then they can even stand the presence of the unknowable. Nothing can temper the spirit of a warrior as much as the challenge of dealing with impossible people in positions of power. Only under those conditions can warriors acquire the sobriety and serenity to stand the pressure of the unknowable. The perfect ingredient for the making of a superb seer is a petty tyrant with unlimited prerogatives. Seers
[FairfieldLife] Re: Carlos Castaneda on self-importance and petty tyrants
I haven't glanced at Castaneda's stuff for years. I was appalled by the excerpt. It reads like some gooey-eyed sophomore, making big, unqualified statements, about warriors and petty tyrants. It is all in his head. I cannot imagine what value Barry sees in it. Once we gain some self-confidence and social balance, and stop self-referencing so much, life returns to normal, without all the dramatic, behind the eyes, mental masturbation going on, the us and them. There are no warriors and petty tyrants and attention vampires and whatever else term Barry wants to hang on those he can't cope with. This isn't some Renaissance Fair Fantasy, it is FFL, an Internet forum. Just as Castaneda was walking around a lot, looking at rocks, and making shit up, Barry does the same...except his body is forty years older than Carlos's was, so he makes it up, while sitting down. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Ann awoelflebater@... wrote: Read: Barry is the warrior. Judy is the petty tyrant. That is why Barry wrote his post on porta potties- so we can see how real warriors respond in times if personal challenges in the face of those pesky petty tyrants. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, turquoiseb no_reply@ wrote: Just in case anyone finds his words relevant to life on Fairfield Life: 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 effort should be made to eradicate self-importance from the lives of warriors. Without self-importance we are invulnerable. Self-importance can't be fought with niceties. Seers are divided into two categories. Those who are willing to exercise self-restraint and can channel their activities toward pragmatic goals, which would benefit other seers and man in general, and those who don't care about self-restraint or about any pragmatic goals. The latter have failed to resolve the problem of self-importance. Self-importance is not something simple and naive. On the one hand, it is the core of everything that is good in us, and on the other hand, the core of everything that is rotten. To get rid of the self-importance that is rotten requires a masterpiece of strategy. In order to follow the path of knowledge one has to be very imaginative. In the path of knowledge nothing is as clear as we'd like it to be. Warriors fight self-importance as a matter of strategy, not principle. Impeccability is nothing else but the proper use of energy. My statements have no inkling of morality. I've saved energy and that makes me impeccable. To understand this, you have to save enough energy yourself. Warriors take strategic inventories. They list everything they do. Then they decide which of those things can be changed in order to allow themselves a respite, in terms of expending their energy. The strategic inventory covers only behavioral patterns that are not essential to our survival and well-being. In the strategic inventories of warriors, self-importance figures as the activity that consumes the greatest amount of energy, hence, their effort to eradicate it. One of the first concerns of warriors is to free that energy in order to face the unknown with it. The action of rechanneling that energy is impeccability. The most effective strategy for rechanneling that energy consists of six elements that interplay with one another. Five of them are called the attributes of warriorship: control, discipline, forbearance, timing, and will . They pertain to the world of the warrior who is fighting to lose self-importance. The sixth element, which is perhaps the most important of all, pertains to the outside world and is called the petty tyrant. A petty tyrant is a tormentor. Someone who either holds the power of life and death over warriors or simply annoys them to distraction. Petty tyrants teach us detachment. The ingredients of the new seers' strategy shows how efficient and clever is the device of using a petty tyrant. The strategy not only gets rid of self-importance; it also prepares warriors for the final realization that impeccability is the only thing that counts in the path of knowledge. Usually, only four attributes are played. The fifth, will , is always saved for an ultimate confrontation, when warriors are facing the firing squad, so to speak. Will belongs to another sphere, the unknown. The other four belong to the known, exactly where the petty tyrants are lodged. In fact, what turns human beings into petty tyrants is precisely the obsessive manipulation of the known. The interplay of all the five attributes of warriorship is done only by seers who are also impeccable warriors and have mastery over will . Such an interplay is a supreme
[FairfieldLife] Re: Carlos Castaneda on self-importance and petty tyrants
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Richard J. Williams richard@... wrote: turquoiseb: Carlos Castaneda on self-importance and petty tyrants Everyone knows that Castaneda and Rama got most of their ideas from reading books like the Bhagavad Gita and the Ramayana epic. Some of these ideas they wrote about are almost pure Buddhism and Hinduism. In the latter case, Rama got most of his stuff from Blavatsky. But, neither was apparently a real warrior. Go figure. Richard, everyone who's been here a while knows that you're a know-nothing troll who shouldn't be paid any attention to at all. But for the benefit of possible lurkers or newbies who have not yet figured this out and might actually *believe* this horseshit, I will correct you. NOTHING could be further from the truth that Castaneda based the stuff in his books on Indian scriptures or concepts. His Warrior's Way teaching really IS based more on Yaqui concepts that he admittedly might have stolen from real Mexican shamans. But these concepts have almost nothing to do with Eastern teachings. The entire emphasis is on *Life In The Relative*, and living it as well and as successfully as possible. There is no concept of enlightenment, no concept of reincarnation, and above all no concept of renunciation or withdrawal from the world. It's a very, very, very pragmatic set of teachings, having to do with life here in the real world, and how to make that life work as successfully as possible. While there ARE concepts of saving and storing energy for the purposes of exploring different levels of life (Separate Realities, to use his term), there is NO sense of evolution or progress towards some Woo Woo goal of enlightenment or liberation as it is thought of in New Agey versions of Hindu and Eastern teachings (read TM). In his view, ya get out of life pretty much what you put into it -- no karma, no past-life influences, no astrological influences, certainly no S-V influences, and above all no gods, goddesses, or other beings whose asses you have to kiss to evolve or have nice things happen to you. Get some smarts, dumbass. If you *ever* read Carlos Castaneda, it must have been back during a period when you were seriously stoned, because you missed pretty much all of the major points of what he was about. :-)
[FairfieldLife] Re: Carlos Castaneda on self-importance and petty tyrants
--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, doctordumbass@... no_reply@... wrote: I haven't glanced at Castaneda's stuff for years. I was appalled by the excerpt. It reads like some gooey-eyed sophomore, making big, unqualified statements, about warriors and petty tyrants. It is all in his head. I cannot imagine what value Barry sees in it. Perhaps you were appalled because one of the very first statement: '...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.' If you are appalled, you have not seen through the veil called ignorance. Barry makes big unqualified statements, though there is usually a disclaimer from time to time that is it merely opinion. I make unqualified statements. Maharishi made all sorts of unqualified statements. The human universe is a morass of unqualified statements. What one needs is a strategy for sorting out what is useful and what is not. And each person has to find out for themselves which strategies work for them. When you consult a teacher, a master, you are not turning over your life to them. What you are trying to do is reclaim your life. What you are attempting to get from them is the means to sort out what is useful for reclaiming life. Surrender is suicide of the ego, not turning your life over to someone else to run it for you. The teacher, the master is the tool you select to do this. Maybe you get the wrong tool several times in a row. Keep trying. Enlightenment, conceived as a path of knowledge, is not a technique, it is a strategy. Sometimes you need to retreat, sometimes attack, sometimes just sit still. Techniques can be part of the strategy, as can be dedication to your purpose, and some kind of visualisation of the goal, which cannot be too precise because all one's ideas about the goal are really largely mistaken for most of the journey. Casteneda's quotes here (and I have not read anything by him in almost 40 years) are all to this purpose of liberation from ones self-imposed limitations. Having an adversary is very useful, especially a good one. You cannot learn chess against a weak adversary; you will not discover your inept play this way. It is like a chess game. Anything you can find that acts as your adversary can help. My first adversary on FFL was Barry, and it helped clear up a lot of fogginess in my experience. Judy has also been useful. Judy fits the definition of petty tyrant. Robin is a more sophisticated tyrant, less petty, but more capable, and more consciously self-involved. Once you get what you want from these obstacles, you can retreat. I think Barry's assessment here that Casteneda, the ultimate con man, nonetheless has said some very useful things. It is not what other people say, but how you manage their effect on you that makes them valuable. Thus whether who you are consulting is Christ or Hitler, Buddha or Stalin, you can find something that will aid you in the quest for life. The goal is not to become what THEY are, but what YOU are.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Carlos Castaneda on self-importance and petty tyrants
...I cannot imagine what value Barry sees in it. Xenophaneros: It is not what other people say, but how you manage their effect on you that makes them valuable... For Carlos and don Juan, it's all about the substances they partake. The idea in shamanism is to get high, to fly up in an altered state, into a separate reality, and learn to communicate with the spirits; to journey with them and learn from them and to master them. And why? To get POWER. Only known photo of don Juan Matus According to Campbell, ...the supreme goal of the shaman is to abandon his body and rise to heaven or descend into hell, not to let himself be 'possessed' by his assisting spirits, by demons or the souls of the dead; the shaman's ideal is to master these spirits, not to let himself be 'occupied' by them.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Carlos Castaneda on self-importance and petty tyrants
His books always had a deep influence on me, and this is one of the reasons why. The subsequent revelations about who he was etc., really didn't diminish that effect. turquoise: Me, too. As I say often about Rama, the fact that Carlos was a charlatan does NOT negate the value of some of the things he taught. :-) Every living being is psychicDid you know that the vast majority of thoughts you think and emotions you feel aren't even your own? Master Fwap asked with a wry smile on his face. 'Surfing the Himalayas' Conversations and Travels with Master Fwap By Frederick Lenz St. Martin's Griffin (December 15, 1994 p. 55.
[FairfieldLife] Re: Carlos Castaneda on self-importance and petty tyrants
Ya know, Zee Know, life goes a lot further than this contrived relationship that Charlie Casteneda builds between himself and others. His two bit lecture against Self Importance, is nothing but a speech glorifying it, the intricacies of avoiding it, the ways in which he separates out those who are under its sway, from the Warriors, who, while labeling themselves, Warriors, have presumably escaped the influence of Self-Importance. The closest Charlie ever got to being a warrior was wielding a stapler in Grad school. So, I will sidestep all the drama you have cooked up about this veil of ignorance I remain behind, and go do something real for awhile. Back in a bit. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, doctordumbass@ no_reply@ wrote: I haven't glanced at Castaneda's stuff for years. I was appalled by the excerpt. It reads like some gooey-eyed sophomore, making big, unqualified statements, about warriors and petty tyrants. It is all in his head. I cannot imagine what value Barry sees in it. Perhaps you were appalled because one of the very first statement: '...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.' If you are appalled, you have not seen through the veil called ignorance. Barry makes big unqualified statements, though there is usually a disclaimer from time to time that is it merely opinion. I make unqualified statements. Maharishi made all sorts of unqualified statements. The human universe is a morass of unqualified statements. What one needs is a strategy for sorting out what is useful and what is not. And each person has to find out for themselves which strategies work for them. When you consult a teacher, a master, you are not turning over your life to them. What you are trying to do is reclaim your life. What you are attempting to get from them is the means to sort out what is useful for reclaiming life. Surrender is suicide of the ego, not turning your life over to someone else to run it for you. The teacher, the master is the tool you select to do this. Maybe you get the wrong tool several times in a row. Keep trying. Enlightenment, conceived as a path of knowledge, is not a technique, it is a strategy. Sometimes you need to retreat, sometimes attack, sometimes just sit still. Techniques can be part of the strategy, as can be dedication to your purpose, and some kind of visualisation of the goal, which cannot be too precise because all one's ideas about the goal are really largely mistaken for most of the journey. Casteneda's quotes here (and I have not read anything by him in almost 40 years) are all to this purpose of liberation from ones self-imposed limitations. Having an adversary is very useful, especially a good one. You cannot learn chess against a weak adversary; you will not discover your inept play this way. It is like a chess game. Anything you can find that acts as your adversary can help. My first adversary on FFL was Barry, and it helped clear up a lot of fogginess in my experience. Judy has also been useful. Judy fits the definition of petty tyrant. Robin is a more sophisticated tyrant, less petty, but more capable, and more consciously self-involved. Once you get what you want from these obstacles, you can retreat. I think Barry's assessment here that Casteneda, the ultimate con man, nonetheless has said some very useful things. It is not what other people say, but how you manage their effect on you that makes them valuable. Thus whether who you are consulting is Christ or Hitler, Buddha or Stalin, you can find something that will aid you in the quest for life. The goal is not to become what THEY are, but what YOU are.
Re: [FairfieldLife] Re: Carlos Castaneda on self-importance and petty tyrants
Guru Zee Know's platitude infested head is so big that he has to buy 3 airplane tickets and sit in the middle seat !!! He can't even buy a first class ticket because that would mean his head sideways either towards the window or the aisle - OMG I am really cracking up imagining this - poor Xeno :-( On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 5:30 PM, doctordumb...@rocketmail.com no_re...@yahoogroups.com wrote: ** Ya know, Zee Know, life goes a lot further than this contrived relationship that Charlie Casteneda builds between himself and others. His two bit lecture against Self Importance, is nothing but a speech glorifying it, the intricacies of avoiding it, the ways in which he separates out those who are under its sway, from the Warriors, who, while labeling themselves, Warriors, have presumably escaped the influence of Self-Importance. The closest Charlie ever got to being a warrior was wielding a stapler in Grad school. So, I will sidestep all the drama you have cooked up about this veil of ignorance I remain behind, and go do something real for awhile. Back in a bit. --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Xenophaneros Anartaxius anartaxius@... wrote: --- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, doctordumbass@ no_reply@ wrote: I haven't glanced at Castaneda's stuff for years. I was appalled by the excerpt. It reads like some gooey-eyed sophomore, making big, unqualified statements, about warriors and petty tyrants. It is all in his head. I cannot imagine what value Barry sees in it. Perhaps you were appalled because one of the very first statement: '...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.' If you are appalled, you have not seen through the veil called ignorance. Barry makes big unqualified statements, though there is usually a disclaimer from time to time that is it merely opinion. I make unqualified statements. Maharishi made all sorts of unqualified statements. The human universe is a morass of unqualified statements. What one needs is a strategy for sorting out what is useful and what is not. And each person has to find out for themselves which strategies work for them. When you consult a teacher, a master, you are not turning over your life to them. What you are trying to do is reclaim your life. What you are attempting to get from them is the means to sort out what is useful for reclaiming life. Surrender is suicide of the ego, not turning your life over to someone else to run it for you. The teacher, the master is the tool you select to do this. Maybe you get the wrong tool several times in a row. Keep trying. Enlightenment, conceived as a path of knowledge, is not a technique, it is a strategy. Sometimes you need to retreat, sometimes attack, sometimes just sit still. Techniques can be part of the strategy, as can be dedication to your purpose, and some kind of visualisation of the goal, which cannot be too precise because all one's ideas about the goal are really largely mistaken for most of the journey. Casteneda's quotes here (and I have not read anything by him in almost 40 years) are all to this purpose of liberation from ones self-imposed limitations. Having an adversary is very useful, especially a good one. You cannot learn chess against a weak adversary; you will not discover your inept play this way. It is like a chess game. Anything you can find that acts as your adversary can help. My first adversary on FFL was Barry, and it helped clear up a lot of fogginess in my experience. Judy has also been useful. Judy fits the definition of petty tyrant. Robin is a more sophisticated tyrant, less petty, but more capable, and more consciously self-involved. Once you get what you want from these obstacles, you can retreat. I think Barry's assessment here that Casteneda, the ultimate con man, nonetheless has said some very useful things. It is not what other people say, but how you manage their effect on you that makes them valuable. Thus whether who you are consulting is Christ or Hitler, Buddha or Stalin, you can find something that will aid you in the quest for life. The goal is not to become what THEY are, but what YOU are.
