The Wheel of Time, Quotes

[Anonymous]

The Wheel of Time is a book written by Carlos Castaneda. I will copy some quotes here which I think could be helpful for putting together warrior related material.

I do see the word “warrior” as a derelict of past. The philosophy so clearly was that of warriors who were engaged in warfare, who saw all the pain and death and sought to survive it and find a reason, the truth of their situation.

Some of these quotes may seem not so warrior related. I copy as many to demonstrate just that. In effect it all is part of warriors mindset, at least of this particular culture.

I think that if a jedi is to become skilled in more than just philosophy, but say use of Force (see the Force, or to do things like transforming physical body into pure energy body) then a jedi needs a warrior mindset to be successful, stay safe and healthy(in mind, body and Force).

Read them, copy out to somewhere, or best get the book and meditate, reflect on those quotes. This stuff is really profound.

Power rests on the kind of knowledge that one holds. What is the sense of knowing things that are useless? They will not prepare us for our unavoidable encounter with the unknown.

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. 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

Dwelling upon the self too much produces a terrible fatigue. A man in that position is deaf and blind to everything else. The fatigue itself makes him cease to see the marvels all around him.

To be angry at people means that one considers their acts to be important. It is imperative to cease to feel that way. The acts of men cannot be important enough to offset our only viable alternative: our unchangeable encounter with infinity.

Feeling important makes one heavy, clumsy and vain. To be a warrior one needs to be light and fluid.

A warrior never worries about his fear. Instead, he thinks about the wonders of seeing the flow of energy! The rest is frills, unimportant frills.

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 on his way, free from worries or thoughts; there will be a million other decisions still awaiting him.
That’s the warriors’ way.

A warrior thinks of his death when things become unclear. The idea of death is the only thing that tempers our spirit.

[Anonymous]

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 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.

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 takes responsibility for his acts, for the most trivial of his acts. An
average man acts out his thoughts, and never takes responsibility for what he
does.

The average man is either victorious or defeated and, depending on that, he becomes a persecutor or a victim. These two conditions are prevalent as long as one does not see. Seeing dispels the illusion of victory, or defeat, or suffering.

A warrior knows that he is waiting and what he is waiting for; and while he waits he wants nothing and thus whatever little thing he gets is more than he can take. If he needs to eat he finds a way, because he is not hungry; if something hurts his body he finds a way to stop it, because he is not in pain. To be hungry or to be in pain means that the man is not a warrior; and the forces of his hunger and pain will destroy him.

Denying oneself is an indulgence. The indulgence of denying is by far the worst; it forces us to believe that we are doing great things, when in effect we are only fixed within ourselves.

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.

We hardly ever realize that we can cut anything out of our lives, anytime, in the blink of an eye.

One shouldn’t worry about taking pictures or making tape recordings. Those are superfluities of sedate lives. One should worry about the spirit, which is always receding.

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.

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.

[Anonymous]

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. The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.

People tell us from the time we are born that the world is such and such and so and so, and naturally we have no choice but to accept that the world is the way people have been telling us it is.

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.

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.

The only possible course that a warrior has is to act consistently and without reservations. At a certain moment, he knows enough of the warriors’ way to act accordingly, but his old habits and routines may stand in his way. 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.

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 or so and so. The passageway into the world of shamans opens up after the warrior has learned to shut off his internal dialogue. To change our idea of the world is the crux of shamanism. And stopping the internal dialogue is the only way to accomplish it. When a warrior learns to stop the internal dialogue, everything becomes possible; the most far-fetched schemes become attainable.

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.

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.

Solace, haven, fear, all of these are words which have created moods that one has learned to accept without ever questioning their value.

Our fellow men are black magicians. And whoever is with them is a black magician on the spot. Think for a moment. Can you deviate from the path that your fellow men have lined up for you? And if you remain with them, your thoughts and your actions are fixed forever in their terms. That is slavery. The warrior, on the other hand, is free from all that. Freedom is expensive, but the price is not impossible to pay. So, fear your captors, your masters. Don’t waste your time and
your power fearing freedom.

[JaxKeymaster]

Neo originally posted this in response to planning the warrior courses here, but I felt it would be good to post publicly for everyone to read and debate if they’d like. 

[Anonymous]

To acquire the mood of the warrior is not an easy accomplishment, for it requires seeing all of life, including one’s fellow men, as equals – an achievement which is a truly magnificent act of the warrior’s spirit. It takes a great deal of personal power to do that.

Knowledge is power. Once the warrior has embarked upon the Path of Knowledge he is no longer liable for what may happen to those whose fate brings them into contact with him. Therefore the warrior has no remorse about anything he has done, because he knows that were he to see his acts as being vile or evil, he would be making his own actions more important than the fate of others.

The warrior never apologises, for he knows that apologies are a stupid waste of time and personal power. The only thing that matters is being an impeccable warrior. However, one cannot be impeccable when one is feeling self-important. Self-importance makes one heavy, inept and vain. To be a Man of Knowledge one must be an impeccable warrior who is light and fluid.

The warrior lives by challenge; consequently his life is a disciplined strategy in the art of survival. If you are going to succeed as a warrior you cannot afford to waste your personal power in living a life which is helter-skelter.

Average man believes that his explanations of life will enable him to survive; but explanations are a meaningless waste of time. Understanding is a matter of experience; not the result of explanations. The mind can be appeased only through experience, but explanations merely dull the mind with a false sense of security, based upon assumed understanding. Whenever the warrior is barred from progress by a lack of understanding, he takes the required action in order to gain, through experience, the knowledge he lacks.

A warrior does not care about explanations. In dealing with power, an intangible and unpredictable opponent, explanations lose their significance. In view of this, rationalisations are a dangerous waste of time and energy. In a universe pervaded by the unpredictable quirks of power, rationalisation is of very little consequence. Rationalising is not true thinking. All rationalisations are simply a function of the rational mind of man, as opposed to the true mind of man.

It is not possible to become a warrior without stopping the world. In order to do this, you must believe that it is possible, and that you too are a magical being of the universe capable of doing so.

The status of warrior is not the result of having undergone a particular training program, but is rather a silent acknowledgement of self, which comes from knowing that one has become impeccable in travelling the Warrior’s Path. To be a warrior is not a goal in itself, but is instead an eternal quest for knowledge and freedom stretching into infinity.

The Warrior’s Path is not an exercise in spiritual development. The Warrior’s Path is a way of life necessary to the daily survival of the warrior. To a warrior the terms tonal and nagal are merely figures of speech necessary for clarity – in an act of survival these terms blend softly into one another.

[Author]

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