Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan’s Teachings

To discard everything that is unnecessary is the second principle of the art of stalking .

Warriors don’t have the world to cushion them, so they must have the rule. Yet the rule of stalkers applies to everyone.

The first precept of the rule is that everything that surrounds us is an unfathomable mystery.

The second precept of the rule is that we must try to unravel these mysteries, but without ever hoping to accomplish this.

The third, that a warrior, aware of the unfathomable mystery that surrounds him and aware of his duty to try to unravel it, takes his rightful place among mysteries and regards himself as one. Consequently, for a warrior there is no end to the mystery of being, whether being means being a pebble, or an ant, or oneself. That is a warrior’s humbleness. One is equal to everything.

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Apply all the concentration you have to decide whether or not to enter into battle, for any battle is a battle for one’s life. This is the third principle of the art of stalking . A warrior must be willing and ready to make his last stand here and now. But not in a helter-skelter way.

The fourth principle of the art of stalking is; relax, abandon yourself, fear nothing. Only then will the powers that guide us open the road and aid us. Only then.

The fifth principle is; when faced with odds that cannot be dealt with, warriors retreat for a moment. They let their minds meander. They occupy their time with something else. Anything would do.

The sixth principle: warriors compress time; even an instant counts. In a battle for your life, a second is an eternity; an eternity that may decide the outcome. Warriors aim at succeeding, therefore they compress time. Warriors don’t waste an instant.

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A recapitulation is the forte of stalkers as the dreaming body is the forte of dreamers . It consists of recollecting one’s life down to the most insignificant detail.

The first stage is a brief recounting of all the incidents in our lives that in an obvious manner stand out for examination.

The second stage is a more detailed recollection, which starts systematically at a point that could be the moment prior to the stalker sitting, and theoretically could extend to the moment of birth.

A perfect recapitulation can change a warrior as much, if not more, than the total control of the dreaming body . In this respect, dreaming and stalking lead to the same end, the entering into the third attention. It is important for a warrior, however, to know and practice both.

The key element in recapitulating is breathing. Recollecting is easy if one can reduce the area of stimulation around the body. Theoretically, stalkers have to remember every feeling that they have had in their lives, and this process begins with a breath.

Write down a list of the events to be relived. The procedure starts with an initial breath. Stalkers begin with their chin on the right shoulder and slowly inhale as they move their head over a hundred and eighty degree arc. The breath terminates on the left shoulder. Once the inhalation ends, the head goes back to a relaxed position. They exhale looking straight ahead.

The stalker then takes the event at the top of the list and remains with it until all the feelings expended in it have been recounted. As stalkers remember the feelings they invested in whatever it is that they are remembering, they inhale slowly, moving their heads from the right shoulder to the left. The function of this breathing is to restore energy. The luminous body is constantly creating cobweblike filaments, which are projected out of the luminous mass, propelled by emotions of any sort. Therefore, every situation of interaction, or every situation where feelings are involved, is potentially draining to the luminous body. By breathing from right to left while remembering a feeling, stalkers , through the magic of breathing, pick up the filaments they left behind. The next immediate breath is from left to right and it is an exhalation. With it stalkers eject filaments left in them by other luminous bodies involved in the event being recollected.

These are the mandatory preliminaries of stalking . Unless stalkers have gone through the preliminaries in order to retrieve the filaments they have left in the world, and particularly in order to reject those that others have left in them, there is no possibility of handling controlled folly, because those foreign filaments are the basis of one’s limitless capacity for self-importance.

In order to practice controlled folly, since it is not a way to fool or chastise people or feel superior to them, one has to be capable of laughing at oneself. One of the results of a detailed recapitulation is genuine laughter upon coming face to face with the boring repetition of one’s self-esteem, which is at the core of all human interactions.

The rule defines stalking and dreaming as arts; therefore they are something that one performs. The life-giving nature of breath is what also gives it its cleansing capacity. It is this capacity that makes a recapitulation into a practical matter.

A profound recapitulation is the most expedient means to lose the human form. Thus it is easier for stalkers , after recapitulating their lives, to make use of all the not-doings of the self, such as erasing personal history, losing self-importance, breaking routines and so forth.

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A stalker never pushes himself to the front. In order to apply this seventh principle of the art of stalking , one has to apply the other six. Only a master stalker can be a master of controlled folly. Controlled folly doesn’t mean to con people. It means, as my benefactor explained it, that warriors apply the seven basic principles of the art of stalking to whatever they do, from the most trivial acts to life and death situations.

Applying these principles brings about three results. The first is that stalkers learn never to take themselves seriously; they learn to laugh at themselves. If they’re not afraid of being a fool, they can fool anyone. The second is that stalkers learn to have endless patience. Stalkers are never in a hurry; they never fret. And the third is that stalkers learn to have an endless capacity to improvise.

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Stalkers face the oncoming time. Normally we face time as it recedes from us. Only stalkers can change that and face time as it advances on them. They see time as something concrete, yet incomprehensible.

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We’re warriors, and warriors have only one thing in mind–their freedom. To die and be consumed by the Indescribable Force is no challenge. On the other hand, to sneak around the Indescribable Force and be free is the ultimate audacity.

What’s needed to enter fully into the other self is to abandon the intent of our first attention.

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Be frugal and utilize every bit of your energy without wasting any of it.

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When I talk about time, I am not referring to something which is measured by the movement of a clock. Time is the essence of attention; the Indescribable Force ‘s emanations are made out of time; and properly, when one enters into any aspect of the other self, one is becoming acquainted with time.

The wheel of time is like a state of heightened awareness which is part of the other self, as the left side awareness is part of the self of everyday life. It can physically be described as a tunnel of infinite length and width; a tunnel with reflective furrows. Every furrow is infinite, and there are infinite numbers of them. Living creatures are compulsorily made, by the force of life, to gaze into one furrow. To gaze into it means to be trapped by it, to live that furrow.

Will belongs to the wheel of time. It is something like the runner of a vine, or an intangible tentacle which all of us possess. A warrior’s final aim is to learn to focus it on the wheel of time in order to make it turn. Warriors who have succeeded in turning the wheel of time can gaze into any furrow and draw from it whatever they desire. To be trapped compulsorily in one furrow of time entails seeing the images of that furrow only as they recede. To be free from the spellbinding force of those grooves means that one can look in either direction, as images recede or as they approach.

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Warriors have no life of their own. From the moment they understand the nature of awareness, they cease to be persons and the human condition is no longer part of their view. You have your duty as a warrior and nothing else is important. So do your best.

The challenge of a warrior is to arrive at a very subtle balance of positive and negative forces. This challenge does not mean that a warrior should strive to have everything under control, but that a warrior should strive to meet any conceivable situation, the expected and the unexpected, with equal efficiency. To be perfect under perfect circumstances is to be a paper warrior.