Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan’s Teachings

M: Yes. Understood. Open yourself up to the potential, and see what you can learn. If there’s something important, act on it provided it can be of potential benefit. Good! Appropriate! (Better than that: impeccable!)

R: Then the kids and I left Japan in Sept. of 96 and my brother picks us up at the airport in Colorado Springs and on the way home (we hadn’t seen each other for perhaps 8 years) I mention the compilation I’d finished in Japan of CC’s books. Well, he starts telling me about “lucid” dreaming and a group at Stanford University studying it and he even had a head set to wear at night to help start “lucid” dreaming. I was a bit shocked, no, I was more than shocked, I was crushed, I’d spent countless hours on CC’s work, I’d recorded onto tape all of his books and my compilation, I’d listened to the tapes and read the books over and over and even listened to the tapes while I slept. But suddenly my introductory note which I’d included so open mindedly, but not believingly, loomed as a real possibility, and more than that, I guess I stopped believing.

M: Understood.

R: Until you, I just figured that, as I’d told so many, the CC books were like a catch 22: You won’t find out if they are true unless you practice them, but if you practice them you won’t care if they are true, and somewhere along the line, well, I really never did practice them in the way of don Juan’s “you must push yourself beyond your limits all the time.”

M: Well, it’s not quite as harsh as you seem to imply. A process of evolution, is, ah, well, a process. You “did” engage the process to a point. You have engaged the process to a point. What happens next FOR you, is wholly up TO you. Appropriately, it is NOT a matter of “belief” at least “blind belief” because that denies all possibility of objectivity. Rather, it is a matter only of remaining open to the potentials, and slowly and sequentially attempting to build on layers of experience and awareness that combined together, provide a path for yourself and everyone that you choose to connect with.

R: And now you’ve approached me like I believe this stuff, and I am totally amazed at the way you respond to what I write to you and your ability, so writing, to show up to me as one who truly knows, yet I’m finding myself to be thinking that I am not up to your expectation …

M: Why, in heavens (tee hee) name, should I have an expectation of you? When found your posted web site, and downloaded your 180-ish page files (which I have not thoroughly read), all I found was someone who was seeking something and had placed a great deal of private effort in exposing ‘the core’ of the concept to others. Those facts can only, in logic, mean that the person having done that has been highly motivated to expose himself and others to learn what returns from the outside world in the form of confirmation or denial of the information: it is bait to the outside. That bait is to either instruct others from a position of a teacher, or to cause interchange FROM others to learn as a student that it intrigued and does not want to miss an opportunity.

R: **The exercise! Yesterday I thought I’d try at the beach, but I couldn’t do it in public, even though I waded out to waist level in the ocean and had my hands under water. Then this morning I tried to find a place where I couldn’t be seen, and I walked all around and found a couple of places where I was almost alone and in the sun, but I couldn’t get over the sense that someone would see me and I have this huge aversion to showing up to anyone as “strange.”

M: Why on earth would you care about what anyone else thinks when they see you? This can be accomplished on a shopping street with a facilitated mind set, in public.

R: And the 30 seconds in one spot where I started trying the palms down feeling of energy, my stiff shoulder was sending pain and tingling through to my hand and you’d said “a comfortable position.”

M: Why not utilize the energy to alter the molecular structure not just to ameliorate the pain, but to heal? There is a sequence, a process, to this understanding.

R: I don’t believe I’m just another reporter, however. So I won’t give up, though I must admit, I don’t know exactly what to do other than to just keep intending the internal dialogue off and … listen to your tape (of compiled E-mail exchanges I’ve recorded) too!

M: Anything that is derived from myself, is only a form of facilitation. The responsibility is wholly yours. The imperative to engage must be yours. The commit is “not” to “the way”, it is to yourself. The process of the philosophy of ‘the way’ is evolutionary for the individual who engages. After engagement, a process of alteration becomes facilitated and there can (and probably will be) many stumbles along the path. Gathered all together, though, the process can alter your existence.

R: Although there is a fundamental difference here now with you … if I could just fully accept that. Don’t you feel a bit like you’ve missed the boat with me, that I’m one of the ten million rather than one in. I honestly don’t know.

M: You say it, but you also say that you don’t fully accept it. As to “missing the boat with you”, my imperative was to approach you. Impeccability for myself demanded that. I am only who I am. If you really believed in your spirit and soul that you are one of the “ten million” (your analogy to my 90 percent, but still unknown) why on earth would you even put out one iota of effort toward this exploration, let alone wade through the 95% babble of CC in order to make a single-book approximate consolidation?

M: Your effort speaks of more than an idle curiosity. Somehow, you must have suspected something within yourself, something not opened, that caused you to take the actions that you have.

M: You might ask if more is known about you? Yes. It is appropriate that this be a subject of specific discussion? No! It must be your discovery, anything else is only a “belief system” or titillation for some other purpose such as the “dangled out hope” that many find in organized religions that are often exploited toward dependency upon those organizations.

M: Why on earth would I have an expectation of you, or have a feeling of “missed the boat” with you? Would that not imply some form of “need” within the context of the human form from myself? That would represent a very severe regression and these approaches can never be made with those dependencies in mind or concept.

M: You have taught me some very interesting things already. In exposing yourself in public forum such as the Internet, and now I have learned that this has been the situation for about 30 months according to your report which is a sufficiently long period of time to have gained many “sample contacts” from others, you have indicated that our dialogue is rather unique at least in terms that you find credible. For me this is more indication that as you have indicated, there are not many wandering about society that are thus engaged, and this is both confirming of other perceptions, and sad simultaneously.

M: Generally, I do not approach individuals in any manner that is decoupled from real-time perception (knowledge). The proteges and apprentices that have been engaged have been selected on a very personal basis and on direct contact.

M: At this point in this dialogue, although there are many details that have been omitted (Why burden your time with more verbosity than necessary to cause an open and honest communication?) The information provided is intended for you to utilize as a basis as you may wish.

R: N0TE: The following section takes the last part of the above E-mail (that you’ve not read yet) which begins to ask me questions and adds in my reply to those questions and also, then, adds in Michael’s later reply to those answers of mine. About his comments here, to my replys, Michael says, “My inserts are always based on my experiences, not ‘the written word’ as you have seen it. Remember always that cc/djm was primarily a comfort to learn of others … (not a source of new information).”

M: You might be interested … to learn that I have been in a major dilemma for myself for very long time. Here is something for you to consider as one that has offered himself toward some “limited” public exposure. Allow yourself to consider, just for a moment, that what I have related to you personally is thoroughly and wholly real.