--- 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.
