Letters to the Editor
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Hunting the nagual
That reminds of another fox story.
A fox woke in the morning, stood up, and looking at it's shadow on the ground, pronounced, "Today I will eat an elephant." It hunted for an elephant all morning. Then at midday after gazing again at its shadow it said, "A mouse will do".
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Once again...they missed the point
Having read Robert Marshall's ill-concieved, poorly researched article one can only throw your hands up and smile. It's the same argument over and over and it shows nothing. Relying on Amy Wallace for something even close to factual is a dubious bet at best and even more so for the ever pedantic and anal Richard Jennings. Believe me, for those who were there, and are there, the mantra is always the same with regards to these two..."That's not the way it happened." No one outside of the situation who has just come upon it seems to want to be bothered to consider that maybe the Nagual Carlos Castaneda told people to cut their family ties because the parents were either abusive or totally absent at best or that maybe Amy and Richard were looking at the scene through limited eyes or...the list goes on. It was, and is, a very real phenomenon, more real than anything you will ever experience in this so called waking life. But I am sure many will be obliged, and relieved, to believe that there are no such things a flyers or the second attention. What a relief, eh? Back to a life of complaining and playing the victim and watching American Idol...or a life of reasonable fascimile.(I know, I know, you love your kids and are somewhat happy...or so you tell yourself). It's interesting to watch as the masses struggle to try and understand the unknown...and again...most unfortunately, miss the point. In all fairness, it's not an easy path...but one that I won't ever give up as I have seen too much to let meager rational doubts stop me. For the record, he never told her to get a job at McDonald's, he told her she had never had a real job or consequently, any real empathy for anyone other than her self and that, half jokingly, he suggested she get a "real" job to learn some humility and compassion, not the overbearing self-pity she had for herself. True dat...
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Casteneda's experience
Anyone who has read Casteneda and observed the behavior of a housecat inevitably thinks of the Teachings of Don Juan.
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Thanks for the info
Thank you for this information. My son has read Calos Castaneda's book's and it supported him in futher drug (ab)use. I hope that this information will give him a more balanced view. I myself have always thought that Carlos made many things up in a clever way. His writing accords with the fasions of the time written. But they are fun to read, not without valuable thoughts, and ... also dangerous for some feeble minds.
Hans
Eindhoven
Netherlands
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Does it really matter?....Can you say "Disconnect"
Lesse...stay celibate, don't drink cappuccino, fly around like a witch, never get sick, never die (but instead turn into a fireball)...and maybe compulsively lie, abuse and obfuscate a little while you're at it.
It's amazing that all his deep insight didn't seem to help him very much in the end. And it also likely ended the lives of his closest, "most evolved," diciples. You have to wonder how his casual defenders here would have turned out if only they "got with the program" a little more.
But some of you can't yet write him off yet. Yes, he may have seemed witty, chrismatic, profound and gave "real" experiences to you. But consider this - even some of Jim Jones' close followers reported experiencing spiritual (even kundalini) sensations around the good Rev..
If you can't write CC off as another Con Artist, then consider some of the darker aspects of your own beliefs. Consider that such people may have had real communicative, if not "spiritual," or "psychic," gifts. Consider that they also developed huge, abusive egos (and perhaps even a "conscience seared with a hot iron" - maybe a series of them).
Every Light Show has to end sometime, and it's never for free. If you can't accept that it was all just wishfullness or brainwashing, then you have to entertain he was something a bit more diabolical.
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A More Balanced Picture
It is quite obvious reading these posts that very few have done more than give a cursory reading of the literature, all the while acting as if they actually knew the person and his work and were personally offended by him.
It is similarly clear that very few have attempted to tackle the premises of the literature, nor God forbid integrate any of the sorceric practices into their lives for any sufficient length of time to determine whether or not they are valid.
It is quite amazing to think that this man left behind a legacy and compendium of knowledge spanning three decades of the most extraordinary training under master seers. Was that at all the focus of the article? NO. It is quite amusing to think that both the Salon article and the BBC4 documentary wasted no time in getting down to the dirt, rumor and sensationalism, rather than come to terms with the premise of sorcery that Castaneda was describing throughout his books.
Once again, only cursory mention was made of Tensegrity, Cleargreen or the worldwide practitioner body, not to mention shifts of the assemblage point or dreaming realities. For a man who has been "dead" for 10 years, his legacy has quite a head of steam. How strange? Given this amount of negative press coverage he is receiving.
Have you ever thought...in those very quiet moments...that you might be wrong, that you fell for something, that you fell for a certain interpretation of events? And what you might not be able to appreciate is the cost.
You are forgiven. Dirt sells...we understand that. But you just might have missed something crucial in all this in letting your awareness get hooked by all that crap. You might have missed the bird of freedom or the doorway to infinity.
I found many of the posts to be quite hostile and cynical, and at the same time ignorant. It is the eqivalent of showing up at an execution by stoning and starting to throw stones because everyone else is doing it.
I never had the good fortue to meet or know Carlos Castaneda but I can tell you that the warrior's path that he espouses through his writings has deep and unmistakeable parallels and resonances with most transformative and transpersonal paradigms. It is also clear beyond a doubt for anyone who has been around and committed themselves over several decades to one of these paths that Carlos Castaneda was for real.
You will have to deal with that.