A Piece of a Conversation With Don Juan

"I'll tell you what we talk to ourselves about. We talk about our world. In fact we maintain our world with our internal talk. ...Whenever we finish talking to ourselves the world is always as it should be. We renew it, we kindle it with life, we uphold it with our internal talk. Not only that, but we also choose our paths as we talk to ourselves. Thus we repeat the same choices over and over until the day we die, because we keep on repeating the same internal talk until the day we die."

(1) That sounds like truth to me.

(2) Ouch.

It's so easy to run ourselves into a rut. And the older we get, the narrower the ruts seem to run. We listen to the same music and regard other, especially current, music as trash. We read the same types of books...maybe even the same books...maybe we even stop reading books. Etcetera. It's comfortable. And we all need comfort, especially when the world seems to get scarier every day.

One of the reasons I stopped having romantic relationships with women was because I realized that there was a distinct pattern in my romances: the women I was with were all domineering, and that led to them being cruel in one way or another every time. And I didn't want to live in that rut. There were other possible solutions, obviously, but I'd just had enough by that point. Enough pain. Enough deference. Enough biting my tongue. I also realized that I'd seen a lot of relationships go this way, where the man let himself to be tied to the whipping post and the woman allowed herself to become mean.

That's not how I want my life to end.

So...thanks for the reminder, don Juan. Time to do some things I don't want to do.

A Separate Reality: Further Conversations With Don Juan

I've been enjoying St. Augustine's The City of God, and have been faithfully reading it every day, but I've also been reading the second Carlos Castaneda book, A Separate Reality: Further Conversations With Don Juan. And I have to admit that when it comes to the latter, it's almost like I have a thirst for that book. This morning that thirst was so intense that I put The City of God down after just a few pages and picked up A Separate Reality. 

Ahhhh. Like sinking into a warm bath.

For a moment, the accusations against Castaneda flittered across my vision: there was no such person as don Juan, Castaneda had made him up; Castaneda had created his books while sitting in a library, and had plagiarized his material from various sources; Castaneda was a charlatan, a snake oil salesman, and his books were essentially fiction. Then I shook the flits out of my eyes and started reading.

Oh, man. Carlos had failed to kill the bird which was the manifestation of don Juan's enemy, and now the only way to stop her from killing don Juan was to stick her in the belly with a desiccated boar's leg, which would cause the boar to enter into her, and then she would leave don Juan alone. Castaneda didn't want to do it, so he got into his car and drove away. Just as disappointment and fear for don Juan flooded my mouth with the taste of street corn, Castaneda turned the car around and drove back to find don Juan patiently waiting for him.

I paused to savor my happiness, and then doubt flitted into my vision again. This couldn't possibly be true, could it?

My first answer was, "Who gives a fuck? Was The Lord of the Rings true? I want to know what happens next!" (I knew that Castaneda wouldn't die, since there were still a dozen more books in the series, but....)

My second answer was, "I still have to look into some questions which were levied against Castaneda, but so far I feel that the contents of this book have swatted down the doubts I've encountered.

Well, enough already. 50 pages to go, and I might just finish them now. And then get back to The City of God. 

And tomorrow,  Journey to Ixtlan: The Lessons of Don Juan.

😉

St. Augustine Says

"...men in princely office, not indeed being just, but like demons, have persuaded the people in the name of religion to receive as true those things which they themselves knew to be false ; in this way, as it were, binding them more firmly in civil society, so that they might in like manner possess them as subjects."

https://www.smh.com.au/national/why-i-m-offended-by-trump-using-the-bible-as-a-stage-prop-20200603-p54z1k.html

"Sicut enim daemones nisi eos, quos fallendo deceperint, possidere non possunt, sic et homines principes, non sane iusti, sed daemonum similes, ea, quae uana esse nouerant, religionis nomine populis tamquam uera suadebant, hoc modo eos ciuili societati uelut aptius alligantes, quo similiter subditos possiderent."

Howie Mandel..or Tom Brady?

Watching the Washington Commanders playing the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFC Championship game and it hit me: Tom Brady sounds exACTly like Howie Mandel.  really. Check it out:

 

Just talking about the fall of the Roman Empire. Nothing topical here.

 "Gaius Sallustius Crispus, Roman historian, on the Fall of Rome:

"Frequent mobs, seditions, and at last civil wars, became common, while a few leading men on whom the masses were dependent, affected supreme power under the seemly pretense of seeking the good of senate and people; citizens were judged good or bad, without reference to their loyalty to the republic (for all were equally corrupt); but the wealthy and dangerously powerful were esteemed good citizens, because they maintained the existing state of things."