Shamans

The Earthkeepers teach that all of creation–the earth, humans, whales, rocks, and even the stars -is made of vibration and light. Nothing we perceive as material and real exists, other than as a dream that we’re projecting onto the world. This dream is a story, and we believe it to be real even though it isn’t. Earthkeeper wisdom and practices teach us how to rewrite our stories about our lives, to do what the shamans call dreaming the world into being.
~ Alberto Villoldo

The visible and invisible worlds are inextricably intertwined... once you’ve opened your eyes to this, you can dance between them.
~ Alberto Villoldo

Life is a wave of creative consciousness rippling through space and time that we have the honor of aesthetically surfing.
~ Alex Grey

There is a wealth of information built into us … tucked away in the genetic material in every one of our cells … without some means of access, there is no way even to begin to guess at the extent and quality of what is there. The psychedelic drugs allow exploration of this interior world and insights into its nature.
~ Alexander Shulgin

Only as a warrior can one withstand the path of knowledge. A warrior cannot complain or regret anything. His life is an endless challenge, and challenges cannot possibly be good or bad. Challenges are simply challenges.
~ Carlos Casteneda

Self-importance is our greatest enemy. Think about it–what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow men. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.
~ Carlos Castaneda, The Fire From Within

Silence is a passageway between worlds. When our mind stays silent, incredible aspects of our being emerge. Starting from that moment, a person becomes a vehicle of intent, and all his acts begin to ooze power..
~ Carlos Castaneda

Sorcerers speak of sorcery as a magical, mysterious bird which has paused in its flight for a moment in order to give man hope and purpose; that sorcerers live under the wing of that bird, which they call the bird of wisdom, the bird of freedom; that they nourish it with their dedication and impeccability.

He told her that sorcerers knew the flight of the bird of freedom was always a straight line, since it had no way of making a loop, no way of circling back and returning; and that the bird of freedom could do only two things, take sorcerers along, or leave them behind.

Don Juan said I should not forget, even for an instant, that the bird of freedom had very little patience with indecision, and when it flew away, it never returned.
~ Carlos Castaneda

We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves strong. The amount of work is the same.
~ Carlos Castaneda

A path is only a path, and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you … Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary. Then ask yourself alone, one question … Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t it is of no use.

For me there is only the traveling on paths that have heart, on any path that may have heart, and the only worthwhile challenge is to traverse its full length – and there I travel looking, looking breathlessly.

The aim is to balance the terror of being alive with the wonder of being alive.

The trick is in what one emphasizes. We either make ourselves miserable, or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same. We hardly ever realize that we can cut anything out of our lives, anytime, in the blink of an eye.

The basic difference between an ordinary man and a warrior is that a warrior takes everything as a challenge while an ordinary man takes everything as a blessing or a curse.

In a world where death is the hunter, my friend, there is no time for regrets or doubts. There is only time for decisions. A man of knowledge lives by acting, not by thinking about acting.
~ Carlos Castaneda

You say you’ve heard that the masters of Eastern esoteric doctrines demand absolute secrecy about their teachings. Perhaps those masters are just indulging in being masters. I’m not a master, I’m only a warrior. So I really don’t know what a master feels like.

It doesn’t matter what one reveals or what one keeps to oneself. Everything we do, everything we are, rests on our personal power. If we have enough of it, one word uttered to us might be sufficient to change the course of our lives. But if we don’t have enough personal power, the most magnificent piece of wisdom can be revealed to us and that revelation won’t make a damn bit of difference.

I’m going to utter perhaps the greatest piece of knowledge anyone can voice. Let me see what you can do with it.

Do you know that at this very moment you are surrounded by eternity? And do you know that you can use that eternity, if you so desire?

There! Eternity is there! All around! Do you know that you can extend yourself forever in any of the directions I have pointed to? Do you know that one moment can be eternity? This is not a riddle; it’s a fact, but only if you mount that moment and use it to take the totality of yourself forever in any direction.

You didn’t have this knowledge before, now you do. I have revealed it to you, but it doesn’t make a bit of difference, because you don’t have enough personal power to utilize my revelation. Yet if you did have enough power, my words alone would serve as the means for you to round up the totality of yourself and to get the crucial part of it out of the boundaries in which it is contained.

Your body is the boundary I’m talking about. One can get out of it. We are a feeling, an awareness encased here. We are luminous beings and for a luminous being only personal power matters.
~ Carlos Castaneda’s Don Juan’s Teachings Tales of Power

I want you to forget everything you have learned in your whole life. This is the beginning of a new understanding, a new dream. The dream you are living is your creation. It is your perception of reality that you can change at any time. You have the power to create hell, and you have the power to create heaven. Why not dream a different dream? Why not use your mind, your imagination, and your emotions to dream heaven?
~ Don Miguel Ruiz

Reclaim experience! Do not dwell in the mistakes of the past. Do not lose yourself in the castles of the future and do not give your authenticity away to experts, gurus, government commissions, bosses, wives, mates – take back your mind and your body and begin to engage with the fact that you are alive, you are going to die, nobody knows what being alive is and nobody knows what dying is.

... that matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration, that we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively, that there is no such thing as death, life is only a dream, and we are the imagination of ourselves.
~ Jed McKenna’s Notebook

The plant hallucinogens dissolve habits and hold motivations up to inspection by a wider, less egocentric, and more grounded point of view within the individual. It is foolish to suggest that there is no risk, but it is equally uninformed to suggest that the risk is not worthtaking.
~ Jim DeKorne from the book Psychedelic Shamanism: The Cultivation, Preparation & Shamanic Use of Psychoactive Plants

The ninos santos (Psilocybe mexicana) heal. They lower fevers, cure colds, and give freedom from toothaches. They pull the evil spirits out of the body or free the spirit of the sick.
~ Maria Sabina

If the words ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness’ don’t include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn’t worth the hemp it was written on.
~ Terence McKenna

The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words, and that if you know the words that the world is made of you can make of it whatever you wish.
~ T. McKenna

The world is labyrinthine beyond possibility of imagining, inhabited on many levels by alien intelligence, infinite in extent, staggering in its beauty, terrifying in its weirdness, endlessly satisfying and peculiar.
~ Terence McKenna

To me it begins and ends with these psychedelic substances. The synergy of the psilocybin in the hominid diet brought us out of the animal mind and into the world of articulated speech and imagination.
~ Terence McKenna

We are caught inside a mystery, veiled in an enigma, locked inside a riddle.
~ Terence McKenna

We have to create culture, don't watch TV, don't read magazines... Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you're giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y.
~ Terence McKenna