Brian Johnson (Philosopher's Notes TV) summarizes and reflects on Carlos Castaneda's The Wheel of Time, presenting it as a distilled collection of Toltec wisdom. He outlines Castaneda's background (anthropology at UCLA; mentor Don Juan) and covers core ideas: asking whether a chosen path "has a heart" (i.e., is authentic and life-giving), the warrior's ongoing inner struggle to overcome conditioning, the need to trust ("lure game") rather than worry, training perception toward positivity, taming internal dialogue, and living impeccably by using death as an advisor. Johnson frames these as practical, disciplined practices for personal power and purpose.
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Hi, this is Brian. Welcome to Philosopher's Notes tv. Today we're going to do another great book, the Wheel of Time by Carlos Castaneda. As always, great book, six page PDF philosopher's note. I've got about 10 of my favorite big ideas. We are going to look at a few of them. This book is awesome. The Wheel of Time. If you have heard of Castaneda and you've read a lot of his different works, I think you'd really love this. If you haven't heard of Castaneda yet, I think this is a great place to start. If this is resonating with you, it's kind of a collection. Castaneda wrote a bunch of novels with a bunch of wisdom in it as he talked about what he learned from his mentor, Don Juan and all that good stuff that went on in their relationship. But what this is is kind of the distillation of all of the most powerful passages. It's kind of like the Philosopher's Notes on Carlos Castaneda by Carlos Castaneda. Just the most potent wisdom from all of his different books. Great stuff. So Castaneda was a pretty eclectic character, 20th century. He went to UCLA and was getting his master's in anthropology and he wrote a master's thesis about his interactions with a guy named Don Juana Yaqui, I don't know how you say that, Yaqui Indian down in Mexico. A shaman who was guiding him in the ways of shamanism. And he wrote his master's thesis, which became a best selling book, which kind of launched a phenomenon around Toltec wisdom, which is the same stuff that Dom Miguel Ruiz and his son are teaching now, Toltec wisdom. And the basic idea is in Toltec philosophy we have a warrior, right, who's struggling against the conditioning that they've had in their lives to claim their personal power and to develop their personal power such that they can move beyond and through that conditioning and live a life of impeccability and clear intention. Really cool stuff. And like I said, this book is just packed with ideas on how to do that. We will start with one of the biggest ones, which is this. On the path of the warrior. The Toltec warrior, who again, is moving beyond the sense of conditioning into trusting himself and herself as a taskmaster and the true kind of visionary in their own lives. We need to ask ourselves a question. Whenever we do anything Castaneda says, we need to say, does this path have a heart? It's a mandatory question. We need to ask, does this path have a Heart free of ambition or greed or fear death. Does this path have a heart? In other words, does it make us feel really good? Does it make us feel alive? Does it feel like what our dharmic pull? Is our destiny to do this thing, or are we doing it out of fear? Are we doing it because of a should? Are we doing it out of greed or some sort of ambition that isn't grounded in an authentic, heartfelt path? It's an awesome passage here in the note. Really powerful stuff, one that I've read dozens of times. I talk about the fact that I actually read that out loud. Passage to a friend and mentor of mine who's recruiting me to do something. We were talking about it, this is maybe eight years ago, and I realized it just wasn't my path. And I read this to him. It just wasn't a path with heart. Pretty funny to look back on that. Castaneda says people say, well, but how will I know if a path has heart? How do I know? And Castaneda says, you know what? You know, you just don't have the courage to ask yourself the question that people don't have the courage to truly ask the question. We know whether a path has heart or not, but we like to ignore it when we're on a path that doesn't have heart. And then he says, we go so far along the path that it becomes really, really, really hard to change direction. So we want to be honest with ourselves. We want to truly check in. And he says, follow the path with heart. And again, this is Joseph Campbell 101. Follow your bliss. And it's a launching off point, as Campbell says, into enlightenment. To learn to trust ourselves to do that which we feel most inspired to do, which is going to be aligned with our deepest strengths, our greatest gifts and our. If you believe all this stuff, which I certainly do, our deepest purpose and dharma and reason, we're on this planet. But if we don't, we're going to go down this other path and we're going to suffer, which is actually a good thing because it helps move us in the direction of getting back on path. So. So does the path have heart? He's got all kinds of other awesome ideas. Another really cool one is this idea of a struggle. He says, look, it's not easy. The warrior's path is one of a struggle. A lot of times I have found myself when I read different things and kind of misread different things and in discussion with different people. We think it should be easy. And he's Saying, no, no, no, this isn't easy. This is the biggest challenge you're going to have to really conquer the lower part of yourself. And to fully express our highest selves is not an easy path. And I quote Socrates and Rumi and Jesus and Lao Tzu here. They all say exactly the same thing. In essence, Socrates says that this is the greatest combat to really align with our deepest truths. Rumi talks about this. The classic Sufi poet. Did you know in Islam there's the jihad? Of course. Right. But did you know that the external jihad, the jihad against other people, other oppressors, is secondary to the greater jihad, the inner jihad, the inner battle we have with our lower selves, that's the greatest jihad, is to conquer ourselves. I mentioned Jesus here and who else did I want to talk about? Of course, the Bhagavad Gita. So the Bhagavad Gita is essentially the story of two families at war. All that is is a metaphor for us at war with ourselves. Right? We have our highest selves and we have our lower selves. We're constantly doing battle. We're constantly choosing whether we're going to step forward into growth or back into safety. As Abraham Maslow says, we talk about often, but this idea of a warrior, we engage in this struggle with a certain level of sobriety and a certain level of joy and a certain definite level of commitment and diligence and patience and persistence, as you know. Well, now, after I've said that hundreds of times already, certainly dozens of times, he's got some other cool ideas that the warrior trusts that they're going to be able to lure game. Right? They don't worry that they're going to starve if they miss this particular animal that they're hunting. Right. I often think about animals, you know, if a bird is hunting and. And maybe they try to go in and go for their kill, and if they don't get it, they're not in their head, stressed out. He says the warrior needs to have the same attitude, one of just a deep level of, on an animal's perspective, unconscious trust. There's just a deep, hardwired sense of knowing that all is good. We need to have that same level of confidence that we're going to lure game into our traps. And the irony is whether it's getting the job or getting the client or whatever. And the irony is that when we worry about that obsessively, we do the things, we stop doing the things that will allow us to actually continue to hunt successfully. And we do all the things that basically scare that stuff away. And then it's a self fulfilling prophecy of all the greatest fears we have come to fruition. And then we say, I told you so. When it was really the belief in the fear that we couldn't achieve the success we wanted to see that led to the negative outcomes. Really big idea. We got to trust that we're okay and we're going to continue to learn a game. He's got a great quote on that. He says, look, it takes the same amount of effort to see things positively or negatively, but one makes you feel a heck of a lot better. So choose the better perception and make it a habit. Build it like a muscle. It's just like working out. If we want to get more optimistic, we've got to consider consistently step in and train and practice. Really cool idea. He talks about internal dialogue, this little voice we have in our heads, we've got to learn to tame that. We talk about that one nearly every time. We talk about the idea of impeccability. Castaneda has a great idea that the warrior is committed to leaving this incarnation, this existence. And when they die, they're going to leave at their very best. There's no way they're going to transition into the next realm of existence, whatever that is, at anything other than their best. Right. They refuse to go into that next step being anything but their best. Now they never know when the end might come and they use death as an advisor, which I talk about in here. They never know what moment might be their last, so they commit to being impeccable every moment. It's an amazing idea, refusing to go out on anything but their best, not knowing when the last moment's going to be. So every moment is an opportunity to be impeccable. Really cool idea that we talk about again, more in here. Well, there we go. That is a whirlwind tour of a handful of ideas. Toltec Warrior Carlos Castaneda the Wheel of Time I think you'll enjoy the note and you'll enjoy this book if this resonates with you. Big stuff. I wish you the best in your inner jihad and look forward to sharing more with you soon. All right, see you.
