when you speak

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Pay attention when you speak the rest of the time, the best you're able, 

and listen to your heart. See if you can begin practicing 

letting your words come from your heart.

 

 A good clue for this is if you're in a conversation that lasts more than five minutes, 

so you've been talking for awhile, pause, or wake up for a second

 in the middle of it, and ask inside, "Now, what does my heart really want to say?" 

You're having this conversation. "What's in there that really wants to be said?

 Maybe I won't see this person ever again. What do I really want to say?" 

That can begin to empower your speech, to transform it 

from automatic pilot to the place where you start to wake up.

 It's fantastic. It's really wonderful to work with.


Most of us value integrity. It really lights up the heart

 to think about living in a way that comes from inside, 

where our actions, our words, and our inner being are connected. 

It's very precious. In the Buddhist tradition they're given as training precepts,

 training precepts which we practice. It's not some God -- given law that we must follow,

 but precepts which we begin to practice -- 

to begin to learn to live our life from our hearts, 

to live our life, as I said, with an uprightness of heart.

 


~ Carlos Castaneda

A path is only a path

You must always keep in mind that a path is only a path.

Each path is only one of a million paths. 

If you feel that you must now follow it, 

you need not stay with it under any circumstances. 

Any path is only a path. 

There is no affront to yourself or others in dropping a path 

if that is what your heart tells you to do. 

But your decision to keep on a path or to leave it 

must be free of fear and ambition. 

I caution you: look at every path closely and deliberately. 

Try it as many times as you think necessary. 

Then ask yourself and yourself alone this one question. 

Does this path have a heart? 

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.”

~ Carlos Castaneda

inner silence

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Once inner silence is attained, everything is possible. 

The way to stop talking to ourselves is 

to use exactly the same method used to teach us to talk to ourselves;

 we were taught compulsively and unwaveringly, 

and this is the way we must stop it: 

compulsively and unwaveringly.
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~ Don Juan Matus
Carlos Castaneda, from 'The Fire From Within'

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