The funny thing about growing is everything spiritual outside of formal religion is it is a mystery until it is not. I know that sounds odd, but if you really think about your life you will see it is true. In one of Castaneda’s books that I read back in the dark ages, Carlos asked Don Juan an interesting question. Carlos asked Don Juan what Don Juan would do if he was on a city street and there was an assassin waiting on a rooftop to shoot and kill him. At least that is how I remember to passage. Don Juan laughed if I remember correctly, and told Carlos that he Don Juan would not be there to start with. Carlos could not comprehend how this would be possible, and neither did I.
I spent years pondering that answer along with the many other things I read in Castaneda’s accounts, the bible, and many other sources that shed carefully shaded light on things we need to know but do not. I used to wonder how Don Juan could possibly know there would be an assassin at some random location, and he would be aware of it and not go there ahead of the fact. It was a huge mystery to me for many years.
Over time and from learning a random bit here and a random bit there, I had the flash of insight I needed to put it all together. Suddenly the huge mystery about Don Juan’s power to avoid an assassin was no longer a mystery but a normal state of life. The hard thing about these little tidbits of life is even though they are everywhere, no one sees them, and if they do, they do not know what they are looking at.
We are so programmed by those before us and everyone around us to only see those things that everyone else sees. As a probable poor example, it would not be unusual to have a large group of people somewhere when a spaceship passes over their heads. Among that group of people there will be a few who will insist, and probably pass a lie detector test, that they did not see a space ship pass over head, and everyone that thinks they did see a space ship succumbed to mass hysteria.
Such is the state of our lives; we live in a state of falsely imposed mass hysteria that has become the norm. Most of us only think, see, and imagine that which we are told is, and little else. So it is with Carlos Castaneda and Don Juan pertaining to the assassin lesson. Don Juan knew what Carlos did not, and Carlos at that point and time could not make the leap from what he knew to be true and logical to Don Juan’s paradigm where the possibility did not exist.
It does not take a lot of thinking to understand why Don Juan was labeled a sorcerer. History is filled with examples of which we are warned about since we were toddlers, of people who choose to search for a truth that most people refuse to see. These hidden truths have been placed in a very bad light. The only time a horrific result has not occurred is with few of the prophets, saints, and perhaps Jesus although in the case of Jesus, his explanation of how the world really works was not, and still is not warmly received - even by very devout Christians. Want to be the devil for a change? Just try to enlighten someone who has their mind made up about what is…
Perhaps it is best explained in one of the parables where Jesus is talking about a lantern being placed under a chair or in a box. Of course a lantern placed under something low to the ground negates the benefit provided by the lantern in the first place. But as with the parables and in most important teachings in life, the lantern is symbolic. Of course when Jesus actually tried to take the lantern from under the chair and put it up for everyone to see, retribution was swift and decisive - to the detriment of Jesus.
Since before that time, and up until the present to undertake the task of finding the lantern under the chair and placing it where all can see it and some can understand has been a dangerous undertaking to say the least. People over the centuries have been murdered in the most horrible ways because they attempted and failed. So it is no wonder that Don Juan was labeled as a sorcerer. I am sure there were many who would have preferred he was tied to a stake and burned alive, rather than have him share what he knew to be true with Castaneda.
Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you see it, knowledge is where you find it. Some people find wisdom sitting on the beach watching the sunset, while others will not recognize true knowledge if it were tattooed on their forehead. Perhaps that is not such a bad thing after all. As the saying goes, a little knowledge can be dangerous, perhaps too much knowledge would be a tragedy, and that is why it is hidden where only a few people at a time will discover it.
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