Carlos Castaneda Quotes

When you begin your transcendental training, focusing your best efforts, without attachment to outcomes, you will understand the peaceful warrior's way.

Meditation is not passive sitting in silence. It is sitting in awareness, free from distraction, and realizing the clear understanding that arises from concentration.

Sit in meditation ! But do not think ! Look only at your mind ! You will see thoughts coming into it ! Before they can enter, throw these away from your mind till your mind is capable of entire silence.

The mind has to be gradually and systematically brought under control.

Weak minds lead to weak actions. A strong, disciplined mind, which anyone can cultivate though daily practice, can achieve miracles. If you want to live life to the fullest, care for your thoughts as you would your most prized possessions. Work hard to remove all inner turbulence. The rewards will be abundant.

To learn to concentrate we must choose a prayer or meditation and follow this path with commitment and steadiness, a willingness to work with our practice day after day, no matter what arises.

Anger has its place, but it will not serve you here, the way of the warrior is the way of knowing. Of that knowledge requires you to use anger, then you use anger, but you cannot wrest forth knowledge by losing your temper.

Learning to focus attention and concentration is very useful; meditation can help you do that.

When one makes the mind stick to one thought, the mind becomes rock-steady and the energy is conserved.

Sometimes it's better to just be quiet, to not think of anything at all. Out of silence comes the greatest creativity.

At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door and say,—'Come out unto us.' But keep thy state; come not into their confusion. The power men possess to annoy me I give them by a weak curiosity. No man can come near me but through my act.

Real creativity comes only out of silence.

It is better to meditate a little bit with depth than to mediate long with the mind running here and there. If you do not make an effort to control the mind it will go on doing as it pleases, no matter how long you sit to meditate.

If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim.

A disciplined mind brings happiness.

Learning to ignore things is one of the great paths to inner peace.

I need more and more silence, it feels. Poems don't leap into my mind when I'm distracted, turned outward, with other people, listening to music.

A mind in control is always better than a mind out of control. For one thing, a controlled mind can learn much better and go much further than a chaotic one. A person with a steady-state mind has the potential to exit this life with a much greater understanding than someone who is continually learning and forgetting, gaining and misplacing knowledge.

The mental ability to concentrate is inherent to all; it is not extraordinary or mysterious. Meditation is not something that a Yogi has to teach you; you already have the ability to shut out thoughts.

With meditation, you become a sensitized superhero, completely in control, with endless possibilities at your fingertips.

Thought will not work except in silence.

Every man whose business it is to think knows that he must for part of the day create about himself a pool of silence.

Meditation is helping me learn to sit still. Twenty minutes of meditation in the morning is a nice way to start my day. If you can actually sit still and really get to that place of silence, you realize what's important and what's not important. Little things don't usually get to me anymore.

Meditation teaches us to focus and to pay clear attention to our experiences and responses as they arise, and to observe them without judging them.

Meditation does not mean just sitting quietly for five or ten minutes. It requires conscious effort. The mind has to be made calm and quiet; at the same time, it has to be vigilant so as not to allow any distracting thoughts or desires to enter.