Journey to Ixtlan

[hester_prynne]

I think it was Marksman who suggested reading some Castaneda to me. I just finished reading Journey to Ixtlan and I have to report it was really a swell book. Fantastic actually. I wanted to start at the beginning of the Don Juan series but I couldn't find the the teachings or a separate reality so started with this one.

The whole book really really intrigued and delighted me. There were parts I read over and over again just to keep tasting the concepts, and also, to understand in some instances.

Don Juan's teaching that the only thing we all have in common is death really struck me for some reason that I haven't definitively figured out, but it has given me a real sense of peace in these wobbly times. And peace, is certainly strength.

Anyway, thank you to Marksman, and the others who recommended reading Castaneda's work. I'm looking forward to whatever book in the series I can find next very much.

H

[Arcadia]

I like Castaneda. I´ve read parts of some of his books, the one you mentioned included but I didn´t finish a whole one. My disperse mind, maybe.

[Zlatko Waterman]

The first three Castanadas, and in particular "A Separate Reality", have rescued me from many illnesses and melancholic abysses.

The first book, with its "faux" anthropology, sets the scene. The pages that describe how to live "as a warrior" in the next two are priceless.

"Don't make yourself available" is one of my favorite maxims in those first three books.

Strangely, it's the opposite of "real" Christianity, in a way, with its supine formula for getting yourself crucified, but with the Christian creed reassuring you that God is the resting place for all your fears and anxieties.

Castaneda stresses self-reliance, something in short supply nowadays. In that he is closer to Sartre. Thoreau does the same, of course, being the branch Emersonian he is.

For me, I think there was a bit of falling off and disappointment in Castaneda's work when Don Juan retreats from the scene, replaced by Don Genaro.

Good reading to you, my friend,



Zlatko

[hester_prynne]

Yes, "Don't make yourself available" really hit me too Zlatko, amongst alot of things. I had to take alot of silent breaks reading this, good silent breaks.

I'm looking for "A Separate Reality" now, seems like I can't find it anywhere here in podunk! Maybe the library has it. Anyway, I feel like it's the next one to take in for sure....

Give it another try Arcadia! It's dang good readin!
It's nice just to be wanting to read something again! Haven't felt like making the time for it, for awhile now.....
H

[Arcadia]

I´ll try to finish one. To not want to finish a book usually happens to me when I have at the same moment more than one author´s book at my hand. I will choose one and return the others to my brother next summer.

[Marksman45]

"Journey to Ixtlan" is one of my favourites. My other favourites are "The Power of Silence," "The Art of Dreaming," and "The Active Side of Infinity."

The first two are actually my least favourite. Too much hocus-pocus in the first one, and too much emphasis on psychoactive drugs in both. But that's just my personal aesthetic.

I also loved Don Genaro.
Now, when both Genaro & Juan (and all the rest of their generation) left to take the "definitive journey," leaving Castaneda in charge of the lineage, I didn't like that so much.