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only thing that you can seriously own. Everything else may fail, but not death, you can take
that as a fact. Learn how to use it to produce real effects in your lives.
"Also, stop believing in fairy tales. Nobody needs you out there. None of us is so important
that it justifies inventing something as fantastic as immortality. A humble sorcerer knows that
his destiny is the same as that of any other living being on Earth. So, instead of having false
hopes, he works concretely and with great effort to escape the human condition, and to reach
the only exit we have: The breaking of our perceptual barrier.
"While you listen to death's advice, make yourself responsible for your lives, for the totality
of your actions. Explore yourself, recognize yourself, and live intensely, like sorcerers live.
Intensity is the only tiling that can save us from boredom.
"Once aligned with death, you will be able to take the next step: Reducing your baggage to a
minimum. This is a prison world, and we must leave it as fugitives; we can't take anything
with us. Human beings are travelers by nature. To fly and to know other horizons is our
destiny. Do you take your bed or your dining table with you on a trip? Synthesize your life!"
He made the comment that humanity in our time has acquired a strange habit that is
symptomatic of the mental state we live in.
When we travel, we buy all kinds of useless devices in other countries, things that we
certainly would never buy in our own country. Once we return home, we store them in a
comer and end up forgetting their existence - until one day we notice them by chance, and
toss them in the garbage.
"And we behave this way on the journey that is our life. We are like donkeys carrying a bale
of useless sniff, there is nothing valuable there. Everything we did, at the end, when old age
assaults us, only serves to endlessly repeat some sentence or other, like a scratched record.
"A sorcerer asks himself: What is the sense of all this? Why invest my resources in something
which won't help me at all? The appointment of a sorcerer is with the unknown, he cannot
commit his energy to nonsense. While you walk the Earth, collect something of true value
from it, otherwise it wasn't worth it.
"The power that governs us has granted us a choice. Either we spend life prowling around our
familiar habits, or we encourage ourselves to get to know other worlds. The only thing which
can give us the necessary jolt is the awareness of death.
"An ordinary person spends his whole existence without ever stopping to reflect, because he
thinks that death is at the end of life; after all, we will always have time for it! But a warrior
has discovered that this is not true. Death lives beside us, an arm's length away, permanently
alert, looking at us, ready to jump at the smallest provocation. The warrior transforms his
animal fear of extinction into an opportunity for joy. because he knows that ail he has is this
moment. Think as warriors. we are all going to die!"
One of the present asked him:
"Carlos, in another lecture you told us that having the spirit of a warrior means seeing death as
a privilege. What does that mean?"
He answered:
"It means to leave our mental habits behind."
"We are so accustomed to coexistence that, even face to face with death, we continue thinking
in group terms. Religions don't tell us about the individual in contact with the absolute, but of
flocks of sheep and goats, who go to heaven or to hell according to their fortune. Even if we
are atheists and don't believe that anything happens after death, that 'anything' is generic, we
assume it is the same for everybody. We cannot conceive of the idea that the power of an
impeccable life can change things.
"In the view of such ignorance, it is normal for an ordinary man to feel panic regarding his
end, and try to deal with it with prayers and medicines, or confuse himself with the noise of
the world.
"Human beings have an egocentric and extremely simplistic vision of the universe. We never
stop to consider our destiny as transitory beings. However, our obsession with the future
betrays us.
"The sincerity or cynicism of our convictions makes no difference, because deep down we all
know what is going to happen. That's why we all leave signs behind. We build pyramids,
skyscrapers, make children, write books, or, at the very least, we draw our initials in the bark
of a tree. It is the ancestral fear, the silent knowledge of death, which is behind that
subconscious impulse.
"But there is one group of human beings who have been able to face that fear. As opposed to
ordinary people, sorcerers eagerly seek out any situation that will take them beyond social
interpretations. What better opportunity than their own extinction! Thanks to their frequent
excursions into the unknown, they know that death is not natural; it is magical. Natural things
are subject to laws, but death is not. To die is always a personal event, and for that sole
reason,' it is an act of power.
"Death is the gateway to infinity. A door made to the exact measure of each of us, which we
will all pass through someday, returning to our origin. Our lack of understanding impels us to
see it as a common reducer. But no, there is nothing common about it;
A girl who took part in this conversation was clearly affected by his words, and commented
that the obsessive presence of death in his teachings was a detail that contributed to darken
them. She would have liked a more optimistic emphasis, more focused on life and its
accomplishments.
Carlos smiled and replied:
"Oh sweetheart! Your words show a lack of deep experience with life. Sorcerers are not
negative, they don't seek the end. But they know that what gives value to life is having an
objective worth dying for.
"The future is unpredictable and inevitable. Some day you won't be here anymore, like this,
you will be gone. Do you know that the tree for your coffin has probably been cut already?
"For the warrior and for an ordinary man, the urgency of living is the same, because neither
knows when they will take the last step. For that reason we have to be attentive to death, it can
jump at us from any corner. I knew a guy who went up on a bridge and urinated above a
passing electric train. The urine touched the high voltage cables, which gave him an electrical
shock and burned him to cinders on the spot.
"Death is not a game, it is reality Without death, there would not be any power in what
sorcerers do. It involves you personally, whether you want it to or not. You can be so cynical
that you
discard other topics of these teachings, but you cannot make fun of your end, because it is
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