Art of Detached Indulgence

Should you be detached or indulgent?

Renounce or Celebrate?

Withdraw or participate?

Jump in or Run away?

We look at Carlos Castenada's Don Juan:

People hardly ever realize that we can cut anything from our lives, any time, just like that. For example, smoking and drinking are nothing. Nothing at all if we want to drop them. Only one thing is indispensable for anything we do; the spirit. One can't do without the spirit.

I have no routines or personal history. One day I found out that they were no longer necessary for me and, like drinking, I dropped them. One must have the desire to drop them and then one must proceed harmoniously to chop them off, little by little. If you have no personal history, no explanations are needed; nobody is angry or disillusioned with your acts. And above all no one pins you down with their thoughts. It is best to erase all personal history because that makes us free from the encumbering thoughts of other people. I have, little by little, created a fog around me and my life. And now nobody knows for sure who I am or what I do. Not even I. How can I know who I am, when I am all this?
Little by little you must create a fog around yourself; you must erase everything around you until nothing can be taken for granted, until nothing is any longer for sure, or real. Your problem now is that you're too real. Your endeavors are too real; your moods are too real. Don't take things so for granted. You must begin to erase yourself.

Mumbo Jumbo? Does it make sense? Can we call it the Art of Detached Indulgence?

Ruthlessly Authentic

We have a mask for everyone around us...Very soon we start identifying with those masks and lose with our Authentic Self.

Consensus and Conformity may give you temporary peace, but eventually destroys you. You cannot follow someone else's religion, insights, methods or techniques. You have to CREATE your own path.

Peter Shepherd says :

My goal in life has been to break free of the consensus trance, to find instead my own truth and to help others find their own truth also. To transform and be free, like a caterpillar becomes a butterfly.

Because we are each such different individuals, with personal goals and at different stages on our various paths, I have found there is no singular tool for transformation...