A Path With a Heart

"All paths lead nowhere,so it is important to choose a path that has heart."
-- Carlos Castenada

Update: I am re-posting this article from 2006. I wanted to highlight this post in relation to the idea of intent. What it means to me.  I wanted as well to show the need for, to be enable conventionality into our own lives. If one cannot find such meaning,  does one find them self as if tossed on the waves of some chaotic life living by rote?

Yes, I find it important that this idea of "a tonal"  leaves the impression in my mind and others of the closeness with which sincerity is expressed through our own feelings and the need for such convictions.

If we understand the the anticipated future is part of our living our lives then it should come as no shock that we are the architects of the time we have in living our lives as we do. That the probable futures and probable pasts come from taking a position in life regardless of the idea that not only is it causal toward our projections, but it also within the scope of our reason that we can live or lives as true as possible.



What happens to a culture raised in the early years that we might have felt that we were getting the messages from someone who understood something greater then ourselves. The baby boomers were all part of the process. I was part of the process in that I wanted to explore unconventional thinking.

While I have move forward to the principles of scientific standards today in my explorations I have to say this was indeed part of my past too. So what has come of the points about sophistical questions about our existence?

Shall we stay so blinded then to what could have transpire in our lives to have the myths transported from our own generations past to  be carried forward to another today to have missed the understandings of the times then?





Some of the older folk probably have read the many books of Carlos Castaneda, like I have? Drawn into a strange world of thinking, it challenged my thought processes.  Most of it I was not accustom too. Did Carlos Castaneda actually exist? Was he some fictional character created, to tell the stories?

Anything is one of a million paths. Therefore you must always keep in mind that a path is only a path; if you feel you should not follow it, you must not stay with it under any conditions. To have such clarity you must lead a disciplined life. Only then will you know that any path is only a path and there is no affront, to oneself or to others, in dropping it if that is what your heart tells you to do. But your decision to keep on the path or to leave it must be free of fear or ambition. I warn you. Look at every path closely and deliberately. Try it as many times as you think necessary.

This question is one that only a very old man asks. Does this path have a heart? All paths are the same: they lead nowhere. They are paths going through the bush, or into the bush. In my own life I could say I have traversed long long paths, but I am not anywhere. Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn't, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn't. One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.

Before you embark on any path ask the question: Does this path have a heart? If the answer is no, you will know it, and then you must choose another path. The trouble is nobody asks the question; and when a man finally realizes that he has taken a path without a heart, the path is ready to kill him. At that point very few men can stop to deliberate, and leave the path. A path without a heart is never enjoyable. You have to work hard even to take it. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy; it does not make you work at liking it.

I have told you that to choose a path you must be free from fear and ambition. The desire to learn is not ambition. It is our lot as men to want to know.

The path without a heart will turn against men and destroy them. It does not take much to die, and to seek death is to seek nothing.

Well I am not going to tell you what to think. I am just going to show some of the things that attracted my attention and brought me to some of the views I have garnered around what the heart actually meant. The lesson was given by a person who told me the story of the picture of the scale weighting the feather, was to be a important one in my recognition of something profound and true. Possibly, to those who understood the message as well?

That was part of my lesson of learning. That a path with a heart was something better then no path at all.