very difficult and very long... He repeated over and over again, whispering in my right ear, that "not doing what I knew to do" was the key to power. C.C.
NOT DOING
The "not do" is another technique to show the apprentice how to save energy. As it has been said, supporting the idea we have of ourselves (which incidentally is always superlative) must be reinforced over and over again, constantly, with the consequent energy use. NOT DOING is precisely not "consciously" responding to the acts that make up our image and stubbornly and unconsciously continue repeating the routines that make up our lives. The "not do", is simply a subterfuge to stop feeding the image of ourselves and break routine. This change of attitude in life and the world, the having our attention and consciousness to stop thinking, feel and act as we always do, produce an energy saving: it's like turning off the "automatic pilot" with which we manage our lives and having all our attention on each Act, no matter if its "large" or "small" transcendent or irrelevant. The warrior understands that in the way that "everything matters".
The world is the world because you know to doing required in making it so —he said—. If you did not know its making, the world would be different… A warrior is always trying to affect the making force changing it to not-do... Not doing is only for very strong warriors... The most difficult part of the warrior path is realizing that the world is a feeling... —Not— doing is very simple but very difficult —he said—. It is not a matter of understanding, but dominating it. Seeing, of course, is the final feat for a man of knowledge, and can only get to see when one has stopped the world through the technique of not-doing... A warrior applies the not-do to the whole world. C.C.
STOPPING THE WORLD
The way in which we hold the idea of ourselves and the world is through reason. "Internal dialogue" is not anything other than the continuous telling ourselves, through reason, that the world is this and that, and that we are the so special way that we are. Internal dialogue is nothing more than the stream of thoughts that are forcing "reality" so that "conforms" to our way of thinking. That is why common men are always either quarreling or bored with "the world", because the world for them is nothing more than a bunch of ideas.
On the contrary, for a warrior "all", is more than what we learned to understand. The world, for him, is a whole enigmatic, mysterious, frightening, and wonderful, which does not "conform" to the ideas of a common man. For the warrior the world is merely immeasurable and indecipherable magical!
The technique of stopping the world refers to the effort that the apprentice must do to "silence" our reason and thus perceive the world through other elements. In a retrospective analysis of the Castaneda book, we might suppose that this is the most important thing that is needed to get in the knowledge path that Don Juan, through various techniques and explanations, tries that the apprentice accept and manages.
When realizing it is just a "feeling". Humans are unaware of the many resources and possibilities they have; the gateway to the Toltequity world, nagualismo or witchcraft, is precisely saving of energy. Don Juan tells Castaneda to stop acting as a supreme importance being, whom must be systematically provided with evidence that the world is not only as his "reason" tells him
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