WORDS CHANGE US: THE TEACHINGS OF DON JUAN by Carlos Castaneda

Tonight’s WORDS THAT CHANGED ME comes from a modern spiritual classic, “The Teachings of Don Juan” by Carlos Castaneda.

Here it is:

“Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use.”

I’ve liked this quote since I first read it in the late 1990s.

Back then, I drove semi-regularly from my home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, to Las Barrancas del Cobre in the heart of Mexico’s Sierra Madre.

I didn’t know what drove me to travel to far-off, sometimes dangerous places like Mexico’s Sierra Madre, Greenland, The Amazon, Indonesia, or Palestine. I didn’t know what I was seeking. I’m sure, on some level, I was trying to prove something to myself.

Was I brave?

I’m sure I was also trying to escape, run, from a lot of things: America, with its emphasis on buying and achieving?

Maybe myself.

But now I understand some of it.

I now see that I was searching for, among other things, a path with more HEART.

By MORE HEART, I mean more open and connected and responsive to REALITY. More human.

Back then, I believed that IT was OUT THERE.

I was wrong.

It’s IN HERE.

HEART is something we cultivate, grow, and tend to.

And share.

Now, whenever I start down a new path, I ask myself Don Juan’s brilliant question:

“Does this path have a heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use.”

What words changed you?

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Brad Wetzler

Brad Wetzler is an author, journalist, editor, book writing instructor, memoir coach and mentor, and yoga instructor. His articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, GQ, National Geographic, Newsweek, Wired, Men's Journal, Travel + Leisure, George, Best American Travel Writing, and Outside, where he was a senior editor and contributing editor. His book, Real Mosquitoes Don't Eat Meat, was a collection of columns he wrote for Outside.Brad writes, teaches, coaches, and mentors from his home in Austin, Texas. His memoir, Into the Soul of the World, will be published in spring 2023.