A warrior starts off with the certainty that his spirit is off balance; then by living in full control and awareness, but without hurry or compulsion, he does his ultimate best to gain this balance. In your case, as in the case of every man, your imbalance is due to the sum total of all your actions.

Castaneda – Tales of Power

This is where I am now. I am aware of my imbalance, that Castaneda rightly identifies as the result of all my actions. Aware of the need to move towards balance but accepting the imbalance.

Castaneda’s reputation has suffered. Some people considered him to be a fraud who invented people and events and claimed they were real. He is also accused of having exploited disciples. This does not bother me as I’m not interested in Castaneda’s life or his stories I’m interested in the insights that I find in his books.

A warrior starts off with the certainty that his spirit is off balance;

I look at my imbalance. I sense it. I am not settled in my own life and I cannot settle until I acknowledge that.

then by living in full control and awareness, but without hurry or compulsion, he does his ultimate best to gain this balance.

What does it mean to live in full control and awareness? It is Zen. Being in the uncertainty and the sadness or the ‘suchness’ of life without running away from all that, the boredom, the dissatisfaction, the despair.

Hurry and compulsion are reactions to distress. Zen is an organic response not a reaction. Distress is acknowledged as part of the whole; it has a right to be here and is part of the ‘suchness’. In the totality of suchness, there is a particular silence, a stillness, into which distress, despair, drops like a small stone into the lake of consciousness.