Dethroning Self-Importance

Demystifying Self-Importance

“Don Juan said that ancient man knew, in the most direct fashion, what to do and how best to do it. But, because he performed so well, he started to develop a sense of selfness, which gave him the feeling that he could predict and plan the actions he was used to performing. And thus the idea of an individual ‘self’ appeared; an individual self which began to dictate the nature and scope of man’s actions.

As the feeling of the individual self became stronger, man lost his natural connection to silent knowledge. And modern man, being heir to this development, finds himself so removed from the source of everything that all he can do is express his despair in sometimes violent and cynical acts of self -destruction. Don Juan asserted that the reason for man's cynicism and despair is the bit of silent knowledge left in him, which does two things: one, it gives man an inkling of his ancient connection to the source of everything; and two, it makes man feel that without this connection, he has no hope of peace, of satisfaction, of attainment.” 

— Carlos Castaneda

Unmasking Self-Importance

“Their reason makes them forget that the description is only a description, and before they realize it, human beings have entrapped the totality of themselves in a vicious circle from which they rarely emerge in their lifetimes.” — Carlos Castaneda

When man, as we might call ourselves, was egoless or without a symbolic self—the ability to consider the self as an object of one’s own reflection and to store the products of these reflections in our memory, was not possible.

It was not until the advent of language, did man gain the ability to reflect upon himself: ‘my, I kind of just did a heroic act’ or ‘brother, am I a loser’, and repeat these statements and the memories connected to them over and over again.

Self-Importance is a false description of ourselves, as told through the translator of our own personal history. We wear this erroneous identity as a mask, requiring external validation... needing other people to respect us so that we can respect ourselves.

Often wrongfully conflated with "self-worth", this mask locks us into one self-created reality centered on ourselves, separating us from the vastness and power of our natural energetic being. 

Removing this irrelevant mask enables us to see ourselves and our surroundings for what they truly are: breathtaking events that bloom into transitory existence once, and are never to be repeated again.

Dethroning Self-Importance

"Don Juan's parting words to us were "Forget the self and you will fear nothing." His grin and the nodding of his head were invitations to ponder the statement."  — Carlos Castaneda

Dethroning self-importance means to stop thinking and talking to ourselves about ourselves, returning instead to a state whereby we are connected to nature, strengthening our intuitive and energetic senses.

You are not your description of yourself. You are much more than you think you are, and from the seers' perspective, self-importance is irrelevant, destructive, robbing us of our birthright. To dethrone self-importance is to return to the warrior's way: forgetting the self and becoming fearless.

“Self-importance is man’s greatest enemy. What weakens him is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of his fellow men. Self-importance requires that one spend most of one’s life offended by something or someone.” — Carlos Castaneda

Embracing The Warrior's Way

The Dethroning Self-Importance 5-Day workshop Event is one of the most powerful workshops we have provided. In it, you will learn and embrace the warrior's way... returning you to your most powerful state of being.

"Don Juan insisted that the sorcerers' way is the best means to oil, so to speak, the wheels of energy redeployment, and that of all the items in the sorcerers' way, the most effective is "losing self-importance." He was thoroughly convinced that this is; indispensable for everything sorcerers do, and for this reason he put an enormous emphasis on guiding all his students to fulfill this requirement. He was of the opinion that self-importance is not only the sorcerers' supreme enemy but the nemesis of mankind.

Don Juan's argument was that most of our energy goes into upholding our importance. This is most obvious in our endless worry about the presentation of the self, about whether or not we are admired or liked or acknowledged. He reasoned that if we were capable of losing some of that importance, two extraordinary things would happen to us. One, we would free our energy from trying to maintain the illusory idea of our grandeur; and, two, we would provide ourselves with enough energy to enter into the second attention to catch a glimpse of the actual grandeur of the universe." — Carlos Castaneda