Shaman Tracks

My Favorite Thinkers

We must look to the spirits, but we can also learn from our fellow human beings. Many great people have shared this planet with us for the last 60 years. They have taught us many things including that we are not alone in our struggles.  The following are some of my favorites and their thoughts. I encourage you to investigate their work. - Dana

Michael Harner:

Truly significant shamanic knowledge is experienced and can not be obtained from me or any other shaman.

Don't trust anyone who isn't confused. 

Carlos Castaneda:

To achieve the mood of a warrior is not a simple matter. It is a revolution. To regard the lion and the water rats and our fellow men as equals is a magnificent act of a warrior's spirit. It takes power to do that.

Look at every path closely and deliberately, then ask ourselves this crucial question: Does this path have a heart? If it does, then the path is good. If it doesn't, it is of no use. 

Edward R. Murrow:

Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts.

No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices.

We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.  

R. D. Laing: 

Society highly values its normal man. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal. Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years. 

The range of what we think and do is limited by what we fail to notice. And because we fail to notice that we fail to notice, there is little we can do to change; until we notice how failing to notice shapes our thoughts and deeds. 

Our 'normal' 'adjusted' state is too often the abdication of ecstasy, the betrayal of our true potentialities.

John C. Lilly: 

Quite early in the dolphin research, around 1955, I had realized that the dolphins have a very large brain, larger than ours, and that they were far more developed than we in strange and alien ways.

Joseph Heller: 

The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he is on.

The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.

John D. MacDonald: 

Somebody has to be tireless or the fast buck operators would asphalt the entire coast, fill every bay and slay every living thing incapable of carrying a wallet.”

At times it seems as if arranging to have no commitment of any kind to anyone would be a special freedom. But in fact the whole idea works in reverse. The most deadly commitment of all is to be committed only to one's self.

Patrick McGoohan:

But what is the greatest evil? If you are going to epitomize evil, what is it? Is it the bomb? The greatest evil that one has to fight constantly, every minute of the day until one dies, is the worst part of oneself.  

Krishnamurti:

A man who is not afraid is not aggressive, a man who has no sense of fear of any kind is really a free man, a peaceful man.

Freedom and love go together.

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.

Hitler and Mussolini were only the primary spokesmen for the attitude of domination and craving for power that are in the hearts of almost everyone. Until the source is cleared, there will always be confusion and hate, wars and class antagonisms.

John Lennon:

I believe in everything until it’s disproved. So I believe in fairies, the myths, dragons. It all exists, even if it’s in your mind. Who’s to say that dreams and nightmares aren’t as real as the here and now?

If someone thinks that love and peace is a cliché that must have been left behind in the Sixties, that’s his problem. Love and peace are eternal.

Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.

I don’t believe in killing whatever the reason! 

Groucho Marx:

I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today. I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today, and I'm going to be happy in it.

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.

Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes? 

Leo McKern:

It is easy to believe in freedom of speech for those with whom we agree. 

Cary Grant:

Everyone wants to be Cary Grant. Even I want to be Cary Grant. 


Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh (Osho):

Meditation can give you the greatest glimpses, because it is the most useless thing in the world. 

 

Alfred Hitchcock:

I have prepared one of my own time capsules. I have placed some rather large samples of dynamite, gunpowder, and nitroglycerin. My time capsule is set to go off in the year 3000. It will show them what we are really like. 

Martin Milner:

You can't do a serious show about two guys in their 60s trying to find their route.