Fear, clarity, strenght and old age

Fear, clarity, strength and old age are the four enemies of the fighter on the path of knowledge, according to the naguals. 

Fear is the first natural enemy that man must overcome on the path of knowledge. Man goes to knowledge as he goes to war, awake, with fear, with respect and with absolute conviction. Knowledge is power. Man only lives to learn. And if he learns, that is due to his fate, whether it is good or not. Once man has conquered fear, he will be free from it for the rest of his life because instead of fear he has obtained the clarity of mind that cancels fear. Then man knows his desires and knows how to satisfy them. It can anticipate new steps in training and great clarity surrounds everything. Man feels that nothing is hidden from him. 

The second enemy of man is clarity. that clarity of mind that is so hard to acquire drives away fear but at the same time blinds you. It forces man to never doubt himself, it gives him the certainty that he can do whatever he wants, because he sees clearly in everything that surrounds him. And he is brave because everything is clear to him and he does not deviate from anything. But everything is a mistake, something seems to be missing. If man succumbs to this so-called power, he has succumbed to the second enemy. He will fumble his way through his training until he ends up unable to learn anything.

Clarity will never turn into darkness and fear. Man will enjoy clarity as long as he lives, but he will never train again and never aspire to anything. He must defy his clarity, use it only to see, wait patiently and think carefully before taking the next steps. Clarity is a mistake. When he defeats the third enemy, man has power. He sees everything around him. 

Power is the third enemy. Power is the strongest of all his enemies. The easiest thing to do is to give in to her. Now man is truly invincible. He commands, starts taking calculated risks and ends up setting rules because he is the boss. The man in this stage does not really realize that in fact his third enemy has cornered him. And he will lose the battle. His enemy turned him into a cruel and capricious man. He never loses his clarity and power. 

A man defeated by power dies without having really figured out how to use it. Power is only a burden to his fate. Such a man does not have control over his own being and cannot figure out when and how to use his power. He must defy the enemy. He must realize that the power he apparently conquered does not really belong to him. He must be on guard all the time, using carefully and faithfully everything he had learned. If he understands that strength and clarity without control over himself are worse than mistakes, he will reach a point where everything is kept in check. Then he will know how to use his power and he will have defeated his third enemy. 

The last enemy is old age. This enemy is the cruelest of all, the one that he will not be able to defeat completely, but only to drive him away for a while. It's time when he has a great desire to rest. If he stops completely before the desire to sit down and forget, if he lets himself be knocked down by fatigue, it means that he has lost the last round and that his enemy will put him to the ground as a helpless, elderly being. 

 His desire to retreat will overcome his clarity, strength and knowledge. But if he shakes off his oboe and fulfills his destiny to the end, he can be called a man of knowledge, even if only for that brief moment when he manages to fight the last invincible enemy. That moment of clarity, power and knowledge is enough for him. Carlos Castaneda - Teachings of Don Juan