In Carlos Castaneda’s book, The Fire from Within, Don Juan talks about how human beings are pure energy or “an amorphous blob of biological matter” and that a particular pattern of energy serves to stamp the qualities of humanness upon it. He explains it “like a gigantic die that stamps out human beings endlessly as if they were coming to it on a mass-production conveyor belt”.

A lot of people find this term offensive but this mass production of people is what I refer to as sheeple (sheep/people). They are predominantly part of a flock whose most every action relies on the acceptance and validation of others or subservience and acquiescence to others and, sometimes, having power over them. In becoming enmeshed within the energetic structure of “the mold of man”, people become robotic, stepford people who often delude themselves into living appropriately as dictated by the dominant paradigm.

I received this response to a recent sheeple remark; “We bristle at terms like ‘sheeple’. We’re still clinging to certain perceptions. We’re scared to death to leap into the abyss, to have nothing to hang on to, to be free-falling into infinity.” With that said, is the need to comply more like a dependence upon familiarity or perhaps, an addiction towards conformity? Does their fear reside as the result of their personal beliefs of their god?

Carlos Castaneda goes on to say that people of awareness have come to realize is that the mold of man is not a creator, but the pattern of every human attribute we can think of and some we cannot even conceive. The mold is our god because we are what it stamps us with and not because it has created us from nothing and made us in its image and likeness. Don Juan said that in his opinion to fall on our knees in the presence of the mold of man reeks of arrogance and human self-centeredness.

People of awareness have seen, therefore, that what we call god is a static prototype of humanness without any power. For the mold of man cannot under any circumstances help us by intervening in our behalf, or punish our wrongdoings, or reward us in any way. We are simply the product of its stamp; we are its impression. The mold of man is exactly what its name tells us it is, a pattern, a form, a cast that groups together a particular bunch of fiber-like elements, which we call man.

Don Juan told Carlos that he had to go beyond the mold, that the mold was merely a stage, a stopover that brought temporary peace and serenity to those who journey into the unknown, but that it was sterile, static. It was at the same time a flat reflected image in a mirror and the mirror itself. And the image was man’s image.

“Freedom is like a contagious disease,” Don Juan said. “It is transmitted; its carrier is an impeccable nagual. People might not appreciate that, and that’s because they don’t want to be free. Freedom is frightening. Remember that.”

The “mold of man” reminds me of a kind of spectator sport, where the people who have the courage to break free are running at full speed around the track, toward the finish line, with the ferocious gleam of freedom in their eyes and the spectators are inside the fenced area cheering them on and rejoicing at their victory, yet the people inside the fenced area choose to remain behind the fence?

Why do so many people continue to wear the chains of bondage that prevent them from being who they truly are? What motivates the fear that fosters their conformity to being sheeple? It seems as though their fear is grounded in their unprecedented need to conform, mysteriously, to something they don’t even know or understand which is devoid of truth. This momentous amount of blind-faith has been energetically fueling a prophetic myth for a very, very long time and is evidence of the power that man has, the ability to which man can individually and cumulatively create.

People seem to place more value on freedom than almost any other thing yet they consistently refuse to claim it as their birthright. To begin to attempt to even fathom this hypocrisy is beyond me.

The self-confidence of the warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man. The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence. The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness. The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked only to infinity. ~ Don Juan