The word “ephemeral” is such a beautiful word to me. It basically means something that leaves no permanent trace, something that is transitory and without lasting significance, something random, transient, brief, lasting a very short time.

In Journey to Ixtlan don Juan said, For a warrior, to be inaccessible means that he touches the world around him sparingly. And above all, he deliberately avoids exhausting himself and others. He doesn’t use and squeeze people until they have shriveled to nothing, especially the people he loves.

A warrior truly understands what it means to be in the flow. With extraordinary fluidity of perception, for a warrior everything resides outside of the box, because there is no box, no fixation or pre-conceived event or idea. For us, there is no attachment to anything that passes us by, not to a thing, a place, a person, the past, the future; it’s all very ephemeral. In knowing impermanence at this level a warrior has no choice other than to be present. This is living with death as an adviser. Knowing that if you were to die tomorrow, your life will have been entirely fulfilling and fulfilled without any regrets whatsoever.

Committed and disciplined warriors on a path of knowledge are, essentially, ephemeral warriors. We walk with energetic efficiency and utter impeccability in our efforts to not lose energy or leave any behind. We do not place demands or expectations on others and we have great respect and amazement for the earth. We deftly cut away and release the things that have become outmoded in our lives, the repetitive patterns that hold us back and in so doing emerge, refreshed and renewed into a heightened state of awareness to experience new things and explore the unknown.

Nothing remains the same and nothing can be repeated yet so many people ache to experience the same thing over and over and over again. That’s why it is critical to disrupt and loosen the assemblage point. To allow it to remain fixated for too long on any single point is futile for a warrior because you wind up becoming repetitive and stagnant. A warrior has to flow, to be free of patterns and outmoded ideas.

One must choose wisely how they decide to respond within each moment to ensure that they maintain energetic impeccability and avoid becoming entangled in someone else’s drama. When people approach me with personal drama, my choice is to sit on the earth to release all of the stories to her where it can be transformed. And in many instances the stories are admittedly an endurance, and soon the words are unimportant and ignored and in connecting with intent and through pure energy one begins to witness the lines of entanglement that create the drama in the first place. The goal is to then clean the links, the lines that connect one to the drama and become liberated from it.

Touch everything and everyone sparingly. Avoid exhausting yourself and others. Don’t burden others with nonsense. Don’t allow yourself to be burdened with nonsense. Be impeccable, connect with silence, align with intent. And just be.

This silent knowledge, which you cannot describe, is, of course, intent –the spirit, the abstract. Man’s error was to want to know it directly, the way he knew everyday life. The more he wanted, the more ephemeral it became. Man gave up silent knowledge for the world of reason. The more he clings to the world of reason, the more ephemeral intent becomes. ~ Don Juan, The Power of Silence