The Value Of PETTY TYRANTS - Wisdom For Modern Times

This piece of advice comes from the brilliant Carlos Castaneda. For those of you who are unfamiliar with his legacy; Castaneda was a master shaman of Peruvian-American descent.

He trained with his nagual (master shaman) don Juan Matus who was a Yaqui Indian.

The books revolve around Castaneda’s experiences he had with don Juan. They read very much like a written apprenticeship. Which was indeed Castaneda’s training during this time.

He trained with don Juan through the 1960s and 1970s. Castaneda wrote the books in the late 1980s and throughout the 90s.

During that time, I read ALL of the books he wrote and I learned A LOT.

Bettie Page could be a real Petty Tyrant…

However, I will preface the following by saying Castaneda was a very controversial figure. From what I have learned in the years since his death (in April of 1998) the criticism he received is well deserved.

That does not take away from the lessons that are taught in his books.

One of the most important aspects of becoming a highly skilled shaman was the use of petty tyrants.

This is an extraordinary lesson and skill to learn if you have the opportunity to work or live around someone like this.

In this context, a petty tyrant is someone who is relentless in their criticism of you. They can be unbelievably annoying. They’ll gaslight you. They’ll lie and gossip about you. They will manipulate you, constantly. If they are severe enough, they may even do things that will either put you in mortal danger or have the potential to kill you themselves.

Castaneda makes the point that there are wide and varying degrees of petty tyrants. From the mostly harmless, but regularly irritating to the full out vicious and predatory.

For the purpose of this article, we’ll be looking at the ‘middle of the road’ petty tyrant.

For example, it’s very much like the demanding boss who you know will fire you at a moment’s notice. This boss will make sure you’ll have a bad report at human resources too. This person will always offer a bad account of your character and your work.

In short, they make a good part of your life very, very difficult to enjoy or feel free in.

Below is the video and transcript of this podcast segments.

Who are the petty tyrants in your life?

Take a listen…

TRANSCRIPT

Today, I’m going to read a passage from Carlos Castaneda’s book The Fire From Within.

(A free copy is available on archive.org. Click the link or pic below)

Carlos Castaneda was a modern-day shaman who trained with a man called don Juan Matus who was a shaman from Mexico.

In this chapter, he’s talking about petty tyrants. Petty tyrants are those people that irritate you and annoy you and do things that make your life miserable.

Until you can realize that they have arrived in your life so that you can see the folly of humanity.

Petty tyrants are those people who are say, roommates, teachers, professors, people in our own families, a parent, a sibling maybe somebody in the neighborhood.

For me it was my father. He was terrible. He was a tyrant with everybody and with me in particular.

I was the oldest child and he really loved humiliating me and manipulating me and jerking me around.

It was not a lot of fun growing up. However things started to change in my late teens and early 20s when I started to realize if I could demonstrate that I didn’t care I could take back some power.

In fact, I took back quite a lot of power. I remember it was, Christmas time or a holiday season and I and my siblings were visiting my father’s home. We were in his basement and we were getting into it again. Another argument. I don’t know why it started.

Anyway, I suddenly remembered reading somewhere – and it could very well have been a Castaneda book – I was reading a lot of books like this, but we were starting to argue and it suddenly popped into my head to show them you don’t care. INDIFFERENCE.

So, I started to laugh. I laughed right in his face. Just out of the blue. Not because I tried to say something glib. Just because I remembered demonstrating indifference with a petty tyrant… works wonders.

When I did that, his eyes bugged out of his head, like he was just about to strangle me to death.

Yeah. Instead, he walked away knowing it would have been a big problem to explain how his daughter had been strangled to death in his basement.

The good news? He never tried that again.

We never did get into an argument quite like that again. Although he didn’t entirely stop.

He was still a petty tyrant in my life until I decided to finally cut off all contact with him.

So now… let me read a few sentences from a chapter from Castaneda’s The Fire From Within.

“Now I was provoking your self-importance,” Don Juan said with a frown. “Self-importance is our greatest enemy. Think about it. What weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellow man. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone. The new seers recommended that every effort should be made to eradicate self-importance from the lives of warriors. I have followed that recommendation and much of my endeavors with you have been geared to show you that without self-importance we are invulnerable.” – don Juan Matus

And there it is. I actually think this advice is extremely relevant today. Although it was written decades ago.

This is lifelong. This type of information is universal and I have tried to follow it. I will say that at this point I have accepted human folly mostly. Mostly my own. I’m exceedingly aware of how human I am and I just don’t have a lot of ego about it.

It just seems silly at this point when you realize what’s really important in life and how we’re all struggling to get through. All we really need to do is connect with the Higher Power, The Divine Creator, Life itself.

So, I’ll leave you with that.