I have two quotes from Donaldo:
"There was only food and water inside the gourds," he said. "And the young man, in a fit of anger, smashed them against the rocks."
I said that his reaction was only natural - anyone in his position would have done the same.
Don Juan's reply was that the young man was a fool who did not know what he was looking for. He did not know what power was, so he could not tell whether or not he had found it. He had not taken responsibility for his decision, therefore he was angered by his blunder. He expected to gain something and got nothing instead.
Don Juan speculated that if I were the young man and if I had followed my inclinations I would have ended up angry and remorseful, and would, no doubt, have spent the rest of my life feeling sorry for myself for what I had lost.
Then he explained the behavior of the old man. He had cleverly fed the young man so as to give him the "daring of a satisfied stomach", thus the young man upon finding only food in the gourds smashed them in a fit of anger.
"Had he been aware of his decision and assumed responsibility for it," don Juan said, "he would have taken the food and would've been more than satisfied with it. And perhaps he might even have realized that that food was power too."
"A dog pisses on food when he doesn't want to eat any more, so other dogs won't eat it. You did that on the gift."
"A reaction that is only natural": Well that may be, but if we follow our 'dog nature', we may as well throw in the towel right now.
There is a tendency in some people, when something is denied them, to piss on it so no one else can have it either. And often it is this very tendency to piss on food, which causes us to be denied in the first place.
"Don Juan's reply was that the young man was a fool who did not know what he was looking for. He did not know what power was, so he could not tell whether or not he had found it."
Yes, that's it isn't it. We don't know what we are looking for, so when the Grail passes before our eyes, when the Philosopher's Stone is tossed out the window at our feet, we don't recognise it!
I recall one event in my youth, at the age of twenty one, when my father passed across the table to me that poem about "The Earth is Sacred" supposedly by an old Indian chief, tho later found to have been written by someone else. When I read it my whole body went into a kind of spasm. I didn't know much about all this stuff at all - hardly took the slightest interest. But when I read that, at the dinner table, I knew I had found something of unbelievable value.
I felt immediately separate from my family. It took all my presence of mind to not scream, and just quietly excuse myself from the table, to go into my bedroom so I could calm down my pounding nervous system, and contemplate this glorious realisation I had just had.
So he ended up with the bags of food instead of the magical deer, and then proceeded to smash the shit out of the food. What a fool! What a waste. And with every blow on the bags of food, that young man bludgeoned his chance at eternity out of existence.
How often do we witness the purest manifestation of magic - before our eyes we see the essence of the universe dance, and we turn our backs on it in our stupidity to follow some rubbish in our own mind or ego?
Let me tell you how often. Every day!
