I don’t, I will die alone and forgotten, without family and friends.

>>24964169
What makes you think I cannot accept the natural cycle of life and death? A warrior accepts death completely, because he never pretends it is far away. He keeps it close as an adviser and lives each day as though it may be his last.

But acceptance is not the same as passive surrender.

According to Don Juan, the Eagle gives awareness to every living being and reclaims it at death. Most people scatter their awareness through fear, self-importance, resentment and attachment. When death arrives, they lack the energy and unity to resist, and the Eagle consumes everything they gathered in life.

A warrior lives differently. Through impeccability, recapitulation, stalking and dreaming, he recovers the energy trapped in his personal history and gradually becomes a complete being. His whole way of life is therefore a preparation to face death with his awareness intact.

At the final moment, he performs his last dance: the complete expression of everything he has learned, loved, endured and become. He offers the Eagle a perfect account of his life—a replica of his awareness—so that the Eagle may accept it in place of the awareness itself. The warrior can then slip past the Eagle and continue into freedom.

Some ancient seers used this knowledge to prolong their lives for centuries, perhaps almost indefinitely. But Don Juan’s warriors sought something greater than endless survival. They wanted total freedom, without clinging either to life or death.

So I do accept death. I simply do not believe acceptance means walking obediently into the Eagle’s beak. A warrior lives impeccably, gathers his totality and, when death comes, dances his final dance—and attempts to pass the Eagle without being consumed.