-Artwork © 2026 Jan Ketchel
The shamans of Carlos Castaneda’s lineage place a high value on people and circumstances that cause us to be offended, what they call the petty tyrants in our lives.
Being offended identifies areas of self-importance, the greatest tax on our energy while living in human form.
Self-importance is not self-worth. We can have a strong knowing of our worth and still not be offended by the inconsiderate actions of others. Self-importance is an ego defense of its inherent worth that becomes incensed when it is not appropriated the respect it feels is due. We all suffer this to some extent at various times in life.
Spiritual growth requires that we retrieve our vital energy from the petty tyrants in our lives to be able to more fully actualize our spiritual potential. When we free up our energy from being offended, we can experience a vastly broader reality than victimhood.
Shamans view petty tyrants as gifts to our evolution, if we can use encounters with them as opportunities to lose our self-importance. The first step in losing self-importance is to identify the petty tyrants in our life.
These days, the world is filled with petty tyrants, especially in governance. Every day, vast amounts of offended energy is spent through emotions of rage and defeat, emotions that can largely define the mood and flow of our entire lives. Releasing ourselves from being offended by truly offensive behaviors is a tremendous boon to our energy stores.
If we can acknowledge to ourselves that someone’s behavior and attitudes are inappropriate, but that perseverating about them is overwhelming our lives, we can simply choose to detach our attention from fixating upon them. As we withdraw our attention from them they disappear from our purview and thus our energy stores are preserved.
Sometimes, however, we may be held in check by someone’s deviousness. This might require that we take some constructive action to protect ourselves, although often we must accept the limitation imposed upon us, until things can change. The trick is not to be offended but, in a detached way, to minimize the energy spent managing the situation.
We can tell ourselves that a circumstance isn’t personal, but the truth is it may be quite personally directed at us. We can tell ourselves to be compassionate toward a flawed human being, but the truth is we might feel no compassion for the ruthless tyrant.
The gift of the petty tyrant is that, in order to successfully surmount it, we must fully lose our self-importance, without feeling bad about it.
To be able to say to the self, “I am being treated like I am a nothing,” without spending any energy feeling insulted by it, enables a clarity on how to respond, which might include not doing anything but simply allowing the karma of the behavior to resolve the issue in its own time. It’s not about retribution; it’s about energetic efficiency.
Of course, on an inner level, taking command of the suggestions we affirmatively deliver to our subconscious mind raises our vibration toward the highest vibration of love.
Regardless of what strategy we follow to navigate the petty tyrant, with positive intent we remain inwardly bathed in love and appreciation for life. At some level, such gratitude will extend to the petty tyrant, who has offered us the opportunity to hone and refine our energy, opening up worlds of possibility.
Ironically, we will eventually discover that the greatest petty tyrant of all resides within the self. Just notice the continual stream of judgments delivered from the habit of internal dialogue. The judgments are about everything and everyone, but most substantially, they are about every aspect of our own not-good-enough, entitled self!
Sometimes the petty tyrant within is experienced in habits that hold us hostage and keep us defeated in life. The opportunity presented to us in this instance is to assume responsibility for the habit, a kink we have consciously colluded with in order to remain fixated at a familiar feeling of being.
Don’t fight with a petty tyrant; to do so is to attach. Feel gratitude for the depth of challenge and consciousness it has brought to you, to truly know thyself.
Finally, achieve untetheredhood, the freedom to journey beyond, because the tethered grounding of self-importance has served its purpose. Get ready to launch now.
Untethered,
Chuck
