Guardian of Edge

"In the morning I was myself again. I asked don Juan eagerly, "What happened to me?"
Don Juan laughed coyly. "You went to look for the keeper and of course you found it," he said.
"But what was it, don Juan?"
"The guardian, the keeper, the sentry of the other world," don Juan said factually.
I intended to relate to him the details of the portentous and ugly beast, but he disregarded my attempt, saying that my experience was nothing special, that any man could do that.
I told him that the guardian had been such a shock to me that I really had not yet been able to think about it.
Don Juan laughed and made fun of what he called an overdramatic bent of my nature.
"That thing, whatever it was, hurt me," I said. "It was as real as you and I."
"Of course it was real. It caused you pain, didn't it?"
As I recollected my experience I grew more excited. Don Juan told me to calm down. Then he asked me if I had really been afraid of it; he stressed the word "really."
"I was petrified," I said. "Never in my life have I experienced such an awesome fright."
"Come on," he said, laughing. "You were not that afraid."
"I swear to you," I said with genuine fervor, "that if I could have moved I would have run hysterically."
He found my statement very funny and roared with laughter.
"What was the point of making me see that monstrosity, don Juan?"
He became serious and gazed at me.
"That was the guardian," he said. "If you want to see you must overcome the guardian."
"But how am I to overcome it, don Juan? It is perhaps a hundred feet tall."
Don Juan laughed so hard that tears rolled down his cheeks.
"Why don't you let me tell you what I saw, so there won't be any misunderstanding?" I said.
"If that makes you happy, go ahead, tell me."
I narrated everything I could remember, but that did not seem to change his mood.
"Still, that's nothing new," he said, smiling.
"But how do you expect me to overcome a thing like that? With what?"
He was silent for quite a while. Then he turned to me and said,
"You were not afraid, not really. You were hurt, but you were not afraid."
He reclined against some bundles and put his arms behind his head. I thought he had dropped the subject.
"You know," he said suddenly, looking at the roof of the ramada, "every man can see the guardian. And the guardian is sometimes for some of us an awesome beast as high as the sky. You're lucky; for you it was only a hundred feet tall. And yet its secret is so simple."
He paused for a moment and hummed a Mexican song.
"The guardian of the other world is a gnat," he said slowly, as if he were measuring the effect of his words.
"I beg your pardon."
"The guardian of the other world is a gnat," he repeated. "What you encountered yesterday was a gnat; and
that little gnat will keep you away until you overcome it."
For a moment I did not want to believe what don Juan was saying, but upon recollecting the sequence of my vision I had to admit that at a certain moment I was looking at a gnat, and an instant later a sort of mirage had taken place and I was looking at the beast.
"But how could a gnat hurt me, don Juan?" I asked, truly bewildered.
"It was not a gnat when it hurt you," he said, "it was the guardian of the other world. Perhaps some day you will have the courage to overcome it. Not now, though; now it is a hundred-foot-tall drooling beast. But there is no point in talking about it. It's no feat to stand in front of it, so if you want to know more about it, find the guardian again."

Carlos Castaneda