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EVERYBODY WHO LIVES IN COMMUNITY WHETHER A COHOUSING group or an ashram-has met a petty tyrant. In The Fire from Within (Pocket Books, 1991) Carlos Castaneda defines the petty tyrant as: "a tormentor, someone who either holds the power of life and death over warriors, or simply annoys them to distraction." Whenever the petty tyrant walks into the room your inner artillery is instantly alert and ready for combat. Everything she says-or doesn't say-gets to you. The petty tyrant is that person in community whom you either go to great lengths to avoid-at times missing meals or staying away from certain events in order to avoid encounter with her, or whom you have decided to confront head-on, making it your personal mission to change her for the benefit of all. While we rarely directly address the issue of petty tyrants in community, we tend to gossip about them endlessly. We give ourselves full liberty to complain about how so-and-so did this, or how irresponsibly so-andso handled that. Yet, we are rarely willing to recoginze that the petty tyrant exists as a part of every community, and to discover what it means to be consciously in relationship with him.
Petty tyrants come in many forms. Castaneda divides the tyrant into three subclasses. The first, "petty tyrants," or pinches tiranos, are fearsome, terror-inspiring individuals, often physically of emotionally abusive, who wreak havoc on our lives simply by existing. The second class of tyrants, onches tiranitos, or "little petty tyrants," persecute and inflict misery on the lives of others, but generally don't cause irreparable damage. They may storm out of the room now and then, or deliberately create problems, but they don't threaten the overall safety of the community. The third class Castaneda calls repinches tiranitos"small-fry petty tyrants," or pinches tiranitos chiquititos-"teensy-weensy petty tyrants." A number of this type of petty tyrant generally exists in any community. Whereas the presence of "small-fry petty tyrants" is disturbing, even highly irritating sometimes, they cause problems only by disturbing our peace of mind, or interrupting the flow of communion between community members. It is the latter two types (not the seriously abusive ones) that we will deal with here.
Whereas commonly one or two people in a community serve as petty...