Dominus Mal

“You are a serious person, but your seriousness is attached to what you do, not to what goes on outside you. You dwell upon yourself too much. That’s the trouble. And that produces a terrible fatigue."
"But what else can anyone do, don Juan?"
"Seek and see the marvels all around you. You will get tired of looking at yourself alone,
and that fatigue will make you deaf and blind to everything else.”
― Carlos Castañeda, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge

“The journey by itself was sufficient; any hope of arriving at a permanent position was outside the boundaries of his knowledge.”
― Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge

“When a man starts to learn, he is never clear about his objectives. His purpose is faulty; his intent is vague. He hopes for rewards that will never materialise, for he knows nothing of the hardships of learning.

He slowly begins to learn — bit by bit at first, then in big chunks. And his thoughts soon clash. What he learns is never what he pictured, or imagined, and so he begins to be afraid. Learning is never what one expects. Every step of learning is a new task, and the fear the man is experiencing begins to mount mercilessly, unyieldingly.”
― Carlos Castaneda, The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge

“Almost all men prized the familiar path over the true.”
― R. Scott Bakker, The Warrior Prophet