People often ask about the loneliness they experience on this path of awareness and express that it seems difficult to maintain awareness on a path of freedom in a world where the majority of people are not aware or free.

Sometimes the greatest role a warrior can play is the part of the observer. It is through detached observation that we can truly appreciate the foibles of man and when we recognize this, there really is no other choice except to laugh and laugh and laugh! Don Juan laughed at Carlos all the time. Carlos was a struggling warrior apprentice in the beginning of his association with don Juan, with a lot of self-importance and attachment to the world at large. (Carlos was not, in my opinion, the idiot he made himself out to be but he wrote his books in a way that allowed each person to see themselves, regardless of their individual struggles as warriors on the path to freedom and he deftly outlined the obstacles that we may allow to get in our way.)

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