This excerpt is from The Power of Silence, by Carlos Castaneda, 4. The Descent of the Spirit, the section titled "Place of No Pity."
In this clip Carlos recounts an incident in Nogales where Don Juan deliberately pretends to suffer a stroke in public. By surrendering dignity and control, Don Juan exposes how self-importance binds people to fear and the ego. The staged collapse becomes a lesson in abandoning pride and showing that Silent Knowledge is best approached from the silent yet infinitely more intelligent side of man which can seem harsher, yet is the more direct and efficient part of man. This part of man doesn’t feel sorry or pity for anyone or himself.
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We'll retain this post, but in the future please spread such future posts out to about one every 2 weeks. Not one every few days.
Though these longer narrated passages of around 25 minutes are much preferred to one paragraph quotes, which is what comprised the entirety of the content posted to this subreddit between 2011 and 2019, we don't want to return to that.
It was likely in Vicam, Mexico vicinity, not Nogales.
Carlos first met don Juan in Vicam, whereas the story said Nogales to protect his location.
The place of no pity is the Orange Zone on the J curve.
And hearing about it in a book or audio recording, never helped anyone get there. Not even 1.
In fact, it leads to endless ugly pretending/.
This is wonderful… I was literally discussing this precise section with a dear friend only a few days ago. Thank you for posting 🙏
One of my favorite. I’m going to be posting all of my favorite and memorable sections of the books, with some light animation attached, stay tuned.