THE TOLTECA ROAD TO FREEDOM
Break old agreements
Everyone talks about freedom. Different people, different races and different countries fight for freedom throughout the world. But what is freedom? In the United States we say that we live in a free country. However, are we really free? Are we free to be who we really are? The answer is no, we are not free. True freedom is related to the human spirit: it is the freedom to be who we really are.
Who prevents us from being free? We blame the Government, the weather, our parents, religion, God ...
Who really prevents us from being free? Ourselves. What does it really mean to be free? Sometimes we get married and say we lose our freedom, but when we get divorced, we are still not free. What prevents us? Why can't we be ourselves?
We have memories of past times in which we were free and enjoyed it, but we have forgotten what freedom really means.
If we see a child of two or three years, or perhaps four, we discover a free human being. Because it is? Because he does what he wants to do. The human being is completely wild, just like a flower, a tree or an animal that has not been tamed: wild! And if we look at these two-year-old human beings, we discover that most of the time they smile and have fun. They explore the world. They are not afraid to play. They feel fear when they hurt themselves, when they are hungry and when some of their needs are not satisfied; but they don't care about the past, they don't care about the future and only live in the present moment.
Very young children are not afraid to express what they feel. They are so affectionate that, if they perceive love, they merge into it. They are not afraid of love. This is the description of a normal human being.
As children, we are not afraid of the future or ashamed of the past. Our natural tendency is to enjoy life, play, explore, be happy and love.
But what has happened to the adult human being? Why are we so different? Why are we not wild? From the Victim's point of view, we will say that something sad happened to us, and from the warrior's point of view, we will say that what happened to us was normal. What happens is that the Book of the Law, the great Judge, the Victim and the belief system direct our lives, and we are no longer free because they do not allow us to be who we really are. Once our mind has been programmed with all that crap, we stop being happy.
This chain of learning that is transmitted from one human being to another, from generation to generation, is very common in human society. Don't blame your parents for teaching you to be like them. What else could they teach you but what they knew? They did the best they knew, and if they mistreated you, it was due to their own domestication, their own fears and their own beliefs. They had no control over the programming they received, so they could not act otherwise.
Do not blame your parents or any other person who has mistreated you in life, including yourself. But it is time to end that abuse. It is time for you to free yourself from the tyranny of the Judge and to change the foundations of your own agreements. It is time for you to free yourself from the role of Victim.
Your true self is still a small child who never grew up. Sometimes, when you have fun or play, when you feel happy, when you paint, write poetry or play the piano, or when you express yourself in any other way, that little boy reappears. These are the happiest moments of your life: when your true self arises, when you don't care about the past and don't worry about the future. Then you are like a child.
But there is something that changes all this: they are what we call responsibilities. The Judge says: “Wait a moment; you are responsible; you have things to do; you have to work; you have to go to university; you have to make a living ». We remember all these responsibilities and the expression of our face changes and darkens again. If you look at children who play adults, you will see how the expression on their face is transformed. A child says, "Let's play I'm a lawyer, " and immediately adopts the adult's expression. If we attend a trial, those are the faces we see, and that is what we are.
However, we are still children, but we have lost our freedom.
The freedom we seek is to be ourselves, to express ourselves as we are. However, if we look at our lives, we will see that, instead of living to please ourselves, most of the time we only do things to please others, to accept us. This is what has happened to our freedom. In our society, and in all the societies of the world, of every thousand people, nine hundred ninety-nine are totally domesticated.
Worst of all, most people do not even realize that they are not free. Something inside him whispers, but he doesn't understand it, and he doesn't know why he's not free.
For most people, the problem is that they live without discovering that the Judge and the Victim direct their lives, and therefore, they have no chance of being free. The first step towards personal freedom is to be aware that we are not free. We need to be aware of what the problem is in order to solve it.
The first step is always consciousness, because until you are aware you cannot make any changes. Until you are aware that your mind is full of wounds and emotional poison, you will not clean or heal the wounds and continue to suffer.
There is no reason to suffer. If you are aware, you can rebel and say: Enough is enough! You can look for a way to heal and transform your personal dream. The dream of the planet is just a dream. It is not even real. If you enter the dream and begin to question your belief system, you will discover that most of the beliefs that opened wounds in your mind are not even true.
You will discover that during all these years you have lived a drama for nothing. Why? Because the belief system that they instilled in you is based on lies.
That is why it is very important for you to master your own dream; This is why the Toltecs became masters of the dream. Your life is the manifestation of your dream; it's an art. And you can change your life at any time if you don't enjoy your dream. The teachers of the dream create a life that is a masterpiece; They control the dream or through their choices. Everything has its consequences, and a dream teacher is aware of them.
Being a Toltec is a way of life in which there are no leaders or followers, where you have and live your own truth. A Toltec becomes wise, becomes wild and becomes free again.
There are three masters that lead people to become Toltecs. The first is the Master of Consciousness: to be aware of who we really are, with all our possibilities. The second is the Master of Transformation: how to change, how to free ourselves from domestication. The third is the Master of Intent: from the Toltec point of view, Intent is that part of life that makes the transformation of energy possible; it is the living being that involves all energy, or what we call God .
It is life itself; It is unconditional love. The Master of Intent is, therefore, the Master of Love.
We talk about the Toltec path to freedom because the Toltecs have a complete plan to free themselves from domestication. They compare the Judge, the Victim and the belief system with a parasite that invades the human mind. From the Toltec point of view, all domesticated human beings are sick. They are because a parasite controls his mind and his brain, a parasite that feeds on the negative emotions caused by fear.
If we look for the description of a parasite, we see that it is a living being that subsists at the expense of other living beings, sucks its energy without giving anything in return and damages its host slowly. The Judge, the Victim and the belief system fit very well in this description. Together, they constitute a living being formed of psychic or emotional energy, and that energy is alive. It is not about material energy, of course, but emotions are not material energy, nor are our dreams, and yet we know they exist.
A function of the brain is to transform material energy into emotional energy. Our brain is a factory of emotions. And we have already said that the main function of the mind is to dream. The Toltecs believe that the parasite - the Judge, the Victim and the belief system - controls our mind and our personal dream. The parasite dreams in our mind and lives in our body. He feeds on the emotions that arise from fear, and he loves drama and suffering.
The freedom we seek is to use our own mind and our own body, to live our own life instead of the life of our belief system. When we discover that our mind is controlled by the Judge and the Victim and that our true self is cornered, we only have two options.
One is to continue living as we have done so far, surrendering to the Judge and the Victim, to continue living in the dream of the planet. The other option is to act like when we were children and our parents tried to tame us. We can rebel and say, "No!" We can declare a war against the parasite, against the Judge and the Victim, a war for our independence, for the right to use our own mind and our own brain.
For this reason, those who follow the shamanic traditions of America, from Canada to Argentina, call themselves warriors, because they are at war against the parasite of the mind. This is what it really means to be a warrior. The warrior is the one who rebels against the invasion of the parasite. He rebels and declares war. But that does not mean that you always win; we may win or we may lose, but we always do our best, and at least we have the opportunity to regain our freedom. Choosing this path gives us, at a minimum, the dignity of rebellion and assures us that we will not be the helpless victim of our capricious emotions or the poisonous emotions of others. Even if we succumb to the enemy - the parasite -, we will not be among the victims who do not defend themselves.
In the best case, being a warrior gives us the opportunity to transcend the dream of the planet and change our personal dream for another we call Heaven. Like Hell, Heaven is a place that exists in our mind. It is a place full of joy, where we are happy, where we are free to love and be ourselves. We can reach Heaven in life; We don't have to wait to die.
God is always present and the kingdom of Heaven is everywhere, but first of all we need our eyes to be able to see the truth and our ears to hear it. We need to get rid of the parasite.
We can compare the parasite with a hundred-headed monster. Each of them is one of our fears. If we want to be free, we have to destroy the parasite. One solution is to attack their heads one by one, that is, face our fears one by one. It is a slow process, but it works. Every time we face one of our fears, we are a little freer.
A second solution would be to stop feeding the parasite. If we don't give him any food, we'll kill him by starvation. In order to do so, we have to be able to control our emotions, we must refrain from feeding the emotions that arise from fear. It is easy to say, but it is very difficult to do so, because the Judge and the Victim control our mind.
A third solution is what is called the initiation to death. This initiation is found in many esoteric traditions and schools around the world. We find it in Egypt, India, Greece and America. It is a symbolic death that kills the parasite without damaging our body. When we "die" symbolically, the parasite also has to die. This solution is faster than the previous two, but it is even more difficult. We need great courage to face the angel of death. We have to be very strong.
The four Agreements
Thousands of years ago, the Toltecs were known throughout southern Mexico as "women and men of knowledge." Anthropologists have defined the Toltecs as a nation or a race, but, in fact, they were scientists and artists who formed a society to study and preserve the spiritual knowledge and practices of their ancestors.
The European conquest, together with an aggressive abuse of personal power by some apprentices, caused the Naguals to be forced to hide their ancestral wisdom and maintain their existence in the dark. Fortunately, Toltec esoteric knowledge was preserved and transmitted from one generation to another by different Nagual lineages. Now, Dr. Miguel Ruiz, a nagual of the Eagle Warrior lineage, shares with us the profound teachings of the Toltecs.
"There is no reason to suffer. The only reason you suffer is because you demand it that way. If you look at your life you will find many excuses to suffer, but no valid reason. The same is applicable to happines.
The only reason you are happy is because you decide to be happy. Happiness is a choice, as is suffering.
Dr. Miguel Ruiz
Excerpt from the book: The Four Agreements.
A book of Toltec wisdom Dr. Miguel Ruiz
