Over many years I have studied Toltec Authors that wrote about topics similar to Carlos Castaneda. One day around the mid to late 90’s I saw don Miguel Ruiz on the Oprah Winfrey show. He was talking about the Toltec’s but he did not say anything that I was familiar with at all. My first reaction was: “Who does this guy think he is? It doesn’t sound to me like he knows anything about Castaneda or don Juan, or the path of power!”
Many times after this I would see his book “The Four Agreements” while browsing at a book store. I would pick it up and skim through it and have the same reaction each time: “What the heck is this? There is nothing in this for me” – or so I thought at the time!
In December of 2002 I had a very vivid and powerful dream. I dreamed I was walking through a Native American camp and I was consumed with the feeling that I really did not know who I was or what it was like to have the complete freedom to be my authentic self. As I walked around the camp, I kept my eyes open hoping to find a medicine person or a “man of knowledge”. I was sure that if I found one there that I could be helped. I saw a few people who had that special sparkle in their eyes, but for some reason I did not feel like approaching them.
Later on as I was walking in the camp along a lake shore. On my right side in my peripheral vision I saw a woman dressed in full ceremonial garb. She was holding an eagle feather and while I was walking she was staring over the tip of the eagle feather directly at me. As I continued along the shore, she magically turned on her heels and followed my motion in perfect synchronicity. At one point I felt an immense wave of energy come from her direction. I had never felt anything quite like what was moving through me.
Two days later I was in a bookstore and once again The Four Agreements book called out to me. When I picked it up, it opened directly to page 95. My eyes went right to a paragraph that said:
“Very young children are not afraid to express what they feel. They are so loving that if they perceive love, they melt into love. They are not afraid to love at all. That is the description of a normal human being. As children we are not afraid of the future or ashamed of the past. Our normal human tendency is to enjoy life, to play, to explore, to be happy and to love.
But what has happened with the adult human? Why are we so different?”
Those words had a powerful impact on me. They seemed to be directly related to my feelings in the dream. This time I dropped all of my judgments and purchased the book.
When I started reading the book I had a completely different perspective of it than I had ever had in the past. It seemed that the book truly did have the “medicine” that I was looking for in the camp. don Miguel turned out to be the “man of knowledge” that I was looking for in the dream.
Don Miguel’s answer as to what happens to adults really opened up my eyes. He basically said that we were domesticated in such a way that does not allow us to be our authentic selves. A belief system was created for us by authority figures who did not know any better. They did not know how damaging their system of control would work against us as adults.
The Toltec path is a path of freedom from that which causes us to suffer unnecessarily. It is a path that leads one toward regaining their authenticity. It provides all of the tools and understanding that you would ever need to completely transform your life. I know from experience that just reading books alone cannot undo a lifetime of D.D.P. (defective domestic programming). The tools have to be utilized often and the knowledge must be put into regular and consistent practice in daily life.
Why can change be so difficult? Because our domestic programming was powerful enough to control a human being unnecessarily for an entire lifetime. I often say that I have spent the last 46 years of my life overcoming my first 5.
Regaining our authenticity can be very challenging because we live in a world that continually bombards us with garbage that reinforces the defective domestic program. In a nutshell we were taught garbage, we practiced garbage, and we became garbage masters & then we wonder why we don’t enjoy life as much as we could!
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