Toltec Wisdom.

It is interesting that Ruiz describes the Toltecs as “men and women of knowledge.”  This is interesting, because, in fact, the Toltec civilization was characterized by:

• Large scale human sacrifice, sometimes en masse.
• Wars of conquest—barbarism.
• Hierarchy
• Inequity of social classes.
• Patriarchy—boys only were schooled; women were subordinate to men and lacked power.
• The death penalty, mutilation—gossip/slander earned the punishment of the excision of lips.
• Theocracy (no democracy)
• Slavery

It's true.  You can Google it.  The kind of "wisdom" to come out of a civilization like that, I would tend to doubt.

Ruiz never mentions these facts, which begs the question as to whether he is ignorant of those facts or deliberately misleading his readers.

The Toltec civilization was authoritarian to the core. Clearly, the power structure of that society was bent on ensuring conformity and enforcing docility within the populace. As I read through the book, I couldn’t help wondering if Ruiz had the same thing in mind for our civilization. His cautions against “gossip," for example, appear to mirror that very taboo among Toltecs. (Especially, “gossip,” complaints, by students directed at their teacher, an authority figure.)

The book was obviously written for a middle and upper-middle class audience, one not challenged by the realities of the poor.  In essence, to extrapolate from his rules, it would be like this: 

• “You don’t have health insurance?  Don’t take it personally!”
• “You can’t afford to go to college?  Do the best you can!”
• “Your husband is verbally and physically beating you up? Well, don’t be angry, don’t speak up, don’t hold him responsible, don’t “gossip” about it, i.e., don’t tell anyone, don’t take it personally, just endure and do the best you can.”

That is to say, "be powerless, don't rock the boat."

Ruiz, and so many of the self-help gurus of our time, holds happiness as the ultimate value, disregarding greater values, such as self-respect, freedom, justice, equality, and even love (care and respect). Followers will be blissfully ignorant, but at what cost to the culture?

Obviously, you see it differently, but, sorry, the book’s all poppycock to me.

Zen, I think you are confusing the Maya with the Toltecs. The Toltecs were a sub group whose ethnicity is the subject of debate among scholars. Toltec simply means artist. And a Toltec is an Artist of life.

Much of what you characterize can apply to our own situation. The Obama Admin much like the Bush admin is sacrificing human life on a daily basis for world wide hegemony. Refer to Wiki documents which assert the lies by both administrations and the lose of innocent human life in the tens of thousands.

 

Just to correct a misconception about the word Toltec. A Toltec is not an ethnic group in the same way as an American, German, Brazilian, Costa Rican, or any other group based on ethnic or geopolitical boarders.

A friend of mine wrote the following article which articulates the differences: although I personally eschew teachers having engaged the knowledge in a seperate way, I do recognize that some people need that relationship. In fact, I don't think it any different than many who read this site.

The Article: By Jim Morris

 

BUTTERFLY

 

 

 

 

 

       I was supposed to take the Sahara Exit; only there was no Sahara Exit. I was on I-15 North, rocketing through Las Vegas early on a Sunday morning, having driven from Topanga to Barstow the night before. My mission was to interview a best-selling author and shaman named don Miguel Ruiz, and what the hell was a shaman doing in the American Gomorrah anyway?

 

Here’s what I knew already. One night in the late 1970s, Don Miguel, then a young Mexican surgeon, fell asleep at the wheel of his car, and crashed it into a concrete retaining wall. He lay near death for some days and had that near-death experience of being out of his body. He saw his body from another vantage point.

 

But if he saw his body, where was he when he saw it? And if he was not his body, what was he?

 

The last of thirteen children, don Miguel had grown up in rural Mexico and come from a line of curanderos, shaman healers. His mother, Sarita, was such a healer.

 

Although she'd taught him as a child, he'd resisted the ancient tradition and become an MD. After the accident, he began to study again with Sarita, and she apprenticed him to a powerful nagual (pronounced no-wall), a sorcerer in the Toltec tradition.

 

Today don Miguel writes self-help books, teaches seminars, and trains Toltec naguals. His students range from old hippies to academics and professionals who have never before deviated from the approved career path. His work has spread nationwide and worldwide through the popularity of his books, principally The Four Agreements.

 

I had long been a fan and student of the books of Carlos Castaneda. He popularized Toltec sorcery with a series of twelve books, which he began writing in the late 1960s.

 

Castaneda's teacher, an old Indian brujo named Don Juan Matus, made his home in a shack, rambled in the desert, and lived a carefully, deliberately anonymous life. Castaneda also stayed out of the public eye.

 

In contrast, don Miguel has a website (miguelruiz.com) on which he advertises "power journeys" to Teotihuacán in Mexico, to Machu Picchu in Peru, to the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, to the Haleakala volcano on Maui. There are links for "wisdom groups" and for "mentors." There is a discussion of something called the Sixth Sun Foundation. This is about as far as you can get from rambling in the desert with an old Indian sorcerer.

 

Was this guy just a jumped up tour guide? Was he a con man? Was it possible that he could be both of those things and still be legitimate? Words like “nagual” are ever so slippery. Bottom line, I wasn’t sure if he was real or not, and I was not entirely sure what, in this context, the word “real” meant.

 

       If I could actually interview him, I could test him, explore his mind.

 

       But I had to find him first. I pulled off the freeway, hung a left under it, and pulled back on, going the other way, heading for the south part of Vegas, dodging in and out of traffic. Nope, no Sahara Exit. Maybe I hadn’t gone far enough North. I turned around again. Soon I was in North Las Vegas. I pulled off and parked by a fancy gas station/convenience store.

 

       I got a Styrofoam cup of coffee, sat down at a sheet metal café table inside the store, and went over my map and notes. Luckily I had started early, to allow for screw-ups, because…I was in an M. Escher map of Hell. Did the Hotel California have a casino?

 

No question about it. Sahara Boulevard was somewhere between the southern and northern city limits of Las Vegas. I had to go back again.

 

       The gas station was beside a railroad track, actually about ten railroad tracks, and a bunch of warehouses, paralleling the highway. A long freight train was coming across the desert, to within twenty feet of where I was. I stopped to examine the cars. There were something like a hundred of them.

 

       Many years ago my then love and I planned a trip to Newfoundland, but we weren’t sure we could pull it off. She suggested we look for Canadian National Railroad cars as an omen. She had used the same omen when she and her girlfriend, the one we were now going to visit, had gone there the summer before. We saw some, and we made the trip.

 

After we got back CN cars became our good luck omen. They never failed either of us.

 

       Over time she and I developed a complete method for divining from railroad cars. CN was good luck; Canadian Pacific meant a change, not necessarily good or bad. Union Pacific meant your relationship would go well. The Southern Railroad was easy, because their motto is “Gives a Green Light to Innovations.” Soldiers and martial artists wear cotton belts, so Cotton Belt means a hard fight. I saw a whole railroad yard full of Cotton Belt railroad cars just before I moved from New York to L.A., and, boy, was that prophetic!

 

Burlington Northern means hard work.

 

       My Spanish pretty much stops at “Mas cervesa, por favor,” but, since Santa Fe is the most common freight car, I wondered what that meant. Santa means “saint” but…”St. Fay?” Not likely. Then one day, driving beside the tracks and trains paralleling I-25, in Denver going to Boulder, it hit me. Santa doesn’t just mean saint; it means “holy.” And “auto de fe” from the Spanish Inquisition means “act of faith.”

 

       “Santa Fe.” “Holy Faith.”

 

       Running at 70 mph in heavy traffic, I laughed so hard my eyes teared and the car swerved. Hundreds of Santa Fe cars, thousands of them, everywhere. What a message!

 

       Of course this railroad car thing is crazy. I love it for that alone. Who wouldn’t want a wild card dimension to his life, without the downsides that go with flagrant substance abuse or criminal behavior? Far better to be just a little nuts.

 

       So here I was, parked, lost, by a railroad track next to a major freeway, where no one could possibly be lost, scanning a passing freight train. There were four Canadian National Railroad cars, four Canadian Pacific cars, four Union Pacifics--which didn’t pertain to the situation at hand, but was reassuring anyway -- one BN, and all the rest were Santa Fes. I whooped. A big permanent positive change, with some work involved, was coming to my life. I hadn’t been lost. I had been directed, to find this omen, to learn that what was coming was big.

 

       Now, where the hell was that shaman?

 

 

 

       I arrived at don Miguel’s apartment with five minutes to spare.

 

He lived in a high-rise, in a gated community, in the heart of Las Vegas. I parked between a Ferrari and a Jaguar convertible, and went in. I pushed open the glass doors, passed a couple of blue-haired ladies in the lobby and took the elevator to the twelfth floor.

 

       I rang his bell. He opened the door. Before me stood a slender, Mexican Indian man in his early fifties, of below average height, in gray slacks and a maroon velour pullover. I met his gaze. All my doubts disappeared before he opened his mouth.Looking into Miguel's eyes is like drowning in warm honey.

 

He grabbed me in a hug.

 

We took seats in his living room. It was severely modern, with glass shelves and tabletops at varying heights, back wall of the dining room open to the sunlight and, from this angle, the desert beyond. The effect was of being in a silver maze.

 

I set up my tape recorder, then asked, "How did you become a Toltec shaman?"

 

Don Miguel smiled. His voice was low and soft, accented, but with each word pronounced so carefully that understanding was never a problem. "Well, it's a family tradition, really. My mother is a great healer. She's ninety-five years old now, and I started to learn from her when I was still a child. Her father, my grandfather, don Leonardo, he was a powerful nagual too. Leonardo Macias. His father, don Eziquiel, was also a great nagual. He lived to 117 years.

 

"I didn't meet my great-grandfather. I only heard all those great stories about him. I think he was the first nagual in the lineage, in the family. And from him you can trace all the way back to the Mexicas, whom you call the Aztecs."

 

"Who were the Toltecs?"

 

"Well, the Toltecs, the name Toltec means 'artist.' A Toltec is an artist, not really a nation. History and anthropology think they were a nation. They have a very strong influence in Mexico. They started more than two thousand years ago, built the pyramids of Teotihuacán twenty-five hundred years ago. Before that, there were already Toltecs. It's a way of living. It comes from what I call just common sense, available to everybody. But very few have the fortune to learn it."

 

"I liked your book, The Four Agreements," I said. "I wonder if any of your students have told you ways the book helped them?"

 

"All the time. I receive a lot of mail from Europe, a lot of mail from the United States, and also from Latin America, from everywhere, really. You know, to write this book, it was a big challenge, to make it very simple and easy and short enough that anyone can read it, can understand it and apply it. To put it in action, that is the key of the book. That everybody can put it in action and see the difference that makes in their lives.

 

"When they understand what the book says, they start taking action, and right away they start seeing changes in their lives, until they reach a certain point. They're stuck at that point, and that's the time to read the book again. Then, it's like they're reading another book, because all the limitations that they used to have, they have already dissolved, and they reach another point. They have another 'Aha!' And they start shifting again.

 

"You find out after you read it that you knew all that. It's something that you knew since you were a child. But for whatever reason, it all shifted, was distorted. When you read that book, little by little you discover that you are not really what you think you are. You are much, much better than that."

 

"Do you know how many copies of this book have been sold?"

 

"More than three million. And the beautiful part is that mainly it's word of mouth. It's true that Oprah read it and gave it a big boost. But whoever reads it, right away they think of the people they love, so it keeps growing in that way."

 

"I get the impression that your more popular books -- The Four Agreements, The Mastery of Love, The Voice of Knowledge -- are for just regular folks. But you seem to be on a double track here, in that you're training people in Toltec nagualism, you're teaching apprentices."

 

"Yes, I teach what I call Dreaming. I have a whole Dream school, and there are teachers there who teach the others."

 

I was curious as to how what he called "Dreaming" related to other spiritual practices. I said, "My sister, she's a magical person. She used to do what she called 'astral traveling.' I couldn't do it. But I do write fiction. My feeling is that when you write fiction, that you are Dreaming."

 

"Yes, you are Dreaming. Certainly, right now. Certainly, all the time."

 

"That part's true," I said. "This is a level of Dreaming. And that's another level of Dreams."

 

He shook his head. "The way your sister approaches it is a different way than you do. You just don't know that you are Dreaming, and you call it your imagination. That you write science fiction, or whatever you write, is in your imagination. And it's true that you are traveling into a virtual reality that is real. Because everything here is just a virtual reality that is happening in your brain. It's not exactly true."

 

"So this world is a screen, and we're just running our movies on it."

 

"Yes."

 

"And what you're teaching is how to put a happy ending on it."

 

"That's exactly the direction that a Dream Master has. You know, like I told you before, the word Toltec means 'artist.' And the art that we practice, really, is the art of Dreams. As with every art, we enjoy the art. That's why we do it.

 

"You know, your whole life is really a story that you create. And that includes your parents, your brother. It's true that they exist. Yes, your father exists. But in the story that you create, you give them...they become characters in your story. It doesn't mean that they are what you believe." He smiled, assayed my soul with those eyes, and cocked his head.

 

"In your story your father is a certain way. Your mother is a certain way. That's what you believe, but that doesn't mean it's true. It's only true in your story. If you compare notes, you will find out your father is not what you believe he is. Your mother is not what you believe she is. Your children are not what you believe they are.

 

"And even going a little deeper, you find out that you are not what you believe you are. This is a place in dreams when your whole reality starts coming apart. What you believed you are is not what you are but what you pretended to be for so long."

 

 

 

The bookends of Don Miguel's career are the traffic accident and a massive heart attack in 2002 that nearly killed him. Since then, he has -- at least in theory -- worked a reduced schedule, laboring to set up his sons, Miguel Jr., Jose Luis, and in time, his youngest son, Leonardo, to follow in his footsteps.

 

"What are your students -- the actual naguals that you've changed – what are they doing with this knowledge?"

 

"Well, they're doing so many different things. You know, when you teach them, what you really teach is about themselves. And everybody is completely different. Then, what they do is to have a way of life that makes them happy. Just a few of them try to be teachers. But many others, they are artists, they paint and they draw beautiful art.

 

"The other kind of artists are the actors. There are medical doctors, lawyers, engineers. They are all kinds of people, and what they are doing, they keep going with their life in their way, but with awareness. Now they know what they are doing, and they do it with a purpose. And mainly the purpose that they have is about giving. It's no longer to receive. That becomes secondary. And by giving they are receiving much more than they give."

 

I wondered how this was accomplished. "What is the Sixth Sun Center?"

 

"It was created because of the need that we had to go to the next level of Dreaming. To have a place specifically where they have a place to sit in a chair, to go into Dreaming, and see their confirmation. This is a very intense work that they do.

 

"All that started eight years ago, on my last journey to Egypt. Then one of my apprentices, Dr. Sheri Rosenthal, she insisted that I teach Dreaming. So I told her no. But she was insisting, and I said, 'Okay, let's make a deal. Get forty people who would really want it so bad that they agree for a whole year not to fail one Dreaming. If you can do that, I will teach Dreaming.'

 

"When I told her that, I didn't think that she could get even five people who would really commit themselves. And she came back to me with much more than forty people. To my surprise, they did it.”

 

"In Castaneda," I said, "I think he hooked his audience in the early '70s with tales of psychotropic plants and also with tales of miraculous events. Y'know, Don Juan disappeared Carlos's car under a hat, and..."

 

"Those were real stories."

 

"My question is, are they metaphorical or are they..."

 

"Okay, this is a great question for don Carlos. But I can make an assumption that, yes, that was real. And, yes, they are metaphoric, but they are real at the same time. Like, in front of my apprentices, I perform so many miracles."

 

"Describe one, please."

 

"Well, for example, I took like forty people to Peru. We were in Machu Picchu, at the very top. It was during the night. We were outside, just relaxing. There were around twenty people with me at that time. The night was very clear. Crystal clear. You could see far away. I told them, 'What would you guys think if in less than one minute the whole environment becomes covered by fog, so that you cannot see anything?'

 

"They said, 'Well, that would be cool.' That's what they said.

 

"And when I said that, you could see from the mountains the fog coming. In less than one minute it was so dense we could not see each other. And then, when we were like that, I told them, 'And now, what would you guys think if in less than one minute the fog just dissipates?' And as soon as I said that, the fog started going away. You saw it going away, and the night was as clear as in the beginning. And if you ask me how I did that, the answer is, I have no idea."

 

"How does Toltec Dreaming differ from normal dreaming?"

 

"Awareness, that is the difference. You know, we live in a world with six billion people. And those people are not aware that they're dreaming. They're born, they grow up, they get old, they die, and they didn't know that their whole life was just a dream. Once you are aware, you find out that it isn't exactly true that life has all the power over you."

 

I had read about a Toltec technique called "The Art of Stalking." I thought of it as using the attitude of a hunter to analyze and master your own will. I asked Don Miguel to describe it.

 

"Well, once you have awareness, and once you master transformation, then you find out that you have control over every single belief that exists in your head. You can choose every action, and by choosing the action, you can see the possible reaction. Then you see that your whole life you were victimized by your beliefs. You find that you have an advantage over the rest of the people because you are no longer naive."

 

"You mean you track down your misconceptions and change them?"

 

"Oh, definitely. Yes."

 

In the Castaneda books, one becomes a sorcerer by capturing an "ally spirit." The way it's described, it's like capturing a demon and taming it, putting it to work for you. But in reading other Toltec writings, and about other disciplines, I'd come to believe it meant getting a handle on the lousy attitudes that ruin our lives: greed, lust, vanity, all that stuff.

 

"I wanted to ask you about the ally spirits. I think they're a metaphor for what in our culture we call neuroses."

 

"Uh-huh."

 

"And also they're a metaphor for archetypes. I wanted to know if you think that surmise is correct."

 

"You know, there's a lot of what I call inorganic beings that exist. And they are in many ways available to us. All that comes from emotions, concepts, beliefs. If you see in your brain, it's full of information, but it's information that doesn't exist in the material world. It's a kind of energy that you can't touch, you can't measure, you can't weigh it. It will not survive the scientific method. But that doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. You hear so many voices in your head. Who are you talking to? Who is talking to you? And all that is not matter, but exists."

 

"Because it has effects?"

 

"Exactly. It exists and makes you act in certain ways. Okay, then, with imagination, we try to express the existence of this kind of life to everybody. We can draw them, or whatever, whatever our imagination says they look like. It's not exactly true, but those things exist."

 

Don Miguel told me that the only way to experience what he was talking about was to go with him to Teotihuacán, an ancient city, ruined and being rebuilt by the Mexicans, about thirty miles northeast of Mexico City. He and his second son, Jose Luis, were leading a group there in a week. The five-day trip was already full, but he would give his assistants directions to make a place for me. I wanted to meet Jose Luis before we left for Teotihuacan. He and his wife, Judy Segal, have a house in an upscale neighborhood of Chula Vista. It’s front is very plain, but inside it’s a roomy two-story house with a two-story atrium living room.

 

I sat on a couch, and Judy, slender, big-eyed, dark and intense, sat on another, across a huge glass coffee table. To my left was a large print of a Klimpt painting, The Kiss, a stylized couple, standing embraced under a black blanket, shot through with gold. On the far wall, across the living and dining rooms, next to glass doors to the back yard, was an enormous Buddha, lacquered deep maroon. On the right wall of the dining room was a small table with a large statue of the Chinese goddess Kwan Yin.

 

       Jose Luis sat against the wall, on a low stool that curved upward around his hips, a stocky young man of about twenty-five. His mahogany face is both innocent and strong, and his hair is long and thick, to the middle of his back. He has his father’s eyes. Judy and I looked like we were in San Diego. Jose Luis looked like a holographic projection from another time and place. “So, I wanted to ask you, Jose Luis, did you grow up in San Diego?”

 

“No, I grew up in Tijuana. My father staged back and forth, went to medical school.” He speaks in a staccato Mexican accent, the same cadence as Tijuana Spanish.

 

“Here in the States?”

 

“In Mexico City, to be a doctor. I basically grew up in Tijuana, and about five years ago I completely moved to San Diego. So, I was going, before that, back and forth. I’d spend the week with my mom, and weekends with my dad, when he was available, because he was traveling all the time.

 

“I wanted to ask you how it was, growing up as the son of a Toltec nagual.”

 

“It was very magical. Magic happened all around us, all the time.

 

“For example, coming from school, my grandma grabbed an egg, and a glass of water. And when she breaks that, she does an egg reading. She reads your life, so whatever you do, it appeared there. There was nothing I could hide. My grandmother always says, ‘Come here!’ I’m always hiding from the egg.

 

       “When I Dreamed, first, I started experiencing like fear, ‘cause I woke up, in the dream, and my body was paralyzed. I was very aware, because I knew I was dreaming. Yet I didn’t have control of the dream.”

 

“Did your father kind of explain what was happening to you, as you went along?”

 

“Yes. But, many times he left it for me to figure out. He just smiled, looked at me and smiled.

 

“When I was like eleven years old we went to Mata Grande. Mata Grande is some mountains, like an hour from here, near Tecate. He did the initiation, with my brother and me, my older brother.

 

“Before we went up there, I had a dream that I was coming up there with my father, in the high mountains. Then, all of a sudden, in the dream, he fell, in the mountains. I looked down, and I could see he was unconscious, and I was so scared.

 

“So, in the dream, I started to run, looking for safety, I went to my mother’s home. I went, ‘Mom, mom! My father is dead. He fell down the mountain.’

 

“And in the dream, he came up from the back of the house, and he said, ‘No, I was only playing with you.’

 

“In that moment I woke up. So, from that, like a week later, I said, ‘Would you take me to Mata Grande?’ It was strange for him that I would ask to go to that place.  I was so little. He saw it as a sign of power, a sign of power in the Toltec tradition. It’s a sign from God. The doors are opening, and it gives you a signal, to take action.

 

“So, he took us to Mata Grande, my brother and I, and he gave the initiation. That initiation was very difficult. Very magic happened, and we took a walk in this place of male energy.”

 

“Male energy?”

 

“Yes, we were with my stepsister, Kimberly, but it was an initiation for us boys. He left my sister, and took us up by ourselves. I remember him saying at that time about male energy. It was all between the three of us. So, in the mountains, he put us to see the beauty around.

 

“And to see his shadow, because he was behind us. The sun was setting, so you could see his shadow, and all of a sudden, his shadow turned to like a serpent form. And, all around the mountains you could see rattlesnakes. Lots of noise, high up, rattlesnakes, all round the mountains.

 

“It was a very powerful personal feeling of having the communication of nature. That was the initiation, which bring many Dreams. So, that was a lot of discovery. And I’m learning from that discovery.”

 

“How do you feel about stepping into your father’s footsteps?”

 

“Right now, I feel it’s so normal, it’s a way of life. I get excited. But before it was a lie to think…you know how a kid always resists what the parents want.

 

“Your father resisted it as well.”

 

“Yes, he did. In the Dream, many times I can escape and resist. But it came to a point where there was nothing to resist. And so it came to a completely joyful moment.

 

“It’s about sharing love. When going into that feeling, we realize that we are children of God, so when I teach I don’t see color, I just go into heightened love. I put everything in the human form into unconditional love. “

 

“Do you teach these seminars south of the border also?”

 

“Yes, yes. When I was little, when I was going to junior high school, and in high school, I always had an altar, wherever I lived. For my friends, it was kind of weird to see these things, because in Mexico, normally you have just Catholic and Pentecostal.

 

“So, they would say, ‘What is your father?’ I say, ‘Oh, he’s a nagual.’ We were at my grandma’s, so they have to listen.

 

“So, at one point, I’m at a party.  They come to me, and say, ‘Okay, you want to show us what you can do, teach us something.’ So-- it was very funny--when I start talking, the noise got lower, lower, and then all my friends, all the people from the party, were in front of me. So, I started sharing what my father had been teaching, and my grandmother.

 

“To my father and grandmother, it was quite extraordinary. How everyone, with no practice at all on my part, received a message. I was inspired.”

 

I nodded. “I wanted to talk to Judy for awhile. You came into this…How?” 

 

She smiled. “I met a person who had just been working with Mother Sarita. The feeling of this person’s energy…I had to meet Mother Sarita. In fact, I didn’t even want to talk to them. I ran to the phone to call. I said, ‘I’d like to come meet you.’ There was a workshop coming up in two weeks, so I went, and met Miguel and Mother Sarita.

 

“Very shortly after that Miguel asked me to start working with him, to teach yoga at his workshops. So, I’d been working with him for a year, and I became one of his students, one of his Dream students.

 

“I met everyone in Jose’s family, and I was traveling around, pretty much everywhere Miguel went. A year later, on the way to New York, to catch a flight to Egypt, I finally met Jose.

 

“When I met Jose’, he was in that point of resistance he shared with you. And when I saw him at the airport in New York, with his father, he intimidated me so much. He had these headphones on, that were so loud with heavy metal, and on his head was like a gangster hat, with bug-eyed glasses.

 

“And this huge shield that said, ’Don’t mess with me.’ In fact, his character was so good, if you could see the face, he was like this mask. He was the type of fellow that if I saw him on the street, I would have crossed the street.

 

“And, after I got over the shock that Miguel was with this character, it took my breath. I almost didn’t want to, but I couldn’t not go over and say hi to Miguel.

 

       “And Miguel said to me, ‘This is my son, Jose.’ And I’d heard that name forever. So, I pushed up these little bug-eyed glasses, and the moment I saw the eyes, I went, ‘Oh, my God! You’re the same as your father. I love you. You are my family.

 

“I saw him, and I saw his mask, and what he was doing, and I saw his beauty.

 

“We’ve been together ever since.”

 

I asked Jose. “Do you have anything that you would like to say, to add, on your own, without answering questions? “

 

He said, “Yes, it was like two years ago, I went to the dentist, and I go home, and when I was coming back to Malibu, where we lived then, I noticed that my eyes started hurting, hurting in the lens, and I removed them, because it was hurting in the lens, for hours, in the rain,

 

“I got to the house. I said, ‘Oh, Honey, I’m very tired. My eyes hurt very much. I’m going to go to sleep, and tomorrow will be better.’

 

“So, I went to sleep, and the next day I saw everything blurry. My eyesight was gone. I could just see a little light. It was very scary, because the pressure kept increasing. The pressure in my eyes, and I couldn’t see.

 

“So, I went to Tijuana. My family, all my uncles are doctors. So, they took me there. And in the beginning, when I see my aunt--she’s an eye doctor--she was very scared. And she put light in my eyes, and asked me if I could see this. I know there was bad trouble. She was accidentally showing her fear.  

 

“So, we went to another doctor, and he said, ‘Well, if you’re gonna see again, you’re gonna see again. At first we thought you might have brain damage.’ So, after awhile, they put in an IV, and the pressure went away. But, I was like that for a week. At first I was feeling bad, feeling scared.

 

But, then I see loved ones having more suffering and pain, crying, feeling these things. And I said to myself, “Wow! I’m the one who’s supposed to be like that. I’m here taking care of them, and I’m the blind one.

 

 “But I loved to…I like to watch eyes. But, when that was taken away, I knew I had to proceed. And I could perceive the whole... It was like the whole infinity inside.

 

So, one night I dream…I’m walking with my beloved, and we see a line of souls going into a cave. I say to my beloved, take these people into the light, into the sun. And I go inside the cave. Inside the cave is Lucifer, and he is all red, with horns and a tail, and he says, “Who are you to take the souls that are my food?”

 

And I say, “They are not your people, or my people. They are their people, God’s people.”

 

And Lucifer grabbed me and bit my neck, and I pushed him back and saw his face. It was my face.

 

“And right there I knew I had a choice, in that moment. I could become the greatest victim, or I could become the greatest warrior in life, and accept what God had given me.

 

“And in that, I noticed that there’s a whole world inside.

 

“So, one day I wake up, and finally start making peace. And accepting, this is the way I’m going to live now. And I go to the mirror, and I see for the first time, I wake up and I see my sideburns. The first thing I see was my sideburns. I was so happy.

 

“And, I know the gift of God that was given to us, everything, life. So, from that experience, it is so amazing, so amazing to see, that we don’t need a sign of God to know that he is listening to us. The very moment that we wake up, every morning we open our eyes and take a deep breath, it’s a sign of power to know that He is there.

 

“And from that we receive all gifts, a true love for the Creator, and the creation, that is one. And from that you fall in love more and more with this stuff, and you fall more and more in love with God. And everything starts making more sense, to listen to yourself, and see the whole Dream around you. And to see, wherever you put your attention, you will perceive.

 

“Whenever you go to church, and see the altar, you know that’s a house of God. You go to Buddhist temple and see the Buddha, you know that’s a house of God. And, also I know that when I opened my eyes, and could see, I know the world is a house of God.

 

“So, going beyond the language, and going beyond the way of being, is a complete accepting of the way life is. And it’s so beautiful, to surrender to that.”

 

---

 

 

 

 

 

       In Teotihuacan I set out to write an objective account of how a miracle worker works, and one happened to me. Objective journalism can’t handle that. This is something else.

 

The first morning the hundred and fifty or so of us, were split into groups of seven or eight. My group was me, Rosalie Garcia, a San Diego corporate exec, two couples--Brian and June Foy, from Diddillibah, Australia, an hour north of Brisbane on the Sunshine Coast, maybe late fifties-early sixties. Brian’s a stringbean, and June sweet and warm; James Golden, an American SNAG (sensitive, new-age guy), and Leslie Gilbertie, his pretty blonde wife, from Northern California, —and Carol Brooks, a young Australian woman, living and working in London.  Carol was in her early thirties, tall and easygoing, her dark pageboy haircut capped by a black Clint Eastwood hat with a silver and turquoise band.

 

When we walked to Teo from the hotel, a Club Med, Carol strode along, in her jeans and black boots, talking to our group leaders.

 

They were stunningly beautiful women; Nancy Coleman, from Los Angeles, a mom in her thirties, and Rebecca Haywood, San Diego, probably in her late twenties.

 

      Rebecca did most of the talking; she had the same gift as Don Miguel. In a low, soft, crooning voice, she led us from our hells of self-centeredness and piglet greed into an altered state of consciousness. We were psyched by Rebecca’s pitch, and the great metaphor of Teotihuacan. It was a metaphor, but it wasn’t a simile, or even a book. It was a whole city, built millennia ago by artists who had thought about it for a long time, to create this experience.

 

Teotihuacan translates, The Place Where Man Becomes God.

 

It's hard to grasp the enormity of Teotihuacan. Twenty-five hundred years ago it was a city of a quarter million people, possibly the largest city on Earth at that time. But the consciousness that built it was more different from ours than ours is from that of the Martians of old-time space-opera science fiction. It was a society in which science, religion, and art were not separate. The engineering has mystical significance. The stone facades are heavy, ominous, and weird. This city of huge pyramids and giant plazas was conceived by a spiritual, poetic sensibility to induce an altered state of consciousness. It towers and sprawls and envelops. It overwhelms.

 

---

 

The Sea of Hell was a huge stone quadrangle, with a grass floor, and a stone platform or island in the center. We were given twenty minutes to wander in the sun-drenched plaza, to drop our emotional baggage, and meet again at the island.

 

Rosalie returned crying. Rebecca held her from behind, and pounded her back in a ritual way that I recognized from the Castaneda books. The couples were crying too. We all talked about our experiences. Talking seemed to make them more real. By the time we left, the two couples were arm in arm, like teenagers in love.

 

Only Carol and I seemed unmoved. But, it wasn’t true. I felt the full load of grief and greed, lust and guilt, lifted.

 

Next we were led to a pyramid with many stone heads of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent, carved on it, told to pick one, and stare at it until we entered it. The next three days were spent symbolically being digested by Quetzalcoatl, to emerge in the light of the sun, at the Pyramid of the Sun, three days later.

 

I won’t describe it all. It’s so deep in symbolism that if I did, it would sound like ravings. But that afternoon it hit Carol.

 

She started screaming, on the long walkway of the Avenue of the Dead. Whatever emotional load she was carrying, whatever demon, it was on the way out, and it did not go peaceful. Nancy led her to some ancient stone steps, and she lay in Nancy’s arms, sobbing; then, just when you thought it had passed, it started again, gut wrenching screams from the bottom of her soul

 

 A Japanese tourist family cast anxious looks our way, without touching their cameras, shrugged and strolled on. Nancy held Carol, and rocked her like a child.

 

That night, in the hotel bar, Carol was radiant.

 

The second day was my day. I sort of hooked up with Rosalie that day. I wanted to talk to her about her experience the day before. But, I felt embarrassed about quizzing her on such a personal moment. I was so circumspect she didn’t realize what I was asking. Later, she said they were cathartic tears of happiness, and showed me an entry in her journal that explained how she felt.  "What is so agonizing about this kind of work is that--despite one's willingness to grow and make changes in one's life, it's our own resistance to release, to let go of the familiar distortions (our domestication) of life--its our fear of the new and unfamiliar that keeps us stuck in our own stuff."

 

But, as we stood atop a stone wall, one that separated two of the stone quadrangles on the Avenue of the Dead, she looked out, at the miles long avenue, at the Pyramid of the Moon straight ahead, and the low dark mountain behind it, and the even bigger Pyramid of the Sun, off to its right, she said. “If this is a dream, it’s a keeper.”

 

Later, she reminded me of her favorite Miguel Ruiz quote. “You are given two choices in life; you can be happy, or you can be stupid.”

 

Rebecca led us, there on the steps of that wall, in a ceremony to rectify our relationship with our beloved. Then we were released to wander and ponder, in the Place of the Air. She said we were to proceed without judgment, but with discernment.

 

Usually your beloved means your life partner. But a writer has another beloved, his audience.

 

I’m a Vietnam veteran. The audience for my writing has been other Vietnam vets, soldiers, and the few civilians who get what that means. But, I’ve said everything I have to say about war and soldiering three times over. I had a practical need to graduate to larger issues, and a new fan base.

 

         What stood in my way was that I had never come home from Vietnam.

 

The young men who went to Vietnam thought that if we were willing to die for our country, put our very lives on the line, our countrymen would be grateful.

 

And, oh, how wrong we were!

 

We came home to a wall that separated us from the civilians. I’ve seen that flinch behind the eyes when someone I liked, but would never get to know, thought, “How many babies has this guy killed?” The answer is none, but they never asked, so I never got to say.

 

I was gun-shy of that hurtful flinch behind the eyes, and to reach an audience, you have to love it, sing to it in its own language. The worst thing you can do is fear it.

 

And, I was so tired of thinking and writing about gore. I wanted to focus on the light, and write about that.

 

I felt dazed, staggered. I walked to an ancient, low wall, and sat leaning against it, in an isosceles triangle of shade that ran along the wall.

 

And I thought, Jimmy, you have to love them. Maybe some of them will never get it, but maybe some of them will, that you signed on to protect their lives with yours. My decision to sacrifice myself for America had been an act of love, and the only way to be true to it was to keep loving, whether it was recognized, or rewarded, or not.

 

And I was crying.  

 

Long-legged Carol came striding across the courtyard, black, flat-crowned cowboy hat on the back of her head. She sat beside me and held my hand, saying not a word. We sat there a long time. She reached in a pocket and took out a curiously shaped crystal, flat on one end, jagged peaks on the other. She placed it on my heart.

 

In that moment, I came home.

 

Everybody there experienced something like that, something cataclysmic in their lives.

 

Rebecca told us to create an energetic double and fill it with our personal stories, all the baggage we carried. Mine walked beside me in tiger-striped camo and jungle boots, M-16 and hooded eyes. As we walked it grew bigger and filled with blood and bile. At the platform at the base of the Pyramid of the Moon we formed in X-shaped formations, four people on an arm, facing the four directions, and shot all the energy of our doubles through our formation, into the sky and into the sun. Gone!

 

People collapsed. People shivered like jackhammers. People cried. 

 

The next morning, in my just-before-waking dreams, I turned myself into a falcon, unfurled powerful wings, and pumped them into the sky, then turned to soar to the top of the Pyramid of the Moon, flaring to alight.

 

I stood on stalky bird legs, hopping, looking out at the first line of light as the sun rose, and the sky gradually turned pastel blues and lavenders. The east side of all the bushes in the brushy plain below turned into rough gray-green crescents. The sights and smells, flame, smoke and coffee, of the first fires of morning rose from the villages around.

 

Okay, it was a dream. But, in memory it is as clear and vivid as turning off the 101 onto Topanga Canyon Boulevard. So which is more real, now? I’d have to go with the dream. It has more meaning.

 

The closing event was at the top of the Pyramid of the Sun. The climb itself was structured as a ceremony. All of us walked all around the pyramid, at every level, men clockwise, women counterclockwise. We could see for miles in all directions. By the time we got to the top we were in that altered space.

 

I felt like an astronaut in orbit around the sun. Then it occurred to me that I really was in orbit around the sun.

 

On top of the pyramid, we gathered in a group around Jose Luis, who was preaching. Jose Luis is a stem-winder of a preacher, with his baby face, hair to the middle of his back, under a battered fedora. He believes, and feels so deeply that the words just roll out of him.

 

The sun shone directly on us, and monarch butterflies fluttered around. One lit on a clip in a blonde girl’s hair. I couldn’t see who she was through the crowd. I thought, that is so cool! It should happen to all of us.

 

Erika Kalter, who had been teaching a free, optional yoga class every morning, stood behind me. She cracked up. She started laughing so hard she bent over and slapped her thigh. I turned and said, “What?”

 

“There’s a butterfly on your hat,” she said.

 

---

 

I’m at the University of Transformation, which has its “campus” in a two-story suite in an office park in Sorrento Mesa, San Diego.

 

There’s a meeting tonight, of the San Diego Dream Group. Don Miguel, Jose Luis, and Barbara Emrys, another San Diego shaman, are speaking, and then the group is going to spend the weekend “Dreaming.” We’re upstairs in a large open room with a lot of folding chairs, not the wooden kind. These are canvas chairs with tube steel frames.

 

It’s an affluent crowd, well-dressed people, mostly, but not exclusively, Caucasian. The main thing I notice is that there’s not a sign of attitude anywhere. There are no macho guys, and no wimpy guys. The women are all attractive. Not movie star or model beautiful, necessarily, but beautiful in the way that any woman who is nice, and has a sense of self, is beautiful.

 

There is a couch on the far wall, with a wire and clip-on microphone on it. Erika Kalter is running the p.a. system. I go over to greet her, and to tell her that I’m still doing most of the yoga she taught me, and that Brian Foy took a picture of me, and the butterfly on my cap. It’s good to see her.

 

Miguel, Jose Luis, and Barbara enter and sit on the couch. Miguel clips on the mike. He looks fondly around the room, with his warm smile and liquid eyes, and says, “I am in love, and there is no doubt.”

 

Someone in the back of the room missed that last. He says, “What?”

 

Don Miguel smiles, “I said, ‘There is no doubt.’”

 

#

 

 

 

I haven't confused the Toltecs with anything.  The Toltecs practiced human sacrifice, too, and were a hierarchical war culture, among the other things I mentioned in my comment (1)...I mean, you could have your tongue cut out for "gossip." (notice how Ruiz also has a dim view of "gossip," but only where a student complains about a teacher, not the other way around (hierarchy).

I've read The Four Agreements.  He's referring to the culture, and, in my opinion, he romanticizes it.

Sorry, I just don't think the book teaches critical thinking, dissent or equality, that is, democratic values. 

I don't speak for ekobe, but I was wondering given your long standing relationship with Tom, if you think censorship is a device that undercuts critical thinking, dissent or equality? Given the obvious, making declarations about not making declarations might seem to some to be tanned with hypocrisy.

To whom is your question/statement addressed?

Your point is unclear.

The four agreements lay a foundation that enable critical thinking. Without the injunctions of not taking things personally and not making assumptions, critical thinking is not possible, or is at the least severely compromised.

Certain lessons are more appropriate for different stages. Don't throw out the babies with the bathwater, Zenzoe

I never said "not taking things personally" and "not making assumptions," should be thrown out, MEJ.  What I objected to was a book dedicated to the dubious teachings of a murderous "civilization," the Toltecs, as if such a culture could ever be a role model for an enlightened one.

Ruiz, for example, cautions the reader against “gossip.”  Is this a rhetorical accident, or has he in fact passed along the gossip taboo from the Toltec tradition of civic repression?  We know that “the imposition of a taboo is an overt attempt to control social behavior.” (Grammar and Gender, Dennis E. Baron) How naive would we have to be not to understand the word gossip, in the Ruiz lexicon, as not only code for female speech violations, but for wider uses of speech, such as protest and dissent?  After all, he makes no exceptions for righteous speech directed at injustice or human rights violations.

Those four agreements, in sum, as set forth by Ruiz—Be Impeccable with Your Word; Don’t Take Anything Personally; Don’t Make Assumptions; Always Do Your Best— can be understood as nothing more than pop-wisdom, over-simplifications of common-sense advice, and not as real wisdom, not as a thinking-outside-the-box answer to the crises of our lives, not as a path to real freedom and happiness, but, instead, functioning in our culture as they did for the Toltecs: to foster collective passivity, and to arrive at the bliss of ignorance. Thus, those enduring real suffering will not find direction there, no path to freedom and deliverance. The whole idea there is to never question authority, never complain, never engage in dissent. After all, to dissent in the Toltec culture was to risk death, or having your lips cut off.

http://www.mexconnect.com/articles/1927-the-post-classic-period-900-1521...
http://www.suite101.com/content/chichen-itza-a7456