Leadership and Integrity

It is the season of politics and people are campaigning for your attention.  The news casters and pundits grasp for it too as they tell you their story of a story.  They sit in their arm chairs and rate the candidates speeches and delivery looking for signs of leadership.   Yet they are somehow oblivious to the fact that it is not the great speaker that makes for a wise leader but rather the quiet listener.

Suggested reading:  Good to Great by Jim Collins

The Jim Collins website

Humility

There’s a tube down his throat to help him breathe.  The tube comes out of his neck and his breath bypasses his mouth.  They call it a trachea.   The doctors had to do it.  The infection had gotten so bad that his airway had almost swollen closed.  The previous set of doctors had dismissed the periodic coughing episodes as unimportant.  Now it was close to closing off his breathing.  The coughing had gotten worse and difficulty breathing couldn’t be dismissed anymore.

Phlegm builds up in his throat and trachea tube every hour or two.  It starts gurgling in his throat.  His body convulses in a coughing gag reflex effort to clear his airway.

We tell the nurse who calls the respiratory therapist.  The respiratory therapist puts a tube deep down his trachea and sucks out the phlegm.  She puts it down so far that it touches is internals.  It makes him heave a cough that lifts his whole upper body.  It looks like torture.  Not being able to breath normally.  Not even being able to clear one’s own throat.  Not being able to help him do something so simple that we all do so naturally all the time.  So easy to take your breath for granted when it comes so easily most of the time.

With the trachea tube in his throat bypassing his vocal cords he can’t talk.  He tries to write some words but that is difficult.  The farm equipment accident injured his left hand years ago.  That coupled with years of arthritis makes small hand manipulations difficult and his letters sloppy.  The morphine he’s on for the pain tends to make his mind fuzzy so he misspells words.   With sloppy writing and fuzzy spelling it is difficult to understand what he’s trying to write.   He’s beyond frustrated that he can’t tell us the simplest things that he wants… needs.  No way to clearly tell us what would make him more comfortable.

I can’t make him breathe easier.  I can’t make his fear go away that is a reflex from choking and gagging while the phlegm blocks his throat.  I can’t clear his throat.  I can’t make the infection in his throat go away that started this cascading of events and discomforts.  I can’t go back in time and change what transpired to have my dad end up in this hospital bed.

I’m not powerless and I don’t feel victimized.  There are simply things that I can do, and others that I don’t have power over. I’m not frustrated or angry.  I’m just aware that I don’t control the bodily functions, immune system, or emotions, of another human being.

I think knowing what you can’t change, and accepting it falls into the category of humility.  It’s not a joy in itself.  However it is far more peaceful than fighting what you can not change.  Life is a big place and respecting the forces of it is part of being impeccable. Death is one of those forces on the human body to respect.  Doing so can teach you a lot about savoring the moments of your life.  Little moments like breathing, or being able to speak and ask for what you want.

I don’t think those folks who proclaim, “If you can dream it, you can achieve it,” ever sat with their dad through the challenges of old age and a body with ailing health.

Humility isn’t about following the overly optimistic positive side of your personality to think you can create and change anything in life.  Nor is it about falling into the negative side of self importance and feeling victimized about life either.  Humility has to do with transcending both sides of self importance all together: the aspect that says you are helpless, and the aspect that says you can accomplish anything you can dream.  There is a middle way.

In the west our mind is so apt to put things into categories of being a winner or a loser,,, a success or a failure.   These are the dual images of self importance to avoid.  When you practice humility, you are no longer trapped by either of those limiting roles or labels.

Money Doesn’t Buy Happiness

Money and the comforts it can purchase can’t protect you from fear.  A big house, in a gated community can’t protect your mind from thoughts, self judgments, and emotions.

A private plane doesn’t protect you from the fear of flying.  A life insurance policy for $10,000,000 doesn’t insulate you from the fear of death, ill health, or the fear of losing a loved one.

No amount of money can protect you from an untamed mind that can take your emotions into a downward spiral of suffering.

If money buys happiness then Howard Hughes would have been one of the happiest people in the world. As it turns out his money didn’t protect him from his thoughts, beliefs, and fears.

The reason part of the mind looks for simple rules to describe the nature of emotions like happiness.  What people find difficult to accept is that one exception like Howard Hughes breaks the rules. Money doesn’t by happiness.  It’s just one factor of how your mind affects your happiness and your emotions.

What can protect you from fear, self judgment, and false beliefs is awareness and love.  Awareness and Love can create and insure happiness.

Creating Confidence

Faith is a force you command. You have the power to put faith in something or someone. When you do we say that you believe in an idea or a person.

Confidence is the feeling you create for your self by investing your faith in something or someone. Oddly you can create this feeling of confidence even if the idea is a lie or the person you believe in is a fraud.

A spiritual warrior is aware of how his or her belief in something can create a false sense of safety.

Practices for spiritual warriors in Self Mastery

What is the Mitote?

The Mitote (me-toe-tay) referred to in The Four Agreements by don Miguel Ruiz is a lot like blogs on the internet. People are pouring out the thoughts in their head and filling virtual cyberspace with opinions, ideas, rants, and their personal knowledge. It is an overwhelming volume of words that other people read, form opinions about and then write words about them in their blogs. Then more people read those opinions about opinions and write their opinion.Very seldom do any of these add any real value to one’s life. Even when good writing has a chance to have an impact, the reader isn’t likely to hold their attention and awareness with it long enough to have a real impact. Their undisciplined short attention is overwhelmed against the onslaught of more information and opinions to surf.

In the same way the mitote in the mind is like those layers of opinions. It is the cacophony of voices that make up the incessant thinking in your mind. The world of your imagination is filled with opinions, information, description, rants, judgments, and victimizations.

It has developed such a momentum that when you will your self to be still long enough and step back from them, you can’t help but notice them. You will likely be surprised at how loud those voices are. And usually right after that moment of awareness where you detach from the mitote and observe it, you form an opinion, or make a statement about what you observe.

And in that moment of forming an opinion or making a descriptive statement about the mitote, you have just lost your attention to the cacophony and contributed another layer.

Free Will: The Choice to be Happy

Free Will:

If you are not choosing your emotions, then what is?

Free Will and the Personal Power to Choose
Is there such a thing as freewill? Do each of us have freewill? First, let’s clarify it. Free will: the ability to consciously choose. Just for fun, let’s conduct a quick inventory and see what happens. Did you choose to have breakfast? Did you choose to take a shower this morning? Or, did this stuff just kind of happen automatically, and later in the morning you found yourself at work? Ever done that, get to work and didn’t really remember driving there? Did you consciously choose the way to work or did you take the same route you always take? Do you remember consciously choosing every lane change?

If you exercised choice in even just some of these then you must have it. If you didn’t, maybe you have it, but just aren’t using it.

Now it gets a little tougher. How do you feel about your day? Has something got you upset or stressed? Are you joyful and grateful all the time? Take a quick inventory of the emotional states you have gone through today, or even this week. Did you consciously choose any of them? Did you choose all of them? Be ruthlessly honest with yourself here. If you were cut off on the freeway by one of those unconscious drivers, how did you react? Did you choose your reaction? Could you have chosen or was your reaction already there before there was a chance to choose? There are a lot of questions, but take your time.

Now lets try something different. Think about what you are most grateful for in your life. Think about it long and hard. Now, how does it make you feel? Allow yourself to focus on this and as you do let the gratitude grow in your body. Settle on this for a few minutes and you may find yourself in a place of great gratitude, a wonderful emotion.

If you did the exercise you found that you have conscious choice over your emotions. So you do have free will with your emotions. Now the really tough questions. How often do you consciously choose how you feel? Do remember to choose when someone is pushing your buttons? Do you choose while driving your car, at the grocery store, with your family? If you did the exercise you know an emotional state is just a choice.

One of my biggest heroes is Nelson Mandela. Why? After decades in prison, when he was released, he embraced his captors. He had compassion for them. His will was so strong that he won over any emotional reaction. When we exercise our freewill we make it strong, just like a muscle. If he can do it after a near life time in prison, for sure, we can do it in our relatively comfortable world.

There is much in the world that we can not change. But we can choose how we feel. If we have difficulty changing our emotional state, it may be we have let the muscles of our freewill grow weak through neglect.

One other question to ponder: If we aren’t choosing how we feel, then whom are we leaving that choice up to?

A Gift that Fulfills You

A Gift

What creates your happiness is your love coming out of you.

We search and yearn for something to fulfill us but what is it?
It was years ago, and I was sitting with a couple warriors and a man who was attending a power journey. He seemed to be a very happy man and had his life very well in order. He was quite wealthy and contributed his money to different organizations and charities. He enjoyed doing so.

He sat about and wondered what he should do with his life. He seemingly had it all. At the time I did not have the awareness and clarity that I do now. At the time I saw a very nice man doing very well, very generous, and that had his life in a nice order. What I didn’t notice was that he was still looking. He was wondering what he should do, or create. What I didn’t notice was that he was not satisfied and fulfilled.

If I were to see that man today, I know what I would recommend to him. I would suggest to him that he express and experience all the love from his heart. When you experience all your love coming out of your heart you stop searching. You have found what you are looking for.

The greatest gift you will ever experience is the Love you express.

Inorganic Beings and the Parasite

In his book The Four Agreements, don Miguel Ruiz describes what he calls the parasite. This concept, and others similar to it such as “inorganic beings” often bring up questions in people’s minds. Someone sent me such a question and I decided to post my answer below. I hope to bring some common sense awareness to the issue and dissipate some of the superstition and fears around it. (please be patient with the grammar as English was not this person’s first language.)

DEAR GARY,

AS I AM NEW TO THE TOLTEC PATH, I WOULD LIKE TO ASK YOU A QUESTION.

IT´S ABOUT INORGANIC BEINGS

I DID A SEARCH ON THE NET AND FOUND THAT SOME PEOPLE TALK ABOUT ANGELS, ALLIES, FRIENDS, AND INORGANIC BEINGS. SOME SAID THAT THEY TAKE ALL OUR ENERGY, AND WE ARE LIKE SLAVES TO THEM, WE GIVE THEM ENERGY THEY GIVE US INFORMATION ABOUT OTHERS DIMENSIONS.

OTHER SAYS THAT WE HAVE TO FEAR THEM. THEY ARE ALL POWERFUL. I FOUND ONE GUY WHO SELLS CRYSTALS WHICH TAKE ALL THEIR ENERGY BACK TO US. HE SAYS THEY ARE LIKE VAMPIRES AND DEMONS AND WE CANNOT DO ANYTHING IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD WITHOUT THEM. THERE’S A LOT OF THINGS WHICH SEEMS THEY ARE GODS, AND WE SLAVES.

COULD YOU PLEASE TELL ME SOMETHING ABOUT INORGANIC BEINGS?

THANKS, JORGE
FROM RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL
(SORRY FOR MY ENGLISH)

__________

Hello Jorge,

Carlos Castenada mentions this in the Active Side of Infinity. Don Juan describes it as the “topic of topics.”

I’ve let this question sit in my mailbox for a few days deciding what to do with it. Just the name “inorganic beings” conjures up mystery and for many that means confusion. Confusion leads to guesses, assumptions, and wanderings of the imagination in speculation. Sometimes this can lead to superstition and fear. The more you write and speak about it the more attention, discussion, and distortion people are likely to stir up. It’s not my intent to stir up fear and superstition but rather to dispel it. At the risk of more confusion and distortion I decided to publish my response anyways.

When we make explanations about these energy beings they are generally done in metaphor. It has to be done in metaphor because that is what words are. Abstract terminology like “energy, entity, dreams, taking our energy, gods, slaves, and power” all add to the confusion, and often create superstition. That superstition can lead to fear. Fear is the big demon that sucks your energy. Of course once you have fear of some “entity” that can not be seen you then might want to protect your self as a reaction to unknown threat. Trade your money for a crystal to protect your self and you have compensated for your fear. You sill have your fear, but you have put your faith in the idea that the crystal will protect you so you balance it out emotionally with a feeling of safety.

And so the chain reaction of personal power bleeding events goes.

In short, inorganic beings exist. Don Miguel Ruiz even refers to them as a “parasite” that eats our energy and doesn’t’ give us anything back. Ekhardt Tolle refers to the “pain body” as behaving as a living being.  In the West we might be more familiar with the term “ego” or the term collective unconscious is used by psychologist.  It’s no different than what we are used to, but since the culture has a different language we don’t know what they are referring to and that can cause confusion.

Fears are one example of something inorganic that you can feel possessed by. Very simply you can consider your mind such an energy being. All the voices in your head talking have taken on a life of their own. The mind is not you and for most people it doesn’t obey your wishes. It keeps chattering even though you want it to be silent at times. Very simply it is a living being with a life of its own and for most people it is not under control.  A simple test of this is to sit still and do your best to quiet your mind.  When you do that you will see what I mean.

In heightened states of awareness you can see the field of energy that don Miguel calls a parasite. They can look like clouds of smoke, or fog that surrounds a person’s body. It is a cloud of beliefs and emotions that distort a person’s perceptions.  If you were talking to someone and you didn’t believe a word they said, you might say, “They live in a dream world.”  We’ll imagine that that dream world that surrounds a person is the belief system of their ego and that it looks like a field of fog.  You can visualize that field of illusions in someones mind a different way, but this is the way I visualize it.

What does your ego or parasite eat and how do they get our energy? They principally eat our emotions, and our faith. Faith is a life force energy or one type of personal power that we can express.   When we put faith into a conceptual idea or an opinion we give it life in our mind. When we believe thoughts in our head, we give them power and life. They become bigger. The more we believe them, the bigger and more powerful forces they become in our life. When we believe strongly in something that has a lot of emotion we can then react to those beliefs and that emotion.

When we put enough faith in those conceptual ideas in our head we start acting upon them. Those beliefs start dictating our actions. For example if we believe: “Inorganic beings can suck our energy, then we will fear them. If we get this crystal and wear it we will be protected.” These are just conceptual ideas, and if we believe them they become alive in our mind. We are in effect giving life to conceptual ideas in an effort to keep other conceptual ideas at bay. The conceptual ideas tell us what we have to do to protect ourselves from other conceptual ideas. These are just assumptions. We give up our free will to these assumptions, opinions, beliefs and fears. That is how humans become slaves to these beliefs in the mind.

Years ago different societies created grandiose ideas that they believed in as a society. Because everyone believed in them together they became gods over large numbers of people. There was Zeus, Apollo, Poseidon, etc. The people put their faith and emotions of love and fear into those conceptual ideas. Those conceptual ideas became powerful forces in their life. They were gods that the people served but they were not real. They only existed as conceptual ideas in people’s mind. Yet the faith and emotion they created around these gods were real. The amount of faith and emotion invested by humans made these gods powerful.

Years later, nobody believes in those gods and because nobody puts their faith in them they have no power. Because no one believed in them they could no longer exist. If you don’t want to be under the influence of inorganic beings and entities, then don’t believe them. Yes they exist as dreams, but don’t believe in assumptions, opinions, judgments, or conceptual ideas that they convey. Very simply don’t believe in lies. That is all the protection you need.

The challenge is that they can be very tricky and subtle. Today we wouldn’t believe in silly gods of Zeus and Apollo. But we might believe our own opinions. We often believe the voice in our head that is speaking to us. It tells us “I shouldn’t have done that” and we believe. It is just habit. It is a little god in our head that judge’s us that we are wrong, or ugly, or an idiot. It rules our life like a tyrant. The inner judge tells us bad things will happen if we disobey it. We create fear and feed it fear when we think about disobeying that voice in our head.

Often the little gods in our head (“parasite”) are backed up by larger gods of society and culture. Religions and expectations of society support the little gods in our mind and that congruency of assumptions make the little voice appear to be telling the truth. In reality these norms are just conceptual ideas that are accepted and believed by the majority of the people in that culture. If you go into another culture they have a different set of beliefs and to them your beliefs look like silly superstitions.

Years ago people believed that slavery was an acceptable way of treating people. Very recently apartheid was an acceptable social norm in South Africa. You can see that apartheid is just a conceptual idea. It doesn’t exist as anything more than a set of beliefs. When people change what they believe, apartheid laws no longer have power over their mind. We could say that apartheid was just a dream of conceptual ideas powered by the energy of people’s faith. It was an idea that humans give life to, and then that idea ruled their behavior.

Not all inorganic beings, entities, and dreams drain on our energy. If you listen to the first session of my Self Mastery Program you will notice that I am inviting you to create the emotion of gratitude. By creating that emotion you are developing your own personal living dream of emotion. It is your own god of gratitude. Except that it doesn’t rule you. You create it. What you will notice about this meditation is that I don’t invite or suggest that you believe anything in order to do this. It is a simple exercise of perceiving and expressing. In this way you don’t expend any personal power of your faith but you still benefit with the enjoyment of a beautiful dream of emotion.

By expressing the emotion of gratitude you are creating your own cloud made of the emotions that come from love. We are going to create and feel emotions so why not create emotions that we enjoy. It is your creation and is dependent on you. You created it and you give it life. In return it gives you a good feeling. Because it doesn’t require you to believe anything, it doesn’t drain your faith. That means it is not a parasite. Because it helps to keep your eyes open and enjoying life. It is an ally that helps you stay in love and gratitude.

By staying in love and gratitude you are not expressing fear and feeding the dream of the parasite. The more you practice this exercise, the less you are directing your faith into conceptual ideas that create fear. Expressing love and gratitude will help you to be free of the parasite more than a crystal.

In the rest of the Self Mastery exercises I teach about taking an inventory of your beliefs so that you can identify these conceptual ideas and recover your faith and emotions from those dreams in the mind.

There is no need to fear inorganic beings, entities, the parasite, or any of those things. They are just dreams. As humans we create them. They are completely dependent on us for life. As we become more aware they will no longer be able to hypnotize us with their conceptual ideas. Those beings might be afraid of us gaining this awareness because it will be their end. But their fear is not our fear. It is the nature of the conscious evolution of the humans that we create and dream with more love and less fear.

That is just the evolution of consciousness. In your personal dream of consciousness you can go as fast as you wish beyond fear and into clarity and love. The more you change your personal dream from one of fear to a dream of love, the more your personal dream affects the collective dream of humanity. This is why one of the greatest gifts you can give humanity is to be express love and be happy in your life. If you do this, then when you die you will leave a giant inorganic field of love for the people you leave behind.

I hope this helps.

Gary van Warmerdam

Spiritual Teacher

Training to be a Teacher or Coach

A Toltec is an Artist, their expression their paint, Life thier canvas.

Becoming, and Being a Life Coach or Spiritual Teacher
The word “teacher” has seemed quite inadequate to me for some time now. So I have taken up finding a better term for what I do. As a starting point I looked at the definitions of Teacher.

In many spiritual traditions the term Master is used. In the definition of master it refers to a person’s skill and proficiency as an artist or craftsman. There is also a reference to a religious leader. (I’ll refrain from using this one as religion often clouds things up by putting rules and definition boxes on the Divine.)

So, here is my dilemma. I don’t like either of them as so many assumptions are already projected on to such titles.. I could use term teacher or master just to simplify things for people, they certainly apply. But as I will explain further on, I feel they fall short of the clarity that I am seeking. I could also use Nagual, Shaman, Witness, or Dream Master. In my world of understanding, these are far more accurate, but to people who do not share my experience, and therefore perception, these terms are probably vague and confusing. For some people, the usage is more confusing than clarifying. And this is an attempt to keep it simple, and in terms of common sense. I often use Life Coach these days because it is more acceptable to people although it doesn’t really say what I do.

Let me share an interpretation of the term, master and we might see how other people might not see it this way. A master is someone who has proficiency and skillfulness of their art or craft. Well, in one point of view, we are creators of our life, or dream as referred to in Toltec mythology. Let’s say that our life dream is made up of everything that we think, feel, say, interpret, and do. It is highly unlikely that anyone has created a life identical to our own. In the world of billions of creators, each person’s life dream is an original work. It is also not likely that someone could duplicate such a life, even given all sorts of insights. If you consider identical twins, they don’t create their life the same way. Not even close.

So each of us is a creator of a personal dream, a work of art in the expression of our life and each creation could never be duplicated. I’d say that this is a kind of mastery, a creation that we may not have previously considered to be a work of art.

Now people may disagree and say that it’s not really mastery if it is filled with fear, judgments, jealousy, and all kinds of drama. We’ll I think that there are some great examples of artistry that are filled with drama. Take for example a play by Shakespeare. Macbeth is filled with drama and it is an incredible work of art. Any performer in one of those roles, that plays it well, is certainly a master. Now, what if people have been playing these dramatic roles so well for so long that they are completely immersed in the character? They do this in their life as their personality?

They are so practiced at playing the role of fear, judgments, anger, sadness, etc., that they do it every day without any second guessing. This is truly an amazing feat. We might call mastery in the way they dream their life. Completely unaware of choice, but a mastery just the same. If we look at how people live their lives and see it as roles they practice and play every day, then we see that everyone is a master. Their life dream is different from every other person. Some people are masters of drama, fear, anger, jealousy while some are masters of love, happiness and fun. But most people have some combination of the two. Whatever their life dream, it is an original work of art, a masterpiece. Therefore, everyone is a master. Perhaps it is clearer that what these words mean to me are completely different from what they mean to other people.

About that word “teacher”
Teacher: one who teaches: one who’s occupation is to instruct. ( this definition didn’t help very much) So I went further.

Teach: to instruct by precept, example, or experience. (this one has a chance but we will clarify.)

For starters there is not enough emphasis on the part where there needs to be someone there learning/growing in order for teaching to be happening. If there is a teacher alone in the forest and no one is there learning, is he teaching? But I digress. Here’s my point. If we teach by example, or experience, then isn’t how we live our life a teaching? If we scream at our employees or co-workers, or children, then we are teaching by example. And they are learning by experience. If we shame our children they are learning by experiencing us. If we elevate their emotions and have them embrace happiness, then that is what we are teaching. If we respect people, then that is what people are experiencing. And that is what is being taught. We are teaching whenever we are sharing our expressions with others, and they experience our expressions. People learn by experiencing someone else’s expressions.

I see everyone sharing their opinion, emotions, and attitudes. In doing so, they are teaching others. Where ever people are experiencing another’s dream, there is a chance for learning. People don’t have to be in front of a class to be teaching. Parents teach children, brothers teach sisters, school kids teach each other on the play ground. Children teach parents and teachers as well, just through experiencing each others attitudes, actions, and personal dream of life. In this same fashion adults teach other whenever they interact. So, by this perspective, I see everyone as a teacher. Each person is teaching other people their own life dream through every expression. Each person is sharing their viewpoints, opinions, emotions, and attitudes that they have mastered in their personal dream. Of course most of this is all done without any awareness that this is what is happening.

So, the way I see it, everyone is a master of their life dream and each person is sharing their mastery to everyone they interact with. So everyone is also a teacher to others of how to dream. Whether we are aware that we are masters and teachers or not, does not change the dynamic. Some interact with awareness and others not.

There are many masters.
If there is something that you wish to master, then one of the fastest ways to learn is to study with someone who has mastered what you desire to learn; provided that they will teach you. If you want to master the violin, study someone who is a master of the violin. If you want to master sculpting, study with a master sculptor.

If you desire to master love and happiness, study with someone who is masterful in their love happiness.

If you would like your children to be happy, then practice being happy yourself, for they will be learning from you, just by them observing and interacting with you.

We are all learning from each other, and we are all teaching each other, whether we are aware that we are doing it or not. The thing to keep in mind is that it is all much easier and faster with awareness.

How to become a Master?
I’ve recently had many inquiries from individuals wishing to teach the Toltec work. The questions vary in range, and include issues of marketing themselves, and the various institutions associated with don Miguel’s work. The extrinsic logistical issues are not that important compared to the intrinsic qualities of a person’s personal dream. You can only really share what is in your personal dream.

In guiding others, I came to a realization that I could not teach what I was not able to do for myself. By the same token, I chose to study with people who had mastered what I wanted to learn. They could teach me how they were living. I did not need a better intellectual definition of “impeccability”. It was much more valuable to spend time with someone who was really impeccable, and learn about how they viewed the world and lived their life.

If you were going to climb Mt. Everest, would you hire a guide that had not been there before? If you want to consider yourself a guide, and you can not get yourself to the mountain top of Unconditional Love, don’t expect others to follow.

Consider the journey out of hell. Would you allow someone to guide you who has not found the way out themselves? If you wanted to live a life of unconditional love, would you study with someone who wasn’t able to live it themselves? If you are considering being a teacher, you must be willing to be humbled with accepting what you have not yet mastered. If not, you will eventually become an obstacle to your students.

As a teacher, If you want to teach Impeccability, then live your life that way.
If you want to assist others in dreaming a life of Joy and Love in every moment, then do it yourself. Notice the definition above about teacher where it uses the word “example”. If you don’t know the way, and you want to get there yourself, hire a qualified guide. It is possible to figure it out on your own. A few have done it, but it can be much easier and faster with a guide. Personally, I can not fathom passing through challenges I have encountered without guidance.

The Toltec Route
People who have just read don Miguel’s books, contact me and ask about being a teacher. They want to become one. The whole idea is a little funny to me. It is like asking one of those mountain guides; “How do you become a guide on Everest.” I imagine that you dedicate your life to the process for starters, and then you add a lot of patience for your own process as it takes some years. At least that is what I’ve seen the best teachers do.

Some people have done a great deal of inner work in their life, and it is not too far to stretch to understand this way of teaching. Just in the way some climbers have a great deal of experience before attempting Everest. Some have even ascended the same Mountain, but by a different route. Meaning, they have already mastered unconditional love, and are happy in their life, and all their relationships. Then it is just a matter of becoming familiar with the Toltec route up the mountain, and gaining the experience guiding others along this route. With each person, the time, effort, and process will vary. No two climbers ever step in the same place.

But for those that show up, and have never climbed a mountain, I am at a loss for words to describe the journey that they will undertake to become a master of reaching the mountain of Unconditional Love. But I have no doubt that the journey will be worth it. It is an epic feat.

Do I need to wait for Mastery to teach?
Don’t assume that because you are not a master of happiness or love, that you don’t have something worthwhile to share, or have no right being a teacher. I don’t think I wrote that up there. And if I did write it, it would just be my personal opinion anyway. And nothing that others necessarily are required to live by. ( just keeping this all in perspective here. This whole thing that I’ve written here is just a viewpoint from my personal dream. No one else need live by my words. They are their own master artist. Keep this in mind as we go. )

As we journey one of the interesting avenues that we can explore is sharing our new found awareness, tools, love, and support with others. If this is in the role of a “teacher”, then so be it. When we consider some of the reasons why we teach, one of the most elegant is that it provides us an opportunity to practice the unconditional love that we seek to master. Then share your love in whatever forms you wish. But it doesn’t have to be as a “Spiritual Teacher”. I know people who have incredible personal dreams, and have no desire to teach in a formal setting. They do it as school teachers, office managers, executives, doctors, and secretaries. Without “trying”, without making an effort, just by their everyday interactions of being themselves, the people around them are affected by their presence. Their teaching is in how they live their life, and they don’t have the need to tell anyone they are doing it. This can be just as valuable to transforming the world. When you are living in a more abundant state of happiness, other people around you will be affected, and most of them may not even know it.

A Beginners Trap
What to be aware of as we share the way we dream life with others is the quality of what we are sharing. Too often a beginning teacher will trap themselves in an image of what they believe a teacher should be. They often feel like they should always have the answers, or “be” a certain way. With these kinds of ideas, they limit their behavior, and thereby sacrifice their personal freedom in order to be what they believe a “spiritual teacher” is “supposed to be”. This is a very fast and effective way for a teacher to fall into misery. And a good gate to pass through as we continue mastering unconditional love for ourselves. As I said earlier, this teaching route can be humbling.

What is embodied by those great teachers is their humility. In their humbleness they act to serve their students. They are not there for the accolades or praise from their students, they are there because they enjoy serving them. And what they are serving them is their love. As a teacher, you become the servant, placing the student’s needs ahead of your own. You operate based on what is best for them, and their freedom. And not, based on what you think would be best for them. This is a very fine line that becomes clearer through experience, practice, and time.

In the early years of teaching, as your mastery is still growing you may encounter individuals that have more unconditional love and happiness in their dream than your own. They are seeking, but what you have to offer, they already mastered for themselves. A person may also grow to this level through working with you. At this point perhaps they have outgrown you as a teacher. At this point, this student is best served by sending them on to a teacher that has more to share. This level of service to your students is truly a gesture of humility. There is a lot of that humility to be found on this teaching route.

Responsibility to the Student
There is an aspect of teaching that is profoundly important to me, yet is rarely talked about. It has to do with the responsibility that a teacher has to a student. Students will often put the teacher on a pedestal. They assume that the teacher knows something that they don’t, and then rely on the teacher’s guidance. Whether the teacher realizes it or not, people will make an authority figure out of him or her. By doing so, the student puts their faith, or personal power, in the words of their teacher. This is not necessarily bad. If a person is in a high degree of hell, and they need help to get out of it, they are often better off listening to someone who has moved past those demons, than to the judge and victim in their own mind.

When a student puts their trust in a teacher, the teacher then has a great responsibility to the student. The teacher is in service to the student. But, this does not mean that the teacher is responsible for the student. The student remains always responsible for their own choices, actions, and results of their actions.

In the beginning of my time as a teacher, I did not appreciate the level of responsibility that students put in my hand. In one manner I did, because I was aware of my own process and don Miguel’s guidance. On the other hand, I was naïve of how much faith my students would put in what I said. As I became more aware of people’s willingness to put their faith in me (something that I didn’t really consider the impact of early on) I became more careful of my instructions and guidance.

Through my experience with don Miguel I became aware of how a dedicated Spiritual pursuit will bring change to your life. In the way you view the world, feel emotionally, what career changes might be incurred, relationships, and everything else.

The integration of these changes in ones life can be challenging. They often take time. If rushed, they become sources of drama that interfere with our creation of happiness. When the integration of change becomes more a source of suffering than a source of happiness, we are moving too fast. I often find myself instructing them to have patience in accepting things the way they are,,, and never to hurry up. The price of too much change too fast, is too high.

Don Miguel’s has often said, “We are not in a hurry, and there is no time to waste.”

As a teacher, these words have a profoundly deeper meaning when I consider my responsibility to my students.

One of the greatest lessons I learned from don Miguel had to do with Power. Through an experience I had with him, I discovered what an extraordinary connection he had with Intent ( Spirit, Power). I was quite impressed. I didn’t understand it very well, but I knew it was big. What I immediately began to wonder was why he didn’t do more with it. Why not do big acts of power all the time? It could have an incredible impact on people to shift the whole dream of their life.

As I journeyed into this question about don Miguel, I saw the amount of refrain he had in the use of Power. What I then saw was behind this motivation of refrain. I saw that don Miguel had no desire to change anyone, or their life. He only loved and accepted people just the way that they are. His love was/is, so unconditional, that he loves people just the way that they are. In that unconditional love, there is no desire or need to change anybody. This is when I saw the real nature of don Miguel. I understood what unconditional love was. It means not needing to change anyone, and that includes yourself. This realization became much more powerful to me than any act of power could have performed. His unconditional love was more powerful than any Ceremony, or act of Power or change could ever be. He loved me just the way that I was. I didn’t have to try to be anything any more. I was lovable. I was good enough just the way that I was. He loved me no matter what I was. And in his reflection, I began to love myself just the way that I was. No conditions.

For me, to love unconditionally became the most powerful act of transformation. It transformed me and my entire personal dream.

And the irony is, that it came to me through someone who didn’t have a need to change me. He was teaching by example. It was simple. He was just living it, and wasn’t even doing anything to bring attention to how he loved me.

To me, Unconditional Love is at the heart of what a teacher has a responsibility to impart to those he or she is responsible to. It may be the only thing they have a responsibility to.

In my quest to find a better term than teacher, I have not come up with one. So, by default I will use the term teacher. However, I don’t know anyone who isn’t a teacher of their own dream. What I teach is about my personal dream. It is quite a bit different than it used to be, thanks to don Miguel. I will continue to share my dream. The words that I use to describe my dream will change, but the essence of my practice and mastery will continue to be Unconditional Love.

__________updated note. Someone proposed that I use the word “un-teacher” since I am essentially guiding people to unlearn all their reasons and excuses not to love. I liked it, but in using it I’ll keep having to explain all this again.

Be Still in the Moment

Be still and you can perceive the infinite in a moment

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Albert Einstein.

Take a moment for a Thought Experiment: Imagine no Time
Take some time reading through this, and then use your imagination for an exercise.

Imagine that this moment is the only one that exists.  After all the future is just an assumption isn’t?  The past is nothing more now than assumptions in your mind about what happened.   Someone else will have a different set of assumptions about the past according to their point of view.  Let all those assumptions go.

Imagining that this is the only moment that exists requires us to remove from our imagination any concept that life is going anywhere. Or, that this moment actually was produced anywhere. To imagine this moment without time requires us to let go of any story of how we got to this point. It is willing ourselves to erase our own personal history, as well as, any that we have placed on the world.

You can imagine yourself being in an experience with no beginning and no end. Let go of any notion of minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years or lifetimes past or future.

When you touch this moment without the overlay of future or past projected on it, you find a feeling of being in all eternity. You are in eternity because you are in all time. This is so because you have not spliced yourself into today, and alienated yourself from tomorrow, or your past. We allow them to merge when we remove the artificial dividers that we placed between them with our imagination. In actuality, they have always been merged, but we have not noticed as our attention has been focused on its division through our projection of the concepts of time.

The idea of eternity is a concept also. It doesn’t exist either except in our imagination. If we remove this artificial construct, then we move closer again to what is Real. Each time we remove these concepts of knowledge that trap our attention, we move closer to what is Real. What is real is what exists when we remove the projections of our imagination. What we might call our assumptions.

Time and the words of time, days, lifetimes, minutes are used to describe that which has no name. In a crude way, they are words that describe the flow of the planets through the solar system. The idea of being late, being ahead of our time, behind the times, on time, in a hurry: these are concepts we sometimes live by or have our lives ruled by, but they only exist in imagination. The judge and victim in our mind use these concepts to tell stories about what we should be and when we should be it. In this way “time” becomes a tyrant that rules our mind. But it is not “time” that rules our mind, it is our knowledge and agreements about time that our judge and victim use against our happiness. In this way, we become slaves to knowledge, knowledge of time.

The present moment has no knowledge. Nor does it need any to be experienced. Practice sitting in the stillness of the moment, letting all descriptions go, letting all knowledge go. Even letting go of the trapping idea that it is a silly way to spend your “limited amount of time”. Practice being in stillness, and perhaps, you will find there all the time in the world. If you don’t practice you won’t ever find it.

Finding the stillness in the mind, may take some practice. But practicing once in a while, will make it easier. If you find it difficult, it may be because you have certain limiting beliefs about time. Living in this timeless way, is actually a natural way of living. Watch any young child. You see that they behave quite differently before being domesticated with the beliefs and agreements about time.

Now Imagine being in this moment, focus your attention on what you are experiencing in this moment. Let go of any knowledge you have of the past, or thinking of the future. Be still, and in the stillness, experience that you are.