Issue #9

© Toltec Mystery School of Light, Lightwurks, LLC March 2002

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Free Will and The Command of the Eagle

by: Kristopher

When the warrior becomes fully aligned to the Dreamer they have the Command of the Eagle at their hand. Toltecs call the Creator of the Nagual (all that is), the Eagle.  When a warrior has the Command of the Eagle at their hand they have the power of the Intent of all creation.  

When we are fully aligned to the Dreamer, the Dreamer’s will and our will are one. We have free will but it is the will of the Dreamer. For those new to Toltec lore, the Dreamer is the entity that dreams our particular lifetime. We are the dreamed, dreamed by the Dreamer, our life is the dream.

 We begin aligning to the Dreamer when we embark on the Mastery of Intent. Most never make it this far on their path. We must start with the Mastery of Awareness and move to the Mastery of Transformation. This is where most get hung up. Progressing through the Masteries of Awareness and Transformation requires growth. Growth requires that we clean, clear, heal and strengthen the human tonal (in the human we can look at the tonal as the human personality, which consists of the mental, emotional and physical bodies). Growth has nothing to do with how much we “know.”

 The cleaning, clearing and healing is not fun. It is work. It takes diligence and perseverance. It requires that we look at our inner and outer worlds as they are, without sugar coating, avoidance or denial. We must begin by looking at ourselves as we are, not how we wish to be.

 In order for us to reclaim our free will and find freedom from the patterns and suffering in our lives we must clean, clear, and heal the tonal. The reason for this is simple, but maybe not obvious.

 When we are very young and encounter pain due to the dysfunction in our families and society, the psyche’s response is to try to suppress the pain. When we are young we are not able to process the pains and injustices we encounter growing up. We are totally dependent on our parents and caregivers for our very survival. Our needs must be fulfilled by our caregivers. When our needs are not met, or when we encounter the brunt of our parents’ dysfunction, we are wounded. We engage all of our will to suppress the pains of growing up.

 Most of us spend our entire lives suppressing the pains of life. We use all of our will to do this. Every time we suppress something we hide it from our awareness. Each time we suppress something from our awareness we add to our subconscious. By the time we are adults we have a huge dark wall in our inner world that blocks us from the Essential Self. This dark wall is our subconscious.

In order to reconnect with the Essential Self we must take down the wall through cleaning, clearing and healing the tonal. We must bring the subconscious back into the light of awareness. 

What does this have to do with free will? We are controlled subconsciously by the wounds, pains and patterns in our subconscious.  We have used and continue to use all of our will to hide, suppress and repress these pains and patterns. We have no free will because all of our will is being used to hold our subconscious in place.

 When we suppress we make a decision to use our will to hide something from our awareness. When we repress, the suppressing is no longer conscious. It has become an unconscious habit. We are not even aware that we are suppressing. The process of increasing the size of our subconscious continues on and on without us even being aware of it.

 In the Mastery of Awareness we begin by becoming aware of that which we repress and suppress. We must start here otherwise we continue to use our will to build our subconscious. As long as we have a subconscious we cannot know who we are because we are hiding aspects from our self. When we use our will to build our subconscious, which controls us, we have no free will because we have used all of our will to build something that controls us. We also have no personal power because we use all of our energy to create a subconscious, over which we have no control.

 We cannot cross the line of our free will. When we use our free will to build our subconscious we cannot reverse this as long as we continue to use our will to suppress and repress. Also, and this is something that many have false beliefs about, SPIRIT OR POWER CANNOT HEAL US, ONLY WE CAN HEAL OURSELVES. Why? Because Spirit or Power cannot cross our line of free will. In other words, because we spend a lifetime using our will to repress and suppress our pain and build up our subconscious, Spirit or Power cannot reverse this, because this would be going against our will.  Not even our Essential or True Self can cross this line of will.

 We and only we are responsible for our healing. No one can do it for us, not a parent, not a teacher, not a Nagual or Master, not Spirit. A teacher can guide us. Spirit can assist us. But only we can do the work.

 It takes an incredible amount of personal power to progress on a spiritual path. Through cleaning, clearing and healing the tonal we are able to reclaim our personal power and restore our free will. The Toltec Path provides us with these tools. When we are clean, clear and healed and have reclaimed our personal power, we are able to align to the Dreamer. We are able to experience true Freedom and have the Command of the Eagle at our hand.

 Love and Light, Kris

Seeing is Freedom

by: David Pawlak

In Casteneda’s works, the word “seeing” is used a lot. It has a sort of magical connotation, associated with 2nd Attention, or special perception, and often it comes that way, but it’s not as unusual or difficult to attain, as one may come to believe.

A similar form of seeing occurs when one says, “Oh, NOW I see!”, which is a kind of dawning or repositioning of perception (A shift in the Assemblage Point [AP]). Sometimes we can have an AP shift just from reading a book or listening to particular experiences or descriptions delivered by an individual. But for an AP shift to take place, the external material must stimulate a collection of memories and “proven experiences” to illuminate a new possibility.

 So much of the truth /validity in a “seeing” depends on validation through past experience and memories, and, as such, we become highly limited in the range and depth of the new “knowingness” received in the “seeing”.

 Let me explain! We perhaps have a plan for our life, no? Whether we do or don’t, it is relatively obvious that where we want to go often meets with resistance. So very little seems “easy”.  What actually guides our life then? The mind may have a plan, and it seems that the mind is the one that is continually “re-directing” us to try to keep us on the straight and narrow. So, is it the mind that guides our life? NO!

 What about our physical body? It goes about the motions. Works, moves, lifts, pushes…. But no, it also is not the one that guides our life; it just does what it’s told.

The emotional body then. Does it not sometimes work against all logic? Does it not convince the body that it would be better to bask in the sun instead of work on a “life’s plan”? Does it not defend, and strive and need?

 Our mind and body bow to the needs of the emotional body. But how often are we aware of this?  Our mind and body, suffer every day, trying to implement plans that the emotional body is just not UP to. So, what can we do?

 There’s another Toltec word, it’s called “Stalking”. We can stalk the emotional body. This means we can watch it. Through  stalking, the coordination between working members of our body (physical, emotional and mental) automatically improves. We begin to “see” the folly in counter-productive efforts. We begin to “see” how we are unknowingly redirected because of emotional reaction. We begin to “see” how easily our perception can be falsely colored and manipulated.

 Then we wonder why our life hasn’t gone at all as we had hoped. Because we don’t look and we don’t “see”.  We don’t let ourselves see the untainted reality, and we react according to a whimsical plan of folly.

 In Love and Light, Dave

by: Kalyn Bastion-Raphael

  Are you free or have you agreed to the matrix?

 In the movie The Matrix people live in “a jail for your mind”, which is the Matrix. They are all the victims of the machines who have created a computer matrix to fool people into thinking that they are living life although their physical bodies are actually in pods hooked up to machines. The people, of course, are unaware of this and are completely in agreement, or convinced, that they are free individuals living their own lives on Earth. Are you free?

 How is it that the machines get away with fooling people this way? What have the machines done to convince people of the lie?

 At first the machines were unsuccessful in incarcerating humans: they created a Utopia in attempts to keep humans happy and willing to uphold the agreement that this Utopia was life, not jail. This agreement was unsuccessful and caused “whole crops” of humans to be lost. The agent who tells us about the failed Utopia blames humanities inability to be happy as the cause. Clearly, he felt that humans can not hold the agreement to be happy, but says that when misery and unhappiness were added to the programming, the Matrix became successful. This unhappy life humans could agree to.

 The agreement that the people hold in The Matrix is so strong that even contrary experiences can not change their agreement. Agents take over the “bodies” of people to enter the Matrix, such as during Neo’s interrogation or chase scenes; Mouse notes that everything tastes like chicken, perhaps because the machines didn’t know what things taste like and made them all the same. To the humans plugged into the Matrix no amount of contradictory evidence will cause them to change this agreement. It is so strong in people that Morpheus apologizes to Neo after unplugging him, telling Neo that people are not unplugged after a certain age because it is too hard on the mind. The agreement is so strong that even unplugging people does not convince them that the Matrix is just a program, just an illusion, not real.

 We find that Neo had held many agreements: he had agreed that the noodles at the corner Chinese stand were “really good”; he had agreed to the name Anderson, agreed to the Matrix, and he also agreed the “fact” that a spoon could not bend. Because Neo begins to question his agreements and to make new ones he finds himself with Trinity, Morpheus and then finds himself in a new world, the real world. Neo, of course, has a difficult time releasing his old agreements which keep him from realizing that he is the One, even when Morpheus knows it.

 Ultimately when Neo truly releases his old agreements about who and what he is, he begins to see his own potential: he is able to break the limiting agreement about motion, matter and speed. His new agreements give him the power to be super-stong, super-fast and to walk on walls when necessary. When he breaks his last agreement, that the Matrix is real, Neo fulfills his true potential by walking into his ultimate power and is able to see the programming behind the Matrix. 

What limiting agreements are you holding? What potential are you keeping contained with your agreements? What contradictory experiences have you denied in order to uphold your agreements? What agreements create the jail for your mind? Although we are not physically plugged into machine pods, we too hold agreements which keep us from being truly free.

 It is only be working in The Mastery of Awareness and becoming aware of our agreements, how they limit us and how we uphold them that we can begin to free ourselves.

Love, Light & Peace -Kalyn

Kalyn is a teacher in don Miguel Ruiz’ lineage. Kalyn is now offering The Four Agreements Online Course, offering the class via the internet. The Four Agreements Online Course introduces Toltec tools to increase awareness of our old agreements to help students free themselves from old agreements as well as enhancing their understanding of and application of The Four Agreements.

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Can’t See My Purpose for the Drama

by Mark Sutton

Sometimes I can’t see the forest for the trees, or is it that I can’t see my purpose for the drama? I am currently in the greatest battle I have ever knowingly experienced for personal power. The roots of this battle are woven deep, back to my life’s beginnings, involving a mentally ill family member and security. I have always deeply felt, even before choosing the Toltec Path, that if I could ever over come this life issue then I could  handle anything.

I have been involved in a successful business for more than 20 years with my dad, who has suffered from a major mental illness for most of his life and which the family has only been aware of for 12 years. Periodically he goes off of his medication and becomes paranoid and psychotic. In the past I have given away my personal power to him by fighting back on his level. My motives were always to protect and act in the best interest of the company and my dad’s well being, but in the process I would become overly proactive in taking action and reacting, resulting in the loss of my personal power.

Once again I find myself in this situation: my dad and partner being controlled, and trying to control me, by his mental illness. Today there is a huge difference though, I am aware of my true purpose in this life. This is a direct result of being on the Toltec Path and having a teacher to help me work through these processes of reclaiming my personal power. As my teacher (Kris) has helped me to see, if I  keep my awareness focused on the real battle, not the drama, I will succeed. For me my true purpose is to attain personal freedom. That is the main purpose of the Toltecs of today.

Winning or losing battles is not the true issue. How we fight these battles is what really counts. If we lose a battle that was fought with integrity then nothing is truly lost. The important thing is what we have gained in the process of the experience. In the situation with my dad, it is not about him and the corporation, that is the drama, it is about personal power and freedom. When, and only when, I stay focused on my purpose, not on the drama, I will grow closer to experiencing the totality of my Being. I will realize the bigger picture. I will see the forest in spite of the trees. I will reach my purpose, FREEDOM.

Love, Mark

Answer:
Hello Lynn,

 If you have not read The Four Agreements then I highly recommend that you do. 

You have many agreements which are not serving you, as is evidenced by the difficulties you experience with your boyfriend and health.  The agreements you have with your boyfriend also need to be assessed to see whether they are healthy or not. 

People experience the difficulties and challenges that you are now experiencing. To help themselves take a stronger and more self-responsible demeanor towards their personal and spiritual growth they take classes or work one-on-one with a teacher. I recommend an online class if you are not able to work directly with a teacher.

Love & Light, Kalyn

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