TACO Tarot Journey

The Empress Many of the agreements and beliefs you are uncovering came from your mother, and how she consciously or unconsciously downloaded her dream of right/wrong, good/bad into your mind. Who you are today is a result of what your mother gave you, and who you decided to be in order to earn her love and be “good.” The Empress also represents the “mother” inside you, and your innate and natural ability to love unconditionally. In Gateway Two, you are learning that unconditional love is nothing more than acceptance. In your Mitote Book, you are observing the dialogue between the Judge and Victim Child with the acceptance of the Spiritual Warrior.

 

The Emperor  You are also learning about the agreements and beliefs you absorbed from your father. Elements of masculine energy include logic and critical thinking. These are great qualities, but when out of balance, the Judge uses the mind’s thoughts to make you wrong, prove your guilt, and punish you. You are learning that there is another kind of masculinity residing in the gentle strength of the Warrior, who says “No” to the Judge, and listens with love to the Victim Child.

 

The Hierophant  It is in Gateway Two that you are familiarizing yourself with the Judge’s voice in the Mitote Book. The Judge knows how you should behave to get it right for all the authority figures in your life. You are gaining the strength to stand up to the Judge through your Warrior, and tell yourself the truth — about who you are as a unique Divine manifestation of God. No longer must you be a slave to the “rules” of religions, school teachers, bosses, or parents. As you move through the Gateways, you will have the opportunity to decide for yourself how you want your life to be.

Books and Movies 

Your second Gateway leads you deeper into dreaming. Gateway Two’s featured movie selection explores the dreaming mind, the hellish dream of the planet and the awakening observer/warrior. All these movies are adaptations of books.

Books

The Mastery of Self, by don Miguel Ruiz, Jr.

You are learning that the ancient Toltecs believed that life as we perceive it is a dream.
We each live in our own personal dream, and all of our dreams together we call the Dream of the Planet. When we forget we are dreaming and believe we have no control over it our lives, we suffer.
In The Mastery of Self don Miguel, Jr, shares how you can:

Learn what it means to love yourself and others unconditional
Wake up to know your true self
Liberate yourself from illusory beliefs and stories
Live with an authentic life

To hear Miguel share in an video interview about his book, go here. (58:55)

The Book ~ On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, by Alan Watts

“The Book explores an unrecognized but mighty taboo—our tacit conspiracy to ignore who, or what, we really are. Briefly, the thesis is that the prevalent sensation of oneself as a separate ego enclosed in a bag of skin is a hallucination. This hallucination underlies the misuse of technology for the violent subjugation of man’s natural environment and, consequently, its eventual destruction.” From the preface by Alan Watts, who was one of the early writers (25+ books) about Zen and psychotherapy, and brought Eastern mysticism to the attention of the new drop-out culture in San Francisco in the 1960’s and beyond. He was Toltec before there was Toltec Cool.

Download the PDF for free here.

Audio Book

Beyond Fear: A Toltec Guide to Freedom and Joy ~ the Teachings of don Miguel Ruiz.

In her book Mary Carroll Nelson explained many of don Miguel’s teachings, and it has a good section on the journey through Teotihuacán, the Toltec spiritual center in Mexico. I recommend the official audio version of Beyond Fear, narrated by my dear friends Francis Rico Hayhurst, Jessica McKay, and my brother, Blair Hardman. Engineered by Blair at Zone Recording,

NOTE: The audio book has been edited to include all the magic of don Miguel’s message, and to release some older esoteric teachings that are no longer relevant.

 

Movies – each of these movies is from a good book

These films are suggested because they develop themes that we are exploring in this Gateway. Even if you have seen these films, watch them again from the perspective of the material in Gateway Two…or, read the book. Enjoy!

A Beautiful Mind – This is a movie about your mind. Watch how, when John Nash’s academic brilliance is undermined by schizophrenia, he is forced to make a conscious choice about whether to believe the voices and visions in his mind. Over time, he develops the power of recognizing the difference between what is true and what is a lie. His ultimate transformation is being able to witness and embrace the voices he hears and the images that plague him without believing them, and with love.

On your spiritual path, you are always faced with a choice about whether or not to believe what your mind is saying to you. You are suffering degrees of schizophrenia and madness, due to the multiple personalities that rule your behavior (Victim Child, Judge, Rebel, etc.) This can be overcome, even under the most extreme circumstances, as in the story of John Nash. As don Miguel Ruiz tells us, “Don’t believe me, don’t believe anyone else, and don’t believe yourself.”

 

Where the Wild Things Are  This movie is about a little boy, the inner child that lives inside us. It’s about domestication, and the wounded child seeking healing through The Magical Child – that part of you that believes in magic and miracles. As you watch the film, you’ll recognize the part of yourself that’s been hurt, lied to, neglected, and misunderstood.

The Help –  You may have seen this Oscar winning film about the grass roots of the civil rights movement, the dream of the most famous dreamer of them all– Martin Luther King. Watch it again, looking at the parallel story of domestication and abandonment of the inner child. See how those poor little rich girls grew up distorted by the dream, generation upon generation, until the spell was broken by the warrior.

Congratulations for completing Gateway 1. There was a lot of information I wanted to share with you there, creating a strong foundation for what is to come. I trust you are clear now on where we are going and why. TACO is based on the Toltec path of transformation, and yet I believe it is essential to understand many psychological principals that were not important or relevant 2,000 years go, as they are in our world now. I am grateful for my background in spiritual psychology, therapeutic hypnosis, inner child work, Gestalt—and that I can bring those supporting modalities to our journey on this ancient path.

Enjoy this sweet recording from Miguel Ruiz recorded for the original 2002 TACO—his English has improved since then and his love is still strong.

Miguel Ruiz – You Can Change Your Agreements and Always Be Happy (1:06)

In Gateway One we explored the Parasite, and the parts of the parasite that cause most people confusion, consternation, suffering, addictions, relationship problems—and the inner mental chaos we call the Mitote of the human dream. The relationship between the inner Judge and the Victim Child are created in childhood and carry over into the lives of most adults. Until we change that inner relationship, it is very difficult (or impossible) to change our outer adult lives. In fact, one of my favorite of Allan’s Axioms is:

“You cannot change your adult life until you heal the wounds of the child within”

 The Parasite has no interest in changing how it operates, especially the task of changing itself! It actually thinks it is protecting the Victim Child, by keeping him or her small, and safe from failure, rejection, punishment, or worse. In childhood, this was true, and saved the life or sanity of many of us. The Parasite internalized the messages of caregivers and other outside judges and their rules, and began to enforce them on our child selves at a young age.

The strategies we learned as kids to get our needs met, the roles we assumed, the masks we learned to wear—are all part of the Parasite matrix. In Gateway Three those strategies will be revealed to be more little inner children, scrambling to get it right for the judge(s). None of those parts have any reason to change the dream of childhood—in fact, they are strongly invested in maintaining and protecting it.

What were good resources then usually go against us in our adult lives– thus our need to explore, reveal, name, love, and change the old self-judgments and the lies behind them into new truths and self-acceptance. The Toltec resource we introduce into our mind to facilitate these changes is The Spiritual Warrior—the focus of Gateway Two.

During my apprenticeship with don Miguel Ruiz it took me a long time to realize he wasn’t waiting for me to get it right, or have all the right answers, or prove to him I was a good student or a worthy apprentice, so he would love me. Nope. He was simply loving me and accepting me just as I was. Don Miguel was seeing the divine essence of my perfection and beaming the reflection of that perfection back to me.

For a long time, I was creating too much smoke to see the reflection of my perfection in his mirror. I took lots of good notes, which I still have somewhere. In time, and in don Miguel’s infinite patience, I learned to see my reflection in his love. My smoke cleared, a little at a time. I didn’t need notes of what he said, I was integrating and absorbing his love—and it became my own. As the smoke cleared, I could see my beautiful divine perfection in my own mirror.

When I created TACO, I realized I couldn’t give that same energetic experience personally to everyone who joined—so, the Spiritual Warrior has become the source of pure love and divine perfection here in TACO. Our task here in Gateway Two is to guide you to be your own source of that pure unconditional love.

Here, then, is your Spiritual Warrior, the antidote to the Parasite.

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A STORY. Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, there was a brand new King in a brand new kingdom. The new King ruled the kingdom with love and integrity, and all of the subjects there were happy and at peace. Angry and fearful kings, however, ruled all the kingdoms around this new kingdom, and it wasn’t long before the True King lost his place on the throne and was replaced by one of the fearful kings. These kings were not real kings, but simply took over the throne because they had the power to do so.

All of the False Kings ruled their kingdoms with secrecy, gossip and intrigue. They made up their own laws, and expected their subjects to follow them, even if they didn’t make sense or caused their subjects to hurt themselves.

The False King has ruled the kingdom in our story ever since. The subjects in the kingdom are not very happy. They now have to hide who they are, and what is in their hearts. They try to follow the laws so they will not be punished, but that only makes them more unhappy. They all vaguely remember a time, long ago, when the True King ruled in their kingdom, and sometimes they tell each other stories about the love and acceptance of the True King. He had no expectations of his subjects, and encouraged them to be exactly who they were. They felt loved and respected, and encouraged to be all they could be. They wished he would come back, but didn’t know where he was or how to overthrow the False King.

There also lived in the Kingdom a Rebel. He knew he could not fight the False King, but he also knew he would not follow all the laws that the False King proclaimed. So the Rebel lived in hiding, and came out when he knew it was safe to sabotage the False King, to entertain and distract his fellow subjects, or to help them get things they needed. He had to be very careful, because the False King did not like him and wanted to drive him from the kingdom . . . or worse!

One day, the Rebel heard about a very brave and honest Warrior that was in the neighborhood, offering to help restore True Kings to their thrones. Seeing how unhappy his fellow subjects were, and knowing that the False King was becoming more and more powerful, the Rebel set out to find the Brave Warrior, to see if he could help. He found the Brave Warrior sleeping under a tree. “Why aren’t you fighting False Kings?” the Rebel wanted to know. “Nobody has asked me,” replied the Warrior, “so I have just been waiting here. In fact, I am not sure if I am strong enough anyway, so it is better this way.”

“My kingdom needs you,” pleaded the Rebel. “I can’t distract people’s attention from their unhappiness any longer. I need your help, and the people need your help!” So, being a Brave Warrior, even though not a very confident one, he rose and followed the Rebel to the kingdom. When they arrived, they discovered that the False King was very strong indeed, and very prepared to keep the Brave Warrior away.

The Warrior and the Rebel took their time. They grew stronger together, and learned everything they needed to know about the False King and all of his henchmen. They dedicated their intent to driving the False King from the throne, returning the True King from exile, and restoring him to his rightful place in the kingdom. As the word spread in the kingdom, more and more of the unhappy subjects of the False King rallied around the Rebel and the Brave Warrior, adding their support to the cause. They began to tell more stories about the happiness of the past, and excitement spread throughout the kingdom. “Maybe it is possible,” they said, “that the True King can come back and claim his throne.”

And that is the tale of the True King, the False King, the Rebel, and the Brave Warrior . . . up until now. Because, you see, the story is about you, and you are still writing your story. It is the story of your domestication, when your True King (your Integrity) was sent into exile, and the False King (the Parasite) took the throne in your inner kingdom. All around you were the other False Kings, encouraging you to be like them. The Rebel kept your spark alive, held onto the desire for freedom, and acted out against the False King for the benefit of the subjects of the kingdom. He couldn’t hold out alone, so the Brave Warrior has come. Perhaps you feel the excitement spreading throughout your kingdom, at the chance to reclaim your Integrity and freedom in the truth of who you are.

Let’s get to know the Toltec Spiritual Warrior, and see what he or she needs to become strong enough to dethrone the False King.

Please remember that I am interchanging genders. You may tell this story about a Queen and “she” Warrior if it feels better to you — I will continue in the masculine – there are reasons most mythological warriors are male. And if you have a reaction to the idea of Warrior, battling the Parasite, an inner war, and just want peace and everybody to get along…well, I’ll ask you how has that story served you so far? Has the peacemaker created peace in your inner or outer world? Perhaps that viewpoint is a child’s strategy to deal with non-peace during domestication. Explore it, and then do it however best it serves you here.

On my Toltec path, I had to make war, not peace. Peace came.

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“A man goes to knowledge the same way he goes to war: with fear, respect, wakefulness, and absolute confidence.”   –
Carlos Castaneda

It is time to call the Brave Warrior of your inner kingdom to come from where he or she has been waiting. Perhaps the Rebel, who has been holding onto the spark of truth and resisting the ultimate triumph of your domesticators, is saying “Enough! We want the True King! And we need Help!” Let’s get them working together, to change your life.

First, let me remind you that if you are resisting the idea of a Warrior, and would like a more peaceful approach, a more non-violent way, stay with me. That hasn’t worked. We are going to War. It is one of those wars that actually do end with peace. Nobody gets hurt and everyone wins — in the inner and the outer kingdoms.

Right now, you are my apprentice learning to become the Warrior. In time, you will be the Warrior, fighting to restore the True King. Until, at last, you become the True King, restored to the place of power in your inner kingdom, living with all of the love, integrity, and freedom that is your birthright.

Who is this Warrior? And what are his Qualities? What does he do? She?

“The Warrior is so called because he or she is always struggling against personal weaknesses and limitations; against the forces that oppose the increase in knowledge and power; against the forces that are driving us to our destiny as ordinary men and women, forces determined entirely by personal history and circumstances.

“The warrior wants to rescue the possibility to choose how to be and how to live. It is a struggle for harmony and tranquility. It is a struggle for freedom, knowing that this struggle begins inside, projecting itself from there toward everything that makes up the world of actions.

“It is a quiet, gentle, and joyful fight.”   – Victor Sanchez, in The Teachings of don Carlos

The Warrior is at war with the Parasite. He comes into the kingdom to drive out the False King — the Judge and the lies of the belief system, the masks and strategies– all of the old dreams programmed into your mind from the past. He comes to restore truth, peace, and respect to your world.

(Are you seeing here the old stories about heroes and bad kings? And the rebel Robin Hood hoping for King Richard to come back and drive the evil Sheriff of Nottingham out of power? These folk stories grew out of these archetypical experiences and longings of all humans).

The Warrior lives outside of the Parasite. If the Judge tells the frightened Victim Child: “What is the matter, you should have known better?!” the Warrior is the part of you that steps in and tells the child: “Kid, the Judge is a liar!” and then tells the Judge: “Shut up and leave this kid alone. He is perfect just the way he is, and just the way he is not.” “Don’t believe the Judge kid. He is lying.” The Warrior cultivates Active Self-Acceptance. The Parasite believes in Active Self-Rejection.

Your Warrior is connected with the Divine, and that Higher Power is constantly reminding the Warrior: “You are okay the way you are. You are okay and I want you to pass my love on to the little Victim Child.” Our intent here is to create in the warrior the powerful awareness of the perfection of creation. He is in a battle for the control of your attention. Is your Victim Child’s attention hooked in the Parasite with its fear and judgment, or is that attention hooked by the Warrior in love and Self Acceptance? You will know when your Warrior is getting stronger when you notice that you are having more and more experiences of peace and acceptance in the face of judgment or fear. You will see the smoky mirror of the dreams around you, including your own, and know that they are not real and have nothing to do with your Divine being.

Some Important Qualities of Your Warrior are:

• Your Warrior lives outside of the Parasite’s fear.
• He holds the Victim Child in absolute unconditional love.
• He knows the Judge is a liar.
• He knows that you are perfect and cannot make mistakes.
• He takes ACTION to change the programming of domestication.
• He is connected to the Divine, and knows self as a responsible creator.

The actions the Warrior takes on behalf of the Victim Child are:

• He practices Active Self Acceptance. (Pathstep 2-4).
• He battles the Parasite for control of the Victim’s attention.
• He rescues and protects the Victim Child from the Judge.
• He teaches the Victim Child that the Judge is a liar.
• He leads the quest for Personal Freedom, and restoring the True King to the throne.

The Rebel in you is the one saying, “I want to know who I am and what I feel. I especially want to know and answer the longings of my Soul.”

Your Parasite, and the Big Parasite in the dream of the planet, will do everything they possibly can to stop the Rebel and Warrior. The Big Parasite created your personal Parasite so the communication is perfect — they know how to make you afraid, how to keep you small, and especially who’s disapproval is the most damaging and hurtful to you.

As the Warrior, you go to war not even knowing where it will lead, you simply stand up and say: “No, I will not give up my life to your dream. I am reclaiming my right to dream my dream for me. I am going to live my life for me!” It is a war with many battles and I can’t even guarantee that you will win it, but I don’t know any other fight more worth fighting. Or any goal more worth wanting to achieve.

You are perfectly OK the way you are, and the way you are not. The Judge has been saying all these years that you need to improve, to be better at everything, and not be so much of a bunch of other things. He never says, “Hey, good job, you got that right.” The Judge is a liar. If your Warrior doesn’t know that yet, I am going to prove it. You are perfect, exactly the way you are, and exactly the way you are not. The Warrior knows that all of your struggle to get it right for parents, friends, teachers, peers, lovers, and yourself, has been based on a lie — the Judge’s lie that you are not good enough the way you are. Simple. Complex.

The Judge learned a long time ago that you are not good enough to deserve unconditional love and acceptance. He believes that. The Victim believes that. In order to agree with the dream of “not enough” you had to go against your nature. As a young child you knew you were the source of love and happiness and play and fun and you accepted and loved yourself (although you didn’t know you knew any of that). Your domesticators had to teach you a dream that went against everything in your nature. They taught you that you were not good enough the way you were, and to be afraid that people would find that out. They taught you to reject yourself. You had to dream it their way because you had no choice. Again, not right or wrong, just what is.

Note: It is easier now to go back to the truth of your own nature than it was to convince yourself to abandon it. It is still there. It is the True King, waiting to be restored to the throne with the help of the warrior.

The Warrior holds out a gentle “No” to the Judge, and reaches out to the Victim Child with love, compassion and absolute acceptance.

To meet your Warrior, click on the graphic:

To experience yourself as the Light, the Warrior, the Nagual, and the universe, make time to listen to this audio journey. It also includes an activation of my energetic channel between us. Remember, the audios in TACO are for you, and this one is for you to come back to as often as it takes to remember what you really are. Create a quiet sacred space, use headphones or buds if you can, and remember not to listen when you are operating large ocean liners or small children.

Warrior Meditation Audio (26:27)

 If you break the lies of your domestication, really break them, you will end your suffering and win the war. I know that as an adult with the resources you have in your life now, including myself and this TACO community, you can teach yourself a different dream — one that will make you very happy. It is your Toltec Spiritual Warrior that will do the job with you

Our job here is to get the Warrior enrolled in the battle. He is the part of you that grasps the absolute reality (perhaps only as an intellectual possibility at first) that the Judge is a liar and should not be believed. (When I use the words “absolute reality” in the face of everything I have said about there not being any such thing, it is because I believe it!). I really absolutely totally completely believe and know that your Judge is a liar when he says you should be different than you are. Because I know that you are Perfect, just the way you are.

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What do I mean when I say your Victim is perfect? What is your reaction? Do you agree with me, or are you rolling your eyes, with “Sure, think that if you want, Allan, but if you knew the truth about me . . . Perfect? I don’t think so?” That voice is your Judge, doing exactly what he knows how to do. You see, I don’t believe him. If you do, then that is our work. How does it feel when you believe him? Feel it in your body. He is talking to the Victim child. Stop and feel how your body reacts to the judgment. Then imagine how you would feel all of the time without that feeling. That is where we are going.

The Logic

Let’s apply a little logic for the education of the Warrior: There is no way to be different than who you are. The Judge says you should be like someone else . . . like many someone else’s! How exactly is this possible? You can only be you, doing what you do in this moment. The Judge says, “Yes, maybe so, but you should have known better. You should have been more careful (paid more attention, listened to your mother, checked with a wine expert, waited to be sure, shopped for a better price, checked to see what other people were doing or wearing, not been such an impatient fool, asked don Allan), and that wouldn’t have happened.”

The Judge is actually saying that you should know what you learn from your experiences before you have the experience so you could do the experience differently according to what you learned after you did it. (You might need to read that again!). Do you understand the huge flaw in the Judge’s logic? This is important. The Judge is saying that you are always making mistakes — and by association, you are a mistake. I believe you cannot make mistakes. I would like your Warrior to believe that you cannot make mistakes. Certainly you can make choices and decisions, but only the Judge makes them mistakes in hindsight. And then he beats you up for not knowing what you should have known when you made the choice you learned was “wrong” after you made the choice. (I am repeating myself, because I want you to see how illogical this is).

The truth is, when you make any choice or decision, your entire lifetime of experiences, information, beliefs and fears (even including those from many generations before you) along with your DNA and the outside circumstances of the situation come together in that very moment and create your decision. There is only that moment, and in that moment you look at the situation and weigh the variables and consequences to the best of your ability, then you act. Ten minutes or ten years later something goes wrong with that decision, there are unexpected results, and the Judge likes to be right there, making you wrong– because you “should have known better.”

You make decisions with the best information you have and to believe you should have done it differently is to believe that you should have had information you didn’t have or that you should be someone else. It is the Warrior’s job to tell the Judge you are not someone else and you don’t have access to some other time where you know the results of your decisions before you make them and therefore you are going to continue to do your best in each moment and be curious about what the future holds when your actions reveals new information.

I don’t make mistakes. I make decisions and choices, and each one offers me new information to use for the next decision. Implied in the idea of “mistakes” is the judgment that I am wrong or have failed to do something the way I should. That judgment completely distorts the possibility of clarity in my next decision because now I am going into my next decision as a mistake maker. I will be a Victim. Victims aren’t nearly as capable of processing information and making decisions as Warriors are. If you believe you are bad or wrong for making a mistake, you will be looking backwards into the past and beating yourself up. Imagine yourself walking backwards into your life, hitting yourself on the head with a baseball bat. You reach a moment of choice, backwards. How consciously will you make your next decision? Not very well. And all because of this totally illogical belief of the judge that you should have known better, before you knew.

Do you see why it is so important for the Warrior to understand this folly so he can defend the poor Victim against the Judge?

EXAMPLE: Many years back (1985) the Coca Cola Company proudly and with great fanfare introduced a new flavored Coke. I am sure their highly paid executives spent a great deal of money and time creating and testing their new formula before they made their decision and released the new Coke flavor. Everyone hated it. If those executives had all judged themselves, and each other, they could have wasted months of valuable time. Instead, if they were like the other CEO’s I read about once, they said, “We don’t make mistakes, we make decisions and gather information.” I imagine they went right back to their public relations people and said “We have new information we didn’t have before. They don’t like it.” Out of the brilliance of PR, they released the new and exciting “Classic Coke,” the old Coca Cola formula. I believe it is selling rather well.

(I just read the story on the Coca-Cola webpage, and they put a nice spin on it. For their retrospective version of how good it all was for the entire cola industry, go here).

(PS: never again drink Coca-Cola, it is very bad for your health).

One of my most profound moments with Miguel Ruiz was in the middle in my apprenticeship, riding in a car with him in Southern California. He was encouraging me to begin taking apprentices, and I was resisting because I was not sure if I could do it perfectly. I was asking him if he thought I should start with one, five, or maybe 15, individuals, a group . . . what was best? He looked over at me with his love and simple logic, and said, “Try it, and if you don’t like it, change it!” Wow. My lifetime of domestication into a dream of perfectionism, of imagining every outcome and planning every detail, evaporated before my eyes. I was free of the tyranny of “mistakes.” I could simply do my best, make choices, gather new information from the outcomes of those choices, and make new choices. Looking forward, moving forward, no fear and no baseball bat.

The Toltec Warrior: “Try it, and if you don’t like it, change it.”

This is what agreement #4 in the The Four Agreements is all about: “Always do Your Best.” It doesn’t mean you have to try harder or pay more attention. This is our reminder that we are always doing our best, and we make this agreement with ourselves: “I am always doing my best.” It is a great way to disarm the Judge’s criticism.

You can review The Four Agreements here.

ACTION: Leave this reading, and go to a quiet place, and take some time to visualize your inner Kingdom. Honor your rebel, for doing his best to resist the False King. See the True King or Queen in exile, and the qualities of self-acceptance, integrity and truth that have been exiled with him or her. Feel the strength and resolve of your Warrior to come and restore the True King to the throne. Know yourself as that Warrior, the embodiment of acceptance and love. Feel your personal power growing with the awareness of the battle for your attention that needs to be fought.

Leave the computer and go do it.

Gateway Two is your place to intensify the Action steps that continue to support your awakening into awareness. I want you to know more about the energy I call the Spiritual Warrior, and the specific tools that he or she uses to battle the Parasite for control of your attention — then put those tools to use through Action. It is this action that reclaims your Personal Power and changes your Personal Dream to the dream of Heaven on Earth.

The Warrior is in a battle with the Judge for the attention of the Victim Child. Who is the child going to listen to, the voice of fear and rejection, or the Warrior’s voice of love and acceptance…?

MUSIC: Ready for some more of James Nihan’s music? This is one of my favorites: “I Am An Artist,” from the Rays of Light CD. James reminds us that we are the artists of our lives, and sings: “I shape the life I’m living, with loving hands each day…I am both the potter, and the piece of clay.” And: “With delicate precision, I chip away the mask…I stand before you naked, when I complete the task.” Listen:

I Am An Artist (4:06)

 

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The Judge is the Master of Rejection. The rejection that hurts us the most, the rejection that is felt most by the Victim Child, is our rejection of ourselves. The Judge is the master of self-rejection—the voice that makes us wrong for being who we are.

As your battle for control of your attention begins, the Judge’s voice has the most experience and power. The Warrior has to work hard to wrest the attention away from the rejection and judgment of the Judge/Parasite and hook it in love and acceptance. Practice makes the master. Since you have had so much practice mastering self-rejection as the Parasite, it takes energetic and persistent practice and action to master the voice of self-acceptance.

Active Self Acceptance is based on your conscious intention to change any of your belief systems about your worth or value that are negative or critical, to ones that are supportive and loving. Active Self Acceptance is self-love. It is something you actively do for yourself, because you know you deserve it!

Once again, remember that you came into this world completely accepting yourself. It was totally natural. The process of domestication convinced you that you were wrong, that others knew more about you and what was right and wrong for you than you did. You actively agreed to believe them, you had no choice. Now it is time to believe your Warrior. The Warrior is learning that you cannot make mistakes, and that you are doing your life perfectly. The Warrior is accepting you just the way you are. The Warrior is your master of self-acceptance.

Three Aspects of Active Self-Acceptance

First, the Warrior values the Victim Child. He is on your side. He knows you have value and worth because you are a child of the universe … you are here, alive, conscious, and have a right to be here. You were born with this self-value, and were taught to act against it. The Warrior acts FOR it. The Warrior acts for YOU.

ACTION: Use this affirmation as the Warrior: “I choose to value myself, to treat myself with respect, to stand up for my right to exist, as I am.” Try it out loud. What happens?

Second, the Warrior Reflects Your Truth: Set your intent to listen to the truth about what is real about you and your life, without denial or evasion. What you think is what you think. What you feel is what you feel. What you desire, you desire. What you have done, you have done. Who you are is who you are. You don’t make mistakes, and you are not a mistake.

The Warrior is a loving friend, refusing to let you have an adversarial relationship with any part of yourself, including your body, your emotions, thoughts, the Victim Child, your dreams, or your quest for freedom.

To accept these realities is more than acknowledging or grudgingly admitting them, it is to experience them, to stand in the reality of them, to absorb them into your truth. To tell yourself the truth is to experience that you are who you are, exactly as you are … and exactly as you are not! To accept this truth is to have complete respect for reality.

For you to accept the truth does not mean you like it, you condone it, or you enjoy it. It simply means you accept the truth. It is denial that keeps you stuck, not the truth. The truth will set you free.

You cannot learn from a choice you deny having made, or forgive yourself for an action you will not acknowledge having taken. You cannot embrace a fear whose reality you deny.

ACTION: Use this affirmation as the Warrior: “I choose to tell myself the truth about myself and to accept and love everything that I am … and to accept and love everything that I am not.”

Third, the Warrior is a loving friend, and has compassion for the Victim Child, the Judge, and all the parts of you. You are a perfect human being, doing your best. Be a good friend to yourself. Listen to your truth, to your feelings, to your fears and needs, without judgment or shame. Love yourself and accept yourself, exactly the way you are.

No one has ever talked themselves out of an unwanted feeling, emotion, or action by scolding themselves, hurling insults at themselves, or by giving themselves a moral lecture. Be gentle with yourself… the outside world is harsh enough. To create a loving place of peace and acceptance inside is an action you take for yourself. It is Active Self Acceptance.

ACTION: Use this affirmation as the Warrior: “I choose to be a gentle and loving friend to myself, and to accept my feelings and actions without judgment or shame.” Repeat as needed.

ACTION: Go to the supermarket as the Warrior. Walk through the entire store, making sure to include the meat department, produce, the liquor department, the dairy case, the snack food and cookie aisle, deli … go only with the intention of doing this exercise, not to buy anything. Note what you are attracted to and what you are repelled by. Listen to the beliefs and opinions of the Parasite about various foods in the store, and perhaps opinions about the people shopping there and what they are buying. Can you be the Warrior, witnessing the perfection of everything in the store, and listen to the Parasite carrying on about it — without reactions?

Write your experience in your journal when you return. 

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The Judge, in addition to being the Director of Domestication, is the Gatekeeper of Hell. Anyone trying to escape hell will be judged, punished, and thrown back into Hell. The lock on the gate is fear, and the Judge holds the key. 

The Warrior holds another key to the gates of Hell. That key is “Responsibility.” When most of us think of responsibility, our shoulders sag, and we might groan that we “have enough responsibilities already.” That is the “responsibility” of the old dream — the one we learned when our domesticators were angry with us for not taking “responsibility” for our actions. “Taking responsibility” sounds like something a father would say to a child while wagging his finger in her face. They taught us to be “responsible” for keeping our room clean to their standards, and for being on time with their schedules. We were taught to be responsible for other people’s feelings, and we were told we would grow up to be responsible for other peoples’ welfare. This is “responsibility” in the old dream. It is, indeed, a heavy burden.

With the Parasite living in your head, you may be afraid to “take responsibility” for your actions because you know you will be judged and punished for your choices and actions. Why would you ever take responsibility for your actions when you are going to be made wrong? How can you show up and be responsible and say, “I made a wrong choice and married someone that was not good for me”? Or, “I spent six years in college studying for a career that I didn’t really want.” In the Dream of Hell, when you take responsibility for your life, the Judge says: “Yeah, and look at the mess you made!” Then you will most likely collapse back into Victim. 

The Judge will always think that you should have known something that you could not actually learn until later (“You never should have married him, you should have known better”), or be someone that you are not (“You should be a lot more spiritual than you are”). The Victim agrees that he failed and pleads for mercy. The Parasite feeds on this fear, so it wants to create more fear by supporting the Judge and making the charges and punishments worse. The Judge is always looking for evidence to use to charge and convict the Victim, and the Victim is always looking for evidence to justify why it was not the Victim’s fault.

It is actually safe to be a Victim, and say “The World is doing it to me. It is not my fault, I can’t control it, they won’t let me, I try and it never works, love is stupid and dangerous anyway, who cares? Don’t kick me Judges, I am already down. I am not responsible for my mistakes and shortcomings, so don’t make me wrong.” Many people live as Victims because in order to leave the Victim dream, you have to take responsibility for your life, and the minute you take responsibility, the Judge shows up and beats you up. You are thrown right back into Victim again.

Have you ever arrived late for an important function and immediately began telling the story of how bad the traffic was, or how the babysitter didn’t show up, and why it was not your fault that you were late? It is the same process, directed to the (assumed) outer Judges. “I am already a Victim, please don’t judge me and make me suffer any more than I already have (at the hands of those elements in my life over which I have no control).”

As a victim, you don’t have to risk being powerful. You don’t have to risk showing up in your life as YOU. You can use your mind to endlessly second-guess, make excuses, and justify every choice and action, until the moment of potential action (and potential failure) has safely passed. What is actually passing is Life itself. Your fear of the Judge creates resistance to Life. Procrastination is one of the direct results of this fear of taking action and being made wrong for it by the Judge (We will look at strategies like procrastination in detail in Gateway Three).

ACTION: Take some time to access the Victim in you. Listen as it tells its standard stories to shift the blame from its Victim self to other people or circumstances that it could not control. What is really true? How does the Victim story serve to keep you safe? Write it down. Writing creates a communication between your conscious and unconscious minds. Our work here is to explore and learn about the beliefs and agreements held in your unconscious, so every tool you can use to that end is valuable to you. Write! In love, of course.

The key the Warrior holds to the gate of Hell is a new understanding of “responsibility,” based on self-acceptance. The Warrior does not believe the Judge. To live in Personal Freedom and not be hurt or emotionally controlled by external circumstances you must stop believing the Judge. That is pretty big. It is essential because as long as you believe the Judge, you are not going to be able to show up and enjoy taking responsibility as the creator of your life. The Warrior takes the risk to step into Life and say “The world is not doing it to me, I am doing it to and with the world. I am creating this. I am the creator of my personal dream, with every choice I make and every action that I take. It is not good, bad, right or wrong; it is simply me being me. I accept it the way it is, and I am free to change it when I want to.”

When you take responsibility as the Warrior, you are saying, “Yes, I am responsible for my life, and it is okay.” Responsible means you are the creator of your life and you have choices about how you feel and react to things. If you are going to accept responsibility for how you create your life, first of all you know you are creating it perfectly just the way it is…then you are going to need to start paying very close attention to your beliefs and actions that manifest into your life. You have the power, through this awareness, to create a life that is based on your integrity and truth . . . a life that you like . . . a life that makes you very happy.

The Warrior understands you are creating your dream of the world through your perceptions and distortions of, and your projections onto, the Divine Reality. It is all absolutely perfect and it is yours and you cannot blame anyone else and there is no reason to blame yourself because you are doing your best. When you become aware of the power of your dreaming mind to this degree, you can indeed become the creator of your life.

The list in Pathstep 2-7 summarizes the important shifts in perceptions from Victim to Warrior. Please digest it well, before going on to PathStep 2-8 and the Mitote Book Initiation.

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This list offers you many of the characteristics and actions of the true Warrior, along with the nature of the Victim he is intent on loving. Please read and digest carefully.

• The goal of the TACO Spiritual Warrior is Personal Freedom

• Personal Freedom is freedom from suffering. Freedom from suffering restores our natural state of happiness.

   

• The Warrior is at war with the Parasite for the attention of your Victim Child . . . battling to un-hook the child’s attention from the fear and suffering caused by the inner Judge and Parasite and keep it hooked in the unconditional love of the Warrior.

• We suffer because we believe what we know. Being attached to our personal knowledge opens us to being afraid we could be wrong. The fear causes us to suffer.

• To suffer is to be a Victim, to feel hurt or angry about how you are treated by “the world.” To suffer is to feel betrayed by a world that goes against you. As a Victim you believe you have no power and no control over what the world does to you. The Victim does not have personal freedom.

   

• What you “know” is all of your beliefs, agreements, opinions, and justifications. It is all of your knowledge. Your knowledge is the description of your personal dream, nothing more. When your Judge uses your knowledge against the Victim Child within, it is the expression of what we call the Parasite — the energy system of fear and self rejection and the drama of the Judge and Victim that lives in your mind’s Mitote.

   

• To believe what you know is to believe your Parasite. You suffer when you believe your internal and external Judges who tell you that you aren’t good enough. You suffer when you believe that your perceptions and opinions are right, and that you see and know the Truth — and when you know and expect that others should believe and act as you believe and act, and judge them when they don’t agree. This is personal importance.

   

• Personal importance is the enemy of personal freedom because the rigidity of personal importance says, “I know.”

   

• To release suffering, the Warrior must surrender personal importance and embrace responsibility for the life being lived.

   

• To be responsible is to know that your perceptions, beliefs, and actions create your reality, and that you are the only one that chooses your beliefs and actions. As the Warrior you know you are in control of only your choices and beliefs, and you accept responsibility for your perceptions. You no longer believe what you know. You accept that each person is separate and autonomous, and that you and every other person is alone in their own personal dream. You know that you are dreaming your personal dream, and you accept responsibility for the distorted perceptions and emotional reactions of your dream. You no longer blame others or yourself.

   

• To be responsible is to respect your own sovereign dream, and to respect every other person’s dream as well. Responsibility is the key to the Warrior’s emerging freedom to embrace Life fully, with the full creative potential inherent in all of Life.

This is what the TACO Spiritual Warrior knows.

 

ACTION: Carefully read each step of the above section, and honestly evaluate for yourself where you are in this process. Do it as the Warrior, without expectations or judgment. Simply tell yourself the truth. Then make some notes in your Journal about what action steps you will take on your own to strengthen your experience of the Warrior’s perspective. Then, take your actions steps.

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The Mitote in your mind is a jungle. The Parasite lives and hides there, hunting you, and attacking you. It supports and uses against you all of your knowledge, beliefs, opinions, agreements, and fears. For a long time, it has been hooking the attention of your Victim Child, and infecting him or her with its fear.

It is now time for YOU, the Spiritual Warrior, to become the hunter in the jungle of your mind — and for the Parasite to become your prey. As you become the hunter, you stalk the fear, lies, and the judgments of the Parasite. You grab the Parasite by the back of the neck and shake it until it releases its power over the Victim.

Your task is to learn everything about your prey: What are its habits? Where does it feed? What paths does it use to get from one place to the other in the jungle? When does it sleep? (Hint: Never!). What makes it vulnerable? You spread yourself out on a high tree branch, and watch the Parasite move about in the jungle. When you are ready, you attack your prey: You challenge the Parasite’s status as King of the Jungle.

The best stalker is the worst prey.

The very best stalker knows its prey so well that it does not hunt aimlessly; it simply shows up where the prey is.

Stalking is the work of the aware mind and the body. Use your body as an antenna to receive the signals that tell you that you are having an emotional reaction. In that moment you know you have become the prey, and the Parasite is hunting you. Use the reactions you feel in your body to awaken your Warrior. Bring your attention back to the truth, and deny the lie that the Parasite is using to create fear in your body.

Remember, the feelings in your body are real, and to be honored, even treasured. The thoughts that give rise to the feelings are the place where you are developing choice. How do you want to feel? Happy? Then stalk the thoughts that make you Not Happy. If you want to be Not Happy, then of course you will choose thoughts that support that intention. It is up to you. 

ACTION: Take time now and throughout this apprenticeship, to feel into your emotional body and stalk the thoughts in your mind that make you not-happy. Record in your Journal what you learn about the thoughts that make you suffer—and your successes changing those thoughts and the results. Note that the Mastery of Transformation has many tools for this process, and it is coming up soon! (GW 4).

This is a path with no rules, just tools. You strengthen your awareness… then you make your choices. 

We will continue to explore the many facets of Stalking as we continue in the Gateways.

Your best stalking tool is the Mitote Book, coming up next. Use it with love to reveal the truth. “And the truth shall set you free.”

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The Mitote Book is an important tool of power in your Mastery of Awareness. As you read through this pathstep, you will come to an audio initiation of your mitote book. Please read and prepare yourself before listening to it. We are going to use the mitote book to break the power of the Parasite in your mind. It is a journaling experience that is guided through many chapters, and ultimately transforms into The Book of Life.

The mitote book is the machete you will use to cut away the jungle of lies and distortions in your mind on your journey to your goal. You can’t see the goal because of the jungle. Just CUT! You will get there!

THE COMPUTER PROGRAM MODEL: Imagine your mind as a complex computer. The computer has a program in it that operates the application you are using. Imagine that you are entering data into your computer, and as you type data into the computer, it shows up on the screen and seems OK. However, when you print your data, it does not print out the way you expected. The normal reaction would be to think you entered something wrong and you need to try it again. And maybe again and again.

Perhaps what you are typing into the computer of your mind is “love, sex, and commitment,” expecting to print out a wonderful loving long-term relationship with the person of your dreams. You put that in but when it prints out into your life it looks more like a nightmare than a dream. So you decide that the next time you will change the way you enter it — you have learned your mistake, and now you will be more careful! After several tries (i.e. “relationships”) you keep getting the same dysfunctional printouts that don’t meet your expectations. What is wrong?

Sooner or later you might realize that the problem is not how you enter the data, but the problem is with the program that processes that data. That is good news, because that awareness gives you the opportunity to fix the faulty program, and create satisfactory results. You realize you need to call someone who can access, read, and change the program.

You call a computer programmer and he shows you that it is actually the faulty program that is distorting the results of your efforts, not you. He puts in “love, sex, and commitment,” and shows you that deep in your computer program, behind the scenes, it says: “You don’t really deserve to be loved. You should pick someone that is emotionally wounded and heal them and then they will be grateful and learn to love you.” Your programmer says: “Well, that looks like what’s causing the problem. This seems to be a pretty old program error, have you been having trouble with it for a long time?” Suddenly, all of the memories of trying to print out your dreams and getting nightmares and dysfunction instead, flash before your eyes. “Yes,” you mumble, “a very long time.”

You tell the programmer that you don’t want the error in the program, so he erases it, and asks you what you want it to say. “I want it to say that I am a loving person, and I deserve to choose a happy, healthy relationship. If I put my love into a relationship it is going to be returned in kind and grow.” The programmer replaces the old program with the new. Both programs are simply programs– they are code written into the computer. Your awareness of how the old program was coded has given you the opportunity to choose a different code. The next time you meet a potential partner and enter “love, sex, and commitment,” the printout will be better, because the program is better.

We call this old program in your mind the “Mitote” – “The sound of 1,000 people talking in the market place and nobody listening.” It is also called The Book of Lies because your Judge has been using lies to accuse, judge, condemn, and punish your Victim Child for all these many years. The mitote book is the place for you to discover and explore the lies in the mitote of your mind.

Your Warrior is your new computer programmer. Your Warrior is the one that you have called because no matter how carefully you enter the data into your mind’s computer, you still end up printing out nightmares and junk instead of your dreams. The mitote book is the tool of power the Warrior uses to reveal the program in your mind’s mitote, take it apart, and choose what you want to keep and what you want to change. You can decide what to keep by asking yourself “Does it make me happy to believe this part of the program? Does it make me happy to keep this agreement I made when I was a child? When I believe and use this part of my program, do I manifest my highest good?”

THE LEWIS AND CLARK MODEL: I want your Warrior to go into your mind’s mitote program like Lewis and Clark explored the Columbia River. Your mitote has rapids and pools and fast parts and very slow parts. It has places that are beautiful and awe inspiring, and places that are dark and cold and fearsome. You cannot predict the river. As the Warrior, you will float down the river of your internal world, making a map of all of the agreements, beliefs, opinions, fears, judgments, resistance, love, dreams, lies and laws you encounter along the way — the entire program. Your mitote book is where you draw the map. Your Warrior is the mapmaker.

The Lewis and Clark attitude is one of exploration, fascination, discovery, maybe trepidation, but never judgment. I don’t recall hearing that Lewis or Clark ever said: “This stupid river should not turn south here, we are trying to go west. Why is it so slow? This is taking too long! Whoever made this river got it all wrong. Oh, no, not more rapids, this will never work. Let’s quit.” We’ll never know for sure, but that is my guess for now.

You are Lewis and Clark, floating down the Mitote River, making a map. Explore! Be amazed, fascinated. Tell the truth. Don’t judge. “Wow, look, here is where she believes she was responsible for her parents’ divorce. And over there is the ‘Loner’ strategy she developed to avoid the pain of having no Dad. And, yikes, what a bumpy ride over the “fear of commitment” rapids.” You can decide to go slower or faster, camp out and rest and work on your map, shoot the rapids or explore them from the relaxed energy of the land. Eventually the Columbia River ended up at the Pacific Ocean. Maybe having come to the eternal Source of everything, Lewis and Clark realized that the river they were on was simply part of one connected Source of all Sources. They arrived at the Source and then they turned and went back. This time they knew their way and knew what to expect. Their journey was much easier.

At the first layer of the Mitote Book you will reveal to yourself the accusations and condemnations that the Judge uses to hurt the Victim Child. At the second layer you will go into those judgments, as well as the Child’s protective strategies and the beliefs and experiences that animate the entire system, and examine, select, and change the beliefs and agreements — to write a new Book of Law. We are starting at the beginning, first layer, to simply listen and reveal, to make the map of the Mitote River. Later, by exploring Masks and Strategies in Gateway Three and learning to recapitulate in the Mastery of Transformation, you will begin to transform the entire Mitote at a deeper level.

TRAPS: There are some traps along the way. One of them to watch out for is to find the judgments or to feel the pain, and then immediately look for the “good side” of everything: “Oh, sure Dad beat me, but he was essentially a good person, and I have forgiven him, and release all of the pain from that time.” Maybe so, maybe not, but you are just making a map right now, not fixing it. Tell yourself the truth.

Beware of any kind of intellectualizing in the Mitote Book: “I know that I always have reacted that way because my mother always … and so I learned to … and now when my mate … and I know I shouldn’t. . . and my therapist says …” This is not a place to explain or justify or rationalize any feelings or beliefs. At this first level, you are on a voyage of discovery, making a map, nothing more. Let the emotions that are connected to the judgments and victimization come out! My basic rule of thumb is that you have not yet found all the rapids on your river if you don’t have some pages of your mitote book that have only three words scrawled across them — one of which is “STUPID!!” — and that are ripped by the Judge’s angry energy pouring through the pen.

A major trap to be aware of is that the Parasite will become quite disturbed by your work in the mitote book. It will begin to do everything it can to sabotage your intentions: “I don’t really have the kind of quality time I want to put into my mitote book now, so I will do it later. I really shouldn’t start it until I have created an altar / cleaned my room / built a private Toltec Temple in the back yard. I am tired now, I will write in the morning. I am busy now with my day, I will write tonight when it is quiet.”

Beware of the Parasite’s tricks. The most confusing problem is that you have been the Parasite all of your life. Now we are asking the Warrior to step forward. The Warrior has the intention to push through this nonsense. The best time to work with your Mitote Book is Now. When we started this work with don Miguel many years ago, he had us buy small dictating recorders so that we could record the inner dialog while we were driving, skiing, eating, making love, or whatever, and then transcribe it later. You can do that, too, if you want. Then write it out in your mitote book.

THE RESTAURANT BOOTH MODEL: Here is yet another metaphorical model that might help you with a sense of the mitote book from another angle: You are sitting in a booth in a restaurant and you can hear an adult talking angrily to a child in the next booth, blaming him or her for something that happened. The adult is very angry, and keeps trying to get the child to agree he or she was wrong, to change behavior, or perhaps apologize. You can’t see them, but you are so fascinated by the dialog between them that you begin writing it down on a napkin. As the Warrior you have no particular agenda about who is right or wrong, you are simply transcribing the conversation. The more you listen and write, your human self might find it increasingly unbelievable that an adult would judge and blame a child so harshly. Perhaps you resolve to never treat any child this way. This transcribing of your inner mitote is your work in the mitote book. Your awareness will give your Warrior the same resolve to stop your inner Judge from being critical and angry with the child inside.

Here is the illustration of the Warrior, along with the Victim child and the Judge. Note how the Warrior holds out a firm hand of “No” to the Judge, and a welcoming invitation of love for the Child.

Click the thumbnail for a full size version in a new page

 

In this Gateway we have focused on the empowerment of your Warrior. It is important for the Warrior to be present for the mitote book. If the Parasite uses it, then the Parasite will chase itself in circles — and that will make you very dizzy! When the Warrior is present, he or she knows that you are absolutely okay the way you are and that the Judge is a Liar. As the Warrior, you can begin listening to everything the Judge, Victim, and other voices say inside of you — without taking any of it personally. If you don’t feel strong enough yet as the Warrior to begin this part of the journey, then rest here. That is OK. Review the Pathsteps in Gateway One, especially the ones about the Parasite and remember why you need the Warrior. And practice the Warrior’s reprogramming tools for Active Self Acceptance in PathStep 2-4.

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>The mitote book is a powerful tool on the way to the Mastery of Awareness. You will write in the book as the Warrior, as though you were a Jaguar (symbol of transformation), stalking your prey in the jungle. This jungle is your inner mind, and your prey is the Parasite. You are stalking the Judge, the Victim, and all the other voices of the committee arguing in your head. You will learn what they say, where they rest, where they feed, how they relate to each other– just like the jaguar stalking its prey in the jungle.

As the Warrior, you will write it all down. Do not analyze or justify anything. This is pure awareness, so your job is simply to take dictation and write down the voices speaking in your mind. Remember to imagine yourself sitting in that restaurant booth, fascinated (perhaps a bit horrified), writing down what you hear. The Warrior uses the mitote book as a tool for recognizing the lies of the Judge and the voices of the other parts of your mind. With that awareness, he or she can begin to protect the victim child from the Judge in your mind. This is a good thing. This is the Warrior In Action.

Keep this book safe and sacred. It is not for anyone else to read. Many people write a disclaimer in the front of the mitote book that says something like: “I am writing here as an exercise in Personal Freedom. Anything written about myself or anyone else is done in love and acceptance, on my path to freedom. I know my judgments are lies, and am writing them here to free myself from them.” Make it a safe place to write your truth, whatever it is. To hold yourself back, to reject your judgments and hurts, to restrain your anger, is to miss this wonderful opportunity to reveal and change the program that has controlled you all your life. 

In the audio below, I will guide you, the Warrior, through an initiation of your Mitote Book as a tool of power in your continuing battle with the Parasite. Again, I want to say this is the most powerful tool you will have in the Mastery of Awareness—and the awareness you will gain from it will automatically lead to much transformation.

For your Mitote Book initiation, you will need:

• A new journal, preferably something new, one that lays flat and is easy to write in, and not so precious that you will hold back if/when the Judge writes angrily in it. You will use it only as your Mitote Book. You should also have your separate journal for writing the action steps and your other explorations.
• A pen
• A candle, preferably one of the tall jar candles common on the Mexican shelf of many stores — with your choice of angels, saints, or saviors on it. They burn forever. Non-perfumed is recommended, some of them can be too strong
• Matches or a click lighter
• A Crystal or other sacred object to initiate as a power object to support your process.
• A photograph of yourself that you like

Create a sacred space and time for this ceremony. Make sure you will not be disturbed by people, animals, telephones, e-mail, or other distractions. When you are ready, use my guided initiation in the audio below. Please stop here, and prepare yourself for this initiation. If you are not ready, wait. Resist the temptation to continue reading until your Mitote Book initiation is complete. Gather the things you need, as you hold a strong intention for this sacred event– it is an important part of your journey here.

Your Mitote Book Initiation Audio (19:45)

When the audio and your ceremony are complete, stop and be present with the energy you have created. Feel your emotional body, and simply note any sensations there. In our “modern world” we are very busy, partly because we have a lot of incoming information to deal with and many tasks to complete…and also because many people are using “busy” to try to outrun their Judge and avoid his criticism (doesn’t work).

To do this work of recovering your connection to your own integrity, your mind, body, and especially your heart center, you will need to remember to slow down and listen sometimes. This is one of those times, please do it right now.

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When you are completely centered in the energy of the mitote book, it is time to start using it. It might be right after the initiation, or the next time you return to TACO and your adventure here. Remember the Toltec path is one of action, and here the mitote book action begins. This experience can last you for months and Gateways, and we’ll expand the uses for it as we go along. It will always serve your intention for freedom. Let’s begin.

ACTION: Your first assignment in the mitote book is to write about your body. Take time to sit with your mitote book, light your candle, and feel the support of your power object. I am connected to this object of power, and you can hook my energy and support through it. It is especially important at the beginning to make a purposeful ritual out of writing. Later, you may hear the voices during the day and go and write them down, or even make notes at work or in the car (not while driving, please!) for writing out later. At the beginning, I would like you to make a ritual out of this writing– to make sure you are writing as the Warrior, and tapping into the personal power you have invested here to support yourself in this action.

If you forget you are taking dictation and start writing as the Judge and believe he is telling the truth (“I can’t believe I think/did that, I am so stupid!”), stop, do not write that, just walk away. See if you can wake yourself up and become the Warrior. Once again, as the Warrior, you can write down what the Judge said, remembering he is talking to the Victim. He is really saying: “I can’t believe you think/did that, you are so stupid!” If you can hear and write it down that way (like the restaurant booth model) you will quickly learn you are not the voices, only the Warrior witnessing them.

The Warrior needs to hold two perspectives: First, the Warrior accepts the reality of the mitote in your mind and is intent on stalking it and learning everything about it. At the same time, the Warrior knows the judgments and rejections in your mind are not the truth, and looks forward to creating a new program of beliefs and agreements.

If, at any time, other subjects come up, write about them. Write whatever the Judge is judging or blaming the Victim for. If you hear judgments about judging yourself, write them down! Start with your body. There is a list of additional subjects below to help you get started. The mitote book will be your tool for the next few Gateways, so begin a regular habit of using it now. It will evolve through many chapters, and in time, will become the Book of Life. Remember that the Toltec path is a path of action and it is your action that sets you free. This Book is the main tool of action that the Warrior uses in the Mastery of Awareness– it is now your tool.

You will find many voices in the chaos of the mitote in your mind. The Judge is judging the Victim Child. The Victim is defending herself. The voices from the masks and strategies and roles that the Child uses to protect herself are all talking. It’s okay to let the Victim Child and the others write how unfair it feels to be made wrong. Your task here is to focus mostly on the Judge’s abuse, listen to the chaos, and transcribe it. Some new Warriors are surprised by how mean their inner Judge is, and how hurt the Victim is by his abuse.

Focusing on the inner relationship

The reason I am focusing your attention on this inner relationship early in your journey through TACO, is because it is the foundation of all emotional and spiritual healing. I believe it is vitally important that you learn to hear the Judge speaking to the Victim within. As I said above and am repeating here because it is SO important: In the old dream, we say: “I am so stupid.” I want you to learn to hear the Judge say “You are so stupid,” and know the “you” he is talking to is the Victim. Your Warrior is the witness. You become like an adult who has walked into a room filled with squabbling children. You listen to all of their fears, accusations, hurts and justifications. You feel love for them. You know they all believe what they are saying. You also know that none of what they say about each other is really true. Write it all down.

In time, you become so familiar with all of the voices, that you do not believe any of them. You, the Warrior, will be able to support all of the emotional experiences of that that Victim Child part in complete acceptance. You will love her and protect her from being made wrong. In time, that precious and wise child part of you will be free to feel what she feels, think what she thinks, and be who she is — without fear of rejection or worse. The result is a grand happiness. In the experience of happiness you will find yourself dancing in joy with all of Life. We are, after all, Toltec Joydancers!

You are re-domesticating yourself. Be patient. Be thorough. There is no hurry… and not a moment to waste.

As you write your self-judgments in your mitote book, use the items on the list below to stimulate your mitote. Your body is a good place to start because we all have deep unconscious ways we reject our bodies. If you don’t hear judgments about your body, stand naked in front of a full-length mirror with bright lights on! Do it. What do you hear, what do you say to yourself? What does your Judge say to that poor cringing Victim inside? Write it down.

Take lots of time. It’s probably best to focus on only one subject per sitting, and go back to subjects you’ve already done to see what comes up the next time. Add your own subjects. Not every subject will lead you to judgments. If you grew up knowing you are smart, then the judge trying to convince you: “You are so stupid!” might not have much effect. But, listen carefully.

Remember, we’re going to spend many weeks with the evolution of this tool of awareness. If you take the time to do it thoroughly at each step you will never have to come back here again. That is my TACO guarantee—or your Parasite back!

I think it is a good idea to share your experiences with TACO and your mitote book journey with others. Come share in the chat room and forum, get to know other members and mentors, perhaps find a local or long distance person or a group you can connect and collaborate with. This IS a community.

In TACO, “We Are Creating Spiritual Community Through Love in Action”

A List of Subjects to Help You Get Started In Your Mitote Book

• Your body
  • Esthetically — how it looks
  • Functionally — how it works
• Relationship with food, the quality of your diet
• Your “will power”
• Your spiritual life — meditation practice, church attendance
• Relationship patterns — friends, lovers, mates
• Your sexual life — you as a lover, masturbation, fantasies
• Economic situation — your relationship with money, bills, debt, tithing
• Your future
• Relationship to time — procrastination, resistance, haste and hurry, schedules
• Relationship with your parents
• Relationships with your siblings
• Relationships with your children, you as a parent.
• Work — what you choose, how you are valued, comfort, enjoy?
• Habits and addictions — (dig deep here). Smoking, overeating, alcohol, marijuana, sex, porn, gambling, drinking, biting fingernails, worrying, Facebook, cell phone.
• Phobias and fears
• How you dance
• How you sing
• Your manners
• State of your health
• Aging
• Death
• Fitness – what you do, what you should do, how you do it
• Quality of your dress and grooming – clothes, hair, makeup, tattoos, piercings
• Characteristics of your intellectual life
• Your art—painting, drawing, making things
• Yourself as a friend
• Relationship with technology — computer, digital camera, mobile phone
• Most common moods
• How you drive
• Type of people you are most attracted to
• Characteristics of your emotional life
• Approach to chores and projects
• Social skills — small talk, parties, strangers, friends, spiritual groups
• Your sense of humor
• Relationship with plants, green thumb
• Relationship with pets
• Recreation — habits, plans, follow-through, leisure time
• Relationship with neighbors

And anything else that comes up! Let me know and I’ll add them to the list for others.

Go for it! And always as the Warrior, always with love.

Note that I want you to begin writing in your mitote book as a way of life now,
along with whatever else you are learning or processing here.

ACTION (ONGOING): Practice bringing the Warrior energy into your body. How does the Warrior walk down the street? How does the Warrior relate to the people around you? At home? At work? What thoughts, attitudes belong to the Warrior? What attracts the Warrior’s attention? What repels it?

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Before you move on to Gateway 3, I think you are ready to learn the TACO Toltec Secret Sacred Mantra (TTSSM) the Warrior uses in the presence of the Judge and the Victim Child, to change the energy in your mitote. Please prepare yourself for this moment, center yourself, and open to receive this very special and powerful TACO Toltec Secret Sacred Mantra.

Note that this mantra is not to be shared with members who have not reached this part of TACO.

When you are ready, click on this audio:

The TACO Toltec Secret Sacred Mantra Audio (1:52)

ACTION: Use the TACO Toltec Secret Sacred Mantra on a regular basis. Close your eyes right now, feel the powerful intention of your Warrior, imagine the Judge and your Victim Child there with you, and repeat the TTSSM several times. Out loud! Use your Warrior authority! Notice what effect it has on the energy in your inner world, especially your Victim Child. Write your observations in your journal (not your Mitote Book).

As I will continue to remind you, this TACO Toltec path is a path of Action, and the Warrior is the one who takes the action. The Warrior is in a battle with the Judge for the attention of the Victim Child. Is your Victim’s attention hooked in the rejection and fear of the Judge, or in the acceptance and love of the Warrior? The Warrior uses the TTSSM to remind the Victim and the Judge that the balance of power in the inner kingdom is changing. 

As the Warrior becomes aware of the lies and distortions in the Parasite’s dream, and the suffering it causes your human, he wades in and says “We are going to change this dream now. I know the beliefs and agreements where the lies are held cause the fear and suffering. I am going to change those beliefs and break those agreements, and heal the emotional wounds they have caused—and free the power caught up in the mitote. I am in charge now. I seize this moment! I am restoring the true King to the throne.”

And so it is.

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Your Warrior work has begun. The Warrior is at war with your parasite. The parasite does not want you to be free, and will sabotage the Warrior as often as possible. The Warrior uses Active Self Acceptance to battle the parasite, along with the absolute knowing of your Victim’s perfection. The Warrior knows that you (victim, judge, parasite, strategies) are always doing your best.

The Warrior accepts responsibility for the choices and actions you make, knowing they are the only possible choices—and thus perfect.

The Warrior stalks the parasite in the jungle of the inner mind, like a jaguar in the jungle. To be a good stalker, you must learn all about the prey—where it hides, when it feeds, and the best way to attack it.

The mitote book is your tool of power in the Mastery of Awareness. You will continue to use it until you have learned all about the parasite, and have changed the dream within.

The TTSSM is also a powerful tool of the Warrior. You will use the TTSSM for as long as is necessary—until the Victim child is bathed in the Warrior’s love and acceptance and knows he is perfect just the way he is. The mantra is your chance to be playful with your victim child.

How are you doing? Are you honoring your personal commitment here by being thorough in the Gateway. Congratulations. You have seven more. There is no rush—and, I remind you once again, not a moment to waste! If you answer these Self-Reflection Questions and realize there are parts of the GW you missed or want to go back to, do it! Are you going to make this the last and final time you will struggle with your domestication and your limitations from the past, and the time accept your divine perfection?

Go to your Gateway Two Self-Reflection Questions here

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Go to your Gateway Two Self-Reflection Questions here