The Toltec Art of Life and Death. Barbara Emrys
are dead and some still live and laugh with me, but all of them have enriched my world. My love for each of them is strong, and my gratitude for the role they played in my life and in my recovery is boundless.
It may seem that our experiences—yours and mine—are very different. Your main character is different from mine, and your secondary characters probably don’t seem like the people in my story. While we may seem different, you are an essential part of the dream of humanity, as I am. You have searched for truth through symbols, as I have. You are knowledge, seeking to redeem itself, as I was. You are your own savior, and you are pure potential in action. God represents the truth of you, and the truth will set you free.
Let this book help you understand these things. Listen, see, and dare to change your own world, a world made of thoughts and automatic responses. Allow the events of my life to inspire new insights about your own dream and its current challenges. A good student makes the most of whatever information becomes available, and as my story demonstrates, life provides all the information we need.
With all my love and respect,
—Miguel Angel Ruiz
Don Miguel Ruiz: The main character of his story.
Mother Sarita: Don Miguel’s mother and teacher.
Lala: Knowledge
José Luis: Don Miguel’s father and Sarita’s husband.
Don Leonardo: Don Miguel’s grandfather and Sarita’s father.
Don Eziquio (ay-'see-kee-o): Don Miguel’s great-grandfather and don Leonardo’s father.
Gandara: Don Eziquio’s friend.
Memín: Don Miguel’s brother.
Jaime ('hî-may): Don Miguel’s brother, closest in age.
Maria: Don Miguel’s wife and the mother of his children.
Dhara: Don Miguel’s apprentice and romantic partner.
Emma: Don Miguel’s apprentice and romantic partner.
Miguel, Jr. (Mike, Miguelito): Don Miguel’s eldest son.
José: Don Miguel’s second son.
Leo: Don Miguel’s youngest son.
I pull at the bedsheets, tightened now around my ankles. I reach for the phone, dial blindly, and then someone is talking to me. A woman is asking me who I am, where I am. It seems unlikely I will remember the answer to either of those questions before speech leaves me forever. I try to sit up, but roll from the tangle of sheets instead and tumble to the floor. The pain slips away mercifully, only to come back again in furious stabs. I can hear my mother calling me, shouting my name. I can hear the voices of strangers and the wailing of sirens as consciousness slips between the rise and fall of incongruous sounds. There will be sweet goodbyes, as a new dream begins to rise in place of the old, but all I recognize in this moment is the distant sobbing of women.
So many women are crying. They cry for a son, a lover, a father, and a guide. They cry for me, for themselves, and for promises that were never made. Like all humans, they cry for the redemption of a word. They cry for Love, the fallen angel, when they need only look, listen, and feel the force of it pounding like music from their own wondrous bodies.
Today, I woke before daylight to an invitation from Death. Like my Aztec ancestors, I welcome it with the gratitude of a warrior who has fought well and wishes for a safe homecoming . . . and a long rest. On some distant horizon I can feel the glow of approaching dawn. My skin warms to it. My eyes lift to see mist dissolving into star-fire, and I know I’ll soon see the way home, out of this dark night. My adversaries have come and gone, vanquished by love. They fought relentlessly within the hallways of the human mind, that splendid battlefield. There will be others like me, eager to lift their swords against a million lies, but the war is over for Miguel Ruiz.
Just moments before, as I slept and dreamed, I had a vision of another warrior, a young man from an ancient time, standing among the foothills of a sacred mountain and watching over his beloved valley. He stood under the faintest starlight, gazing at the lake that curved protectively around Tenochtitlan, the home of his people and mine. In the dream, the great valley was veiled in mist. Slowly, dimly, predawn fires began to twinkle as his village came gradually awake. The young man’s heart was beating loudly, as mine is now. His nostrils tested the night air, and his skin tingled in response to wind shifts. Lowering himself carefully to one knee, he lifted his bow and held it high. The fingers of his right hand touched the feathers of an arrow blessed by smoke from a sacred fire. He would not fail his people when the attack came. He would not fail his family, nor the memory of the ancient Toltec people. He would not fail himself.
This was the most dangerous time, the hour when morning had not yet imagined itself and good struggled against evil in the predawn gloom. The young warrior blinked his eyes once, then again, and steadied his arm. As I dreamed with him, it seemed I could feel pebbles shift under one sandaled foot, bite into the flesh of his knee. I could feel the mist grip the man’s ankles and tighten its chilly hold on his bare arms and thighs. I could feel it licking at the back of his neck and his painted brow. Together, we glanced toward the sky. The world above him—an array of stars within a field of mystery—mirrored his perfect body. Seeing this, he whispered a prayer and steadied his breath. His body relaxed. His attention moved back to the valley below, where the mist had begun to disperse and the waters of his ancestral lake curved between dark hills like the jeweled fingers of a goddess. He steadied the bow. The eagle feather in his hair danced gracefully in the rising wind. His back was straight and his belly relaxed. His dark skin glowed radiantly bronze in the approaching sunrise.
His people would be grateful to him now. He imagined some of them peering out of their doorways and sensing the threat that lay beyond the fog. He looked toward the lakeside village as if he might see his father gazing back at him where he knelt quietly and alone—one brave soldier empowered by the strength of the fiery mountain. He felt his father’s pride, and the pride of the ancestors. There was so much to feel in that empty moment between the start of things and the end of things. Light would soon burst over the eastern rim of mountains and destiny would rise up shouting behind it. There were victories lying in wait. Revelations loomed just beyond this present uncertainty. With the breath of his ancestors on his cheek, and the cool touch of their hands upon his back, the warrior composed himself again, one sandal digging into the rocks and eyes staring down the shaft of his warrior’s arrow. He was ready. . . .
And now, as the shock of pain startles me from my dream, I see that it is my time to join the warriors of antiquity. As I once stalked truth, eternity stalks me now. Sunrise thunders along the eastern ridge, and destiny is riding in its wake. With the breath of my ancestors on my cheek, and the cool touch of their hands at my back, I wait for Death’s greeting with a welcoming smile.
I, too, am ready.
The old woman muttered to herself as her feet shuffled along the surface of the dry, cracked terrain. Her slippers scratched the dirt, kicking silky clouds of dust into the wavering air. She held a large bag in one hand and clutched her shawl around her shoulders with the other. The beat of her labored footsteps was the only sound, a slow and plodding sound that never hesitated. She walked on. There was no path to speak of, but she didn’t need one. She knew where she was