The Toltec Art of Life and Death. Barbara Emrys

      With my mother on her way, I can rest again, feel the infinite light, and listen to the music. I hear the songs of my youth even now, even through the haze of this dream. I hear their beat, demanding my complete attention. I hear their lyrics, the messages that describe pain and a solution to pain at the same time. I hear truth running just above the melody and somewhere beneath the words, always discreet, but always present. I belong to the music and to the life that beats within it.

      It’s been a long journey through existence, a journey that started sometime before I could appreciate music—in fact, before hearing connected me to the physical world—and before I was aware of the struggles of men and women. It started before I knew anything of matter. My actual memories might have begun at the birth of my body, my initial attempts to breathe, and the sounds of my mother’s anguished cries. From there came the eventful ride from infancy to manhood, from student to master. I have traveled from pure potential to the thrill of physical being to a road-weary ending. I have gone from endless nights of lovemaking to this quiet night, with death whispering within and around me. It’s been a good life, a life of giving and receiving love without condition and beyond justification.

      Love needs no justification; it is simply what we are. Men and women rarely allow themselves to feel the force of this. They know love only as a fallen symbol—a symbol meant to represent life, but one that has become corrupted by the many distortions of meaning. With the corruption of that one word, all symbols fall into confusion. Symbols grow into beliefs, and beliefs grow into petty tyrants that demand human suffering. All of this began with the fall of the first word: love.

      There were many loves in my life, of course. There were always women eager to be touched, hungry to love and be loved. There were always women searching to see the truth of themselves in my eyes. In my life, I’ve loved them all. They had different faces, different names, but to me there was only one—only the fallen one, caught in a web of distortions and looking for a way back to truth. She seeks a path back to heaven even now, all the while believing the lies that keep her in hell.

      Of course, she is all of us. She is Knowledge; and I can say now, without shame, that there was a time when she was Miguel. I had a good relationship with knowledge from the beginning. From my first breath, I was eager to learn the ways of sounds, symbols, and scribbled lines on paper. Like any healthy infant, I saw and heard everything. I felt in ways that adults around me had forgotten to feel. Sensation washed through me night and day, but clearly, sensation needed someone who could give testimony to its wonders. According to what I observed of the adult world around me, sensation needed a storyteller.

      Feeling the flush of excitement that came with my first uttered word, and the thrill of seeing how it sent happiness racing through my parents and our friends, I was hooked. How quickly I became a devotee of words! How rapidly I used words to create a caricature of a little boy! Amazing, too, how words became the endless testimonial that is thought. In a very short time I grew exactly like those storytellers who populated my little-boy world. I happily collected assumptions and opinions, and the reward for my efforts was an incontestable identity. I knew myself well. Everyone else who knew me, knew me well, too—or so I believed.

      I loved words and the universes that words created for me. I loved the power they gave me to convince other minds and change points of view. I loved the way words made it easy to romance girls and persuade knowledge-hungry boys like me. I loved the advantage that words gave me in school, both with peers and with teachers and then professors. I was always a good student. I was quick to memorize and quick to recall facts to mind. I was quick, that is, until I entered medical school. There, it seemed I had no advantage. No matter how hard I studied, how well I memorized, I could barely pass a test. My grades were poor, my temper was bad, and my self-confidence was plummeting. I wanted so much to follow in the footsteps of my brothers, but after my first semester in medical school, my prospects for a career as a doctor weren’t looking good. Things got so bad that my physiology professor approached me privately, asking why my grades failed to reflect the intelligence and enthusiasm I showed in class. I had no good answer. I told him how hard I was trying and how much energy I was putting into memorizing the material. He stopped me there. “Don’t memorize,” he said. “Use your imagination.”

      This may have been the first time I heard words used in this way—to invite, rather than to convince. That professor was inviting me to break away from structure and to dream my life. He was giving me permission to experience the truth, not simply to observe the facts. My grades improved drastically after that—but, more important, the world as I knew it changed. This was the first of many steps away from knowledge, away from the compelling voice in my head. It was a small step, of course, because I was strongly bound to the laws of knowledge and, at that age, was knowledge’s greatest champion. I believed it could cure every illness and solve every problem. It defined me. I was knowledge, in all its youthful expression and tireless aggression. Without the me that was born of words and ideas, I could not exist—or so I believed.

      Watching my mother make her way to the horizon and to her destination, I’m at ease. Seeing the distant tree from my present refuge among the branches of the Tree of Life, I feel only love. That tree, mirroring mine, is the symbol of knowledge—only that—and symbols have no influence on me. Now they don’t, but there was a time in my existence when I would have given anything to free myself of knowledge’s hold. I would say its power, but knowledge represents a false power, born in those exhilarating moments of infancy when language is perceived as the only path to paradise. From that first seduction, there seems only one way forward. This is simple human destiny, of course. Out of infinite light we are brought into physical being, flung into dark perplexity, and challenged to find our way back. There’s nothing that says we must burn with the same frequency of light that brought us here—but would it be so impossible? Bringing light to the obscurity caused by words is a determined choice, the path of a seeker.

      My professor had asked me to dream the world from an academic point of view, but I soon discovered that dreaming is all we ever do. We imagine, and then we become. Those who are artists of the dream, whatever it may be, are artists of life. To dream means to construct reality, by whatever means available. A dog dreams the dream of a dog. A tree dreams itself in ways known only to the tree. It knows its body—every leaf and particle that makes it a universe. It knows the rejuvenating powers of sunlight, rain, and the nurturing soil. It perceives itself in relationship with all life, and it changes with the changing light, just as human bodies do. The human dream, on the other hand, adapts to changing knowledge. As human brains convert light into language, they learn to dream through words. We are gifted beyond our own understanding. Our words describe our reality. We are always dreaming, always redefining realities. In our sleeping hours, words are only the dim echoes of a waking dream, but the dreaming still continues. Like all creatures, we dream all the time. We dream an idea of who we are in relation to everything else. When other minds agree with us, we venture to call our dream truth. Depending on how we use knowledge, we can be victims or we can be responsible masters of our personal dream.

      Just as I indulged knowledge so many years ago, there came a time when I had to refuse its authority. I had no cheering family then, and there was no community of humans to teach me how. I was alone, with only the ancient wisdom to comfort me. I was alone, as Sarita is now. Her journey to find me will begin in earnest in the world represented by that tree. Anyone can gather the pieces of an old dream, built by old knowledge. It takes a master to select the precious raw materials of a new and inspiring dream. This will be her challenge. She may fail or she may be victorious. Either way, Miguel will not be back. He is at home, here in the arms of eternity.

      In his life as a man, he became aware of the truth of himself. Inch by inch, he slipped away from the temptations of knowledge. Ounce by ounce, he made his heart a weightless thing, emptying it of a thousand lies. The frequencies within him changed and intensified, until matter could not contain him. Revive the body,