The Toltec Art of Life and Death

Copyright

Thorsons

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published in the US by HarperElixir, an imprint of HarperCollins 2015

First published in the UK by Thorsons 2015

FIRST EDITION

© Miguel Ruiz and Barbara Emrys 2015

Designed by Ralph Fowler

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

Miguel Ruiz and Barbara Emrys assert the moral right to be identified as the authors of this work

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

Find out about HarperCollins and the environment at www.harpercollins.co.uk/green

Source ISBN: 9780008147969

Ebook Edition © September 2015 ISBN: 9780008147976

Version: 2015-09-25

I dedicate this book with all my love and gratitude to the young woman who left her physical body in the month of October 2010 and donated her heart to me. Thanks to her generosity and to the generosity of her family, I have been able to travel to cities around the world, bringing my message of love, awareness, and joy to many ­people. It is because of her that I was also able to create this book with Barbara Emrys, whose imagination and artistry bring the story of don Miguel Ruiz to life within these pages.

To all the hospital personnel who have treated me since my heart attack, during my subsequent heart transplant, and up to this date, I offer my deepest gratitude.

I also dedicate this wonderful story to my sons, my daughters-in-law, and my entire family, all of whom I love so much. This is also for my readers, whose growing awareness over the last fifteen years has encouraged me to deliver my message in inventive and exciting ways. It is clear to me that their love for this wisdom has made the world a happier place to live.

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Preface

Cast of Characters

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

Reader’s Guide

Glossary

Acknowledgments

About the Authors

About the Publisher

Preface

This book recounts the events of my life. Unlike my previous writings, it merges the power of imagination with the teachings of Toltec wisdom. It tells the story of a mystic dream I experienced several years ago, during the nine weeks of a medically induced coma that followed my heart attack.

At the time of our death, it is said, a lifetime of memories will flash before our eyes. Something similar happened to me while my body desperately struggled to stay alive and my mind expanded toward the infinite.

You could say that during those long weeks I dreamed my legacy. A personal legacy is the compilation of all the experiences in our life. It is the sum of all our actions, all our reactions, all our emotions and feelings. It is what we give to those who remain, after we leave our physical body. A legacy is all that we are, the totality of ourselves. Through the memories others have of us, our legacy is determined . . . and the more authentic we are, the brighter that legacy will be.

I was inspired to create this book as a gift to my sons, to my students, and to all those whose love helped bring me back to life. To my children, my family, my friends and lovers, I give my memories and my unconditional love. To those who wish to learn from my words, I offer the experience of my life. My enduring love of the world is my gift to this beautiful planet. The authenticity of my awareness is my gift to humanity.

Our waking lives, like our sleeping dreams, are works of art. This book is an artistic piece of storytelling about very real interactions between me and my mother, doña Sarita, a well-respected healer in San Diego and my teacher and guide through much of my life. From the moment of my heart attack on February 28, 2002, she did everything she could to keep my body from dying. Using all the power of her faith, she gathered her children and apprentices to perform a series of ceremonies on my behalf. She worked tirelessly, day and night, to bring me back to health and consciousness. She was determined that I return to my body and give it life again. On many occasions she went into a trance, or deep meditation, with the intention of entering my dream and demanding that I reject death.

Those excursions into my dream state are the basis for this book. When my mother confronts me there, I send her to talk to the main character of my story, which is my own knowledge. In this fantasy, knowledge is depicted as a mysterious creature called Lala. You could say she is the embodiment of everything I believe and everything that gives shape to my story—just as your knowledge helps you create the story of your life.

Many wonderful characters bring energy and life to this story. Each one reflects me and each one contributes to my healing in a singular way. Although some of their names and some of their exchanges with me have been fictionalized, all of these characters represent actual friends, students, and family members. Some 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

Cast of Characters

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.

Prologue

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 going. She was following the traces of something invisible to her, but unmistakable. She was following the instincts of a mother searching for her son.

For weeks now she had felt the chilling fear a mother feels at the possibility of losing her child. Somewhere in the world she had just left, her thirteenth child was slipping away—not from her sight, for she knew he lay silent and pale in a hospital bed. He was slipping steadily away from her senses. She could no longer feel the life-current of him. She could no longer speak to him in the wordless ways that they had shared for almost fifty years. As the force of life weakened in him, so did his ties to the world of matter and thought. There was very little time left, she knew. His heart had failed, his body was dying, and the doctors were poised to give up the fight. What else could she do but journey into this timeless place where his presence had gone, and seek him out? She would find her youngest son, the soul of her soul, and she would bring him home.

Beyond her fragile form there stretched a vast landscape of sand and rock and all manner of lifeless things. There was no color, save for billowing clouds of slate blue that swarmed above her soundlessly. Lightning seared the depthless heavens, blinding her in jagged rhythms . . . but this storm was made of dreams. This was a storm born of feeling and wonder, and such things would not slow her progress.

Sarita continued on, the sound of her breath echoing into the silence. Her pulse quickened and her chest heaved, as if her exertions were real. Perhaps they were. She had never attempted such a journey before. She had not known what to expect, or what cost her body would have to pay. As she walked on, she willed herself to relax. She would not succumb to fear. She was old; it was true. She had recently celebrated her ninety-second birthday, but she was not ready to leave the world of matter and meaning. She was not ready, and therefore he was not ready. Her son would not be permitted to die while she still had the strength to fight for him. She took a quick breath and allowed a smile to wash the strain from her features. Yes, she had the strength. In this peculiar space between here and there, her love would triumph. Encouraged, she set her bag down for a moment and straightened her shoulders, gathering the ends of her shawl in a loose knot at her neck. She was wearing a nightgown made of thin cotton. The windless cold seeped through it easily, chilling her flesh. No matter, she thought. There was no turning back now. Her senses might fail to recognize him, but her heart would not. Scanning the landscape once more, she picked up the heavy bag with the other hand and resolutely shuffled on.

It was a nylon shopping bag, the kind that she would have taken to market in those cool early mornings in Guadalajara, during the days just before her youngest had been born. It showed a portrait of the Virgin on the outside, printed in bright colors, and within it were many items blessed by her own prayers and intent. She gave the bag a gentle shake, as if to reassure herself of her mission, and thought of those days so long ago, just before the birth of her thirteenth child, when all of life seemed reassuring. It had been a sweet time: she was forty-three, still beautiful, and wedded to a handsome young man to whom she had already given three sons. He had married her right out of school, in spite of her age and her nine children by a previous marriage. He had married her against the wishes of his family. He had married her, some said, because she worked her wicked magic on him. Well, there would always be those who were skeptical. They had married out of love, pure and simple. From love, four healthy sons were born.

The old woman slowed her pace, then stopped. The storm still flashed and billowed around her, but its eerie silence was gone. Now, beyond the muffled sounds of her breathing, there was something else in the air. Where there should have been thunder, there was now music, building in the distance like a growling wind. He must be near, she thought. She stood where she was, listening, until it became clear that a particular song was playing, rising from the horizon to meet the sky’s fury. It was music she recognized from a time long ago. She could hear her son singing to music like this as a boy, his little fingers moving along the strings of an imaginary guitar while he mouthed senseless syllables and shook his whole body to the rhythm of it, just as he had seen his older brothers do. What had he called this sound? What . . . ? Oh, yes.

“It’s rock-and-roll, Mamá!” she remembered him shouting. “The music of life!”

Yes, a rock-and-roll song was playing in his head even now. That was the sound that raced along the lightning bolts in this blackening sky and whipped like cyclone winds through her gray hair, even when everything around her was still. Her senses had not failed her. She could feel his mind now, and hear his immense and eternal heart reverberating with joy. He was close.

Setting down the shopping bag again, she wrapped her woven shawl more tightly around her. She was dressed for bed, wearing what she’d had on when everyone had arrived at the house to join her in ceremony. In some distant corner of her consciousness, she could hear those guests, too—her children, her grandchildren, her students, and her friends. They had come at her request—for the obvious reason that no child or grandchild, no apprentice or assistant, ever refused Mother Sarita. They had come in quiet resignation—bringing gourds and drums, lighting candles, and burning sage. They had come to sing, to pray, to plead. They had come to bring him back, the thirteenth son of a woman who could not be ignored. They had come as the ancestors would come, to do the job of spiritual warriors.

On this night, with so much at stake, Sarita had been transported from the circle of the faithful in her living room to a world that existed only in imagination. She had trespassed into the mind of another. She was willing to pay the price for that at some other time, but for now she must keep going. For now she must walk without apology into her son’s dream, and she must bring him back—dragging him by an insolent ear, if she had to. Certainly, she had done it many times before.

She shook her head as she remembered the child he once had been. She remembered those black eyes full of humor and mischief, and the little hands that had reached for her face with love when she was tired or touched by sadness. There was nothing—not even death—that would keep her from him. There was no logic that could undo her need for him, not even his logic. In her ninety-two years, Sarita had experienced all the joys and sorrows of being thirteen times a mother. She had survived the deaths of two of her children before this. She had lost husbands, sisters, brothers—but there was enough life in her still to fight one last time for what she loved. Picking up the bag again, she shook a little ethereal dust from the image of the Virgin Guadalupe and searched the landscape. She sniffed the air for some other sign, hesitated, and then turned around. Something had caught her attention, something that could not yet be seen. She would change course. She must follow her intuition—and the music.

The music grew louder with every painstaking step she took. It seemed to vibrate from ground and sky at once, pulsing to a loud beat . . . perhaps to the beat of the drums in her living room. She thanked God silently for obedient children and continued walking, her feet moving heavily through a thick spray of illuminated dust. Beyond the near horizon, she could see Earth rising over the rim of this vacant dream, blazing with a spirited light. She caught her breath. In the darkening sky of storm and shimmering heat, she could see something silhouetted against Earth’s brilliance. A tree loomed in the distance! Its heavy limbs seemed to undulate with erotic pleasure, causing green leaves to quiver and shine. Sarita marveled at the sight of something so full and fertile in a land of such vast emptiness.

Miguel . . . she whispered. In any dream where there was color and life, there would be her son. He used to say that fun followed him everywhere. Well, this was fun. This was magic. Wherever he was, there would be a celebration—of that she was certain. She walked on toward the tree, the music growing louder. The walk might have taken a lifetime, or a minute, or no time at all. She was aware only that her heart was beating to a lively tune while she walked. She must have come a long way, whatever the time, for the massive tree spread before her now—tall, wide, and graceful. Its limbs stretched in all directions, as if beckoning the universe into a huge, benevolent embrace. Sarita hesitated by a root that jutted out of star-silt, and peered up into what looked like a galaxy of suspended fruit twinkling in the unworldly light. As she gazed in wonder, her eyes fell on the one she had come to find. On the lowest limb of the gigantic tree, almost hidden among the dancing shadows and the thousand sparkling leaves, sat her son.

Miguel Ruiz was lounging against the trunk of the tree in his hospital gown, quietly munching on an apple. Seeing her now, his eyes brightened and he waved enthusiastically for her to come closer. His mother edged toward the tree, choosing her steps carefully through the enormous tangle of roots, until she was standing by the limb that supported him. It swooped low along the ground, making it possible for her to look directly into his eyes.