The Toltec Path of Freedom

The toltec Path Of Freedom – an introduction (For more information see the website @ www.toltec-foundation.org)
An ordinary housewife, let’s call her Ann, does a college course and there she meets a diverse group of people, her fellow students. Now, Ann has always had a vague feeling there is more to life, but it’s only a very vague indistinct feeling and most of the time she just ignores it. But on the course she meets a man, let’s call him John, who is rather unconventional and strange, but nevertheless a nice person and quite normal in most respects. Being near him though amplifies this vague feeling she has about there being more to life and she realises intuitively that John knows more about this than she does, so she asks John to tell her what it is. Now, John does know what this thing is, for although he doesn’t advertise the fact, he is a warrior on the path of freedom which also means he knows you cannot tell people directly anything about the path of freedom, for it is not something you can explain, it has to be experienced. So, instead of trying to explain things to Ann he suggests a course of action to her. This course of action is really nothing very dramatic or difficult, and it sounds to Ann like quite a stupid idea. John wants her to rent a film from the video shop that she normally wouldn’t watch. This is the stipulation. It must be something she is not interested in. Despite her misgivings let’s say that Ann does this. Being a conventional Mother and housewife, Ann realises, if she is strictly honest with herself, that the kind of film she is not interested in are the obscure and ‘arty’ ones. So she follows this through, even reading up on the subject so that in the end she now feels she can understand what this type of film is about and why it is made, because, albeit conventional Ann is an extremely intelligent and capable person. But despite having done this for six months, Ann still feels she is no nearer to understanding this vague thing about there being more to life and goes back to John to complain that the whole thing has been a failure. John laughs of course and innocently asks if anything else happened in the six months. Ann thinks hard and remembers one thing that was unusual. Her husband had got angry with their daughter for some minor issue, a thing he would never normally have done, and when Ann had tried to discuss it with him the idea had occurred to her that he was actually angry with her. Hearing this John suggests that her instinct is right and that her husband is angry with her for acting out of character with her arty film craze. Then Ann remembers all the sarcastic comments he had made. Hearing this John suggests that maybe her husband doesn’t want her to do anything new. Ann goes home that night and talking to her husband about it finds herself getting extremely angry and shouting at her husband in a way that she did not think she was capable of. When she calms down Ann is shocked. She had never thought of herself as an angry person before, priding herself on her self control and now she realises this is simply something she has hidden from herself.Realising this,she suddenly does feel she is a tiny bit closer to understanding what that vauge thing is which is missing from her life.

What I am trying to illustrate in this story, which I have made up,is the way in which the path of freedom differs from other paths, inasmuch, as it is about changing our perception of ourselves, through stalking our own feelings and emotions. This is the fundamental nature of the path of freedom. It is not about adding something to our lives. It is about working intelligently with what is already in our lives. Fundamental things like relationships. Always though, when people do feel a lack of something in their lives, something they might term a spiritual element, they will miss the boat entirely, in terms of freedom, by assuming it is some definite thing which they can simple acquire, like anything else. So they take up Tai Chi, Yoga, become Astrologers, Witches, Landscape Gardeners, and persuade themselves they have changed, when, in reality, at a fundamental level, nothing has changed within themselves. They have merely added something to an existing configuration. Now, I am not saying that the things mentioned above are not empowering, enlightening, etc. On the contrary, I would heartily recommend them all. What I am saying is that if you use these thing to create a new identity for yourself you will still not be free. You will be a slave to you new identity, just as you were a slave to your old identity. You will still have all your eggs in the identity basket, and the real issues, about your feelings, failings, emotions, as a human being, will carry on being unresolved in the sense that your awareness of these things will not progress in a way which it will effect the quality of your life and those around you.