The Serpent Is Asleep in the Grass
In Chapter 2 you were introduced to the serpent, jaguar, and eagle. The serpent represents the part of you that is asleep in the dream. The serpent moves through life focused on its immediate needs for food, shelter, and safety from predators. As a human, your predators are the people you are afraid of because they judge you, reject you, compete with you, or take your energy in other ways.
Perhaps there is a part of you that has been lulled to sleep by your domestication. Take a moment to look at your life. Are your daily routines always the same? Do you have habits of grooming, eating, or communicating that are so automatic that you don't even notice when you are doing them? What about your thoughts? Listen to your mind. Do you often mull the same topics, or replay hurtful conversations while testing snappy new comebacks? What about recurring fears of losing your possessions, of being criticized at home or work, or losing a mate or lover?
These are the ways of the human as the serpent — going through the motions of life according to the expectations and agreements of the dream, connecting the dots according to other people's pictures of life, following orders, and often feeling disconnected from the passion and juicy fun of life that their spirit remembers from childhood.
The Sleeping Serpent Obeys Orders
Perhaps you can think of examples in history when people did not ask questions, but simply followed leaders, and did what they were told. In the name of both religion and politics, women have been burned as witches, advanced civilizations have been destroyed, and wars have been waged between brothers and sisters of nation or faith.
Throughout history, leaders of all kinds have used fear to convince their followers to go to war against their fellow humans. These leaders, especially in politics and religions, have created false stories of fear and dreamed them into the minds of their followers. They know that people are generally asleep, and domesticated to not question authority. In the mind of the sleeping human, fear is the strongest motivator.
Awakening the Serpent
Because the Toltecs have always been willing to openly explore truth and question reality, they have been able to awaken the sleeping serpents among them. In most families, societies, and religions, this questioning is gently discouraged or vigorously prohibited.
Domestication is not an evil conspiracy or plot to destroy the sensitivities of humans. It is simply a fact of human life, not good or bad, right or wrong — it simply is. As humans awaken to greater possibilities, they realize that they can domesticate their children and each other with mutual awareness and respect.
It is said that every fifty-two years, when Venus completed her cycle in the night sky, the Toltecs examined and destroyed every belief and physical representation of their dream that no longer served them, and then re-created each one. They would not tolerate sleepwalking in their individual lives or as a culture.
