To understand the transformative potential of the Toltec wisdom, it is often important to return to the beginning of the domestication process and remember what humans are like when they come into this world. Humans are born free. They have no opinions, judgments, fears, shame, denial, addictions, broken hearts, and no sense of self to defend or justify. Especially at the very beginning, human infants are pure awareness, with no stored light in their minds to distort the incoming light of reality.

In the early chapters of this book you learned how humans store light in their channels of perception, and how that light distorts their awareness of reality. The Toltecs call the resulting virtual reality in the human mind the personal dream. The more distorted a human's personal dream of reality is, the less effective and happy he will be in his life. Domestication is the path away from the truth of the spiritual nature of every human.

Remembering the Goal

The goal of the Toltec path is to clear the distorting light and return to the spiritual awareness that is a human's birthright. The path to that birth-right lies back through the domestication and its stored emotions and hurts, and the warrior travels there like an explorer hacking his way through the jungle looking for a lost city of gold. The treasure the warrior seeks is his original state of pure awareness, which has been covered and lost under a tangle of lies and childhood hurts.

The warrior knows he cannot return to the state of pure innocence of his infancy, and he does not intend to. He knows the treasure he longs to recover will be a product of his clarity and wisdom as an adult. The warrior is prepared to use his tools and his energy to find his way back through the jungle of his domestication and out the other side — into the light of pure awareness and spirit. He will not reject, deny, or misuse the knowledge he has gained throughout his life, though he knows it is not the truth.

A Life Lived with Awareness

The parasite is not interested in, or capable of, imagining a life lived without the parasite. Remember the definition of the parasite as “knowledge used against yourself” from a previous chapter? What would it be like for you to live with knowledge as your ally, always supporting, accepting, and loving yourself and everything you do? Can you imagine what your personal relationships, work, spirituality, leisure activities, and creativity would be like if you lived free from fear of judgment, and doubts about your perfection?

There is incredible personal power available to humans who have freed themselves from the tangle of their domestication — power to create, play, love, laugh, and enjoy life in every moment, no matter what happens to them. A life of personal freedom and joy is available to any human who frees himself from the control of his parasite and returns to the truth of his nature.