The Parasite Becomes Your Ally
The victim child within is very much like a wild animal. She has been hurt by the inner and outer judges so often that she probably does not feel safe coming out to play just because the new warrior wants her to. The warrior must tame the child, the judge, and the entire complex of strategies, masks, and other adaptations you have learned to call the parasite in earlier chapters. The warrior must change the parasite's diet, and feed it love and acceptance.
The Toltec wisdom has been passed down and taught by many teachers for thousands of years, and the core beliefs have remained the same: To be free from the conditioning of your domestication, you must identify it in your mind and reject it. Then you can learn to accept yourself the way you are.
Every time the warrior reminds the victim child that the judge is lying when he is critical or shaming, the warrior is feeding the parasite love. Every agreement the warrior breaks about having to do it right to earn love, replacing the old agreement with self-acceptance, is a bit of love food for the parasite. The warrior continues to offer the new diet to the parasite, and little by little the parasite is befriended.
Using Knowledge with Self-Love
An apprentice's story: “All my life I believed that the way to improve myself was to judge myself for the things I did wrong. That is how my mother ‘helped’ me to behave, to pay attention, and to be good, so I did it to myself, without even thinking about it. I was very attentive to my actions, and even if I kept the extra change from a store clerk who miscounted, I scolded myself for weeks about my lack of moral integrity. Like I said, I never really thought about it, I just did it because that is what you do to improve yourself. I also did not notice that I was a pretty unhappy person.
“When I began to explore the Toltec way of life, I knew I wanted to be an artist of the spirit, an artist of my life. I began to stalk and inventory all the ways the voices in my mind talked to each other. Wow, was I ever surprised to hear what they were doing. The judge sounded an awful lot like my mother! Yikes. I thought I had left home many years before, but I guess I took her with me. One day my teacher pointed out to me that it is rare that anyone is actually motivated to improve themselves by being judged, shamed, or criticized.
“I knew he was right. I was hurting myself with everything I knew about how I should be and what I should do. I was filled with knowledge and I was using that knowledge against myself. So, I changed it. It wasn't easy, but I kept stalking and listening, and little by little I stopped the mean talk in my mind. I taught those voices to say supportive and loving things to each other and me. I taught them new agreements about life, love, and my worthiness as a human. Now I bask in the light of self-love and my entire life has changed. I am a very happy person.”
Redeeming the Parasite with Love
When you think of the parasite as all your knowledge, perhaps you can understand why it is important to inventory and recapitulate everything in your mind if you want to be free. There is great magic available to you when you change those thoughts that judge and scold you into voices of love and compassionate support. When all the beliefs, agreements, and knowledge in your mind are working for you instead of against you, your mind becomes a powerful tool for creating a beautiful life.
The Toltecs say that when you redeem your parasite with love, it becomes your ally. When you change the knowledge in your mind from fear-based rules and judgments to love-based wisdom, your mind becomes an ally, and you become the artist of your life. This is the Toltec wisdom, and the Toltec way of life.
