Feeding on Your Fear and Doubt
Can you imagine any other living beings with a parasite like the one the humans have? A small oak tree would be jealous of a larger oak tree, and say, “It isn't fair that you are so big. How come you got the good soil, and I have to be over here in the rocks?” Or, the large oak tree might say: “I had better not grow this year; I shouldn't hurt the little oak tree's feelings by being too successful.”
Parasite talk is not going on in the minds of the deer, snails, trees, birds, fish, worms, clouds, wind, galaxies, or rain. It is not even happening in your body. Can you imagine your cells worrying about what other cells think, or your liver thinking it should be more like your kidneys so that it could impress your pancreas? The only part of creation that dreams in fear is the (supposedly) highly evolved humans!
The Toltecs recognized the spiritual wisdom of all life.
The Parasite Creates Fear
This living dream called the parasite feeds on your emotional fear and has the power to create fearful thoughts in your mind. The human mind becomes so possessed by the parasite energy that a Toltec master will often tell her apprentice that he is the parasite. In Chapter 7 you learned that the human can become a puppet of the outside dream. This happens because the person is already a puppet of his or her personal parasite.
Take some time out and imagine yourself as a tree, bird, cloud, or deer. Quietly experience your surroundings from the assemblage point of each of these other living beings. What about a galaxy? What does it think about taxes or the right outfit? Become your liver. Does it worry? Why do you?
There is no limit to the fear that the parasite can create in the emotional body of a human. The rules, expectations, beliefs, obligations, and agreements programmed into the mind by other parasites are an endless source of fear-producing thoughts. After seeing all the variations of fear-based thoughts in his mind, one apprentice reported that ultimately his big and little fears all came down to one story: “I am not good enough, and so sooner or later I will always be rejected, especially by people I care about.”
The Parasite Feeds on Fear
The Toltecs say that the food of the parasite is fear. It is as though it uses the human to feed itself, like a farmer raising chickens so he can eat the eggs. It manipulates the dream in the human's mind to create fear, and then it eats that fear. The more fear it can produce, the stronger it becomes. Some parasites are very big and strong, manipulating their humans into angry or violent behavior toward themselves and others. Other parasites are more benign, and only cause mild anxiety and confusion in their humans.
There is a marvelous resource in you. It could be called your truth, or wisdom, or pure knowing. This resource is part of the emotional truth that you were born with, and that was domesticated into exile so that you could be good and welcome in your family. Your truth is the reality of which the parasite is most afraid. It knows that your truth is based in love, and it is afraid it will starve if you feed it truth and love (this is not necessarily true, as you will learn in Chapter 15, but the parasites believe it).
The parasite must do everything it can to make you doubt your truth. It has lots of help from all of the strategies and masks that are busy hiding the real you and creating pretend versions of you to please other people. If you really want that last piece of chocolate cake, the parasite will remind you of your agreement to always leave the last piece for someone who might want it more than you do. It uses words like selfish and greedy to make sure that you don't break that old agreement. You want the cake, but you doubt your desire, make it wrong, and don't take the cake. The parasite has won another round.
