These teachings of the Toltecs truly are a path. Like most paths, this one begins somewhere, travels a defined course, and ends in a very special place. It is a path that may wind through unexpected parts of your mind, your history, and your relationships. Yet if you follow it to the end, you will find great treasures there. You will find a richness beyond value. You will know the truth and beauty of who you are and the magnificent oneness of the universe in which you live.

Even though the Toltecs have described this path for thousands of years, it remains unique and personal to each individual who travels it. As you are learning in this book, each person has been programmed to see and understand the world differently, and the world you live in, the paths you walk, are yours and yours alone.

This Toltec path is a path of mastery. In order to help you know where you are beginning and how to get to the riches at the end of this journey, the Toltecs divide their path into three masteries: the mastery of awareness, the mastery of transformation, and the mastery of intent.

Taming Your Mind

One of the goals of the Toltec path is to quiet your mind and resolve troublesome emotional reactions. Imagine you are trying to ride a horse, and it is fidgeting and won't let you stay in the saddle. You try being nice to her, and you try being mad at her, but she still won't let you control her. If the horse has burrs under her saddle blanket, she is never going to settle down so you can ride her. You begin your mastery of awareness when you recognize that your mind and emotions are fidgeting, and you know the problem is the burrs in the saddle blanket of your dreaming mind.

If you just get mad and walk away from the horse, you haven't solved your problem. To help the horse settle down so you can ride her, you must take off the saddle, find the burrs, and remove them. It is the same with your mind and emotions. Once your awareness shows you the real source of any difficulties in your life, you have the information you need to go to the source and remove the burrs. This is the mastery of transformation — your awareness leads you along the path to the true problem and its solution.

Once your mind is cleared of its burrs, you can use it to take you directly and exactly where you want to go. This is the mastery of intent. With your mind cleared of old programming and other distractions, the inspirations and perspirations of your life will take you easily and effortlessly to your goals. You will find yourself creating your life in a new way. You will be an artist, and your life will become a masterpiece of art.

What follows is an introduction to these three masteries, which are expanded and explained more thoroughly in later chapters.

The Mastery of Awareness

Perhaps you have heard the old saying “We don't know who discovered water, but we know it wasn't a fish.” When you are dreaming, and you don't yet understand that you are immersed in a reality that is unique only to you, it is difficult to see outside of it. If you take a fish out of the water, and say, “See, there is air, also!” I am guessing that the fish would say “Fine! Great! Now put me back in the water!” With your new Toltec understanding of your dreaming mind, you might say, “Wow, I like the view better out here. I want to really see, without distorting reality!”

Toltec masters teach their apprentices that to “breathe the air” outside of their old dreams, they need to master awareness of how their dreaming minds work. The apprentice needs to become aware of the beliefs, opinions, fears, judgments, and other subconscious attitudes that control his behavior. Remember the example of the burrs under the saddle blanket? The Toltecs know those burrs represent everything stored in your mind that cause you to be stressed, agitated, afraid, angry, hurt, jealous, or depressed.

The Mastery of Transformation

Once you have revealed to yourself the details of your personal dream, you have the opportunity to un-learn everything you know. You came into this world with no opinions and no fears. All the distorting light in your channels of perception was put there by others, and it is possible to clean out those channels. Your new awareness will give you choices about what you want to believe, think, and feel. In this mastery you are offered many tools for transforming your dream.

On the Toltec path there are no rules about who you should be, or how you should think or act. There are only the many time-honored tools that guide you to awareness and the transformation of your dreaming mind. It is up to you to make choices about how you want to live. Once you actually have the choice, wouldn't you like to always be happy, peaceful, and loving in your life?

The Mastery of Intent

Some of the modern Toltec masters call the mastery of intent the “mastery of love.” The most important change that people on the Toltec path make is to discard all the beliefs and agreements that cause them to hurt themselves with self-judgment and self-rejection. In their new way of dreaming, they live with self-acceptance and self-love. They learn to be impeccable with their word, and never use it against themselves or others (more about impeccability in later chapters).

The mastery of intent is like holding a big fire hose right at the nozzle, and directing the water (your intent) exactly where you want it to go. Before you reach this level of mastery, you are more like a firefighter holding the hose ten feet back from the nozzle, while it whips around with the water going everywhere.

The Toltecs teach that when you become the master of love and intent, magic will happen in your life, and abundance will come to you effortlessly. You will become the master of your life, and live in the dream of heaven on Earth. This is the ultimate personal freedom, and the goal of the Toltec path.