Don Ruiz - Beyond Fear: A Toltec Guide to Freedom and Joy: The Teachings of Don Miguel Ruiz

Copyright 1997 by Mary Carroll Nelson and Miguel Angel Ruiz

All rights reserved.

Published by Council Oak Books, LLC

An imprint of Chicago Review Press Incorporated

814 North Franklin Street

Chicago, Illinois 60610

ISBN 978-1-57178-038-6

Cover design: Laura Beers

Cover illustration: Nicholas Wilton

Interior design: M. Teresa Valero and Carl Brune

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Nelson, Mary Carroll.

Beyond Fear : a Toltec guide to freedom and joy :

the teachings of Miguel Angel Ruiz / by Mary Carroll Nelson.

p. cm.

ISBN 1-57178-038-6 (alk. paper)

1. Spiritual life. 2. ToltecsReligionMiscellanea.

3. Ruiz, Miguel, 1952- Teachings. I. Title.

BL624.N4441997

299.792dc2197-29355

CIP

Printed in the United States of America

Please join me as I begin with a prayer. First, read the words of the prayer and then take a few moments to close your eyes and do this little exercise yourself. Whenever you are feeling alone or without love, repeat this prayerful ritual and you will feel whole again.

Put your attention in your lungs. Feel the pleasure of breathing. To breathe fulfills the biggest need of humanity. When we fulfill a need, we feel pleasure.

Feel that strong connection between your lungs and the air. Just to breathe is enough to make you happy. You can always feel that pleasure of the strong communion between your lungs and the air. That communion is love. When the archangel created humans, he put a gift of love in the air for them. This gift of love fills all of your being when you breathe with awareness in every cell of your body, in every emotion of your mind, and in every piece of light that creates you.

Today, Oh Father/Mother God, we ask you to come to us and be always with us. We offer ourselves to you so that you can use our eyes, our voices and our hands to share your love with yourself, because we are One.

In every direction from an electron to the stars, from matter to spirit, from every emotion to the energy of light, God help us to be like you areto love with no conditions. Help us to love ourselves just the way we are, without judgment, because when we judge ourselves we find ourselves guilty and we need to be punished, and we suffer from the punishment. Help us to be like you are, to accept everything the way it is, to love the way you love, with no conditions.

Love is changing the whole world. Love is your real name and we are your children, so we are also Love. Oh, Father/Mother God, help us to be just like you are. Amen.

Desparte, y ya no era el mismo

Por primera vez, abr los ojos

Los mismos que cre tener abiertos

Engandome por tanto tiempo

Sin saber que nicamente

Estaba viviendo en un falso sueo.

Con una hermoza sonrisa,

Como una estrella brillante,

El Angel de la Muerte,

En el Angel de la Vida cambiaba

Transformando de mis vida el drama

En la mas deliciosa comedia.

Es que acaso he fallecido?

Pregunt al Angel con sorpresa,

Muerto por tanto tiempo has estado

Y aunque en tu cuerpo el corazn latia,

Tu mente en la tumba de la ilucin dorma,

Donde tu divinidad inconciente yaca.

Tu corazn aun late,

Tu cuerpo aun respira

Mas tu mente ha despertado

Del largo letargo del infierno.

Es por eso que tus ojos han cambiado

Admirando la belleza que te espera.

Tu divina concencia has despertado

De tu ser, el amor emana

Dejando el odio y el temor en el pasado

La acusacin y la culpa han terminado

Perdonando tu alma has resucitado

Comenzando tu romance con la vida.

Mis ojos la vieron fascinado

Comprendiendo la verdad en mi dormida

Sin pensarlo, me rend sin condicin

Y ahora con humildad, acepto la muerte y la vida

Dejando ir las ataduras del infierno

Con gratitud veo partir mi amor eterno.

Miguel Angel Ruiz

I waken

And nothing is the same.

For the first time,

I open my eyes,

These eyes of mine

I long believed could see

And find that all I knew as true

Was nothing but a false dream.

Then, like a radiant star

The Angel of Death

The Angel of Life became

And transformed my dream

From a drama of fear

To a joyful comedy.

So surprised, I ask the Angel,

Am I dead?

She replies,

Yes, for these many years,

Though your heart beat on,

Your mind slept in the grave of illusion

Unconscious of your divinity.

Now, with heart beating

And body breathing,

Your mind has wakened from hell.

Renewed, your eyes

Admire the beauty awaiting you.

Your divine awareness wakens

All the love in your being.

Hating and fearing forsaken,

Gone are the guilt and the blame.

Your soul forgives,

Your divinity lives.

My eyes, in fascination,

Stare at the Angel.

Sensing the truth waking in me.

I surrender, willingly,

Without condition.

Humbly receiving

Death and life,

To hell, I release all claim

And with new eyes,

See my eternal love leaving.

Miguel Angel Ruiz

I t has been my privilege to know Don Miguel Angel Ruiz, and his lovely wife Gaya, for several years. Miguel and I have shared numerous conversations in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, New Mexico and in Teotihuacn, Mexico.

On each occasion I became aware, for the duration of our talk, that we had been in another dimension where the possibilities for transformation are boundless. In this other place, where Gaya also dwells, affirmation, a positive viewpoint and a profoundly holistic sense of the sacred prevail. My task has been to collect, record and shape Don Miguels wisdom.

Though I am neither an apprentice nor a shaman, through the years of writing this book my imagination has been penetrated by nagualism with its eternal promise of heaven on earth, and I am grateful.

Mary Carroll Nelson

Albuquerque, New Mexico

May, 1997

T his book will take you on a dream journey into your imagination. Your destination is heaven on earth and your guide will be Miguel Angel Ruiz.

Miguel is a nagual.

Nagual is a word passed down from ancient times through the Aztec language, Nahuatl. The word nagual is making its way into English, particularly in discussions of shamanism. What is a nagual?

According to Toltec tradition everything that exists is one living being, which manifests itself by creating everything that we can perceive and everything that we cannot perceive. This living being is the only one who really exists. All else, including ourselves, is an emanation of this great and wonderful being.

This being controls our planet by supervising the energy of the sun, and the sun also is an emanation of the one being, whereas all the planets orbiting the sun are emanations of the sun. All life on the Planet Earth is an emanation of the sun in an interaction with the Mother Earth.

To understand the emanations of the one living being, the Toltecs divided everything into the nagual and the tonal.