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

A DREAM JOURNEY

This book will take you on a dream journey into your imagination. Yourdestination is heaven on earth and your guide will be Miguel AngelRuiz.

Miguel is a nagual.

Nagual is a word passed down from ancient times through the Azteclanguage, 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 livingbeing, which manifests itself by creating everything that we canperceive and everything that we cannot perceive. This living being isthe only one who really exists. All else, including ourselves, is anemanation of this great and wonderful being.

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

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

The nagual is everything that exists that we cannot perceive. We couldcall it the unknowable and the unknown. The tonal is everything that wecan perceive with our common sense.

The tonal and the nagual can only exist because of intent. Intent isthat connection or that force which makes possible all transference ofenergy between the nagual and the tonal. Without intent, neither thenagual nor the tonal would exist. There would literally be nothing inexistence at all. Intent is life. It is eternal transformation andeternal interaction. Intent is what we call God. Intent is life byitself; it is God and it is Spirit.

In terms of our modern science, everything that exists in the world isenergy. Light is energy and everything, at its root, is light. Energyhas billions of manifestations, millions of different vibrations. Thenagual is all the energy in the stars and between the stars that wecannot perceive. This is "el nagual." The kind of energy that we canperceive, and prove that it exists, we call "el tonal."

The solar system is a living being with its own metabolism, with its ownnagual and tonal. The tonal is the sun, with all of the planets, moons,comets, meteorites and satellites...everything that we can perceive withour eye and the instruments that give increased power to our eye. Thenagual is the energy that comes from these planets and moons, includingthe energy that emanates from the earth.

Planet Earth is also a living being with its own nagual and tonal. It,too, has its own metabolism. Like the human body which has many organsthat work together to maintain a perfect equilibrium, the earth also hasorgans. Among these organs is the human organ composed of all humanbeings together. As an organ, human beings also have their own nagualand tonal. Emotions are energy that we cannot perceive, but we call themtonal because we experience them in our senses. The tonal in humans isthe energy we know and also the energy that it is possible to know. Thenagual is the energy that we cannot know with our reason. In the Toltectradition, we call God "the Eagle," which means the spirit. All humanbeings are the Eagle. All human beings are the nagual, the tonal andalso intent, whether they are living or dead. When we refer to a personas a nagual, we mean that the person has a characteristic energy whichcreates a direct connection between the nagual and the tonal. The nagualcan split emotions from actions. The nagual is born with a strong willand is not paralyzed by fear. A human being who is not born as a nagualis often paralyzed by fear. Nonetheless, in theory, anyone can become anagual by intent. Some seers can see a person's characteristic mindenergy in the energetic field that surrounds the human body. If theperson is a nagual, the nagual energy field around the body has a shapelike a double egg. The form is that of a mandorla, a slightly pointedoval.

A nagual is a person who has the ability to teach or guide others to thespirit by convincing them that inside of each person is a powerful forcelinking one to God. This is the force of pure intent. Usually, thenagual is the one who guides others to find who they really are, to helpthem find their own spirit, their own freedom, their own joy, happinessand love.

Miguel Angel Ruiz was born a nagual. From the moment of his birth, hehad a precocious awareness of spirit. He was an incipient Master ofIntent. From a young age, he received training from his family and alsothrough visions.

Miguel is dedicated to spreading his spiritual knowledge as broadly aspossible. For a decade, he has drawn upon his visions to impart to hisstudents a vast amount of wisdom that has been hidden for centuries.They learn from his lectures, workshops and journeys.

For those who may never meet Miguel, the material in this book has thepower to replace fear with joy.

We are all inculcated with fear. Miguel says fear is the normal resultof our domestication in childhood. Fear is the root of the reality weusually perceive around us. Fear is the source of disease, of war, andof alienation from the joy that is our birthright.

The greatest fear, subsuming all other fears, is fear of loss or death.The path Miguel follows is straight into the heart of our fear of death.His wisdom is derived from a vision of the Toltec spiritual center inTeotihuacán where ancient masters discovered a process forridding ourselves of fear. Miguel has journeyed to Teotihuacánwith his students each month for years. While there, he has led themalong the Avenue of the Dead. He has directed ceremonies at variousstages of the path and guided his apprentices to confront their fearsand to release them. From this process, they awake to a new view ofreality in which the world is one of justice and happiness.

You do not have to visit Teotihuacán in order to benefit fromMiguel's wisdom. It is enough that you lend your imagination to theinner journey of your own spirit.

Excerpted from Beyond Fear by Mary C. Nelson, Don Miguel Ruiz. Copyright © 1997 by Mary Carroll Nelson and Miguel Angel Ruiz. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.