The Five Levels of Attachment: Toltec Wisdom for the Modern World (Toltec Mastery Series)

by Miguel Ruiz Jr.

You are the only one who is with you for your entire life. Imagine if you didn't like yourself. That would be a tough life, because there is no escaping yourself.

You are the only one who knows how wonderful it is to feel that pleasure of eating a meal you enjoy, of hugging or kissing someone, of simply being alive, through your own perception. This is your Personal Dream. You can make it the most beautiful paradise or the most perfect nightmare; it is all based on what you believe in, what you think, what you know.

The person I am right now is the accumulation of my yeses and nos over the course of my life, and that is true for each and every one of us.

Harmony exists when we engage one another with respect, honoring each other's yeses and nos as we construct the dream of us.

If my attachment to what I know blinds me to all the available options, then my knowledge is controlling me; it is controlling my intention, and it is creating my Personal Dream for me. But with awareness of my attachments comes the opportunity to take back that control and to live as I choose.

I am only responsible for what I say; I am not responsible for what you hear.

When I believe something must stay in its rightful place, exactly as it is, for me to be OK, I have become attached to it, I have confused this external thing with who I am. If that external thing changes, and eventually everything does, how do I react? If I have placed my sense of self in it, then I have to defend it. I have to argue for it. I have to come up with definitions, and meaning. In short, I have created an attachment.

Authentic love is the greatest motivator for letting go of our attachments, while conditional love only strengthens our attachments. Knowing the difference is key as we enter the process of detaching from the conditions and agreements that keep us from experiencing our authenticity. At the root of this is how we relate to ourselves and the people in our lives: I cannot give what I don't have. If I have conditional love, I will give conditional love. If I have authentic love, then I will be able to give authentic love. The best way to let go of illusion is choosing to accept the truth as it is presented to us just as it is. As it has been said, “The truth will set you free.”

Their words and actions have power to hurt you only by permission, because you chose to agree with them.

The mind shows preference when adding information, too, and favors adding what it thinks it already knows—that is, it supplements incomplete new information with the beliefs it is already attached to.

Believing an assumption is a choice, though if I am unaware that my mind is filling in gaps, then this is not really a choice at all. I am at the mercy of my assumptions. But when I have that awareness, an assumption allows me to consider a possibility that will only become true the moment, and only at that moment, when it comes to fruition. If the assumption is incorrect, with awareness I am able to simply release it, and new possibilities abound. Seeing our attachments for what they are allows us to see that an assumption is merely one possibility.

When we build our belief structure on assumptions and we become attached to that structure, we are living in ignorance. The truth, however, is the path to freedom. Becoming aware of those assumptions, and the source of our attachment to them, allows us the opportunity to truly heal from a wound.

We are conditioned to behave in such a way that whenever we encounter a truth that contradicts something we believe, we are quick to either reject it or create a story that protects our belief and further weaves a web of distortion. In so doing, we keep distorting our faith further, forming new beliefs to keep our sense of self safe.

We often fear that changing our point of view is admitting that something about us is wrong. Thinking we have been wrong can lead to guilt, because actions we've taken and things we've said have been based on that one belief.

If we decide that a belief is no longer working for us, it can potentially make us question every past action that was based on that belief. It does not have to be this way. Instead, we can choose to be aware that what works one day may not work the next.

As long as we engage in the I-am-right-and-you-are-wrong struggle, there will always be conflict. It is our attachment to being right—our attachment to our personal importance—that keeps us from experiencing freedom in both our Personal Dream and the Dream of the Planet.

There comes a point in life when we grow tired of needing to be right—especially when we see how this ego-feeding need affects our relationships with people who just want to be our friends, with the beautiful souls who just wanted to love us. Our attachments don't let us see further than the tips of our own noses.