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

by Miguel Ruiz Jr.

Imagine if you didn't like yourself. That would be a tough life, because there is no escaping yourself. Regardless of how much you may distract yourself, you can never escape your own point of view.

The challenge I have for you is to change your agreement, to see yourself as a perfect human being, and to realize that there is no object, idea, or knowledge that you need to be complete. You are perfect because you are alive in this present moment, transforming continuously with life. If we can see ourselves as perfect just the way we are because we are alive at this moment, we are free. Our attachments no longer define us. Instead, the knowledge we gather becomes a tool that can help us decide how we want to engage in dreams—the personal and collective—and how we choose to act is the manifestation of our intention.

Level One: The Authentic Self Imagine that you like soccer, and you can go to a game at any stadium in the world. It could be a magnificent stadium or a dirt-filled field. The players could be great or mediocre. You are not rooting for or against a side. It doesn't matter who is playing. As soon as you see a game, you sit, watch, and enjoy it for those ninety minutes. You simply enjoy watching the game for what it is.

Level Two: Preference This time, you attend a game—again, at any stadium in the world, with any teams playing—but now you root for one of the teams. You've realized that if you invest a little more of yourself by identifying a preference, the emotional roller coaster makes the game more exciting. You decide which team to root for based on just about anything—from the color of the uniforms to the names of the players. Perhaps you simply pick the home team. You spend the game rooting for one team but not necessarily against the other. Still, in the end, you walk out of the stadium and leave it all behind.

Level Three: Identity This time, you are a committed fan of a particular team. Their colors strike an emotional chord inside of you. When the referee blows the whistle, the result of the game affects you on an emotional level. This is your favorite team. You can still go to any stadium or field in the world, but nothing compares to seeing this team play. Your team, winning or losing, partially defines your character beyond the ninety minutes of the game. You feel elated when your team wins; when your team loses, you feel disappointed. But still, your team's performance is not a condition of your own self-acceptance. And if your team loses, you're able to accept the defeat as you congratulate the other side.

Level Four: Internalization Staying with our sports analogy, at Level Four your association with your favorite team has now become an intrinsic part of your identity. The story of victory and defeat is now about you. Your team's performance affects your self-worth. When reading the stats, you admonish players for making us look bad. If the opponent team wins, you get angry that they beat you. You feel disconsolate when your team loses, and may even create excuses for the defeat. Of course you would never sit down with one of their fans in a pub for a friendly chat! You might even find yourself consumed with finding out more information about the players. On the other hand, each and every word of praise your team earns feels as though it is directed at you. Not only have you brought the game home, you have completely incorporated it into your persona, shaping your identity by your belief of what it means to be a “real” fan.

Level Five: Fanaticism At this level, you worship your team! Your blood bleeds their colors! If you see an opposing team's fan, they are automatically your enemy, because this shield must be defended! This is your land, and others must be subjugated so that they, too, can see that your team is the real team; others are just frauds. What happens on the field says everything about you. Winning championships makes you a better person, and there is always a conspiracy theory that allows you to never accept a loss as legitimate. There is no longer a separation between you and your attachment of any kind. You are a committed to your team through and through, a fan 365 days a year. Your family is going to wear the jersey, and they better be fans of your team. If any of your kids become a fan of an opposing team, you will disinherit them. Out! At Level Five, your family can easily be torn apart and destroyed if any one of you turns your back on the team. Relationships mean nothing to you unless they are a believer in your team.

We have the freedom to evolve as life evolves and to engage the people we love without the need to domesticate them to our point of view.

Only unhappiness stems from the judge and victim mentality. To live up to these conditions and be accepted, we hide who we really are not only from others but also from ourselves. We are completely confused, believing that the mask we have created is who we are. We create what we believe is an acceptable image for conditional love, regardless of our passion and preference in life, and project that image solely for the purpose of acceptance.

The most obvious examples of fanaticism can be found in news reports that describe killings in the name of some cause, belief, or way of life—where one's love for their fellow man is entirely conditional upon the others' willingness to do or be exactly what is expected and acceptable within that belief system. The narrators speak so loudly in these cases that they drown out the Authentic Self completely and relentlessly impose conditional love to such an extreme that death is a means to the end.

Fanaticism is the complete loss of respect for another living being, when we no longer see an individual as a living being, and instead only an idea or a number.

Instead of simply experiencing love, being love, narrators explain how love should feel: what makes us worthy of love; who should love us, and how they should express it; what we need to do or achieve to love ourselves, and what others need to do in order to receive our love in return. We begin to believe the narrators' analysis of what love should be and become attached to that belief; we begin to impose it on ourselves and others, thus creating a distorted reflection of love. Narrators convince us that if we can achieve an imagined perfection, we will be so full of love that life will be smooth going from then on. But what has really happened is we have made love conditional. And if we continue to follow the guidance of our narrators, we will go from childhood to young adulthood and beyond attached to the idea that we need to find a living personification of what “true love” is.

Believing that we need to avoid rejection at all costs is a very common belief. For instance, if someone says to you, “I'm not attracted to you,” you have a choice about what to do with that knowledge. You can accept the truth without the narrator and realize that it has nothing to do with you and has everything to do with that person and his or her particular taste. The news is still hard to hear, but it is simple, and it ends there.

Either way, you are making a choice. You can choose to let your self-acceptance be subjugated by another person's taste or opinion, or you can choose to accept that they have simply stated what is true for them and that does not change who you are.

Toltec agreements, Be impeccable with your word Don't take anything personally Don't make assumptions Always do your best Be skeptical, but learn to listen

Envision yourself at the beginning of the labyrinth. First, you must be willing to enter. If you are not ready to forgive and let go, you have a choice to not enter the labyrinth. This exercise only has power if you say yes by your own will, and by your own will alone will you be able to engage in the exercise. If you do choose to enter, this is the action of saying, “Yes, I am ready to forgive and take responsibility for my own will.” As you enter the labyrinth, imagine it is a road map of your past that leads to your present moment in life. With every turn, envision a person, a moment, or a belief that you have used in some way to domesticate yourself. What or whom have you used to subjugate your own will in order to be accepted by yourself or others? When you hold that vision in your mind—a person for example—stop, envision him or her, and become aware of how their words have contributed to your domestication and say, “Forgive me. I have used your words to go against myself.” Although that person might have used his or her words and actions to domesticate you, or to cause you harm or pain, you are the one who ultimately said yes to the belief and allowed it to blossom in your mind. Becoming aware of your responsibility for your half of a relationship is crucial as well—it's not just the other person's fault. Recognize that you have been using someone else's words or past actions to potentially cause both of you harm, simply by saying yes. The action of saying yes is let...

You are worthy of your own forgiveness, as much as you are worthy of your own love.

With awareness of how attached we are to a particular belief or idea, we regain something very important: our ability to make a choice, to say yes or no all over again. The true freedom we have as individuals is to be able to choose with full awareness of what we want and don't want, instead of allowing our knowledge to dictate what we are supposed to be or choose. Our freedom to choose is true freedom; it is free will.

This is the Gestalt principle of closure: our minds react to familiar patterns even though we have received incomplete information.

But the mind doesn't just do this with geometrical shapes. It fills in gaps to make assumptions about everything. 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.

Let's say I stand up from where I am sitting, walk across the room, and kiss your hand. The kiss is truth. The missing information is: Why did I do that? What does the action represent? What does it all mean? The answers to these questions are subjective and are based on what we already know and all the possibilities that are available within our belief system. Only I know for certain why I have kissed your hand.

When you become aware of how attachment distorts and corrupts knowledge, you can begin to see how some people easily confuse the quest for truth with the quest for being right. These are not the same thing. The quest to be right is about self-importance: we need to be right in order to accept ourselves; this is a condition we place on our self-acceptance and our acceptance of others. The quest for truth, on the other hand, is the desire to discover—regardless of whether our beliefs are supported in the process.

I had to learn to decipher what was truth and what was just a story. I learned to rely on my own perception but to question my own perception as well.

Mexico is not the only country or culture whose textbooks contain stories rather than facts.

Many people believe that self-confidence means standing behind your beliefs one hundred percent. If you fail to listen to what else is going on in the world and only rely on what you think you know and believe, you've attached yourself to an idea that blinds. This is not confidence; it is stubbornness. 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.

The lesson here is to shift our confidence away from our beliefs and back to ourselves, since we are the living beings who give life to the beliefs in the first place. In other words, rather than having confidence in what we know, we have confidence in who we are. Instead of defending or debating a belief with all our might, we look and listen to what is going on around us. Questioning ourselves and being open to changing our minds about something does not mean that we must question our core being. With self-confidence, we can simply question our beliefs and the stories we've created to describe our being. Ask yourself, Where did I learn that belief? How is that belief affecting me? Am I using that belief well? Do I still need that belief?

Most of us have an ideal version of how we think the world should be. I have to. You must. They should. It has to be. When we hear these words, we are listening to the voices of our narrators expressing an agreement that is at a higher level of attachment. The narrators are reminding us how things are to progress within the framework of our understanding in order for the world to be the way we want or expect it to be. These are the rules we have created for ourselves to live by—and if we fail to follow these rules, we judge ourselves (and others) harshly. We have to get it “right,” and our beliefs dictate to us what that means. Depending on our level of attachment to a particular belief, we may not waver in the least, remaining so closed-minded that we cannot even think about alternatives.

Whenever we hear someone say that the world should be such and such way, as beautiful as the idea may be, we must realize that it can be easily corrupted, because for the world to be in this ideal state, the idealist must impose his or her beliefs on others and subjugate those who refuse to fit in with their “perfect” image of the world.

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.

What I learned is that he honestly believed what he was telling me. And who am I to say otherwise? Had I felt the need to retort, this would have been based on my own attachment to my identity and my beliefs, and a battle of personal importance would have begun between us.

Whenever I'm upset, I know that something I hold to be true has been put to the test.

There are 360 degrees of possibilities surrounding you. This point—this now—is your potential. To move forward in any direction is to make a choice; you say yes to something and no to all else. This is true regardless of whether or not you are aware of the infinite possibilities present in each moment.

It is easier for us to attribute a power to something outside ourselves than it is for us to see that we are the power that gives things in our world life. We are the ones responsible for ourselves and our reality. We are the creators of our own dream. This is why our self-judgment is so strong and alive with a force that can hold us back and rooted to the past—we gave our narrators the power! Fortunately, we do not have to die to reclaim it. Independent of the attachments that weigh us down, each one of us has the freedom to live life to the fullest at any given moment. The field of possibilities awaits our next step, and we can take that step confident in our ability to do so. When we are aware and see the truth of infinite potential, that is ultimate freedom.

For me, home is no longer a physical place; home is me. It is everywhere my heart and love go. Wherever I am, that is where I call home.

“Find your way out. Go home and master death by becoming alive.”