Allan Hardman is a Toltec Master in the Eagle Knight lineage of don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements. He teaches in Sonoma County, CA, nationally, and guides “Journeys of the Spirit” to sacred sites in Mexico and Peru. He is the author of “The Impotent Hero–Healing the Wounded Masculine” in the anthology The Heart of Healing, and “The Perfect Dream” in the anthology Healing the Heart of the World–co-authored with Deepak Chopra, Dean Ornish, Dr. Andrew Weil, Prince Charles, and others. Read about his Journeys, and events such as “The Joydancer Summer Celebration of Love,” and “TACO,” the Toltec Apprentice Community Online, on Allan’s web site at www.Joydancer.com. Or call (707) 528-1271 for information.

Have you ever thought about it? About how good and relaxed it would feel to not have to maintain any fronts for anybody... to be able to totally and completely be yourself all of the time? There was a time when we were little kids that we must have felt like that. Times when we were so absorbed in ourselves that we were totally unaware of observers, of judgments, of "shoulds." As an adult, I have rarely enjoyed the privilege of such states—that is, until I discovered the Gentle Freedom of Being a Nincompoop!

I used to spend a great deal of energy in my life being Somebody. (And not getting much return for my investment!) I posed and I postured, looking good, to attract what I thought I needed. I had a Somebody for any occasion. I used my vast intellect to understand everything, and to predict every outcome—both for myself and for everyone around me, especially in my relationships. I had all of the answers. And then one day I discovered that what I thought people were thinking and feeling was absolutely not what they were really feeling and thinking. And then another day something turned out differently than I predicted and I couldn't control the outcome. The more I paid attention, the more I realized that my control was only an illusion, and my keen awareness of other peoples' realities was a mere figment of my imagination. I felt like such a Nincompoop! I came to realize that I actually didn't know how to figure anything out, I really didn't know what people were thinking or feeling, and I wasn't actually controlling the outcome of anything or anybody!

So I gave up. I let go of the whole crazy idea. I figured that Spirit or the Universe must be doing it, even if I wasn't, because it kept on happening without me, so I decided to surrender. As time went by, I discovered that being a total Nincompoop wasn't so bad. I didn't have to get anything perfect anymore, I didn't have to know how to get relationships to come out the way I wanted, I didn't have to know exactly what other people were thinking or needing.

What freedom! No more posing and posturing. No more Perfect Answers. No more managing and manipulating to control the outcome. Just a shrug of the shoulders, and turning it over to the Universe. And taking it back, turning it over, taking it back, turning it over, etc. It turns out that I am a Nincompoop about knowing how to surrender Perfectly. Ahh, what freedom, what a simple gentle freedom.  Care to join me?

For most of my adult life, I felt there was a wall between the rest of the world and myself. The Wall lived between my partners and me in relationships of all kind: business, romance, family, play. In fact, it separated me from the entire world, and from Life itself. Of course, I was able get along just fine. Most people did not seem to notice my wall, perhaps because they were walled in, too. In time, I found help with psychotherapy, discovered hypnosis, became a hypnotherapist, and a trainer of many new practitioners. It all helped. Yet always, below the surface, there was a longing for a deeper connection to Life and the Divine.

When I met don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements, ten years ago, I was told he was a “Nagual,” a man of power. I was excited to believe that he had the power to break down The Wall from the outside, since I had been unsuccessful from the inside. Alas, it turned out to not be the case. I waited and waited for that wondrous miracle when he would make his move, and I would be catapulted into my total freedom. Fortunately, I kept waiting, and showing up, and doing what he told me to do. I began to realize that what he had done was chip a little hole in The Wall with his unwavering unconditional love, and was passing me tools through the hole that I could use for myself. It was still my responsibility to take down the wall that I had erected, but now I had the tools I had been missing.

I embraced the Angel of Death, I stalked my Petty Tyrants, and I said the Circle of Fire Prayer in my sleep. I carried my Medicine Bag, practiced my Not-Doings and Controlled Folly, I recapitulated and fought to eliminate my Personal Importance. Slowly The Wall came down (and sometimes it crumbled so rapidly that I became dizzy with the changes). AND, right there, waiting for me to show up, was Life!

Life was always right there on the other side of The Wall, waiting. When I emerged from the safety of the hideout I had created long ago, I was embraced by Life. I learned that Life is not dangerous. To love is not dangerous. It is safe to live and love with our hearts wide open.

Are you doing your Inside Job? Do you possess and use tools to free yourself from the confines of the Old Dream? I hope so. If you do not know the wonderful tools of this Toltec path, we offer them to you on Joydancer.com and in TACO, our online community. If you have them and are not using them, what would it take to inspire you?

There is no rush, of course, AND not a moment to waste. I hope you are with us on this journey to Heaven on Earth. It is a great place to meet.

Throughout history, humans have wanted to know about the future, about what is going to happen with humanity. We live in a universe whose real nature is unknowable, and, to a human mind that has the need to know, appears unsafe. Our need to know, to feel safe, may be why there have always been so many different mythologies and religions around the world, all with different beliefs and doctrines. It is often not even important to our mind if something is true or not, we just have the need to feel safe, to know.

We don't really need prophesies. We do not really need anyone to make us feel safe (or afraid!) by telling us what is going to happen to us, because we have the power to contact all of that knowing through our connection to the silent knowledge contained in the universe. I don't believe the prophesies that the humans will destroy themselves, or that we will destroy the planet. I don't think we need to be saved by extraterrestrials, either! Our evolution is unfolding perfectly, according to Life's plan.

First of all, we need to see that everything is connected. Everything is one living being, just one manifestation of that force that we call Life, that we call God. A star thousands of light years away is connected with every atom of your body by Life, by God. There is only that one living being and that living being is made by billions of universes. If you understand that, you can understand why the Toltecs of ancient Mexico say that this solar system, the sun and all the planets around the sun, is one individual. They believe that it is the sun who controls life in every planet around the sun. It is all connected. It is connected through the light that comes from the sun – there is no separation.

The light from the sun has all the information about the creation of life on the planet Earth. That light has billions of different vibrations. Every vibration can create a different form of life on the planet. The planet earth has the capacity to react to the light that comes from the sun and that reaction creates all the life forms that manifest here.

The planet Earth is a living being with different organs. The atmosphere, the forests, the oceans, are all organs of that living being. And all we humans together are one organ of that living being. And just as your body grows up, gets old, reproduces and dies, humanity as a living being has the same kind of evolution.

The Toltecs teach us that we are living in a dream and there is nothing really solid about that dream. We can say that the human body is made for perception, and the human mind is made to dream. We each dream our personal dream of "reality," and we all dream together to create the "dream of  the  planet."  The function  of   the  human  dream  is  to prepare the new humans by "domesticating" them and making them part of the human organ, so that our evolution continues.  If we understand that, it is easy to prophesy what's going to happen with humanity.

When the dream of the humans matures to a new level, the sun perceives the change and the sun changes the quality of the light that affects the humans, which facilitates the process of the evolution of the humans. Every time the sun changes the quality of light we call it a new sun. According to the Toltecs we have entered the time of the Sixth Sun. That means that the humans are starting to change again. This change is in the human mind and in the way we dream. The capacity of the mind to see the truth, to see what is, is changing dramatically.

The old dream is resisting, of course, and the reaction is causing tremendous upheaval in societies and individuals. The apprentices I work with often have to face this upheaval in their own minds, the war between the old dream and the new dream. They discover the "Parasite" in their minds: the Judge, the Victim, and their whole belief system from the past, eating their energy and making them unhappy. They also discover that there is a real possibility to be happy. The old dream resists. It sabotages their happiness, because the old dream feels safe with suffering, feels safe being a victim. The apprentice needs to find the Spiritual Warrior within to battle the Parasite, to accept and surrender to not knowing, and make space for the new dream.

I believe the message of this new millennium is that there are no limitations anymore. Anything and everything can happen. As the old dream breaks down, we can let go of all the old habits of selfishness, envy, anger, fear, and jealousy. They are not a part of the new dream of the Sixth Sun. The new dream is a dream of love – love without conditions, love without expectations, love without obligations. The "Heaven on Earth" that Jesus talked about long ago is this dream, it is a dream in which you are always happy. It is a dream in which you are no longer afraid, when you awaken and become the being of Spirit that you really are. It is beginning with individuals, and spreading to the entire world. It will take time, but it is happening.

So we can see that it is easy to prophesy the future of humanity in the new millennium. The future continues the transformation of the dream. Of course there has to be resistance to the change, but that resistance creates the heat that lights our way to a higher awareness, until the light changes again, and again.

Imagine what humans will be doing after a hundred, five hundred, or a thousand more years of this evolution! In the last 500 years we have evolved out of the Inquisition and witch burnings to a more tolerant society. In the last 150 years, communication has evolved from Morse code to television to the Internet. In quantum physics, scientists are struggling to explain the discovery that matter and energy are interchangeable, and that matter/energy responds to (or is created by?) human thought.

And spiritually, we are becoming more and more aware that the truth of our being is that we are Life, we are everything, everywhere, we are God. This awareness is the direction of the evolution of the humans. Of course, there is no hurry. We are not in charge, although we get to play in the light of change if we choose to. And why not choose to? It is the best dream in town!

Let's dream the new dream, reflect it to the sun, and let the sun know we are getting the message – we are learning to love ourselves and all of creation without condition. Maybe the sun will smile back.

¡Qué tu sol sea brillante! May your sun shine brightly!

Prominent thousands of years ago, the Toltecs were scientists and artists who formed a society to explore and enrich the spiritual knowledge and practices of the ancient ones. The Toltecs considered science and spirit to be one and the same, and believed that all energy, whether material or ethereal, was derived from the one source and influenced by the same universal laws.

The Toltec came together as masters (Naguals) and students at Teotihuacan, the ancient city of pyramids near Mexico City known as the place where "Man becomes God." There, in order to transcend the realm of ordinary human awareness and attain their personal freedom, the apprentices studied the Arts of Stalking and Dreaming, and the three Toltec masteries of Awareness, Transformation, and Intent.

The Masters taught that the function of the human mind is to dream, and that it is always dreaming, in the day as well as the night. They knew that "reality" was a subjective perception, based on each person's programming and beliefs, and that all suffering was a result of those perceptions. To be free from the "dream" of reality imposed on them from the outside, they knew they must examine and gain mastery over their own personal dream.

Personal freedom came when the apprentices mastered their dream enough to choose happiness instead suffering, gratitude instead judgment, generosity instead of selfishness, and love instead fear.

The Toltec Path is a path of love and action. As Spiritual Warriors we can use the Toltec masteries today, to awaken to the truth that reality is a dream and we are the dreamers, and that only we are responsible for our happiness. In our awakening, we rebel against the programming from our past, we awaken from their dream, and we create our new dream of life. You awaken, and in your new awareness, you decide to become a master of your own awareness, you become a Dream Master, and your life becomes a masterpiece of art.

The Toltecs of ancient Mexico taught that each of us is "dreaming" a reality that was taught to us by our parents, teachers, church, and peers. We agreed to agree with their version of reality because of our fear of being judged and rejected for not doing what is "right." We learned to judge ourselves, as a way of protecting ourselves from the judgment of others.

This then is the story of the birth of the inner Judge (the little boy in this tale), protecting the hurt inner Victim (the little girl). We call the Judge and Victim together "The Parasite," because it both creates and feeds on our fear and thus controls our emotional body and our lives. It is The Snake on The Road.

One day, a long time ago, in the Time of Innocence, a man and woman were walking in the beautiful forest near their village when they met a strange snake on the road.  "If you eat my fruit, you will always know exactly what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad," the snake told them. Of course they were intrigued. "What wonderful power," the man said to his wife, "to know such wonderful things." And so together they accepted the snake's offer, and ate the exotic fruit he offered them. Immediately, they fell asleep, and they dreamed an odd dream. They dreamed that they awoke, and continued walking in the forest, now knowing the truth about what is right and what is wrong, and what is good and what is bad. Now they knew how everything should be.

They discovered that they liked the way some things were, and for the first time saw that there were many things they did not like.

In their dream they were soon blessed with the birth of a little girl child and a little boy child. The children were wonderful, and a blessing to their lives. Their hearts were open, and they all played and laughed together. They had forgotten all about the snake and his exotic fruit.

Then one day a stranger came to town, and seeing the little children and their parents playing so happily, he questioned the parents: "This world is a harsh and difficult place. Shouldn't you be teaching your children about what is right and what is wrong, and what is good and what is bad? What kind of parents are you?"

As soon as they heard his words, they remembered the snake and his exotic fruit, and they remembered everything they knew about what is right and what is wrong, and what is good and what is bad. And so they begin to teach their little children everything they knew about how things should be, including little children.

The little girl child and the little boy child were very loving and gentle. But when their parents begin to teach them what is right and what is wrong, and what is good and what is bad, the children tried to rebel. "I don't like that" they said, "that is not how I feel. That is not what I want." "How you feel is bad, and what you want is wrong," replied the man and woman. "You must do it our way. If you do not, we will call the snake who knows everything about what is right and what is wrong, and what is good and what is bad. The snake knows we are right, and it will help us punish you. You cannot be in our family unless you do what you are told."

The little girl was hurt and scared, and began to cry. "No!" said the little boy to the mother and father, wanting to protect the little girl. "You are hurting her. Leave her alone!" He reached out, and struck the man with his fist. With that, the man called the snake, who came immediately and helped the man and woman force the little boy and the little girl to eat the exotic fruit. Instantly, the children fell asleep and began to dream the same dream that the man and woman were dreaming. In that dream, the little boy knew that he had to keep the little girl quiet, so the snake would not come and hurt them again.

So the little boy told the little girl "Stop crying and stop being hurt. Do what they say. Don't make them mad. Otherwise they will hurt us more, and maybe they will make us leave them. If they do that, we will surely die." The little boy child knew that he had no power to protect her from the man and the woman and the snake. He knew that the only way that he could keep them both safe was to always remind the little girl child to be afraid of the man and the woman and the snake, and to agree to be like them. And so the little girl child learned to be quiet, to not cry, and to not be angry and even to not be too happy.

By the time the children grew up and left their mother and father, they had forgotten all about their magical childhoods, but they remembered the snake and his exotic fruit. And when it came their time to have little girl children and little boy children, they knew to invite the snake by the side of the road to come to teach their children what is right and what is wrong, and what is good and what is bad.

And to this day, the snake waits by the side of the road. For you.

At the end of my first period of apprenticeship with Miguel Ruiz, he was encouraging me to begin guiding my own apprentices. I was a little unsure of my capabilities at the time — hence his gift of pushing me. As we rode along in the car together, I was carrying on about "Should I do a group or individuals? How many apprentices do you think I should have? What if I find out I don't know what to do?" and just on and on.

After listening to me for a few moments, he turned, smiled, and said in his simple way: "Try it, and if you don't like it, change it."

The earth moved beneath my Perfectionist's feet. My "know how it is going to turn out before you start" self was gasping for air. My ducks would not stay in a row. And in a flash of a Loving Wisdom, I was free.

It did not matter! I was free to act, to risk, to try it — and to be me. And you know, it has turned out pretty well.

Thank you, don Miguel. As I write this, my heart is filled with gratitude for your patience, love, and wonderful wisdom. And I am so grateful for the many opportunities I now have to share my own love with others.

So, the next time you are agonizing over a difficult decision, large or small, I encourage you to try this simple wisdom for yourself: "Try it, and if you don't like it, change it." I think you will be happy that you did. I am.

Every human's mind has a storyteller . . . a small being who sits in the mind and tells stories to the human. That Storyteller is not there when the human is born. As soon as the new human is able to understand stories – in tones of voice, facial expressions, and later with words – the Storytellers living around that new human put the seeds of their stories into the mind of the new human. And they grow there, and become strong, and bear much fruit.

You were once a new human. When you popped into this world, the Storytellers knew it was their job to teach you their stories. Many of those stories were based on fear. . .  fear that you will be rejected if you are not good enough, not smart enough, not rich enough, not beautiful enough, not handsome enough, not thin enough, just Not Enough. The Storytellers taught you that you had to be perfect in order to be accepted. The Storytellers taught you that nobody is perfect. Only God is perfect. They taught you that you could never be God, and yet you had to be perfect.

The storyteller's stories were often confusing, contradictory – yet as a new human, you had no choice but to accept them as true. A fish living in water has no way of knowing air. A new human, living in that ocean of stories, has no way to know anything beyond those stories.

The nature of stories is that they are only true for the Storyteller who owns them. They are not true for anyone else. There cannot be a True story, or a Right story, or everyone would agree on everything. Even if everyone, everywhere, did agree, it would still be a story. It would be a description of the beliefs and agreements that were once learned and held in the mind. Only that, nothing more.

The recent events of terrorism in our country present us with a story from other Storytellers that is, in the context of our story, incomprehensible. The terrorists' Storytellers say that their goal is to create terror in us, to create terror in our lives, to teach us that we will never be safe again. Even the news media says America will never be the same – they also teach us the terrorists' new story: "We will now live in fear and not be safe." The images of planes hitting buildings are now implanted in our minds, and the Storyteller tells stories about them over and over and over. The media compounds our fear, telling us stories of Anthrax and poisoning water supplies.

Every time the Storyteller tells a story about fear, every time your storyteller reads or listens to or watches a story about fear, it creates fear in the human mind. It creates terror in the human mind. Every time your Storyteller tells you a story that creates fear and terror in your mind, your storyteller has become the terrorist. Every time you are the terrorist, every time you allow your Storyteller to tell you a story that creates fear, the foreign terrorists have succeeded.

Of course there are terrorists in the world, because there is a terrorist in your mind: your Storyteller. Now your Storyteller has learned new stories with which to terrorize you even more than it used to. It used to terrorize you by telling you stories that said that you would not be loved unless you made more money or were slimmer or younger or had fewer wrinkles. But now your Storyteller is learning new stories, and you are feeling more fear.

It seems to me that the way to end terrorism is to end terrorism in our own minds, to quit believing the stories we tell ourselves that create fear and terror in our own minds. The fear that we feel is real, but the stories that we tell ourselves that create the fear are simply stories. You have a choice about what stories you allow your Storyteller to tell you. You have a choice about what stories to believe.

What stories are you choosing to believe? Are they stories that create fear and terror in your mind and your body? Or are they stories that create love, peace and harmony inside of you? You can choose. Maybe we can't eliminate terrorism in the world, maybe we can't find all the right people to kill so we can feel safe again. But perhaps we can, and do, have a choice not to be our own terrorists. Perhaps, when we are no longer terrorizing ourselves –  whether in fear about how much we weigh or in fear from imagining a story of an agonizing death caused by some foreign agent – we can live in peace within ourselves. If we all live in peace with ourselves, surely we will live in peace with each other. It is worth a try.