2011, New Year, New Name, New Book

Here it is February 2011.  Sometimes the months just seem to fly by.  This has been an exciting year already. BRC and I got married January 2nd.  Jillian is off to France to study at Pont Aven until the middle of May. Will is making a home for himself in Iowa, engaged to be married in September.  I can feel the tides of change shifting to a more stable time.  I have decided to write the blog about the book The Mastery of Love by Miguel Ruiz, published in 1999.  It really resonated with me.  If you are not familiar with this author he also wrote The Four Agreements which was more commercially successful.  Don Miguel Ruiz is a Nagual(shaman) and a master of the Toltec mystery school tradition.  He recently experienced a heart transplant.  This is a description of the book:

The Mastery of Love

In The Mastery of Love, don Miguel Ruiz illuminates the fear-based beliefs and assumptions that undermine love and lead to suffering and drama in our relationships. Using insightful stories to bring his message to life, Ruiz shows us how to heal our emotional wounds, recover the freedom and joy that are our birthright, and restore the spirit of playfulness that is vital to loving relationships.

I really like playfulness as a vital part of a loving relationship.  So who are the Toltecs?  The book jacket states the Toltecs have three fundamental masteries that guide us to our true nature, which is happiness, freedom and love.  The first is the Mastery of Awareness.  This makes sense in that we need to have an awareness of what we really are.  The second is the Mastery of Transformation which teach us how to become spiritual warriors, breaking free of the knowledge that enslaves us.  We change the dream of our life by changing our agreements and beliefs.  The third is the Mastery of Love which is a result of the first two masteries.  when we master Love, we align with the spirit of Life that is passing through us.  We are no longer the body, or the mind, or the soul, we are Love.  When we master these three we reclaim our divinity and become one with God which is the goal of the Toltec.

Thousands of years ago the Toltec were known throughout Southern Mexico who were people who formed a society to explore and conserve the spiritual knowledge and practices of the ancient ones.  Over the millennia they were forced to conceal the ancestral wisdom and maintain its existence in obscurity.  This was necessary to shield the knowledge from those who were not prepared to use it wisely or use it for personal gain or intentionally misuse it.  It was passed down from generation to generation, unveiling at this time.  It is not a religion, it honors the spiritual masters who have taught here on Earth.

The book gives the following description:
    A toltec is an artist of Love, an artist of the Spirit, someone who is creating every moment, every second, the most beautiful art~ The Art of Dreaming.
    Life is nothing but a dream, and if we are artists, then we can create our life with Love, and our dreams become a masterpiece of art.

To be a Master of Love,  let my journey begin...