The Wisdom of the Shamans Read online

  Copyright © 2018 by Don Jose Ruiz

  First Paperback Edition © 2019

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this work in any form whatsoever, without permission in writing from the publisher, except for brief passages in connection with a review.

  Cover design by Emma Smith

  Cover art by Eky Studio || Shutterstock & Weredragon || Shutterstock

  Interior Design by Frame25 Productions

  Hierophant Publishing

  8301 Broadway, Suite 219

  San Antonio, TX 78209

  888-800-4240

  www.hierophantpublishing.com

  If you are unable to order this book from your local bookseller, you may order directly from the publisher.

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019930193

  ISBN: 978-1-938289-84-2

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Printed on acid-free paper in the United States

  www.redwheelweiser.com

  www.redwheelweiser.com/newsletter

  CONTENTS

  Foreword

  Preface

  Explanation of Key Terms

  Introduction

  1. The Eagle and the Snake Finding Your Own Truth

  2. The Riverman Flowing with the Cycles of Life

  3. The Birth of Quetzalcoatl Ignite Your Imagination and Creativity

  4. The Jungle A Lesson in Awareness

  5. The Rattlesnake Initiation The Power of Ritual

  6. The Devil's Cave Embracing the Shadow Self

  7. Divinity and Discernment The Lessons of Madre Sarita

  8. The Day of the Dead Death and Honoring Our Ancestors

  Afterword

  FOREWORD

  Imagine being alive hundreds, even thousands, of years ago. You are sitting at the edge of a fire, at the dawn of human memory. Others are gathered around the warm glow of the flames with you, and you are all bathed in the light of a sacred circle. Leaning forward into the light, one person begins to speak. A log cracks, sending a burst of embers into the dark sky. The story begins:

  Once, there was a woman who found herself lost in the desert. She wandered for days under a sky heavy with clouds. Folded in layers of darkness, she stumbled across the landscape, her hands empty and her skin cold. Finally, exhausted, she sank to her knees and turned her face to the heavens.

  There, she saw that the clouds had opened, revealing a wash of bright stars. She stared up at them. Each one, she thought, has sent its light to me. The glow of each star—even those that died millennia ago—is reaching me right now. But what has the light reached? What am I? What is the truth of me?

  You see in your mind's eye the light of the stars and feel the lesson in the words settle into your heart. The story has brought a reflection of the truth. It has opened you to the idea that you are not your roles, your desires, your destiny, or even your body. The truth is that we have no idea what we are; all we know is that we are.

  The truth often needs a mirror, as sometimes we cannot see the truth itself—only its reflection. Since ancient times, teachers, masters, and shamans have reflected the truth through storytelling. It is perhaps the oldest forms of teaching, and while the words may disappear as soon as the story is over, the lessons they teach us can last for a lifetime.

  As we move through the world, the mind tells a million stories a day. For instance, I could put two random words on a page:

  Attic Proud

  Already your mind has gone to work. You've found a connection, perhaps several, and the stories are beginning to send seeds into the earth so they can flower. We can't help it—our minds are storytelling machines.

  Because of this, we could say that stories are like an element of the mind, just as earth, water, air, and fire are elements of the body. Like the primordial elements, stories can cleanse, burn, reveal, or create, and the lessons they teach us can be used to build bridges, make heartfelt connections, and reveal powerful ideas that lead us in the direction of truth.

  In the book you are holding right now, don Jose Ruiz, my second son, shares the wisdom of our family's shamanic tradition. This wisdom has been handed down, generation after generation, in the form of stories. He also shares with you his own truth about the deeper meaning these stories reflect.

  While stories are part of our dream of reality and we give them their due, we must remember that they are only reflections of the truth—not truth itself. As you will soon learn, the truth you seek is inside of you, and these stories, as well as your own story, can only point you to that truth.

  Wisdom is the realization that you have a choice in your story. If you don't like the story you are living, I invite you to write a new one. Let the wisdom in this book be your guide to doing so.

  —don Miguel Ruiz

  author of The Four Agreements

  PREFACE

  Much has been said and written about the North and Central American shamans since Europeans first began arriving in the Americas en masse over 500 years ago. They have been called everything from witch doctors to medicine men and even sorcerers. Their ideas about life were often considered primitive, uneducated, superstitious, and otherwise not as “enlightened” as their European counterparts.

  Shamans were almost always assumed to be men, a presumption proven to be based more on the bias of those who wrote about them than on historical fact. Personally, this idea never occurred to me, because when I was growing up, my grandmother was the most powerful shaman in our family.

  Linguistically, the word shaman would have meant nothing to the vast majority of native cultures outside those groups in northeast Asia where the term likely originated. In my own tradition, that of the Toltec people of what is now Mexico, the shamans were called naguals, meaning “the awakened ones,” in our native Nahuatl language. It's interesting to point out that the word nagual has an additional meaning: it is also the word for the life force energy, the divinity that we all have inside of us. Taken together, we can see that the Toltecs believe that everyone is a nagual, but the shamans are the ones whose eyes are open to this realization.

  For uniformity, and because any word in itself has no meaning without our agreement, I will use shaman throughout this book to describe a person who is awakened to the realization that we are all this fundamental life force energy, as this is the most familiar term in the modern world.

  On a global scale, shamanism refers to the spiritual tradition or religion of native cultures around the world. These spiritual traditions are said to have certain things in common: a respect for nature, a respect for all life, and a respect for their ancestors. While this is all true, this is only the barest of beginnings of what it means to practice shamanism.

  The good news is that we are seeing these old ideas about shamanism open up more in recent times, thanks in part to the work of my father, don Miguel Ruiz, as well as Carlos Castaneda and many others. The modern world is beginning to catch up to what my family has known and passed down via oral tradition for more than a thousand years, namely that the shamans were both men and women and that their ideas were anything but primitive. In fact, the roles they played in their communities were a sophisticated combination of philosopher, spiritual leader, medical doctor, psychologist, and friend.

  Seen in this context, certain questions begin to arise: What did these ancient masters know? How did they acquire and pass down this knowledge? And can this knowledge help us in the way we live our lives in the modern world? Answering questions such as these is the purpose of this book.

  As you will see in the pages that follow, it is my personal belief that the wisdom of the ancient masters was not something primitive or reserved only for men, but a complex and powerful series of teachings
available to all of humankind. It is the wisdom of waking up, of finding your own personal freedom, of living in peace and harmony, and of being of service to others and the planet.

  Quite simply, it is the wisdom of love and life.

  EXPLANATION OF KEY TERMS

  Attachment: The action of taking something that is not a part of you and making it a part of you through an emotional or energetic investment. You can attach to external objects, beliefs, ideas, and even roles you play in the world.

  Awareness: The practice of paying attention in the present moment to what is happening inside your body and your mind as well as in your immediate surroundings.

  Domestication: The primary system of control in the Dream of the Planet. Starting when we are very young, we are presented with either a reward or a punishment for adopting the beliefs and behaviors of what others find acceptable. When we adopt these beliefs and behaviors as a result of either the reward or punishment, we can say we have been domesticated.

  Dream of the Planet: The combination of every single being in the world's personal dream, or the world we live in.

  Mitote: A Nahuatl word that means chaos and references the idea that it's as if a thousand people are talking in your mind simultaneously and no one is listening.

  Nagual: A Nahuatl word with two meanings. First, this was the word for the shamans of the Toltec people, and second, this word was used to describe the life force energy and divinity within all beings.

  Nahuatl: Language of the ancient Toltec peoples.

  Narrators: The voices in your mind that speak to you throughout the day, which can be either positive (ally) or negative (parasite).

  Ally: The voice of the narrator when it inspires you to live, create, and love unconditionally. The ally can also offer constructive self-talk.

  Parasite: The voice of the narrator when it uses your beliefs, formed through domestication and attachment, to hold power over you by placing conditions on your self-love and self-acceptance. This negative voice causes sadness, anxiety, and fear.

  Personal Dream: The unique reality created by every individual; your personal perspective. It is the manifestation of the relationship between your mind and body.

  Shaman: One who is awakened to the realization that all beings are life force energy, and that humans are dreaming all the time.

  Silent Knowledge: A knowing that is beyond the thinking/discerning mind. Silent knowledge is the deep innate wisdom that is in all things.

  Teotihuácan: An ancient city in south central Mexico that was the home of the Toltec people 2,500 years ago, well known for its pyramids.

  Toltec people: An ancient group of Native Americans who came together in south and central Mexico to study perception. The word Toltec means “artist.”

  Toltec warrior: One who is committed to using the teachings of the Toltec tradition to win the inner battle against domestication and attachment.

  INTRODUCTION

  The wisdom you seek is inside you.

  Take a moment and feel the truth of those words.

  One of the most important aspects of shamanism is that within every one of us is the light, the divinity, or as my ancestors would say, the nagual. Each one of us has our own truth inside ourselves. The quest of the shaman is to find, live, and express it.

  Unlike some other traditions, shamanism is not based on hierarchy and deference to past teachers or following a sacred text with blind belief, but on uncovering the truths within yourself and bringing them out into the world to become a messenger of truth, a messenger of love.

  The path of the shaman is largely an individual journey. Rituals, books, tools, and even other shamans only serve as guides to help you find the wisdom that comes from deep inside of you. No two shamanic journeys are alike, as we each ultimately make our own unique path, create our own art, and express ourselves in our own beautiful way. That's why I often say that you are both the student and the teacher on the shamanic journey, and life is expressing itself through you.

  In my own tradition, that of the Toltec people of south central Mexico, we say that we are all artists. In fact, the word Toltec means “artist.” This is not confined to the traditional understanding of the word as painters, sculptors, etc., or just to members of my ancestral tribe; this designation extends to every human being on this beautiful planet. The simple truth is that every person is an artist, and the art that we create is the story of our life.

  If the Toltec tradition is the way of the artist, then we can say that the shamanic path is really an invitation to you, the artist, to create your own masterpiece, to use everything in your life as a brush to paint your own picture of personal freedom.

  We also say in the Toltec tradition that everyone is dreaming all the time. This is because you can only ever see life through your own filters—the filter of “Jose” in my case. Therefore, life as you perceive it is a reflection of your perceptions and beliefs. It is not real, but rather a dream. To some this may sound negative, but in fact it is positive because if your life is a dream, and you become aware of the fact that you are the dreamer, then you can consciously create the dream you want to see and live the life you want to live.

  There are actually two dreams that make up what we call life. First, you have the personal dream, which is your own perspective. It is how you see the world around you and how you make sense of it in your mind through the stories you tell yourself about what you perceive. Things such as “My name is Jose,” “My parents are Miguel and Maria,” “I was born in 1978,” “I live in this place, that is my car, my house, my spouse, etc.”—this is your own personal dream.

  There is also the Dream of the Planet or the collective dream we are all having. The Dream of the Planet is the sum total of all our personal dreams, and together they make up the world in which we live. Together we have created the oceans, the mountains, the flowers, the wars, the technology, the concepts of good and bad—all of it. The Dream of the Planet is the combination of all our personal dreams and forms the basis for how we interact and communicate with one another.

  The Toltec understood that in both cases, personally and collectively, what we are perceiving as life is not real. Our perception of life is really just a complex set of overlapping stories, held together by our concept of time. In my family's traditions, the shamans, who were called naguals in our native language, were “the ones who are awake,” because they had woken up to that fact that we are all dreaming, that we are all storytellers, and that while the truth of who and what we really are is ultimately indescribable, the best way to say it is that we are life itself.

  I find it interesting that halfway around the world more than 2,500 years ago, a man sat under a bodhi tree for forty days and nights until he realized his true nature, and when he got up from the tree and returned to his friends, they could tell this experience had changed him. They asked him, “What happened to you?” And the man replied in his native Pali language, “I am awake.” The word for awake in the Pali language is “Buddha.” In both Buddhism and shamanism, those who are masters in each tradition are referred to as awakened.

  So who can be a shaman? Anyone who has the desire to awaken from the dream and find his or her own personal freedom is a shaman. Of course, this is easier said than done, because the dream has several mechanisms it uses to keep us asleep, many of which we will look at in greater detail throughout the course of this book.

  To be clear, waking up involves more than just knowing intellectually that everything around you is a dream. It is easy to be told something and believe it with your mind, but much more difficult to put it into practice. The point of the shamanic path is to have the experience of awakening, which involves something beyond the thinking mind or intellectual knowledge.

  For instance, when I tell you that you are dreaming all the time, you may trust me and believe it, but it isn't until you integrate that knowledge and experience it for yourself that your world begins to change. Prior to that it is only a belief. Once this bel
ief becomes your experience, then it becomes a part of your personal reality.

  So at first, the shaman tells you that you are asleep, that you are dreaming, and offers you a path to awaken to who you really are. The shaman wants you to come to know yourself beyond the little story you have created, the little you. The shaman can do this because he or she has come to know him- or herself as an individual expression of this divine life force and that this divinity, this life force, is in all things. That's why shamanism is so connected to the natural world that surrounds us. The shaman knows that all life is connected, all life is one. And this doesn't just refer to the bodies we can see, but the space between everything as well. We are connected through the air we breathe, through the ground underneath our feet, the water we share that makes up so much of our bodies, and everything else that constitutes this planet and beyond. The connection is so obvious to the shaman, but the illusion of the mind and its constant dreaming prevent many people from seeing this truth.

  As a simple example, think of an oak tree. This tree is the culmination of so many things—earth, sun, water, air, an acorn blown by the wind or carried by a bird—all of which have worked together to manifest this beautiful creation of art that we call a tree. If you were to take away any one of any of these things, this tree would not exist. The same can be said for you, for all of us, everything. We are a creation of all that has gone before us. Yet the mind clings to the illusion of separateness. But it is only that: an illusion, and the shaman is the one who sees through the illusion to the interconnectivity between all things and beings.