I have long believed that the opposite of love is fear and as a
friend once told me fear is false evidence appearing real. Love is real, fear is
not. Fear just appears real. Yet fear is like a self propagating weed which seems
to take over an entire yard. It continues to keep coming back until you are
able to dig them up by their roots and permanently remove them.
The soil in which our fear is planted is in our mind. Our mind is like fertile ground where these weeds exist until we have stalked them down to their roots and removed them. We have a choice as to whether we plants weeds of fear or seeds of love in our minds. When we are impeccable with our word, which is the first agreement in Toltec Wisdom, then our mind is no longer fertile ground for weeds of fear; it is only fertile for seeds of love.
The question then is how do I remove these fears and replace them with love. Toltec Wisdom teaches a process called stalking. According to Sheri Rosenthal, there are ten steps to stalking:
Step 1: Watch ourselves with absolute objectivity, observing how people behave in our presence and how they react to our actions.
Step 2: Create an inventory, through journaling of what we believe about what is happening to us, noting our judgments, opinions, and points of view.
Step 3: Examine our emotional reactions and journal what we believe about each of the emotions we have listed.
Step 4: Look at everything you have journaled to date, and ask ourselves if our journaled beliefs reflect the truth.
Step 5: Acknowledge the truth of what is happening in our lives, and accept responsibility for our half of making it happen.
Step 6: Recapitulate our lives by going back in time and seeing where our beliefs and agreements originated.
Step 7: Release all of the expectations we have in life about everything and everyone.
Step 8: Forgive and let go. Forgiveness is not about the other person, but about setting ourselves free and letting go of the past and harmful judgments.
Step 9: Erase our personal history. This is not to say that events did not happen, but that they no longer have an emotional hold on us and hook in us.
Step 10: Become impersonal by totally detaching from the egotistical mind.
Stalking is a way of being which leads us to freedom and happiness. It is about identifying the weeds of fear in our mind, which cloud our vision and removing them so we have greater clarity in life. As we remove the weeds of fear, we are left with the space and the clarity to plant seeds of unconditional love in its place.
Reference:
Rosenthal, S. A. (2005). Complete Idiot's Guide to Toltec Wisdom. New York: Alpha.