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July/August 2002 Spirituality
The Mitote Book

by Kelsey Bunker

All of the suffering and drama in your life is the result of your domestication. It comes from all of those things that your parents, your teachers, your siblings and your friends told you about who they thought you were. And you believed them.

When you were born you had no idea of who you were. You had no concepts of good or bad, right or wrong. You had no concepts. You simply felt. You were.

Slowly, slowly the other humans around began your domestication. You learned that when you cried someone came. You learned that certain sounds produced certain results. Say "Da-Da" and watch the male human figure gloat, coo and otherwise respond. Open your mouth when someone stroked your cheek and you received a bottle or breast. You were fed.

You were learning how to hook someone’s attention to get what you needed in order to survive. The other humans also hooked your attention. At some point you heard your first "No." Then you began to hear, "this is right" or "that is wrong." You listened because when you did what someone wanted your needs were met. When you went against someone you experienced pain, rejection or humiliation.

One of things that happened during your childhood was that people around you told you who you were, according to their beliefs. You are good when you don’t cry. Translation: Crying is bad. I’m bad when I cry. I don’t want to be bad. I won’t cry.

This process occurred over and over, thousands of times. Each person in your life giving you his or her opinion about when you are right or wrong, when you are bad, when you are good, what makes you beautiful, what makes you ugly. And you believed them. What other people told you about who they thought you were became what you think you are today.

Every belief that we have about whether something is valuable or not, beneficial, appropriate, useful is what we use to judge ourselves. The picture that we have created to describe ourselves is based on an image of perfection, as defined by other people. We will never live up to that image. We judge our performance in life based on those distorted views. We find ourselves lacking, and we feel bad. We find ourselves superior and we feel isolated. Good or bad, better or worse, judging ourselves puts us into hell.

Take a moment to reflect back on an incident that made you feel bad. What happened? Did someone do the wrong thing? Did you do the wrong thing? Did someone not live up to your expectations of how it is supposed to be? Isn’t this the source of your suffering? You judge either someone else or yourself as not doing something right. And then you compound the pain because you take it personally. You believe that he or she believes just as you do. If an action is wrong in your book, then it must be wrong in the other person’s book, and the only reason that he or she would do that bad action is because there must be something wrong with you. Ouch.

How do you get out of this conundrum? One of the most helpful tools along the Toltec path is the creation of the mitote book. In the Toltec mythology, the mitote is the equivalent of a thousand voices in the marketplace, speaking all at once. Those thousand voices are all the voices in your head that tell you what is right or wrong. Often, we don’t even hear the individual voices. So many talk at once, but we feel their effect when we feel bad or uneasy.

We create a mitote book to begin to bring awareness to those voices, to begin to understand how we judge ourselves, to begin to understand our personal yardsticks. In our mitote book, we inventory every belief we have about every topic. Yes this is a daunting task. It can take years to complete. However the good news is that with each belief that is brought to the surface you can begin to bring some clarity into your life.

Because the task is so big, it is often easiest to begin with those areas that pop into your field of vision. If you have an emotional reaction to a situation, there is something there that is waiting for your attention. The best way to start digging is by asking questions. What do I believe about what just happened? What do I believe is the right way to handle it? The wrong way? What is the result of that belief? What happens to people who act wrongly? Who act rightly?

Let’s take a look at an example. Suppose that you bought a beautiful dress and wore it to a party. Imagine that a person comes up to you and says, "Wow, that’s a little risqué isn’t it?" There are so many possible interpretations. Maybe she likes the dress and wished she had the courage to wear something attractive. Translated…I’m good. Maybe she thoroughly disapproves. Translated…I’m bad. Maybe she has just noticed the small slit on the side. Translated…she’s observant. What she is thinking is not as important as to your reaction to her words.

If after your conversation with this woman, you feel uneasy or unsure or even angry, maybe she pushed one of your buttons. Perfect! Begin to ask questions. What do I believe about wearing a red-sequined dress to a party? Women who wear red-sequined dresses are, fill in the blank, courageous, loose, cheap, daring. Then ask yourself, what do those words mean? If I’m courageous, then again fill in the blank, e.g. I get attention. If I’m loose, then again fill in the blank, people won’t like me. Keep digging. With each belief, continue asking what does this mean to me?

Uncovering your belief system is critical to understanding how you judge yourself. Even if you have done years of therapy, you may not be aware of how you think about yourself. Sometimes this can be an uncomfortable process, but it gets to the heart of the matter. You begin to be honest with yourself about whom you think you are. And with this compassionate honesty you can see your beliefs that are based on fear--those beliefs that cause you drama and suffering. The best news of all is that you have a choice. In every moment you can chose pain and suffering or you can choose love and joy.

Kelsey Bunker is an apprentice with don Miguel Ruiz and currently teaches classes in the Portland area on the Four Agreements and Toltec Wisdom. She is available to help with the creation of Mitote Books. For more information, call 503/288-4229 or email b1kelsey@aol.com.