EMMA HAD FOUND HER EQUILIBRIUM AND WAS feeling better. An hour or so in the mirror room usually did that. She was exhausted from days and weeks of exultant upheaval. Exultant—now there was a mystery! From the time of Miguel’s heart attack until now, so many weeks later, she’d felt only joy. The man she loved was in a coma, unlikely to survive the crisis, and yet she was at peace. She missed his voice, his touch—and yet she didn’t miss him at all. He was more present now than he had been in the eight years they’d known each other. He was laughing with her and at her and poking fun at tragedy. His words spun around in her head—teaching, chastising, comforting. He was in the passenger seat as she drove back and forth to the hospital. He lay close to her at night, and she woke up to his smile every morning. This persistent joy chased away the doubt. She’d never felt better or more content—and at a time when everything seemed to be going wrong. She’d never felt stronger in her trust or more in tune with life.

Maybe this was what freedom felt like. “You don’t have to be you,” he used to say. How many times had he said that—something so simple, and yet so difficult to grasp? Miguel had no obligation to be anything to anyone now. He might soon be free from matter itself. He might soon be home.

Thinking of her own dream, so precarious without him, she wondered why all of this was happening. And why—why?—was she feeling such a sense of calm?

“Why ask why?” Miguel answered in the sweet voice she knew so well. He wasn’t with her in the little mirror room . . . but, as usual, he was with her.

“I knew you’d say that,” she responded.

“You know things.”

“I still want to know things,” she agreed. “I’m hopeless.”

“I hope you’re hopeless,” he said. He smiled, and she smiled with him. He liked to call hope the biggest demon in hell. It enticed and beguiled, but delivered nothing. Hope wasn’t making its usual mischief, thankfully. She had no hope for any particular outcome, nor did she expect things to go any particular way. It always came back to surrender.

“Do you like my gift to you, sweetheart?” Miguel asked.

“Your gift? You mean this joy? This cluelessness?”

“I mean Miguel’s legacy.”

“Legacy,” she mumbled, frowning. “Legacies belong to the dead.”

“Legacies belong to the living. When someone stops existing, what is left of him?” he urged. “What remains?”

“Things he said today,” she said, echoing the refrain of a Beatles song.

“Exactly,” he said, chuckling. “Things he said.”

He and Emma had always had the same music playing in their heads; this had been true since they first met. Music had sparked their romance—music and life’s chemistry. He remembered many sleepless nights, singing to each other. Sometimes they turned it into a game. One would start a song, then stop in the middle of it. The last word they sang would make the first word of the next song, on and on, until they could sing no more, falling asleep to the lyrics of a hundred classic melodies.

“My legacy to all of you,” he said, “is the memories you have of me—each different, all of them dreams of your own making. My legacy is the teaching, however it is interpreted. My legacy to everyone is like a music library, custom-made for the listener.”

“My memories of you are all musical.”

“Really?”

“Okay, and physical,” she said, yearning to touch him. “And emotional.” It would be dishonest not to include the searing heartbreaks she had experienced since she first fell in love with him. “Occasionally painful,” she added.

“You’ve used me as an excuse to hurt yourself,” he commented. “This can stop now, my love.”

“It will stop for sure,” she offered, “if you come back.”

“Oh, no,” he said, laughing. “You sound like Sarita!”

“I’m not Sarita, though,” she said. “I’m . . . I’m your . . .”

Sighing, she gave up. Who she was hardly mattered now. She was untethered, set adrift on a sea of mystery, and she had no answers. She felt his love more than ever now, and wondered how she could have turned such unequivocal love against herself. What kind of lies had she believed all these years, to make love seem so dangerous? Love with conditions was the opposite of love, he’d said. It was the warped reflection. Now was the time to end the distortions, while he was still near, lifting her with him into paradise.

She gazed at the mirror in front of her, seeing a woman who looked vaguely familiar, but who bore no resemblance to the woman he had found—and resuscitated—so many years ago. She saw a woman without a story and without fear. Most significantly, she saw a woman who was intensely happy and without hope.

“This is intolerable,” Gandara whispered self-consciously, trying to squeeze his shoulders into the mirror room where Emma sat in silence. “What sort of magic is this devise meant to conjure?”

“Not magic, I presume,” said Eziquio, wriggling within the small space, “but mood.” He had left his sombrero and boots outside the mirrored door, but he was still uncomfortable and struggled to find a suitable position. “I believe she is conjuring a mood.”

“Tell her that my mood is degrading rapidly,” Gandara groaned. “Shall we alter the landscape, patrón?”

“We found her here,” Eziquio reminded him. “There must be a reason.”

“Ah, now reason has joined us! One too many characters, if you ask me.”

“Be patient, my friend,” Eziquio said, peering over his bony knees to survey the small space. “This may be interesting.”

“This is intolerable!”

“Look around you!”

The two men ceased their floundering to consider where they were. They had crawled into a handcrafted room of eight mirror panels, all framed in polished oak and hinged together with an artisan’s skill. It was a piece of furniture, it could be said, but one that had been built to accommodate one person . . . a peculiar someone who might enjoy contemplating the world as life’s magnificent reflection. At this present moment, all that could be seen within the tiny mirror room were reflections of the woman apprentice. She was the only living thing here, but her reflections dominated the space. One mirror image enveloped another, then another, and on and on, spiraling into infinity.

Gandara squirmed in his confinement, but he had to admit that this space was ingenious. He wondered why he had omitted this from his education—allowing simple mirrors to create an infinite universe. Placing oneself in the middle, one could see the real world as a mere projection of mind. One could imagine life, infinite and mysterious, visible only in the reflective surfaces of matter. This was good. This was disturbing and wonderful. If he and the others had taken more opportunities to dream like this, they might have been formidable even in childhood. He smiled at the notion, rearranging his beefy shoulders within the confines of the octagonal box.

He noticed that Eziquio had finally settled on his side, pressing his backside against the glass panels, but finding no appropriate deployment for his spindly legs. Gandara, with most of his corpulent body outside the room, had managed to push only the top half of himself into the cramped space, and was presently resting his round, unshaven face in both hands. Though displeased, he took the advice of his friend and looked carefully around, as Eziquio was doing. Wherever they looked, they saw the same thing. Emma, seated quietly with legs crossed, was surrounded by countless copies of herself, all of them sitting exactly as she was. The two men craned their necks this way and that, trying to catch a view of themselves around the many Emmas, only to come face to face with each other. They both turned away, disgusted.

“As I said,” Gandara repeated pointedly. “Intolerable.”

“Perhaps you prefer the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs?”

“Once was enough, gracias. Still, the chambers provided a better view.”

“Hombre,” said Eziquio, “the view here is spectacular. See beyond this human, beyond these reflections, to the infinite dream.”

“Take an adventure, you say?”

“As in the days of our best ruses, my friend.”

“Life was a drama then, was it not? An opera.”

“Complete with divas and buffoons.”

“But we held the baton, no?”

“We held the baton, yes.”

“Ah,” Gandara said, remembering how he used to see the dream of humanity as an orchestra, a vast composition of sounds and tempos. How he loved to guide the music, how deftly he held the baton! His pudgy fingers floated to the rhythm of unheard melodies as he recalled those good times. He was silent, closing his weary eyes and letting his head rest on the soft carpet beneath him.

He loved the feel of existence, and he missed the power to see past its imaginary walls. He could sense invisible things back then, when he was alive in his body. He fancied he could hear people thinking; he knew their intentions before they did and could easily anticipate their actions. As a mother knows her infant, he knew the language of the human mind. As a man knows his lover, he sensed life’s breath on his flesh, and he responded to every lustful yearning. He could see life’s currents ebbing and flowing from everything to everything. Why, he could see life shooting from his own fingertips! Ah! What a joy it had been to be alive!

“Take a closer look at the mirrors, Gandara,” Eziquio said. “Look up, my friend, and see how each mirror holds an array of memories, and how every memory is an opus, yielding to the obra maestra that is one single human life.”

The fat man lifted his head and inspected the glass panel nearest him. Thankfully, he thought to himself, there was no sign of a scruffy old Mexican man with red eyes and bad breath. There was only the woman, sitting serenely, motionlessly, beside him. He could see many, many versions of her. He could sense the pattern of her memories. There were innumerable light projections from other mirrors, bouncing her image around this little room of infinite perceptions and telling a million stories—stories that warned him not to believe just one. As the enchanted moments ticked on, every story-picture came to life and moved to a kind of music, becoming a dance, a play . . . an opera.

The mirrors . . .

When I first added mirrors to my teaching, I didn’t want Emma to participate in that kind of meditation. She was too avid a dreamer as it was, I felt. Remembering my own experiences, I thought she might go too far, enjoying her time with mirrors so much that she’d lose interest in reality. She did as I had done, however, and spent long hours there. Sharing my dreaming moments with her in this way, I see that she uses the mirror room well. She dreams with me. She dreams in creative ways, and when she has seen enough, she steps away. The beautiful little room of wood and glass is serving her especially well now, when revelations come swiftly and steadily. It consoles her during these days without a teacher, at a time when her future, like my family’s, is so unclear.

Don Eziquio is also serving her well. Old tricksters, it seems, can be the best allies in our quest for awareness. The more they argue and posture, and the louder their inanities become, the more we’re able to understand what we’re doing to ourselves. Hearing the mind’s incessant chatter brings attention to the dangers of blindly believing. All the characters in our lives are imagined, just as our inner voices are. The real people they represent are nothing like the impressions we have of them. This is obvious to someone who sits quietly in a mirror room, where all reflections seem distinct and familiar but are not us, are not real.

The year 2000 was not the catastrophic event that some had predicted, but the changes that occurred in my own world were significant—a few people would even say catastrophic. The power journey to Egypt had left me uneasy and restless. I saw clearly that I had changed, that my investment in my present dream had lessened. To excite and renew my interest, I needed to find other ways to create. My first book had been published, and it included much of the wisdom that my apprentices were familiar with—but practice, as I always told them, made the master. I had often said that I would be their last crutch, the last psychological support they would have to abandon before they could fly on their own. Like Dumbo’s little feather, crutches help people believe in themselves, and help them survive dynamic changes. Transforming our belief structure is the most important kind of change we can make, and in many ways the scariest, so a little help is good. Putting faith in the teacher helps. With every little change comes a big reaction, so a new mythology helps. White lies and harmless justifications help, too—until it is time to fly.

My students were lying to themselves less than they once had, but it seemed impossible for them to stop gossiping about themselves and each other. Their struggles with self-importance continued. Some needed to feel particularly important, so I had given them titles. For many, I used descriptive nicknames, encouraging them to imagine themselves differently. Like all crutches, these were meant to be discarded when the time was right—that is, when wisdom and awareness made distinctions unnecessary. The Four Agreements also helped their progress. Seeming so simple at first introduction—be impeccable with the word, don’t take anything personally, don’t make assumptions, always do your best—these agreements made huge shifts in awareness. With every application came new revelations, and with every revelation came more awareness.

As wonderful as my interactions were with my apprentices, I was disappointed in the results of my efforts over the years. I saw that many of them were simply trading new superstitions for old. Jealousies remained strong, and selfishness was still evident. Generosity seemed difficult for many to give or to receive. We cannot give what we do not have, and for many of my apprentices, unconditional love was unfamiliar, untried. Many imagined themselves to be great teachers, a goal I encouraged, but their pride made that goal seem unrealistic. So, after Egypt, I made changes.

I started by doing away with titles. No one had an advantage over anyone else, even if that advantage was only in their imagination. There would be no gossiping. There would be no selfish actions. Each one of them was a potential warrior, capable of facing the battle within himself, but they’d all devoted too much energy to fighting outward battles instead. They would have to confront their own lies. “Don’t believe me,” I would remind them. “Don’t believe yourself . . . and don’t believe anyone else.” Not believing their strongest opinions was the most powerful tool for awareness. Not believing their own thoughts, and the stories they’d created, was the best path to freedom. They fed on superstition, and my message to them was one of common sense. Appetites would have to change.

There were many reactions to this. There was excitement, but there were also hurt feelings and resentments. Seeing this, I soon realized that I would have to go further. I would have to tell them to go, and to use the tools I’d given them to create happier lives. In too many instances, fanaticism was replacing the desire to learn and to change. As I had done many times as a child, I challenged myself to invent another kind of game, this one with better results. First, I would need to end this one. Just as I had done years before, leaving medicine to investigate new ways of healing the mind, I would have to put shamanism aside. I would have to renounce power.

Few would ever ask what I meant by that. Few people truly want to understand power, preferring to accept common assumptions. And yet it’s important to see the true nature of power. I renounced power because of the effect the very idea of power had on my students, and the zealotry that my presence incited. I had made my personal power evident to my apprentices. They had seen how I shifted perception, soothed fears, and healed sick bodies. They had seen that the force of life that flows through all of us can be used to enhance our relationship with life. We each have access to total power and the ability to change our reality. It was essential that my apprentices learned to do these things for themselves, with no expectations. It was important that they knew themselves as the saviors that they were.

We are life. We are the result of life’s power, and we are the channels through which that power courses. We want truth, but we reach for more knowledge instead—and then we must defend what we believe. Knowledge makes a small impression on the world compared to the power of truth—even when it serves life, elevating awareness and creating dreams of impeccability. How can knowledge serve better? How can we stop it from doing harm and creating conflict?

First, we can see knowledge for what it is—all the agreements we make about reality—and get some perspective. Then we can listen to ourselves. We can modify both our thinking and our emotional attachment to thought. We can win the war in our heads, one that has gone on long enough. We can nurture a belief in ourselves and drift away from the crowd.

It could be said that, after Egypt, I drifted. During this time of transition, I had a chance to work with José and oversee his spiritual education. I wanted to put my attentions there. I wished for a new way to play with life. I experienced the peace of nonexistence in Egypt, but I had to begin again in this life, this present existence. It was important to see the next step, and to keep myself walking steadily through the human dream. Coming back from that expansive peace, I saw humans more clearly. I saw them as exceptional creatures under the tyranny of knowledge, helpless to change their circumstances. The human animal is helpless, that is, until the mind decides to change and until knowledge has lost its supreme authority. I was aware that I wasn’t Miguel, that Miguel was just how I described myself to others; but whatever I was, I was in a body that needed my presence and my guidance. There are a few simple things the body must have to live. The mind, on the other hand, needs nothing. It invents needs, imagining that it’s made of actual matter. It is, instead, dreamed by matter. An exceptionally aware mind understands that it serves the body’s needs and the body’s communion with life. A mind aware of itself is willing to listen to its own voice, and to change that dialogue for the sake of the human being.

If I were ever to teach again, every student’s discipline would need to include direct conversations with the main character in their story. They would need to look in the mirror and announce themselves. They would need to separate body from mind in their perception—in other words, to recognize the difference between knowledge and the very real human it occupied. This was the only way self-awareness could have true meaning.

Months after the journey to Egypt, I began to feel incredibly free—as free as I had ever been. I was in love with life once again and dared to imagine that my love would inspire a vibrant new dream. So I looked ahead, trusting life’s generosity as I always had. I was alive. I was eager to play with intent again.

I was back, and ready to begin a different kind of game.