THE FIVE LEVELS OF ATTACHMENT:  Toltec Wisdom for the Modern World is a wonderful book by don Miguel Ruiz Jr.

From the dust jacket:  “Building on the principles found in his father’s bestselling book THE FOUR AGREEMENTS, don Miguel Ruiz Jr. invites us to gauge how attached we are to our own point of view.  In THE FIVE LEVELS OF ATTACHMENT, he will help you gain awareness of the agreements you have been implicitly making all these years that shape your reality and affect your future and show you how to release the attachments which no longer reflect who you really are.

This method is twenty years in the making.  When don Miguel Ruiz Jr. began his apprenticeship into his family’s Toltec tradition, he was just fourteen years old.  His first task was translating his grandmother’s talk from Spanish into English.  One day, as he struggled to keep up with her, she asked him: Are you using knowledge, or is knowledge using you?  

Finding the answer to this question would shape the destiny of his life.  In this groundbreaking work, Ruiz explains each of the Five Levels of Attachment in detail and shows that as our level of attachment to a belief or idea increases, ‘who we are’ becomes directly linked to ‘what we know.’

Our attachment to beliefs — our own and the beliefs of others — manifests as a mask we don’t realize we can take off.  But with don Miguel Ruiz’s help, and some Toltec wisdom along the way, we can return to our True, Authentic Selves, unhindered by judgement and free to pursue our true life’s calling.”

The foreword of the book was written by the author’s father, don Miguel Ruiz.  In it he says, ” My son has spent a great portion of his life silently rebelling against the way other people live, creating many judgements and opinions.  He did not realize that in doing so, he was becoming attached to those judgements and opinions, and his emotional reactions were becoming increasingly intense.  One day he had a conversation with his grandmother — a conversation that would forever change his life.  During this conversation, his grandmother, a faith healer, helped him understand the attachment she had to the rituals she used for healing her patients.  My son saw his own reflection in this interaction with his grandmother and was able to clearly see all of his attachments.   This is how his rebellion came to an end.  Although it took him a couple of years to completely assimilate the experience into his life, he finally decided to share it in a book.  THE FIVE LEVELS OF ATTACHMENT is that book, and it is destined to transform the lives of millions of readers.”

And in the author’s words…”In this book, I will teach you the Five Levels of Attachment.  The are guideposts for gauging how attached you are to your own point of view, as well as how open you are to other opinions and possibilities.  It is my hope that you will engage in this book to measure how attached you are to the various beliefs and ideas in your life that create your reality, your Personal Dream, and contribute to our collective reality and the Dream of the Planet.  Only with this deeper awareness of yourself are you truly free to pursue your passion and experience your full potential.  The choice is up to you!”