What exactly is Mitote? The concept can be confusing and vague.
The outside dream – the world – is full of unpleasantness, drama, violence, fear, war, and injustice. Fear and false beliefs control the outside dream.
Because we’re integrated strongly into this outside dream, our personal dream is also ruled by fear. The agreements and beliefs we store in our heads stop us from seeing the truth – that justice, beauty, joy, and freedom can be our personal dream
This inability to see the truth is a fog of perception the Toltecs called a mitote. The mitote clouds our vision, so we can’t see who we really are. We can’t see that we’re not free. We create an image of who we should be in order to be liked, loved and good enough. But this image isn’t real.
We even harm ourselves to be accepted by others. (Think of the teenager who takes drugs or starves herself to be accepted, or of someone who stays in an abusive relationship.) When we accept self-abuse, we learn to tolerate abuse from others because of an inner belief: “I deserve it.” A false image of perfection makes us reject ourselves and others.
Mitote, the chaos in our minds, leads to misunderstandings and misinterpretations. We simply don’t perceive things the way they truly are.
Mitote is also caused by gossip. Gossip spreads, whether it’s being mindlessly repeated or spread intentionally as a calculated effort to bring someone down. The contagious poison of gossip creates what the Toltecs called the mitote. The mitote is defined as “the chaos of 1,000 voices all trying to talk at once in the mind.”