Living a Life of Awareness: Daily Meditations on the Toltec Path – For the first time ever, the wisdom from the Ruiz family is bound together in a book of daily meditations designed to inspire, nourish, and enlighten adherents as they travel along the ancient path of Toltec.
When he was only 14 years old, don Miguel Ruiz Jr. apprenticed to his father don Miguel Sr. and his grandmother, Madre Sarita, to learn how to they manifested their intent to heal people, both physically and spiritually. Now in his thirties, don Miguel Ruiz Jr. has applied the lessons learned from his father and grandmother to define and enjoy his own personal freedom while achieving peace with all of creation. As a Nagual, he now shares the wisdom and the tools of his family’s traditions. Along with his father, don Miguel Ruiz Sr., and brother, don Jose Ruiz, don Miguel Jr. leads workshops, retreats and power journeys to help others to achieve their own personal freedom and optimal physical and spiritual health. Earlier this year we interviewed don Miguel Jr. after the release his first book, The Five Levels of Attachment, which has gone on to become a bestseller around the world.
Our Conversation
Soul Love: Last time we were talking about the 5 Levels of Attachment and in the mean time the journey you’re on looks amazing to me. Can you share some of your experiences with us?
Don Miguel Ruiz Jr: The funny thing is that when I go into interviews and there is a camera can’t help but to start working because that is what I used to do back in the time when I worked in the film industry. We are there to help each other out and work towards our common goals. In touring this year I find that a lot of the presentations are exactly like that. Whether I am presenting at a big Unity Church or in an independent bookstore or even in a taco restaurant, I actually gave a lecture in a taco restaurant. The place in Modesto wasn’t big enough because they sold a lot more tickets and they sold out very quickly so they asked the neighbour, which was a taco shop, if they could host me. So there I was, there were tacos behind me, 75 people surrounded me and there I am presenting. It was very cool. We are all part of the same community and we are working towards that.
The two hours go by so fast and I noticed a huge change from my first presentations in February about the book to the last presentation in December. I started expanding and it felt so great because the audience allowed me the opportunity and some of the questions I was getting allowed me to expand on it.
One day, my dad was presenting in Ashland, Oregon via video and I was there live but the feed wasn’t very good and it was hard for my dad to have some continuity so we changed the format to receiving a lot of questions. There were a lot of questions about Love, particularly about the difference between conditional and unconditional love. So after my dad finished I was supposed to talk about the Levels of Attachment but I changed it because there were still a lot of questions about love I wanted to focus on.
My personal experience of the last year with presenting and touring and being in so many places allows me to interact rather than being in my own room writing. Speaking in front of an audience makes it so much more vibrant and full of life and it’s fun!
What I have learned in this past year is that in order to let a message come across, it’s always the result of a community, a group of people coming together to help facilitate the opportunity. It’s not just two hours of me showing up, it’s that entire group of people who make those two hours happen. You work of course towards it: promoting it, finding the venue and setting it up, that’s why I used the example of the Modesto experience and it shows the flexibility we need to have in order to present the message. I clearly get to see how life works and if we’re rigid and it has to be this specific way, then the opportunities diminish because life has its own plans. That’s also the joke: “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans”.
SL: In Living a Life of Awareness you give an example that when you look at the world through the eyes of love, it’s all love that you will see. Can you give me some practical tips of how to look at the world, purely from love, because I come across people who say: “That sounds so nice, I wish I could do that, but I just don’t know how”.
You can watch Miguel’s answer below or read on below this video.
DMR: Well, it starts with ourselves, it starts with saying I can only control the tips of my fingers, that’s it, all the rest of the seven billion human beings that live in this world, live in their own free will, so I only control my own.
The relationship that I have with myself will dictate how I see the world. Of course I will always see the world through love. The question is, will I see it with conditional love or unconditional love? If I see the world through the eyes of conditional love, then the whole world has to fit my definition of love and anyone who doesn’t fit, I will punish them for not fitting, thus I am in constant conflict with the world. But if I accept myself for who I am at this very moment, which means I accept myself unconditionally that this is a living being with the capacity to evolve, to change my mind, with the capacity to learn from my mistakes, to learn from what didn’t work then I can choose to live in harmony and compassion with my fellow men and women. When I have unconditional love for myself then I am this constant opportunity for unconditional love with people around me.
I am the constant with every relationship that I am in. Every relationship I am in is different from one another because the individuals are different. The relationship I have with my wife is different from the relationship I have with my kids because each one of us is different and unique. If I have unconditional love for myself then there’s the opportunity for unconditional love for everyone there. This happens with the eyes of compassion, which means I see how they live their life and I respect them. I respect their choices even if I don’t agree with them. That respect allows me the opportunity to share, because if I don’t respect their choices, then I don’t respect them and that is conditional love.
A relationship is about adapting to each other to create something new. I live in my own relationship with myself but the relationship between you and I is unique to you and I. I will always be me, but I will adapt myself to the relationship between you and I. But if I condition myself and I act differently by pretending to be something I am not, that’s something completely different. When I see the world through love, what I am seeing is to be in communion with other people and respect them just as much as I respect myself. When we realize that we are love, we automatically know that we don’t have to earn it.
SL: You talk about the choice we have between truth and illusion and you give the example of Don Quixote and the windmills. Isn’t that one of our biggest challenges, to recognize that difference? I might really think I have a truthful thought about something or somebody, but in the end it appears that it was an illusion. How do we recognize this?
DMR: It’s mainly based on how much energy you use to defend it. The truth requires no energy at all to defend it because it’s present and an illusion requires a lot of energy and this energy can be felt like how much we argue for it, how much we invest emotionally in it, how much of ourselves is in it.
Sometimes we have an illusion and we want it to be real so much and we invest so much in ourselves to keep it alive, but the truth exists with or without us. Life changes continuously, a truth only exists for a certain amount of time before it is no longer truth. A thought and an idea only exist as long as I agree with it. The function of truth, of knowledge, is to help us understand the world, but most importantly how to interact with each other. It’s the bridge that allows us to understand one another. Truth is always subject to the agreement of the people.
“In this book of short lessons and meditations don Miguel Ruiz Jr. puts the wisdom of the Ruiz family into his own heart-felt words in a way that truly brings them into daily life. The message of the book — that everything in life is interconnected and is perfect in the moment. There is an earthy quality in the way Ruiz expresses those ideas that makes this book particularly comforting.” —Anna Jedrziewski, Retailing Insight
DMR: “A prayer without action is just a wish, a prayer with action is the manifestation of a miracle. A meditation is basically reminding ourselves how we want to manifest our life. The awareness comes at the moment when I realize that I am alive. Just as I am able to move my hands, the energy I use to move different parts of my body, to letting air into my diaphragm and slowly letting it out to be able to speak with you is the same energy I use to create a thought, to create an idea”.
You can now purchase Living a Life of Awareness in our eStore.
For information, please visit Miguel’s website: miguelruizjr.com
INTERVIEW BY: DIRK TERPSTRA – SOUL LOVE FOUNDER
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