Some of our favorite books are The Mastery Of Love and The Four Agreements. If you haven’t read these books, they’re a must-read. It’ll change how you relate to others and view your relationships.
For this reason it’s such an honor to be interviewing international bestselling author, speaker, and Toltec Wisdom teacher – Don Miguel Ruiz on this episode of the Lasting Love Connection podcast.
Along with, ‘The Four Agreements,” we love Don’s book, “Mastery of Love,” which is part of the Toltec wisdom series about applying the four agreements to an intimate partnership.
Each of his books is a practical guide to living a better life, creating healthier relationship dynamics, and the spiritual laws to transforming complex human issues.
Don is world renowned for his simplicity, and teaching with such clarity makes him an international bestselling author.
Don Miguel Ruiz illuminates the fear based beliefs and assumptions that undermine love and lead to self rejection.
The wisdom that Don teaches stretches beyond religion or sect and goes straight to the heart.
Table of Contents
The Path To The Great Mastery Of Love
On our path to the Mastery of Love or staying grounded in the four agreements, it can become all too easy to make the agreements a way to judge ourselves.
These rules and judgments hurt us. But the problem is this: Most of us don’t know how to help the emotional wounds recover the freedom of self love.
In this interview, New York Times Bestseller Don Miguel Ruiz illuminates the Mastery of Love, to help us the judgments, and to guide us back to the heart of self-love.
Love is an art form. We are artists, and as an artist, we create the story of our lives and the love we feel. Don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements, The Mastery of Love, and various other books, talks about how mastering our stories can lead us to mastery of love.
When we can master love, we learn to love without conditions. On this episode, we explore what’s the mastery of love.
Key Takeaways From The Mastery Of Love Don Miguel Ruiz Interview
- Love is everything that exists.
- The way that we learn to love is by seeing how our family and society loves.
- We learn to love with conditions.
- Loving with conditions is the root of violence, injustice, and war.
- Every single human is an artist. We create the story of our lives.
- Truth and love are the same.
- You don’t know anyone. You only know what you believe about other people.
- Once you love yourself unconditionally, you’ll respect yourself, and others will also respect you.
- The mind is a reflection of life through matter.
- Practice makes the master.
- Love is an equilibrium between gratitude and generosity. When you practice gratitude and generosity, you see that there is love in everything around you.
- The thing that stops gratitude and generosity is selfishness. Selfishness is what stops you from sharing, giving, or saying thanks to people around you.
Transcript From The Mastery Of Love Don Miguel Ruiz Interview
Luis Congdon Today, we’re going to be talking about what’s the mastery of love with Don Miguel Ruiz. He is the author of The Four Agreements, The Mastery of Love, and various other books. His book The Four Agreements touched my life.
It’s a book that, if you haven’t read or listened to on audio, I want you to give it a shot. It’s a fantastic book that talks about some simple but incredibly life-changing and transformative agreements that we can all take in our lives.
This is one of the books we recommend if you want to learn the mastery of love.
One of those is being impeccable with your word. Using your word for good, and doing what you say you’ll do. It’s super simple but incredibly powerful.
The second is not taking anything personally. What an incredible agreement to make with yourself that the things that people do and say are not about you but rather about themselves.
Now, if you want to know the rest of the agreements, you can pick up his book The Four Agreements. His other book, The Mastery of Love, touched my life and made me think about the mastery of love.
It also made me think about how to have unconditional love, the stories that I tell myself related to love, and how much, basically, garbage fill up my mind.
What’s The Meaning Of Love In Its True Sense
Luis Congdon We’re going to dive in with Don Miguel and go into the Toltec wisdom that has been changing lives for the past several decades.
It transforms people’s lives and changes in miraculous ways. Don Miguel Ruiz was also a medical doctor before he released his book The Four Agreements.
It’s amazing to watch the transformation that he’s gone through. Now his new book, The Toltec Art of Life and Death, it’s an incredible book looking at what life and death are.
So without further ado, let’s get started and let’s bring on Don Miguel Ruiz to the show. Okay. Don, Bienvenido! I want to start by asking you, Don, what’s the mastery of love?
Don Miguel Ruiz Well, this is the most exciting and beautiful question because love is everything that exists. I often get asked about the mastery of love. It’s what I call the truth.
Truth and love is the same thing. The truth existed long before the creation of humanity and will exist long after the distinction of humanity.
Truth is everything, and love is the same thing. Love is everything. Everything is love. Humans perceive love but distort it. The way that we learn to love is the way our family and society love.
Don Miguel Ruiz Illuminates How To Love Unconditionally
Don Miguel Ruiz We learn, just like everybody else, to love with conditions.
Our love is a conditional love, and that’s how we love everybody. It’s how everybody loves us and knows the mastery of love.
It’s with conditions, and because we learn to love with conditions, it is the same way that we love ourselves. We love ourselves with conditions which mean that I love you if you let me control you.
If you do whatever I want you to do, then I love you. If you walk the way I want you to walk, talk the way I want you to talk, behave the way I want you to behave, then I love you. But if not, I will not love you.
That means that I need to control you to love you. But this is the way that everybody also loves you. They try to control you.
They try to tell you what to do, what not to do, what to say, how to behave, etc. They even have that little wall of control.
The main problem is the way we love ourselves. We love ourselves with conditions. I love myself only if I become what I wish to be.
The punishment for that kind of love is rejection. Know the mastery of love and avoid rejection. If you cannot control me, you will reject me.
And if I cannot control myself, I will reject myself, and then I will carry guilt, blame, all that garbage, and anger. Then, we can say that the whole problem of humanity is because we love with conditions.
Understanding The Real Mastery Of Love
Don Miguel Ruiz If we understand that point, we also will understand the roots of all the constant violence, injustice, and even war.
That kind of love, which is not love, but the opposite, has ruled humanity for thousands and thousands of years. But real love exists, and we need to understand the mastery of love.
We perceive love, but we are distorted, and love is unconditional. It’s just the way it is. It is real and is truth.
But the love that we use is the opposite. You can’t create the story of your life, the story of humanity, and the story of your personal life. This is how we rule our lives because our love is conditional.
Kamala Chambers Wow, I loved your insights about the mastery of love. It’s so good to hear you spell it out so clearly.
It seems that a lot of that control that you were talking about comes from people not feeling safe, so they want to control the situation.
Now, what do you feel is the path that we love without conditions? How do we understand the mastery of love and how to love unconditionally?
Don Miguel Ruiz First of all is to understand that every single human is an artist. We all are artists, and we create. It’s what we do. We are always creating. As artists, we can master the story of our lives.
The Insightful Stories Our Lives
Don Miguel Ruiz That story is about the main character of the story, which is why you believe you are.
And you will be the main character of that story. Everything that you perceive, you believe, and everybody else does is about you.
Understand the mastery of love and self-discovery. The whole story is about you, but if you can’t understand that, it’s just a story. It’s only true for us and nobody else. Then perhaps everything will start changing.
Don Miguel Ruiz We create every secondary character of the story. The people who live in our minds only know what we perceive about them. But, all those secondary characters are based on characters that exist.
Because it’s true that you have a mother and father. But the ones who live in your story are just an image that you create about your father and your mother.
It’s an image that you create about your beloved, your children, your friends. Everybody around you, there’s only pictures of the real one. But they are the ones who lived in your story. They are the people who populate your story and help you understand the mastery of love. You don’t know anybody.
You only know what you believe about others. You believe in the images that you create. It’s fascinating when we understand how we create that story, but even go a little deeper. There’s another character that we create. This character is the most important one of the story, which is the main character. In my case, is Miguel Ruiz.
Self-Discovery And The Mastery Of Love
Don Miguel Ruiz Miguel Ruiz is the main character of my story. So, for many years, I used to believe that I was Miguel Ruiz, that Miguel Ruiz was real. But then, I discovered that it’s just my creation. It’s a character that I create with everybody else’s help.
While I was growing up, I cared about everybody else’s opinions, my parents’, my brother’s, my sister’s, my friend’s, teachers’.
Everybody has an opinion about me. They want me to be the way they believe I should be. I made an agreement with all of them, with myself, and I try to please everybody else. I tried to be the way they wanted me to be, but it was impossible.
They did not know the mastery of love and how to love unconditionally. There was no way that I could be like everybody else wanted me to be. They created this character who tried to adapt to every circumstance, to every event that happened in life, and the name is Miguel Ruiz. But, I’m a Miguel Ruiz? No, I am not.
The truth is that I have no idea what I am. I know that I created Miguel Ruiz, and he’s not real but looks real and feels real.
For a long time, I believed it was real until I found out that it was not true. I found out that Miguel Ruiz, the main character of my story, is just my creation. The whole story is about Miguel Ruiz, and this is the main point in this in The Toltec Art of Life and Death.
The Mastery Of Love And Toltec Wisdom
Kamala Chambers I’m excited to hear more about the book, The Toltec Art of Life and Death, you have coming out. I’m excited to talk about the mastery of love and Toltec wisdom.
First, I just like to hear a little bit more about what’s the meaning of love. What is the experience like when you love without stories? When you’re not trying to be who other people want you to be, or you’re not making up a story about even who your partner is?
Don Miguel Ruiz It’s key. When you love without conditions, you have no expectations. Whatever you do is because you want to, but you don’t have to. You don’t have to believe in any judgment or opinion from anybody else. Because now, you love yourself unconditionally and just love yourself the way you are.
You don’t have to be anything else but you. You don’t have to pretend to be anything. It’s okay to be you, and you find love as perfect, just the way you are. Once that happens, you’ll gain all that respect above yourselves. You will respect yourself completely 100%. When you respect yourself, not just to respect everybody around you.
You will understand that they also create their story. And what they know about you is only what they believe about you.
They don’t know you, and because you respect their story. They are free to be or to do whatever they want the world to be. Everybody around you has that love and respect for you. It’s just wonderful to live in that way.
Deeper Insights Into The Mastery Of Love
Luis Congdon I’m curious, Don. I went in and listened to you years ago, and you talked about dying. What happened to you when you died? How has your life changed? For the listener, if you’re curious. Don is going to be diving deeper into the experience of death in his book, The Toltec Art of Life and Death. Right now, for you, the listener.
I want us to kind of peel back the curtains a little bit and find out what happened to Don. I am curious to know his story and his idea of life when he died and when he came back.
Don Miguel Ruiz The whole thing happened when I had a major heart attack. I knew that life was very short, and maybe I had a few hours before I died. I was excited because I had the opportunity to share with everyone the best way to leave our physical body.
There was no fear based beliefs. Not everyone knows the mastery of love. It was a very intense pain, but I was excited about the outcome. It was so perfect for me to feel that experience. As you know, when we are dying, it’s like the whole story of our life is just in front of us. You can remember everything, and it takes no time. It’s very fast.
It was one moment when I went into nine weeks of coma. For nine weeks, I have that little vision, but I don’t know who she is. The whole nine weeks became 10 seconds from 1 minute, and it doesn’t matter because it’s still a whole story.
Knowing Who You Are Is A Practical Guide To The Art Of Relationship Success
Don Miguel Ruiz In that story, my mother Sarita tried to pull me back to life. She taught me the mastery of love. By doing that, she went into my dream. She let me know very clearly that I have to wait to die before she dies. She did everything in her power to pull me back.
Then, what I did was to say, “Okay. Well, if you want to bring me back to life, you have to gather all those great memories. And tell the truth, and in that way, perhaps you can bring life to my body. To do that, you need to face all those lies that exist in my mind,” because we can say that a lie is just a distortion of the truth.
Don Miguel Ruiz Like when you see yourself in a mirror, what you see in the mirror is exactly the opposite of the real you. Then, we perceive love the way it is, but in our mind, it’s just a reflection of that love, is exactly the opposite, and it’s full of lies.
In this book, I created this character that represents everything that I know, but everything that I know focuses on the main character of my story, which is Miguel Ruiz, but without being Miguel Ruiz.
Then, we create that secondary character whose name is Lala. Lala is everything that I know with all those lies, and this is precisely what Sarita, my mother, has to face to challenge all those lies to get the truth and to redeem that great character in my story, which is my knowledge.
Perceive Truth Through Mastery Of Love
Don Miguel Ruiz Then, the whole story is a redemption of knowledge. This means to clean up all those lies so that only the truth lives in those memories. Then, by the end in the redemption of knowledge, then they might just dissipate and go with the creator, with everything. After nine weeks of coma, I opened my eyes again.
We can say it was an act of supreme love that came from my mother to me to bring me back. It’s unconditional love. But, the beautiful part is standing in the direction between my mother and Lala. That also affected my mother and the belief system of my mother.
It was beautiful when finally I opened my eyes, and I saw the transformation in my mother, who owns that experience.
Kamala Chambers I’m curious. What do you think it takes for us in our loving relationships in our lives to access that supreme love? Or to step outside of those stories that you’re talking about.
Don Miguel Ruiz Well, we can say that love is the real truth. It’s the energy. We can call it God, also. Every time that I say this, it’s incredibly simple. It’s nothing but matter and energy. Matter has a beginning has an end. Energy is eternal. Energy cannot be changed and cannot be destroyed.
Then, if this is what we remember, then matter only can move if a force moves matter. And a movement only can be stopped if a force stops matter. But that force, which eventually is life. Then life is love or God. It’s the same thing. It’s everything that exists that is mortal.
Stepping Outside Of The Conventional Stories And Exploring What’s The Mastery Of Love
Don Miguel Ruiz When we leave our physical body, the physical body will disappear sooner or later, sometimes little by little. But, the matter will be recycled and create more matter. Well, the energy will create more matter, but this also means, what are we?
Are we the matter, or are we the force that moves matter? If you see your physical body made of matter, matter is made up of millions and millions of atoms and electrons. But the space between the atoms and electrons is hundreds of times bigger than matter itself, and that is moving everything. It’s life.
The size of life is immensely larger than matter. It’s that life that gives shape to that matter. It creates organs. It can provide the function to those organs. It’s just beautiful to see everything. We can see that matter reflects life.
By reflecting on life, it creates an entire virtual reality, a whole reality, which is the mind. Then the mind is a reflection of life through matter. Matter reflects life and creates the mind. Then the mind creates the whole story by perceiving life.
This includes perceiving love, distorting it, and giving shape to everything, and believing it to have an emotional relation to everything also. It is so beautiful to see all that wonderful interaction.
The Mastery Of Love And Your Personal Story
Don Miguel Ruiz Then, when we create that story, the evolution of that story. We can say that if we live with the story of everybody else, seven billion people’s stories are the same as my story.
The only thing that changed is names, characters, and the main character. But usually, the human story is very similar. Love, and close bonds matter, and all this. However, in the end, they don’t look real but are based on reality. When somebody reads the story of my life and they compare it on their own.
They will see that this book is guiding them on how to change the world that they create. To modify the story that they create, they need to redeem the belief system that they have.
The main character of their story is that the demon that exists in everybody’s mind is nothing. It is a distortion and is not even real. That can apply to everyone. When we read the book, we can be part of that book and see that story.
It guides us to ourselves to be authentic. It teaches us to console all those dramas into joy, into happiness, into peace until all persons know heaven, which is a heaven of love. This is the intention of this beautiful book.
Luis Congdon You’re making me think and remember when I went into a deep meditation. I don’t remember how long I was gone.
When I came back, all I knew was that there was only love and there was nothing else. And that I understood that people had a belief. A belief that they had to be somewhere or get somewhere to be enlightened or to feel love, and that was their problem.
The Mastery Of Love Is Listening For The Answer
Luis Congdon There wasn’t any problem. There wasn’t such a thing as a person or anything that wasn’t created from love. When I was there, Don, there was no time, and there was no need to do anything.
Because everything seemed to be happening very magically, and the story of me was intertwined with everyone. There wasn’t even me.
Don Miguel Ruiz Exactly. That is the conclusion. There is no “me” anymore. It’s just an identity.
Luis Congdon Yeah.
Don Miguel Ruiz It’s perfect.
Luis Congdon It is a beautiful place to see that, and your books are wonderful insights into that time and space. All of us have these magical moments where we feel like the whole world is okay. Even though none of our problems have been fixed. Your books give us an opportunity to get to that place more often.
Don Miguel Ruiz We can say that. That’s the most beautiful part.
Love Changes Everything
Don Miguel Ruiz We don’t have to believe anymore and not disagree. Be skeptical but learn to listen. Don’t believe me. Don’t believe yourself, and don’t believe anybody else. They live in their own stories, and that’s the way it’s only true for them but not for you.
You live in your own story, and that is your truth, even if that is unnecessarily the truth but it can get you to that truth. Because when you get the truth, you put yourself aside somewhere in between the truth and the truth.
Luis Congdon It changes everything. I remember when I think I have a problem or that there is a problem, I can learn to tell myself, “There isn’t a problem.” Or “Let go of that idea,” then I found out that that problem was love happening.
That’s what was going on. But for some reason, I had this idea that the world had to be a certain way. So I made it conditional. Then later, I discovered, “Wait. When I let go of that condition, I realized that even that thing that seemed like a problem was love.”
Don Miguel Ruiz Yes. My son Don Miguel Ruiz Jr., talked about The Four Agreements in his teachings. He says how people corrupted the four agreements and changed them into these four conditions, which is conditional love.
I only befriend someone who is impeccable with the world. I will not be around people who take this personally. I don’t like people who make assumptions. I don’t like people who don’t do their best.
Even something as beautiful as the four agreements can corrupt it. We can use it against ourselves just like everybody else because we can use it to judge other people. They take over the world.
Practicing The Mastery Of Love
Kamala Chambers I’ve seen that, and actually, I experience that. The first time I read your book when it first came out many years ago. I experienced that where it’s like I want to be impeccable with everything I say. I wanted never to take anything personally and could use it and distort it first.
When I read The Mastery of Love, it made it much deeper for me. It helped me to understand the deeper way that it was not about ammo to use against other people or myself. It’s a fuller experience to tap more into the love that exists moment by moment. I’d love to hear more about how to master love.
I know that this is something that you are a master at yourself. How do we get to what’s the mastery of love? What do you feel that it takes to master love in our lives?
Don Miguel Ruiz Well, practice makes the master. We need to practice love, and the way to practice love is just to be yourself and not try to be anybody else. Love is an equilibrium between gratitude and generosity. When you practice gratitude and generosity, you see that there is love in everything around you to live this single moment.
Every moment of your life is love. First, you have that gratitude just to be alive. Every time you wake up, you have so much gratitude that you live with that gratitude. Gratitude changes into generosity when you give that wherever you go.
Then, you give your love everywhere. When you perceive everybody else’s, you have that gratitude for whatever anyone does for you.
Practice Gratitude Is Key To The Mastery Of Love
Don Miguel Ruiz When you practice that love, be grateful for everything and be generous with yourself. You can see that life has become a great paradise. You can see that what is stopping that gratitude and generosity is selfishness. Selfishness is what stops you from sharing, to keep giving, or saying thanks to them.
Then, this is what I would say the limit of love is other people’s ego. Other people’s selfishness to the point that they will not understand that, and you want me to judge or anything. If they are not grateful for what you do, you just don’t do it.
You stop giving and sharing. Then, they are the ones who close those doors. Not you. They’ve been trying to take your generosity, but there’s nothing but selfishness.
This is where you stop giving. But it’s nothing personal. It’s simple you don’t play that game. Because you love yourself, you respect yourself, and you will not cross those lines. Also, you will not allow anybody to cross those lines to you.
Luis Congdon I hear you talk about love and your book, The Mastery of Love and The Four Agreements. The biggest takeaway lesson for me is I have a story about who I am. I have a narrator about who you are, and everything that I interpret and experience is about me and no one else. And the same goes for you and how you interpret and take me in.
So, the mastery of love is the mastery of yourself and the mastery of your story. It comes back to self-love and the relationship that you have with you and your story of you.
Don Miguel Ruiz This is beautiful. Just to be alive is just great.
Just Being Alive Is Part Of The Mastery Of Love
Kamala Chambers I love how you gave us this very simple, so simple that it could be easy to pass over. This simple and powerful practice of being grateful for everything and being generous with our life is beautiful.
I wanted to reiterate that so we all have a moment to let that sink in. Before we close out today. I want to make sure that you have a chance to share a piece of wisdom from The Toltec Art of Life and Death.
I know that some of what you’ve talked about is going to be out in that book that you’re releasing. Is there anything else that you want to share about the mastery of love?
Don Miguel Ruiz I would like to clarify that the word Toltec means artist. When I talk about Toltec wisdom, I’m talking about the wisdom of the artist. There are 7 billion artists on this beautiful planet Earth, and they’re Toltecs in their own language.
When we look at the mastery of love, we see that we are artists. We are Toltec. We are artists, and as an artist, we have the eye of beauty. We love to see the beauty, and with the beauty, we can create anything and practice it in any different direction of life.
Whatever we do for life, we use that. We are the artists. We create, and if we combine what we create, then we can change it. We can change it because we are the artist, and we create it. No one can change it but us.
The Mastery Of Love Contributes To The Revolution Of Love
Don Miguel Ruiz I like everybody to understand that point. In this book, I show how I shift my story so that they can shift their own story and be part of what I aim for everybody around the world.
Please help me to change the world. By doing that, I told them to change the world, their personal world. The world that they can change and nobody else can. If you can change your own world, which you can, your personality will then change. And part of that change is part of that revolution, the revolution of love.
Luis Congdon What an empowering time that we’ve had with you today Don Miguel. We’ve been talking about the mastery of love. It has been so powerful because it is a beautiful reminder, as you said, that we are the artist, we are the creator. We are the ones who have the power of our Yes and our No. With that yes and No, we can create, and with our agreements, we can create. It’s been truly an honor to sit and speak with you today. Thank you.
Don Miguel Ruiz You’re very welcome. It’s my privilege to speak with you about what’s the mastery of love.
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