The Mastery

of Love

an interview with
Don Miguel Ruiz
by Diane M. Cooper

''You are Life passing through your body, passing through your mind, passing through your soul.
Once you find that out, not with logic, not with the intellect, but because you can feel that Life -
you find out that you are the force that makes the flowers open and close, that makes the
hummingbird fly from flower to flower. You find out that you are in every tree, and you are in every
animal, vegetable, and rock. You are that force that moves the wind and breathes through your
body. The whole universe is a living being that is moved by that force, and that is what you are.
You are Life.''[1]

Diane: Don Miguel, I understand that you were born into a family of healers - your mother was a
curandera and your grandfather a nagual.[2] How did you come to take up the Toltec ways?

Don Miguel Ruiz: All my life magic was around me. When I was a kid it was an everyday thing. But I
was very, very skeptical. I became even more so when I went to medical school to become a surgeon.

It was in my last year of medical school that I crashed my car and had an out-of-body experience. That
changed everything. After that experience I began looking for answers. I went searching right away,
because I had had the most incredible experience, but there were no words to explain it. It changed my
life completely because I understood that my everyday life was not exactly as I had believed.

My grandfather used to tell me that life was a dream. He also said that when people finally realized this,
the dream could be changed, and then humanity would change. After my accident, everything I had
witnessed as a child started making sense.

You know that it's one thing to hear about something and another thing to have an experience. After
the accident the things my grandfather said were no longer theories for me, they were facts.

First you need to change what you believe about yourself. The day the
relationship you have with yourself is great — when you Love yourself unconditionally, when you
respect yourself 100 percent, when you honor yourself, and you never do anything against yourself —
when finally you are that way, then you will attract the right man. And because you have such high
respect for yourself you will respect him. But also, you will not allow him to disrespect or dishonor you.
In this way, the relationship will become completely different than those you have had before, because
you don't have the need to control the other out of jealousy or insecurity about yourself.

When you love that way, you allow your beloved to be whatever he is. You don't need to impose. You
won't feel hurt that he is not what you want him to be. You'll accept him just the way he is. You'll love
him the way he is, and even more. You will love him because of what he is.
But you have to present yourself honestly. Try to be what you really are, and don't pretend to be what
you are not just to get him. You'll also be able to see what he projects on you. And you'll get the
opportunity to be yourself even though you might want to meet his expectations just because you like
him.

Let's say you and a partner play doubles tennis. It would be fun if your partner allowed you to play
freely instead of trying to control the way you play or criticizing you every time you made a mistake.
Your teammate is not your enemy. No. You both are working together for the same cause.

In order to make it easier for the student I mentioned before, I told her, ''There are two kinds of humans
— the humans that are like flies, and the humans that are like bees. Bees Love honey. Flies like poo.''
And I asked her, ''What kind of human being are you.'' She said, ''I'm like honey.'' I said, ''If you behave
like honey, the bees will come to you. If you behave like poo the files will come to you.'' And she said,
''Now I've got it — okay — it's so simple — I need to become honey. And if I become honey, a bee who
only Loves honey will come to me.'' And I said, ''Honey is Love, and poo is all that emotional poison.
Who wants that? Only flies.''

So you have a man that you love, and you say, ''Ah, honey, I love you so much, take my poo!'' That's
what we do when we send our jealousy, envy, or anger to the one that we love. Why in the world would
we want to give that to someone that we love?

Or what if someone says that they love us, and they project envy or jealousy or self-righteousness, or
try to control the way we walk or the way we talk — wow, this is a fly, really.

We have to be so clear with what we want. Then the perfect match is honey and a bee. If we have
awareness we can see that clearly. But without awareness there is no way we can see that. We can
behave like poo or we can behave like honey. With this choice, everything can change.

Diane: One of the things that made an impact on me from your first book, The Four Agreements[4],
was what you said about being abusive to ourselves.

Don Miguel: I said that you will not allow anyone to abuse you more than you abuse yourself. If
somebody abuses you more than you abuse yourself, you will leave. But if someone abuses you just a
little less, you'll stay, because you believe that you deserve it.

The more you love yourself, the less tolerant you become of abuse from others. When you love
yourself, you will not allow anyone to abuse you.

Diane: Do you think that we also test ourselves a little bit to make sure we've learned our lesson?

Don Miguel: Life is an eternal test, so we don't need to consciously test ourselves. It comes to us in
the form of a lover or a friend or our own mother or our own children. The test is always there. Then
with our reactions, we can make sure of our evolution. We will no longer say yes when we want to say
no.

Diane: Do you feel hopeful and optimistic about the human race?

Don Miguel: Oh, definitely. Yes. We are evolving very beautifully. It will take some time — a few
generations into the future — but we are going in the right direction. There is nothing to be concerned
about. If we survived the Middle Ages, if we survived the Inquisition, we will survive the rest. Humanity
is getting better and better. Yes, there is still war and injustice and violence — but it's changing.

Diane: Thank you, Don Miguel.