DON MIGUEL RUIZ JR.- TOLTEC MASTER & AUTHOR

I am super excited to have on with me today Don Miguel Ruiz Jr., Oh! Here he is... Hello! Good morning!

Good morning! How are you, yes!...look what happens when you stay in your lane...lol... Yes, thank you for having me, I hope that you are having fun. I really am having fun, I love it. I had your brother last week, and I was so hyped. So I only had one cafecito this morning... Wow! I am on my second... I forgot to tell your brother last week that I also have your book, ‘Mastery of Love’ - I am rereading it. And I have ‘The Fifth Agreement’. Half of my library are the Ruiz’s family books, I am such a nerd when it comes to this.

First, congratulations on being a 2021 Walden Award Nominee, how does that feel (that accomplishment...

It feels good. It is a beautiful honor I was happy, it is the result of a lot of hard work, and not just mine, but all of us. The people who help me - my brother, Jose Ruiz, my dad, my brother Leo who is the boss, he organizes everything. Also Natalie, Karla, and Aaron, it is a team project we all help each other out. That award belongs to all of us. I am very grateful to all of them and I am grateful to the people that nominated me. It is nice, for me it is a green light for me to continue to work..

That is awesome, I think when you are so happy that you just do a ‘hair flip’...was that a ‘hair flip’ moment for you...Yes! Exactly!!! Just bring it back (with both hands)...or really like a rub!...yes! I like that!!!

It brings me to my next question, your book ‘The Mastery of  Self ’, I am obsessed. In my opinion it is a deeper explanation of ‘The Four Agreements’, and ‘The Fifth Agreement’ , I just thought that it went a lot deeper. Can you explain why you decided to go a little deeper, and dive into the Dream of the Planet with this book...

Sure. Well, the book ‘The Mastery of Self’ came out of a tangent from my first book, ‘The Five Levels of Attachment’. It helps describe how we get attached, from my grandmother’s teachings of whether you control knowledge, or does knowledge control you. So as I was going up the levels of attachments, as I described it...then my dad was like ‘good, now how are you going to get down’. Which is the tough part, because it is how are you going to apply everything to detach. So as I was going from level three, identity, to level two, preference, I started going off on this tangent.

My publisher was like ‘wait you are breaking the cycle, put that aside and let’s finish this and we will go back to this later’. So almost as soon as I finished writing ‘ The Five Levels of Attachment’, I began writing ‘The Mastery of Self’ from that tangent. 

Even thought I was born into this family, I have done the work. The biggest lie I could tell myself would be, I am a Ruiz this is automatic I don't have to do anything. I requires a lot of work and a lot of processing.  When I was 27, or 26 years old is when I really began applying it (the teachings) in my life; even though I was an apprentice of my grandmother since I was 14 years old.

I began to do this work to self heal, to recover and to let go of a lot of my domestication. But a lot of my own image of what I thought that I was suppose to be, and not to be something that I am not. I began this journey, and it feels good. When you finish this inner journey with yourself, then you say ‘now what’. I still live in a community, I do not live in an Ashram, or a Monastery, I do not live by myself on a hill. I am part of a community how do I stay in my discipline as I begin to engage my everyday life.

That image at the beginning of the book - being that only sober person in a party where everyone else is drunk. You know imagine you do this process, this journey; and you have that...well it is like the imagery of sobriety, and you are like this feels good. But you are still in a party where everyone is at different stages of their attachments I would say.

The people in this party are everyone that you love - people you work with, your family, your friends, and beloveds. Now imagine you are in this party and you are talking to two people, the one to your left in the party has had a drink that they have been nursing for a long time, and barely sipping it...and he is barely buzzed. It is almost like a party favor that they are nursing. Yes, too look like they are not different. Now the person to the right has had their third or fourth bottle of wine.  They have already blacked out but they are still functioning.

It is crazy and scary to know someone that can black out and still function, it is scary. Imagine these two people, and everyone in the party are between these two people. Some of them with every drink they take their personality changes, you might be talking to them and they say ‘oh no that is too much, give me the water or the coffee’. Then they start to change in front of you, they start to sober up.

Everyone is there and starting to go up and down their integration, with the alcohol and spirits; now let's just translate that into awareness. Everyone is in different stages - you have your fanaticism, you have your people with the attachments, level five attachment, level four - internalization and they domesticate themselves, level three - identity, level two - preference; level one authenticate themself. Everyone is going up and down the different levels of attachment. They are on their own personal journey.

So you have that, and how are you going to engage, what are you going to do? Are you going to engage in the drama of the party by grabbing a drink and nursing it once in awhile? Then you realize if you take one sip then the person on the left will kind of be like ‘oh wow that tastes good’. And that is a slippery slope. So from that point of view it is a slippery slope, how are you going to stay in your discipline, how are you going to engage?  

For me that is the premise from ‘The Mastery of Self’, it comes from the moment when I take off that mask of who I thought that I was. That identity, that image, that is all what an identity is...it is a symbol with a definition. It is when I get to know myself through the experience of being me, experience of being alive and how I want to engage, and how I want to manifest things.

To me The Mastery of Self is very simply when I stop pretending to be something that I am not, and I accept myself for who I am. Basically I am this living being, I do not need this identity to know who I am, I know who I am. And how do I engage in the world. To describe what the Dream of the Planet is, it is describing a party. The main function of my mind is too dream, that is what we know as the individual dream.

Very basically my father would put it this way...if I am the voice that is talking inside of my own mind, who is listening? I am. Well, if I am the one who is listening who is talking, Miguel? I am the one talking. That voice that I hear when I am thinking, that is me. So that relationship, that metaphor of my brain and my mind, my mind and my heart. That experience, that inner dialogue that we have is the individual dream. And we call it a dream, because the main function of the mind is the dream; which is to perceive and too project. And I see it from a single minded perception that is me. 

Now as I have said before I do not live alone, I am a part of a community, with about approximately 8 billion people. And each one with their own individual dream, everyone in their own journey. When we come together we bring all of us - society, culture, community, family. Whatever term you give it to understand it, it is all of us coming together to create our civilization. Our language, our values and all of these things that we want to create. I can't control it, I can only control to the tips of my fingers. I can't control your perception, I can't control your will. I only control my perception, and my own will. 

How do I co-create, how do I engage...how do I do it while staying in the discipline of my own awareness. So it is the moment that I put into practice everything that I have learned to heal, and to heal my relationships. Also within my own individual journey, because I cannot give what I do not have. If I have disharmony within me, then all of my relationships will be in disharmony.

It will be the creation of domestication, conditioning, or conditional love. When I heal that within me, then that is what I am able to offer.

I become the constant opportunity for unconditional love in all my relationships, for awareness and harmony, peace, respect...that is what I can give, once I have that for myself. And that is where ‘The Mastery of Self’ came in...and everything that I said is the tangent. No! It is all so amazing...I am like keep going. I do write my books like that, from tangents...then I just copy and paste and move them around.

That is my creative process, it flows...and sometimes tangents come. You look at the tangents, and sometimes they go nowhere; then sometimes they lead to something and this lead to ‘The Mastery of Self’. Which now leads to my next book, ‘The Mastery of Life’. And it continues on that basis of - what now? I have done this personal journey, how do I apply that in my life now? 

Your whole family is pure love, and I am going to be mellow...because you have just jumped and talked about how you write, lol. We are just going to just switch it up.... I did read your email that you sent...lol, but that is how my brain is...I see it, and then my brain just starts to process it...and it is like that, lol.

Now that brings me to your other book that I love, ‘ The Seven Secrets to Healthy, Happy Relationships’. You kind of touch on with ‘The Mastery of Self’, then love as an attachment. This book is to me like...you do you, and however you want to connect deeper to people - here is a tutorial on how to do it. For me personally, I am shy and like to sometimes keep things superficial. I would like to say that your guide makes it super easy, and I would say that it is transformative, if you commit to it. It is the most freeing thing. My question is why did you decide to write this book, and how have these steps helped in your own life....

Well, in ‘The Seven Secrets to Healthy, Happy Relationships’, that book started when my dear friend, Heather invited me to work with her. She is my dear friend, my ink sister, and we work together. I had just finished ‘The Mastery of Self’, and I just finished something in my own life. When I wrote this book I had just finished this journey of healing with someone that I loved, my first love, and someone that I loved very much. 

You can say that my brother and my dad had their aha moment in different ways. My dad had an accident that made him go , aha what is this? My brother had his aha moment when he went blind after a dental procedure, some nerve was hit, but he recovered. For me my aha moment came when I lost someone that I loved very much. Remember when I said that I didn't really start the practice until I was about 26, or 27 years old. Well it was from when I lost someone that I really loved.

When I was young I was taught, and believed that the best way to get over a relationship is to get into a new relationship. You don't do any of the process of healing, just find someone new. So it becomes like a freight train, all of this stuff that you do not work on just keeps getting bigger and bigger. It is the equivalent of carrying this corpse of who you were, it is heavy and infecting every relationship that you have. With every relationship it just piles it back on, like that freight train analogy. 

Then there is that moment of heartbreak...it was 2002, my dad suffered a massive heart attack; and my brother and I broke up. And I could not project blame at that moment in time, it was all me. One of the biggest heartbreaks was that I was pretending to be something that I was not. That image that I had of myself did not exist. Also causing so much blame, projecting so much blame, and not owning any blame. This came at a high cost.

My dad wrote ‘The Four Agreements’, when I was 21 years old.  At that moment (when I was 21years old) I picked it up, and put it down after about chapter three; because it was my dad telling me what to do all over again. That is the thing when you grow up in a family of healers...and your dad is Don Miguel Ruiz...I am thinking that he is trying to domesticate me, and it is the whole power struggle and structure of father and son.

When that happened I picked up the book like everyone else had, and I used it to heal myself. I began the process, that was the moment that you can say that I began to apply everything that I had learned. I did this inner work, I stopped dating for a whole year and took that time to heal. When I emerged I felt so confident, I learned to say no, and it meant something. I didn't have to say yes to feel validated, to feel accepted, I can say no and even to the people that I love. 

My teacher once taught me don't waste your time on ‘potential’. I always thought don't waste your time on a ‘wanna be, or a pretender, find quality from the get go’. That is just domestication all over again. I realized that is not what my teacher meant. What was meant was, don't waste your time with someone that doesn't want to be with you, be with someone that does (want to be with you). Do not waste your time with someone that doesn't love you, or who doesn't accept you for who you are. I then realized, it is not their job to accept me for who I am, it is my job. Don't waste my own ‘potential’.

Then I met my wife. I met her one day, we kissed the next day, and we have been together for 17 years. You know I am going to do a hair flip for that... Yes! I had done the work and when I was done, I met my wife. We heal a lot of stuff. Social media also contributed to my input in ‘The Seven Secrets to Healthy, Happy Relationship’, it was MySpace (the social media). I was reconnecting with my friends from high school, college, and there she was the name of my first love.

So I sent the request and she accepted. We (my family) went to San Diego to meet her and her family. We all hit it off. For a good number of years we hung out and all had a good time, her husband is a good guy. Then one day I went to San Diego on the eve of my first marathon, and she and I were talking...and then I apologized. For everything that I did. I learned the difference between guilt and remorse.

Guilt is punishing yourself over and over again for something that you wanted to do. And every time that you think about it you judge yourself. And punishing yourself over and over. Here is the thing, if life gave me the chance to do it again, I would do it again. That is what guilt is.

Remorse on the other hand is I see the ripple effect of my actions, and how that impacted others’ lives. Not from an evil point of view, but how I took an action and I hurt this person. You can say that it is the first time that I heard her, and I listened to her. It was the first time that I saw her as a human being, not as the girlfriend with all of the expectations that come with being domesticated. I heard her and listened to her, and I apologized to her, and asked for forgiveness. 

The key is this, if life would give me the chance to do it again - I would not do it again. Not that I got caught, or whatever. But I know that the consequences are not worth it, because it is not worth it to hurt someone. That is what remorse is, I own my actions. That is the lesson that I learned in my life.

She also shared with me her side, and something that my 18 year old self would have loved to hear - that she loved me very much.  The people that benefited from that of course was not just she and I, but my wife. That old wound is no longer infecting my present relationship in this moment. I am very grateful to my wife for giving me that much trust. Yes! I was going to say she must be a saint. 

From that point of view it is the four secrets of healing. The original title of the book was ‘ The Soul of Intimacy’. Imagine a lotus flower that we call intimacy, and sometimes that lotus flower closes because of so many wounds, and so many things that we are not protecting. The more you heal these wounds the more that you open up. It opens because you have to trust, you allow yourself to enjoy - which is the fifth secret. Basically healing and joy allow that ability to trust again, and love blossoms where trust exists. When this happens the channels of communication open up. You are no longer protecting whatever wound that you have. 

Communication is what allows us to heal because we listen to each other. You are not listening when you are talking to someone and you finish what you are saying; then it is the other persons turn to talk, you are thinking about what you are going to say when it is your turn to talk again. You are not listening, because you are focusing not only on what you are going to say, but on processing and interpreting  what the person is saying. You are not really listening, and being present.  So often for us to get there it requires for us to heal those wounds that intimacy blocks. It comes from unhealed wounds.

When Heather asked me to participate in this project, ‘The Art of Showing Up’, which is an audio book with Sounds True; and with ‘The Seven Secrets to Healthy, Happy Relationships’ - they are the same project with different titles. That is what I brought to the table, that experience, that journey. That is the part where me and my first love healed that relationship, that allowed me to heal all of my relationships. That is the thing sometimes we have that one wound that impacts everything after it. Only because we never healed that wound. Letting it go, is what allowed me to heal the past that which allowed me to heal my present. 

The Seven Secrets to Healthy, Happy Relationships’ is written in that one voice, not in a he say she say voice. My publisher did a great job in morphing all into that one voice, a voice that goes between both genders and experiences to explain different concepts and viewpoints. It is that commitment, awareness, and freedom - these are the foundational secrets that allows me to honor that commitment to myself. 

I am the only constant in every relationship that I am in, every person comes and goes, but the only person that I will know for all of my life will be me. So the commitment is within me, to let go of my commitment to conditional love, domestication, the judge, and the victim. To learn what are my triggers.  Allowing me to be free of my own domestication that is the journey. That is what we learned from practicing ‘The Four Agreements’. 

This is the foundational work that we do within ourselves, and once we have that, we are able to give that to our beloveds. I can't give what I do not have.

©DONMIGUELRUIZJR.

I love that you are open, and that you have said that even you have had to work with yourself. We would all think that it would come easy and natural to you...but you being open, and real it helps us with our journey. So if we are reading it or just starting out it does take time so it is good to know that... Yes, it is a process. Being the eldest of my father’s children, it is three of us - me, Jose, and Leo. I remember Doctor Miguel Ruiz, I remember Apprentice Miguel Ruiz, and I know Don Miguel Ruiz. All three stages of that evolution - Doctor Miguel Ruiz was a domesticator he expected straight A’s, then he had his aha moment. Then he began to become the Apprentice, which he began to process it all, then he became Don Miguel.

In my case each stage of those awareness within his life was different and how he parented me. Dr. Miguel Ruiz was the domesticator, Apprentice Miguel Ruiz was a hybrid, and Don Miguel Ruiz was - let me set up an experience for you to learn. It was all a journey.

We are all at different stages, it is not a race, it's a marathon; that we go at our own pace, we are not competing against anyone. Or comparing ourselves to anyone, and is part of the reason why I used ‘The Mastery of Self’, it is the journey that I am in and enjoying where I am at. So all of us are at different stages.

I touched on it last week with your brother Jose when we talked last week, you and your family created a fourth month program - The Path to Authenticity. What is your favorite part of the program, and what do you love most working with your family...

It is also Aaron and Karla who for me really created it, me, my brother and my dad we are the talking heads in front of the camera. Aaron and Karla, my cousin Karla Ruiz, they created this structure that allows us to teach not just virtually but engaging with everyone. We report the lessons, Aaron who has been working with my father since the 90’s understands it so he begins to put the structure in. We do lives on Sundays and Thursdays. 

On Thursday’s we focus on answering questions from the group, and engaging that group. Then on Sunday’s it’s the lectures with me, Jose, and my dad live. So it is a combination of pre-recorded, and live.  My favorite part is the live part, we get to answer and engage these questions, comments. Sometimes you get to hear my answer, then my brothers and my dad. Then sometimes we just build upon each other what we are saying and that is the fun part. 

The gem is that it is all family, it is a family interaction that we come together to create something that is beneficial to everyone that wants to hear it. Once again my favorite part is engaging my family, and working together.

What is your favorite meditation and practice that you do to start your day...    

Well, in my case at this stage in my life, my favorite way to start my day is to being of service - my kids. Me and my wife wake up at 5:30 a.m. every morning and we get up to get both of our kids ready for school; now mind you they are both high schoolers.  My son is special needs, he has autism so we help him a bit more. My wife and I have this structure, she goes down and preps their breakfast and makes their lunches. I go up and help Alejandro wake up, process, get dressed; I prompt him by guiding and reminding him through these stages.

I get dressed, go downstairs and help my wife where I can along the process. Reminding Alejandro that the bus is almost here to take him to school. Then I take my daughter, we get her best friend and go to school, and then I get back. Sometimes I have my cafecito like today, or sometimes I go workout - go for a run, kickboxing, or lifting weights. 

It is a brief moment to myself before I go back to service, getting ready for when they come back from school. And being there for them. Right now my main intent, priority is my family - being there for my wife and kids. Helping my wife in anyway that I can, being there for my kids, and for my mom who lives next door. Engaging with my mom, giving her something to do. It is hard to be honest with you to allow her to pamper me. That is my main job.

Writing books, doing this interview, presentations that is my side project. It is my passion and my purpose, and it is fun. What allows me to set my intentions everyday is making sure my kids are okay, my wife is okay - I am holding space for the people that I love. 

©DONMIGUELRUIZJR.

Oh! ...I love it, you and your family are simply amazing. Thank you for your time and presence....