I recommend this book! I read it a long time ago – so long ago that it is no longer in my library, together with the cards that were created especially for it. I suspect that the energy of love pushed me to give them to someone… 🙂
Now I feel the urge to recommend it again, because our idea of what love is has been distorted by many false beliefs, and this seriously harms our ability to have fulfilling relationships – not only with others, but also with ourselves. The pain and fear we associate with love can be healed only if we change these beliefs and replace them with others that are closer to reality.
This book manages to do exactly that.
“Perhaps you have never thought about this, but on one level or another, we are all creators. We are creators because we have the power to create and direct our own lives.
Just as societies and religions around the world create powerful mythologies, we create our own personal mythology. Our personal mythology is populated by heroes and villains, angels and demons, kings and ordinary people. We create an entire population in our minds, including multiple identities for ourselves.
Then we adopt the image we will use in certain circumstances. We become masters of pretending and projecting identities, and we create what we believe we are. When we meet other people, we immediately classify them and assign them roles in our lives. We create images of others according to what we believe they represent. And we do the same with everything around us.
You have the power to create. Your power is so great that what you believe becomes your reality. You create yourself according to what you believe you are. You are what you are because this is what you believe about yourself. Your entire reality, everything you believe, is your creation.
You possess the same power as every other human being. The most important difference between you and others is how you use your power – what you create with it. You may resemble others in many ways, but no one else in the world lives life in the way that you do.
All your life you have lived in such a way as to be what you are. And you have done this so well that you have completely mastered what you believe you are. You have mastered your personality, your beliefs, every action and every reaction. You have practiced for years and reached such a level of mastery that you have become what you believe you are. Once we understand that we are all creators, we can see what kind of skill we have actually mastered.
When we are children and have a problem with someone, we get angry. For whatever reason, that anger pushes the problem away and we get what we want. It happens a second time – we react with anger – and now we know that if we get angry, we can remove the problem. Then we practice this again and again until we become masters of anger.
In the same way, we become masters of jealousy, sadness, and self-rejection. All our dramas are the result of this practice. We make an agreement with ourselves and practice it until we fully master it. The way we think, feel, and act becomes so routine that we no longer need to pay attention to what we are doing. The way we behave in certain situations becomes an instinctive reaction.
To become masters of love, we must practice love. The art of relationships is also a mastery, and the only way to achieve it is through practice. That is why, to master relationships, you must act – because this is not a matter of concepts or acquiring knowledge, but a matter of practice in action.
Of course, to act we need some understanding, or at least a little more awareness of the way human beings function.”
Don Miguel Ruiz, The Mastery of Love
For me, this book is a form of cognitive psychotherapy of the highest order. It brings clarity about how the human mind functions and how, through de-conditioning inherited beliefs, we can become conscious creators of our own lives.
The only thing that is required is to begin applying this knowledge in practice. And this is precisely where the real challenge lies – because an awake, conscious life requires constant attentiveness and inner honesty. Only the one who is willing to pay this price can transform from a victim of circumstances and other people into a true creator of their own destiny.
That person is you.
