Miguel Ángel Ruiz
Mexican writer and philosopher
Miguel Ángel Ruiz (born August 27, 1952), more famous as Don Miguel Ruiz, is a Mexican shaman, teacher, and author, most famous for his work The Four Agreements.
Quotes
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- I change my story by changing what I believe about myself. When I clean up the lies I believe about myself, the lies I believe about other people change. Every time I change myself, my whole story changes to adapt to the new main character.
The Four Agreements (1997)
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- Be Impeccable with Your Word. Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.
- Don't Take Anything Personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.
- Don't Make Assumptions. Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.
- Always Do Your Best. Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.
The Mastery of Love (1999)
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- You have the power to create. Your power is so strong that whatever you believe comes true. You create yourself, whatever you believe you are. You are the way you are because that is what you believe about yourself. Your whole reality, everything you believe, is your creation. You have the same power as any other human in the world. The main difference between you and someone else is how you apply your power, what you create with your power.
- Ch.1 - p.8 [Page numbers per the 1999 Amber-Allen Publishing, Inc. paperback]
- In every relationship there are two halves of that relationship. One half is you, and the other half is your son, your daughter, your father, your mother, your friend, your partner. Of those halves, you are only responsible for your half; you are not responsible for the other half.
- Ch.4 - p.66
- Love is not about concepts; love is about action.
The only way to master love is to practice love. You don't need to justify your love, you don't need to explain your love; you just need to practice your love.- Ch.4 - p.71
- Relationship is an art. To keep the two of you happy, you have to keep your half perfect. You are responsible for your half, and your half has a certain amount of garbage. Your garbage is your garbage. The one who has to deal with that garbage is you, not your partner.
And it's the same with your partner's half. Your partner has a certain amount of garbage. Knowing your partner has garbage, you allow her to deal with her own garbage. You are going to love her and accept her with all of her garbage. You are going to respect her garbage. You are not in a relationship to clean your partner's garbage; she is going to clean her own.
Even if your partner asks for your help, you have the choice to say no. Saying no doesn't mean you don't love or accept your partner; it means you are not able or you don't want to play that game.- Ch.5 - p.85-86
- There are people who say, "I want to change, I really want to change. There is no reason for me to be so poor. I am intelligent. I deserve to live a good life, to earn much more money than I earn." They know this, but that is what their mind is telling them. What do these people do? They go and turn the television on and spend hours and hours watching it. Then how strong is their will?
Once we have awareness, we have a choice. If we could have that awareness all the time, we could change our routines, change our reactions, and change our entire life. Once we have the awareness, we recover free will.
Becoming aware is about being responsible for your own life. You are not responsible for what is happening in the world. You are responsible for yourself.- Ch.7 - p.110-111
The Voice of Knowledge (2004)
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- If I see a tree, I don't just see the tree; I qualify the tree, I describe the tree, I have an opinion about the tree. I like the tree or I don't like the tree. I may feel that the tree is beautiful or not, but my point of view, my opinion about the tree, is a story of my own creation. Once I interpret, qualify, or judge what I perceive, it is no longer real; it is a virtual world. This is what the Toltec call dreaming.
The Toltec believe that humans are living in a dream.
You are dreaming your life in this moment. You live in the story that you create, and I live in the story that I create. Your story is your reality — a virtual reality that is only true for you, the one who creates it.
Long ago, somebody said, "Every head is a world," and it's true. You live in your own world, and that world is so private. Nobody knows what you have in your world. Only you know, and sometimes even you don't know.- Ch.4, 'A night in the desert' - p.49, 51 [Page numbers per the 2004 Amber-Allen Publishing, Inc. paperback edition (Don Miguel Ruiz with Janet Mills)]
- If one hundred people perceive the same event, you hear one hundred different stories, and everybody claims that his or her story is the true story. Of course, it's only true for that person, and your story is only true for you.
What we share with one another is just our perception; it is just our point of view. And it's completely normal because the only thing we have is our point of view.
You know, the way we create our stories is very interesting. We have a tendency to distort everything we perceive to make it agree with what we already believe; we "fix it" to make it agree with our lies. It is amazing how we do this.
With awareness, we recover the control of our story. That is the good news. If we don't like our story, we are the authors; we can change it.- Ch.5, 'The storyteller' - p.70-71, 71, 72, 77.
- You don't need internal dialogue; you can know without thinking. The value of cultivating a silent mind has been known for thousands of years. In India, people use meditation and the chanting of mantras to stop the internal dialogue. To have peace in your head is incredible. The moment the noise stops, you notice the silence and feel the relief, "Ahhh..." When the voice in your head finally stops talking, it feels something like that. I call it inner peace.
- Ch.6, 'Inner peace' - p.89
- Common sense is wisdom, and wisdom is different from knowledge. You are wise when you no longer act against yourself. You are wise when you live in harmony with yourself, with your own kind, with all of creation.
- Ch.8, 'Common sense and blind faith' - p.138
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If you practice doing your best, very soon it becomes a habit. When doing your best becomes a habit, everything is a set up for you to always be happy.
- To be aware is to see what is truth, to see everything the way it is, not the way we want it to be to justify what we already believe. The mastery of awareness is the first mastery of the Toltec, and we can also call it the mastery of truth. First you need to be aware that the voice in your head is always telling you a story. You are dreaming all the time. It is true that you perceive, but the way the storyteller justifies, explains, and makes assumptions about what you perceive is not the truth; it's just a story.
Next, you need to have the awareness that the voice of the storyteller in your head is not necessarily your voice.
Finally, you need to practice awareness until you master awareness. When you master awareness as a habit, you always see life the way it is, not the way you want to see it.- Ch.9, 'Transforming the storyteller' - p.153, 154
- Doing your best is about trusting in yourself and trusting in creation, the force of life. You set a goal and go for it 100 percent without any attachment to attaining it.
I encourage you to take responsibility for every decision you make in life.
If you practice doing your best, very soon it becomes a habit.
When doing your best becomes a habit, everything is a set up for you to always be happy.- Ch.9, 'Transforming the storyteller' - p.157, 158
The Fifth Agreement (2010)
edit- The Fifth Agreement : A Practical Guide to Self-Mastery
- Be Skeptical, but Learn to Listen.
- Respect is one of the greatest expressions of love. If other people try to write your story, it means they don't respect you. They consider that you're not a good artist who can write your own story, even though you were born to write your own story.
