Don Miguel Ruiz Jr.

Lewis Howes:              This is 5-Minute Friday!!

Welcome, everyone, to The School of Greatness Podcast! Very excited about our guest, had an incredible time connecting with Don Miguel Ruiz.

For those who don’t know who Don Miguel is, he’s a Toltec master of transformation. He is a direct descendant of the Toltecs of the Eagle Night lineage, and the son of Don Miguel Ruiz, the author of The Four Agreements. And by combining the wisdom of his family’s traditions with the knowledge gained from his own personal journey, he now helps others realise their own path to personal freedom.

Don Miguel Ruiz:         First, they see themselves as who they are. They can’t go back on the past and change a yes into a no, or a no to a yes, because life no longer exists in the past, so it only exists in my mind, and it probably didn’t happen the way I think it happened. But I can’t go back there. This is a result of that consequence and this is the result of who I am.

Now, true justice is paying for something once. Injustice, paying it over and over and over again. So, from that point of view, why am I continuing to judge myself? Why am I continuing to feel this guilt? And it’s because I haven’t forgiven myself. I accept the truth, but I haven’t forgiven myself.  And, to me, to forgive ourselves is to accept the truth and let it go. What I mean by that, is to learn from it.

Now, sometimes we continue to punish ourself because we’re still attached to that domestication. Like I said before, domestication is a system of reward and punishment by which we model the behaviour of an individual. If we live up to the expectation, we get the reward, and if we don’t live up to the expectation, we get the punishment.

And since part of our perception is emotions, that reward feels like acceptance, which feels like love, which means, when we don’t live up the expectation and we get the punishment, well, the punishment is our rejection, our judgement, and we don’t get love. It’s the lack thereof and it’s the way we learn conditional love. That’s how we begin to love ourselves conditionally.

So most of the time we continue to judge ourselves over and over, because we are still not living up to that image. And here’s the thing: that image doesn’t exist, it’s an illusion. And we still judge ourselves compared to this image that doesn’t exist. So, we’re still looking at ourselves not as who we really are at this very moment, we’re still chasing this elusive carrot, that, as soon as we get it, we’re worthy of love.

And until we get it, we can’t forgive ourselves and that, to some people, it’s a motivator and they drive through that obsession. But when you realise that that’s just and illusion, and then you realise you’re never going to reach it, because that guy, that girl, never existed. It was someone’s point of view projected onto us. A mask projected onto us, and we believed it.

And when we realise that we’re not that, when we realise that that image, nothing exists, then, what is the truth? Well, the person who I am at this very moment. I am not my past, I am not my future, this is the only place where I am able to express my will, this present moment. This present moment that moves with me from the moment I am born until the moment I die. So, this is me. Flaws and all.

So, what we can say from that point of view, is, say, “Reset the starting point. This is the starting point. This is me at this very moment.” So, all those times, okay, I forgive myself because I didn’t know what I was doing. Which is the truth, it’s like Christ says, “Forgive them, Father, they do not know what they do.” Well, forgive me, Father, I didn’t know what I was doing. Or you can say, “Forgive me, Miguel,” in my case, “I didn’t know what I was doing.” But now I’m aware of it, and I’m going to learn from it, and I’m not going to repeat the mistake and that’s the lesson learned.

So, I’m no longer going to use that spur to motivate me to become something I’m not. Because I forgive myself for ever saying yes to it. So, you can say, from that point of view, a judgement is just simply that instrument by which I try to mould myself to being something I wasn’t. As soon as I become aware of that, I can forgive myself for ever doing that.

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