Don Miguel Ruiz: The Toltec Art of Life and Death

I once didn’t understand any of this. I once thought of myself as poor, and rejected, and victimized, and little by little, I expanded my awareness what it meant to be Barbara and how I could make that literally my art. Not my identity but my art. This is a chance through her words, through her speech, through her beliefs, and through her ability to love, to make something wonderful out of matter. So, little by little, the awareness expands. Only if we want it that way. If we want to be compressed into a very small idea of ourselves, then that’s okay too. There’s no good or bad to this. There’s no reason in any of spiritual teaching, to reject or to disrespect another human being. They deserve all of the respect we can give them for being alive. For being that wonderful reflection, Miguel was talking about — the Truth. However, we think how corrupt that reflection is, that is no excuse to disrespect or disregard the value of any other human being.

OMTimes: Miguel, we’ve been speaking about life, love, and death. What does love mean to you?

Don Miguel Ruiz: The love that we learn is exactly the opposite of what love really is. Unconditional love is, think of something between gratitude and generosity.

When you remember having your baby, you just love it without conditions. Also, in interactions with others, when you receive, you have the gratitude for what you receive, and that triggers generosity in you. What others receive from you, they also create their own generosity, and we can see that we can rise in love.

Now we find inspiration. And with the inspiration you find yourself. You will find what you really are. You find that unconditional love, which is to live inspired all of the time. And this is what love really is.

OMTimes: Is there anything you would like to add to our conversation?

Don Miguel Ruiz: I would like to invite everybody to help change the world. I refer to entire humanity and the story we create. The only world we can change is our own. And the way to change our world, is not to change the secondary character, but to change the main character. If everybody would do this, how beautiful would that be?!