don Jose Ruiz: The Ancestral Knowledge of Power Animals

don Jose Ruiz has dedicated his life to sharing the ancient Toltec wisdom by translating it into practical, everyday life concepts that promote transformation through truth, love, and common sense. don Jose Ruiz has now collaborated with his father don Miguel Ruiz on The Fifth Agreement which offers a fresh perspective on the Four Agreements and a powerful new agreement for transforming our lives into our personal heaven. His latest work is Shamanic Power Animals.

An Interview with don Jose Ruiz: The Ancestral Knowledge of Power Animals

don Jose Ruiz was born in Mexico City, Mexico, and was raised in Tijuana, Mexico. When he was 21, he came to live in the U.S. with his father, don Miguel Ruiz. From an incredibly young age, don Jose was guided by many teachers present in his life, including his mother and father, grandmother Sarita, and several other Naguals. Through masterful guidance by his teachers and amazing life experiences with precision synchronicity, Jose came to ‘silent knowledge’; he witnessed the World as it is, without any story. In his early twenties, don Jose lost his eyesight. In his process of surrendering, he discovered the value of learning to listen. To listen to his inner wisdom and integrity and to see different perspectives while knowing nothing is personal. As a result, he had a renewed love and gratitude for life ~ and he found acceptance, happiness, and abundance; he found bliss. He grasped a true understanding of faith, love, gratitude, and humility. Through his surrender and faith, in concert with modern medicine, Jose recovered his eyesight.

OMTimes: Why Power Animals? Tell us a bit of your Book, the spiritual messages of Nature’s kingdom, and the inspiration behind its creation.

don Jose Ruiz: Power animals are very important in the Toltec tradition. I dedicate my books to them because they are artists that need to be acknowledged. We get inspiration from them. They inspire us to create our inner art. Sometimes people can get inspired by songs or someone else’s art, but the animal kingdom, Nature’s kingdom, is one of the most powerful ways to become inspired. It’s the purest there is. There is no agenda. No knowledge corrupts the animal’s mind, and they are just pure. They see life for what it is. So I get inspired by the animal kingdom and the creation they make, they remind me that I might be human, but I am an animal too. I’m a domesticated animal. I have all It knowledge inside my head, and I also created and allowed a parasite to share my mind space. That parasite takes the inspiration out of me because I use it against myself. And when I look at animals and notice they just love, it inspires me to be the same. If they do something out of instinct, they do not punish themselves. They don’t feel guilt or shame like we humans do.

So in It Book, I give gratitude for the animal kingdom’s messages that remind me of who and what I am.

I’m an animal with instincts, love, tenderness, and the ability to survive anything that comes my way. In my personal dream, I used the rattlesnake as an example to control my emotional poison. When the rattlesnake is young, he cannot control his poison. He bites and fights from fear, but when he matures, he learns to control its poison, and that’s where I am now trying to control my “poison.” The second power animal that I have is the bat. The bat leaps and sees through sound and vibration. There was a point in my life where blindness occurred from an illness, and I temporarily lost my vision. Although losing my sight showed me that I could not see myself, to begin with, it taught me to feel my vibration and guide and trust myself.

I learned to live in the dark, the uncomfortable, to trust myself, that I was my light. The third power animal that I resonate with is the Jaguar. It is very special to me because it takes care of the jungle. My mind is my jungle. It is where my Jaguar lives. The Jaguar stalks lives and protects. It is how I have learned to “roam” now in my mind, like a jaguar. Power animals are the biggest reflection of divinity for the Toltecs. The shamanic path is to live our lives in the service of love. Power animals are great teachers to teach It to us.

OMTimes: In your book, you say the animals can be healers. Can you explain a little about that?

don Jose Ruiz: I truly believe that animals can be healers. I have an example of that. I shared about the point in my life that I went blind. I lost my sight for over three weeks. It is when I got the inspiration I call the “healing medicine” from the bat. The bat can listen to sound and vibration to guide itself, trusting its instinct to navigate. The teaching of the bat helped me when I was temporarily blind. First, I experienced the parasite in my mind, what is happening, the worry, and resistance. Then, I see my loved ones, especially my mother, feeling sorry for me, feeling bad. She was hurting herself with my blindness.

I attempted to comfort my mother, saying, “it’s okay, mother.” As I comforted her pain, I began feeling my vibration saying, “it IS okay,” and that I do not want It message of negativity and pain. I became aware that these things happening with my blindness and the sadness around me made me a victim. I noticed things I never saw before, I did not see clearly, but I could see myself clearer now, even more so than when I had my site. The darkness allowed me to hear myself, hear my vibration, and I can honor that. The bat became my medicine because Its spirit animal began guiding me. I used the gift of the bat to begin to expand on my hearing power and my power of feeling. I began to trust in these senses. In Its vibration, I even changed the way that I dream.

I saw what I could not see awake, in my sleep and dreams. I was not focused on what my eyes were telling me or were seeing. I started to focus on that it is not about seeing anymore. It is about feeling and hearing my experiences. If you do not want to see the truth in your life, you become like when the bat gets scared. It will start crashing against walls, looking for an escape. The times when I begin feeling It way like I have no freedom, I begin to panic. It is the moment I begin focusing on my breathing to calm myself, not to lose myself in reaction or panic, but to find trust in my sound and in my vibration to guide me out of that room or situation. I am so grateful that I learned these lessons when I was blind. When I got my eyesight back, I kept these lessons with me. It is something that the bat taught me, to have the awareness and gratitude to see not with eyes but feel the vibrational emotions, to let them guide you.

The way you are now, you are not guided by lies but by your truth. That is my healing medicine from the bat. It came when I needed it and taught me self-trust.

OMTimes: What is the role that The Dreamtime plays in understanding the Nagual Non-Human Behavior?

don Jose Ruiz: I always dream that I am walking with my puppy Yogi. No matter where I am in the dream when I look down, he is always there, he looks at me, and I remember that in Dreamtime, I have an ally. The behavior that my physical body has nothing to do with my dreaming mind. It is just an open perception that it is feeling. It begins to translate to me, and It is when my mind gets creative when listening to what the body is telling me. When you begin focusing your attention, when you sleep in your physical body, you notice that there is no physical body. There is just a memory. When you wake up and take the first breath of being awake, that is the energy of the night you are feeling. That is the gift that I experience personally in dream time. In dream time, you can experience the feeling as if you are a part of your physical body and life.

I wake up knowing that I am life, that my puppy and I are alive because I am life. But this body, along with my dog, helps me translate what I have in my heart and my human mind. I am made to create. Humans, we are creating the dream. Whatever our belief system is, we create a dream that will affect the planet and the animals. We are co-creating with one another. When we get out of the way of It, we stop being cancer on It earth. What do I mean by that? Well, cancer is anything that hurts the physical body. And the physical body is our self.

We begin hurting the planet. We hurt Nature. We, in turn, hurt ourselves. When we hurt ourselves, we become irritated, full of poison. We will say negative or hurtful things. That is why, for me, the dream time has taught me that I am like the body of my little puppy, that I am an animal. But I am also an energy, a Nagual energy that steps into It animal. And for the longest time, The animal ran free, guided primarily by the parasite in my mind. But the moment that my Spirit woke up in dream time and woke up in my life, that is when I was truly awake, feeling that energy from both places. I know that all the Toltec books that my family has written come from It perspective. The energy being put into words that are being read.