Language of Love with Dr. Laura Berman - Learning to Love without Conditions: A Conversation with Don Miguel Ruiz, Jr.

Episode Date: September 1, 2021

On today’s episode of the “The Language of Love,” Dr. Laura Berman sits down with guest Don Miguel Ruiz, Jr. The world-renowned Toltec spiritual teacher and New York Times best-selling author of books like “The Five Levels of Attachment” recently hosted a shaman retreat which Dr. Berman attended, and on this new episode, they sit down to reconnect and reflect on love, healing, and living wholeheartedly and consciously even during this difficult time. Don Miguel Jr. (son of Don Miguel Ruiz, author of "The Four Agreements) recently wrote a groundbreaking book titled “The Seven Secrets to Healthy Happy Relationships,” and as he explains to Dr. Berman, the foundation of all of these secrets is unconditional love. “The difference between conditional and unconditional love, to me, is that conditional love only sees what it wants to see, and unconditional love is willing us to see life as it is, it is willing us to see the whole,” says Don Miguel. Don Miguel and Dr. Berman then delve into communication and the common issues that arise between couples, such as fights about money, parenting, sex, and other stressors. How can one apply the wisdom of unconditional love to rise above these arguments and instead approach their relationship in a more wholehearted and enlightened way? How can unconditional love be applied to these situations in a real, applicable way that couples can use in their daily lives? Don Miguel shares his wisdom and his tips for couples who are seeking to build a healthier and happier marriage, and how people can ‘defuse their triggers’ and learn to separate these arguments from their love for one another and the security of their relationship as a whole. Listen to his life-changing advice now! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey, I'm Dr. Laura Berman, a sex and relationship therapist. And for the past three decades, I've been helping people learn how to love and be loved better. That's what we're doing here on The Language of Love, where I get to answer calls and emails from people just like you. My goal with The Language of Love is to help you discover more meaningful emotional and physical intimacy and to help you build more awareness of how precious and sacred your sexuality really is. Be sure to email me or reach out with your very own love-sex relationship questions, and I might just answer them live on the air. It's time we all become fluent in the language of love. Hi, everyone. Welcome to the language of love with me, Dr. Laura Berman, joined by someone

really special. I'm so excited to introduce our guest this week's episode, Don Miguel Ruiz, Jr. Welcome. Hi, Laura. Thank you so much for having me on your show again. It's such an honor to be here. I'm very happy to have you. Don Miguel Ruiz, Jr. is a Toltec Master of Transformation direct descendant of the Toltecs, author of five books, including the topic that we're going to talk about today, his book that he wrote with Heather Ashimara called Seven Secrets to Healthy, Happy Relationships. And I don't know if you remember, do you like being called Miguel or Don Miguel? It's like people asking me, do I want to be called Dr. Laura or Laura? And I, what's your opinion on that? Well, I like being called, you know,

I usually tell people, it's like, yeah, you can introduce me first with Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. And then after that, just Miguel. Yeah, that's how I am. Yeah, it's the term of endearment. It's kind of like it allows us that intimacy. That's right. Into me see. So, Miguel, I don't know if you remember, but I was at your shaman's gathering in Sedona and I came up and introduced myself.

And actually, I gave you a copy of my book. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have it upstairs. So I went with two girlfriends and actually that was the first big community outing. I mean, I wasn't alone in that because I think a lot of people have been obviously isolating and this was one of the first big gatherings that a lot of people have attended. But for me, as I think I told you when I met you, my son, Sammy passed away six months ago. And so I was, so I went with these two beautiful soul sister girlfriends that were sort of girding me on both sides.

And we had this beautiful weekend with you all. And I actually posted, if you follow me on social media, I'm not, I know you don't follow me, but people listening, if you follow, you saw a lot of my posts from when I was there. And it was really beautiful. This was the first one I'd ever been to a shaman's gathering. I know you all sort of have been doing it every year, right? For the last five, six years, yes. Yeah, it was beautiful and very profound. And what I loved, I mean, obviously, all of the presentations and your wisdom that you all were sharing was really beautiful. But what really struck me, because I do a lot of events and I go to a lot of events, is the community of shaman and training, all the attendees. There was so many, I don't know if you saw because you were probably too busy working, but whenever you walked around campus, there were people making drum circles or dancing together or, you know, it was really a beautiful community. And I know that's in large part a testament to you and the other guides and teachers, you know, the community that you bring around you.

But I just wanted to compliment you on that, too, because I know you all have a huge part to do with the people you attract. yeah it's a wonderful community you know the uh randy davila with inside events does a great job with that project and mago retreat center in sedona they do a great job they they're a great tag team and then having all the teachers you know every every teacher there brings a different element to the event that allows us to commingle with one another you know it's like The people who follow Heather Ashamara, the people who follow Star Wolf, or myself, or everyone else in the panel, it's a wonderful mixture of approaches to self-healing, to love. And that's really, I thought, was powerful about the idea of shamanism. Just talk about this idea of shamanism. That sort of was the headline, I think, of the weekend, is that it's really about self-healing, right? It's about, how would you describe it? well no exactly that's it it's about healing you know for me a shaman is a healer and as you can

say that all ceremonies are have the intent or purposes of grounding in the sense of finding that experience that allows us to heal a wound in our being in our psyche in our all and whatever it is that is our self and we give ourselves that opportunity and what i remember telling everyone at the event is that you have different channels of different teachers here and look for the things that resonate with you that thing that resonates with us is the thing that allows us to not just relate but it speaks to a truth in us and that's what allows us to give ourselves the permission to heal so for me a shaman as a faith healer or even a doctor they're instruments for the patient to heal themselves. You know, I was born and raised in a family of healers, my father being

a medical doctor, my mom being a dentist, my grandmother being a faith healer, my grandfather being a faith healer, and uncles who are doctors as well. If anything, I've learned from watching the two different types of healing, you know, with Western medicine and non-traditional or traditional homeopathic and natural remedies healing is that patient uses the doctor the nurses the practitioner to heal themselves you know it's about being the willingness to heal yourself like i you know for example the doctor will set something up you know for example i just took my son to he had a toe infection and i took him to see his doctor the doctor you know prepared his toe made an incision to let all that pus out to clean the thing out and my son

you know did his very best to handle the pain and then breathe and i'm there holding his hand giving him like comforting his anxiety my son has autism and uh and the thing about it is that it all required my son letting me and my wife know i don't feel good then making an appointment and And we go there and the doctor becomes an instrument that allows my son to heal. And the same way I see a shaman, a shaman is an instrument that allows me to heal. And in order to heal, it requires awareness. But a lot of us have wounds that you can't see. It's in our persona.

It's in our heart. It's in our mind. It's in our whatever it is that we want to address that needs that healing. our memories, our anxiety, our disbalance, it requires that moment to have that awareness that something is off. And once you accept it, now you can take a step further and find that healing that resonates. In a shamanic practice, it is something quite similar. You have an aha moment. You know that something is off. You go to the person you resonate with. In this case, would be a shaman you resonate with the lessons and teachings of a shaman and you go into a

ceremony and in the ceremony you do the thing that allows you to let go you know i'm thinking for example of you write a little in a piece of paper that wound you you write or you write in a journal that what moment or you had us do something at the your event where we went out and took rocks, a rock to represent what we wanted to let go of and then physically release it. Yeah, that's a good example of what you're saying. Exactly, and that's basically awareness.

We're bringing into the forefront of our attention that which we want to heal. And as we prepare ourselves emotionally before we tell our story about, you know, an example of the stones, you pick up a stone and that stone becomes a symbol that represents that wound, that condition, that thing that makes us feel inferior

or brings pain into our life. We look at how that impacted our life. We understand what domestication is and we understand how it impacted our relationships. But once you get that point, it comes up from the ceremony itself, which is very simple. Do I want to keep this in my life or not?

If I don't, then that's when we take the step of forgiveness. That's the example we did in the ceremony in the Sedona. I forgive myself for ever saying yes to this. Or I forgive myself for allowing this to continue to hurt me beyond that moment in time. Yeah, it's like the awareness, the recognition, the release and the forgiveness or forgiveness and release, which is so crucial. If you're like the millions of women out there and the people who love them whose sex lives have been negatively affected by chronic urinary tract infections, I wanted to tell you about a product line I discovered called Eucora because people don't talk about this enough. UTIs can happen due to menopause, pregnancy, so many other factors. And so many women struggle with this and go to the doctor repeatedly and then end up avoiding sex as a result.

Eucora not only offers UTI relief and proactive urinary tract health supplements, but they have a whole learning center on their website with research and information for you. So get proactive about urinary tract health with Eucora. Right now, Uquora is offering 20% off when you go to Uquora.com slash love. But hurry, because it's a limited time offer. Go to Uquora.com slash love and get 20% off your order. That's U-Q-O-R-A dot com slash love. I knew some about shamanism, but not as much as I learned over that weekend.

But what I love about it is that it's very, it's fundamentally what I already subscribe to and do in my own work, which is like healer, heal thyself first, right? Like we have to, which I do think is a distinction between the more shamanistic approach, not that one is better than the other, and Western medicine is that a doctor prescribing medicine, you know, he has to be somewhat self-aware, but he doesn't have to have done all the personal healing work that a really good shaman has to do. Yeah, you can't give what you do not have. That was the thing. So, you know, I remember someone talking about and complaining about all these authors sharing their stuff. And I told this person, you do know that all these people who are teachers or authors went through all this stuff and they got out on the other side. And now they're sharing what helped them with us. And that's what resonates.

Yeah, feel, learn, teach. That's what allows us to see the humanity of an individual. So you mentioned domestication, which I want to get to in a minute. That's a fundamental teaching of your work, of perhaps all of shamanism. And we're going to talk about what that is. But I want to mention your book, first of all, your most recent book, Seven Secrets to Healthy, Happy Relationships. And we're not going to get into all of these, but the seven secrets are commitment, freedom, awareness, healing, joy, communication, and release. Did I get them all? Okay. But it starts, right?

What you talk about is the fundamental underpinning of this is unconditional love. And we're going to get to domestication and exactly what that is. But domestication is basically a block. Yes. Right? To unconditional love. So will you just talk for a moment about the difference between unconditional versus conditional love? Because everybody has a different definite.

I mean, we can guess what that is, but as you define it. Oh, of course. Well, first, let's say love is an energy that allows us to create a bond. It's always good to have that foundation. Love is an energy that allows us to create a bond between individuals, between ourselves, between life. It is the thing that brings us together. It's a beautiful thing. An energy.

It is an energy. So with that understanding, the difference between conditional and unconditional love to me is that conditional love only sees what it wants to see. And unconditional love is the willingness to see life as is. It's willingness to see the whole. So you can say that what corrupts love. My father always taught me the opposite of love is not hate or anger. Hate and anger are just the instruments by which we implement the opposite of love, which is love. the opposite of love is love. To put it simple, the opposite of unconditional love is conditional

love. Very simple. So people use hate to execute conditional love. Got it. Yeah. And what I mean by that is this. In our books, from the Four Agreements, to my father's book, the Four Agreements, to my own books, to my brother's book, all the books in our family deal with domestication, a system of reward and punishment by which we model the behavior of an individual where if we live up to an expectation we're worthy of a reward and if we fall short of that expectation we're worthy of the punishment and since we are emotional beings who experience the full spectrum of our emotions that reward feels like acceptance which feels like love yeah and the punishment feels like rejection and the lack thereof of love is the way we run especially yeah

i love you if you live up to my expectation now the example i love to give is that of myself hello my name is don miguel ruiz jr if you have an expectation of what that means you think of this individual that always does his best is not doesn't take things personal doesn't make assumptions i forgot the fourth agreement oh no how can i call myself don miguel ruiz jr if i don't know the four agreements and there is the downward spiral of judgment punishing me for not living up that expectation of perfection where don miguel ruiz jr doesn't take things personal doesn't make assumptions always does his best and he's impeccable with his word thank you very much if i live up to the expectations i am worthy of the name i'm worthy of the image i'm worthy of

whatever it is that don miguel ruiz jr represents but if i forget for example the fifth agreement be skeptical but learn to listen oh no there i go again i fall short again and there's a diagraph of judgment punishing myself for not living up to that image at that moment i'm basically using the four agreements as an instrument of domestication where if i live up to the four agreements or five agreements i'm worthy of not just my name or my the total tradition but i'm worthy of love i'm worthy of acceptance i'm worthy of so many things and if you don't but if i don't i only get the punishment yeah it's kind of like the equivalent of saying in order to be perfect which is something that is completely free of any flaw

i have to be 27 years old weigh 170 pounds and have hair like my brother he has long flowing hair beautiful you know it's like fabio fabio has nothing on my brother you know but i look at myself in the mirror and that's just not the truth i am 45 years old i weigh 195 pounds and i'm basically i'm definitely balding but because i don't live up to the expectation i'm gonna judge myself you fat bleep you old fat bleep you bold old fat and that's a result of societal domestication right or or sometimes in our families like mine it's easy to say societal but it really is comes to the individual because i said yes to it i believe it And that's a very important distinction.

Society, like a culture or a family or individuals or friends or beloveds, they might try to impose their domestication on you, but it still requires for us to agree with them. Let's just pause for a minute because I want people to understand what we're talking about when we talk about domestication, which is fundamentally creating conditional love. So define what domestication is. So that's what domestication is. I love you if you live up to my expectation. Some people prefer the word conditioning because they say, well, we humans don't get domesticated. Only animals do. But yeah, conditioning and domestication are exactly the same concept. And we are animals. Yeah. So in this example, you know, domestication basically is the way we've learned how to love ourselves with conditions.

If you want to be worthy of the family name, and in this case, the four agreements becomes the four conditions, the instruments by which I love myself conditionally, using the four agreements as a corrupted version of it. Right, supposed to be something that frees you, not that you use to judge yourself. Yeah, exactly. It's an instrument of unconditional love, but we're so attached to our domestication that we will corrupt all these things, not just the four agreements. Well, the corrupt Deepak Chopra, Marianne Williamson, Jesus, Buddha, Siddhartha, Mohammed, psychology, psychiatry, Alcoholics Anonymous.

So those judgments that we create of ourselves, right, when we self-domesticate, the idea is, which is something I obviously believe as a therapist and work with people, is to recognize where those stories come from, right? And you've talked a lot about this in your own life and in your and in your writing that each of us, we as parents do this to our children unconsciously until we learn otherwise. And even then, we're obviously not perfect. It was done to us because our our caregivers, not just our community, were literally like you were saying, approved for children. Approval and love are the same thing. Yeah. And that's because it's an instrument that somehow allows us to control another individual. That's the other side of domestication, the subjugation of someone else's will according to the point of view.

For example, one of my favorite quotes is by Eleanor Roosevelt, which goes, no one can make you feel inferior without my consent. Your consent, sorry. If I paraphrase, no one can make me feel inferior without my consent, or no one can domesticate me without my consent. The question is, how do we give consent? And the answer is very simple. By agreeing with it. By saying yes to it. That's how we give consent. So, to me, the moment I become aware that I said yes, it doesn't matter if it's societal or family or friends. I'm the one who said yes. To me, if the consequence of domestication or conditioning is that I lose trust in my

own ability to say yes and no, because personal freedom is to be able to say yes and no with a complete freedom of life that my no is just as powerful as my yes. But like Uncle Ben told Peter Parker, with great power comes great responsibility. To have personal freedom is to be able to say yes and no without freedom, to say yes of the things i want to say yes to and no to the things i want to say no to and with that comes the responsibility of i will experience the consequences of my own choices i am responsible for my own will so from that point of view i've been saying to my 23 year old at this point you know whatever i did to screw you up i take responsibility for but at this point it's up to you to heal it yeah and

that's the thing it's like it's it gets to that moment where you become aware of it you know my brother has an analogy that i love a scorpion that decides to no longer sting itself with its own poison i love that analogy and i used it to compare compare it to another lesson of someone taught me in sacramento which goes like this forgiveness is the moment you no longer wish the past was any different it is the moment you accept it and you let it go yeah so accept it means that you know that you can go back in the past and change the yes to no no to yes because life no longer exists in the past right so he can't make changes it it happened to let it go simply means that i will no longer use the past to hurt me and impact me in the present and that's

where the analogy of the scorpion comes in it's the moment where the scorpion no longer decides to sting itself with its own poison that it meant for someone else but it's so used to that domestication or condition or pain that or pain that he or she is used to or it it's a moment where i choose to no longer hurt and move on kind of like the ceremony we were talking about with the stones the moment of forgiveness is the moment we drop that stone and we no longer let it infect our present yeah that's really so and in our domestication you can say that conditional love is implementing that emotional poison letting someone else's point of view letting someone else's prejudice or ideas of what love should be and we continue to believe it until the moment

comes where we realize you know i no longer believe it and that it is usually it's a moment of clarity where i become aware of what i've created you know it's like you used the example of your son that yes at one point yes you taught him domestication but at one point it's his journey and that journey will come the moment where i no longer believe that domestic and i no longer subscribe to it and i let it go and i forgive you mama yeah and then the way that forgiveness comes comes the moment when we're able to see our parents as as uh peers for me when my son was born you know i read what to expect when you're expecting i read all the books I had that wisdom in the sense of reading from books.

But when I held my son in my hands, in my arms, I realized I had no idea what I'm doing. Yeah. I'm doing. And then I realized the thing that we parents don't tell kids or other people is that we don't know what we're doing. As soon as we get used to being a parent of a one-year-old, they turn two, making everything we know about parenting irrelevant. Then they turn four, they turn eight, they turn 12.

And we're growing up with them. And every birthday seems. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. It seems like every birthday makes everything we know about parenting irrelevant because the person we're raising is changing in front of us. And that's when I realized that my parents have been doing it, playing it by ear for all that time. And all of a sudden, you realize you take off the mask of mom and dad, and you see the two people who did their best with what they've got. and they only shared in this basically sometimes that's the moment when you become an adult when

you no longer see mom and dad as this godlike official godlike being that we put in a pedestal is the moment we take off the mask and we see them as human beings who are doing the best and once you see that from from that point of view it's easier to forgive because you see them in the same way yes you see them yourself we're doing it our best and that's when real shifts become to happen sometimes that happens if you have a kid sometimes that happens when you don't it all comes to the moment when the individual realizes that our parents are just human beings who are doing their best with what they've got and eventually it stops being their responsibility to raise us and it starts being my own for example and a presentation i was talking about how

i was dealing with the anxiety of raising teenagers and how it's going to be out there in the world especially with one of them with special needs and then i became a line help me which goes how to raise an adult is basically to teach them how to survive without me and also it dawned on me my job as a as a parent now is to teach them how to survive without me that's the good it's it's it's the moment where they take off the life vest that me and my wife put on to them and they decide that i got this and i'm going to take this life vest because i have confidence in myself to make those and as i use that analogy we're both i've been the parent i am the parent and at the same time i've been the son my mom and my dad took off that vest so

let me take off that vest a long time ago. That's true. And that's very powerful. And we've talked, you know, we've been talking about domestication in terms, and actually we've talked about some of the secrets, right? Awareness, becoming aware, releasing, you know, committing to unconditional love,

domestication that we do to ourselves. But I love how you talk about the ways in love. And I know you cover this in the book as well, that we usually unconsciously domesticate or try to domesticate our partners you know especially when we have differing viewpoints yeah right and i love there was something a note i took there was something that you were talking about it was about imposing your will basically you're taking away your partner's freedom when they disagree with you and you're just innocently which I try to do all the time. Innocently trying to convince your partner to agree with you when

they have a very clear no or yes, the opposite of you. That there's a way in which you are imposing your will and attempting to domesticate and, this was the big aha, make them doubt their own will. Like the only way you get them to come to your side is if you get them to doubt themselves. And that really struck me. Will you talk about that? Subjugate the will, yeah. I only control to the tips of my fingers. I control my will and I control my intent.

That's something that took a long time for me to truly understand. What do I control in this world? And the only thing I truly control is my will and my perception. I'm the infinite possibility because I'm alive at this very moment. my yes is a very powerful thing because with that three-letter word i can use the intent the energy that animates my body to create anything i can go in any direction i want my mind can think of all these possibilities and if i like one of them i'll say yes to it my no is just as powerful as my yes because that two-letter word represents the moment where i

choose not to use the energy that animates this body that animates this mind to manifest a single thing. And for as long as I say no, thy won't be done. My no is just as powerful as my yes. Like I was saying before, my yes and my no, also known as my will. To have personal freedom is to be able to say yes or no with complete freedom of life. I am free. You can say that's the first secret, freedom. To recognize the power of my own will or my own intent, whichever word we prefer to use. I am free to go in any direction. And the commitment is to give myself that opportunity to heal, to let go of that domestication in my mind and give myself the permission to heal, which comes with the awareness, what am I healing? So in my relationship, I'm the constant

in every relationship that I am in. So let's take my wife, for example. My wife is also free. she is my equal she is my equal because she is alive at the same time as I am alive we're both living beings with the full capacity to go in any direction in life and here's the thing she controls to the tips

of her fingers her own will and her own intent just like me and here's the beautiful part two individual beings who have gone through life met and fell in love and we've been saying yes to one another ever since the relationship between she

and i exist because we're both saying yes at the same time and that's true of every relationship every relationship exists for as long as those two people are saying yes because the moment one changes that yes into a no it ceases to exist that relationship ceases to exist which means my relationship with my wife exists because with our own freedom we're saying yes and here's the thing the only thing that will exist in our relationship are the things that we both say yes to if she says no to something or i say no to something that won't be done you see to respect her is to respect her ability to say yes and no to things she wants to say yes and no to just in the same way i respect myself i respect my no just as much as my yes

and my no is just as powerful which means my wife's no is just as powerful as her yes to respect my wife is to respect her no no means no but i'm very grateful that she's saying yes My wedding ring has power. It means something because it represents both she and I are saying yes to one another. Now, here's the thing. There's the expression, if you love someone, set them free. That means that my wife, at any given moment, she can change that yes into a no. If I do something stupid or she just simply goes in a different direction in life, she has every right to say no.

In fact, this wedding ring doesn't really stop her, you know, and there's no amount of domestication that can really stop her once she really has personal freedom. And that makes you not take her for granted, right? Because you both understand that. Exactly. Every relationship exists for as long as we both say yes. So to set someone free is to respect that free will. I only control to the tips of my fingers, which allows me to, like you were saying, not to take for granted this relationship. But I do have a question about this as a recovering codependent who has had to, because of my own domestication and, you know, very early on, you know, I would say one of my biggest challenges has been what I would call discernment, knowing, like we were talking about before, knowing my true no and yes, and not moving into questioning that in the face of someone's disagreement who I care about. And so a lot of my adult life has been creating these boundaries, right, and really honoring my boundaries. But for someone like me, and there are millions of us, how would you describe distinguishing between a healthy no, for instance, a healthy boundary that is about really honoring your authentic self and a boundary that is really a result of domestication or, you know, doubt, you know what I mean? Or your ego or whatever.

How do you really know when that boundary... For those of us who doubt our boundaries when they're hard to hold, how do you know that that boundary is coming from a healthy place? Very simple answer to a very complicated question. Our emotions are real. What triggers them may not be real. Our emotions are real. So when we feel those emotions, that's how we feel.

So for me, the telltale sign that a boundary, a no, comes from unconditional love is I don't have to say no with anger. I have complete confidence and trust in myself to say no to things I want to say no to. My boundary is there to protect this living being. A no given with anger is basically saying, you know, for me, a lot of people think, well, a few people, whoever resonates with this, actually, I'll use that phrase, whoever resonates with this anger is actually giving away your power even though it makes us feel mighty and strong and we can do whatever we want with when we say no with anger it's actually

a crutch because we're not confident in our nose so we have to use our anger to reinforce it that's a good point and from that point of view i don't trust my no and i have to only be able to say it with anger yeah and usually that comes with pain of course a wound that's there but it's also the way we've learned how to assert ourselves so from that point of view when i'm learning to assert myself which simply means i'm learning how to say yes and no am i no like imagine i'm eight years old and i know how to talk and i'm saying no to mom no to dad yeah At that moment, I'm gaining my confidence to say no. But if they really want that yes, and this is where the other question comes in, if I'm saying no, but they really want that yes, they're going to use an instrument that allows them to change that no into a yes.

And that usually is doubt. Look at you. You made this mistake. You made that mistake. Let me think for you. or you don't know or you're not good at figuring things out or exactly so let's let's let's put first the first contrast when i said to respect my wife is to respect her no just as much as her yes which means imagine to her index finger touching my index finger and those fingers

even though it looks like et represents represents respect with two individuals who come together and the only thing that will exist between she and i are the things we both say yes to and that's how we create the dream of us or the relationship between us. The only thing that will exist in our relationship are the things we both say yes to. If she says no to something or I say no to something, it will not be a part of it. It doesn't happen. Yeah. And that's where I think a lot of couples get stuck. And you talk about this, I know about, you know, those big kahunas, money, religion, children, those sex, even, you know, those big four topics that couples seem to have the most problems with and then you really do every single couple is going to come to many if

you have a long relationship and are engaging in any of these things together and you're human you're gonna come across one of you with a very clear no and one of you with a very clear yes and my sense is that your approach to that is okay we agree to disagree and then right like and then how do you decide which direction to go from your perspective well for that you know I guess I'm still trying to answer the other question. All right. So wait a minute. Okay.

Let me still balance things out because, you know, the other question is still up in the air. Keep going with the other question. We can hold this one. Let me ground it. No, because I'm going to make stone soup because the way you put it is perfectly. It feels connected to me, but that's just my word. All right. So in the example of me and my wife, obviously she says no to things.

And I say no to things. And when we were a young couple, we would fight. You know, most of the fights or arguments that couples have is who's going to domesticate who, because whoever controls the yes of a relationship controls the relationship. And this is where we begin to go beyond, you know, we can say that if you have that image of the fingers who are touching and with mutual respect, if I want that yes, and I want that no, or something like that, you can say, I start pushing back and forth. Also, it starts being who controls.

And then there's a line of respect, which one of them crosses, and they try to impose their will on the other. And the other one subjugates their will. I love you if comes into play. If you want to be with me, you better live up to this expectation. If you want to be with me, you have to do this. You have to do that. This is what a woman is supposed to do. This is what a man is supposed to do.

this is what and we begin to project because that's so you can say that what the majority of what we see out there is a battle of wills of who is going to control yes and no in the relationship so a lot of people who become dependent tend to subjugate their will so that please don't leave me i will do anything you want at that moment that person subjugates their will and the other person imposes their will and some say that's called peace but it's not peace it's a lack of respect on both ends on the other on the imposing the person who is imposing their will they don't respect the will of the other individual the subjugated person in this case doesn't respect their own yes or no they've given in to the finger pushing doesn't even have to push

they just pull it back yes and you can run away but that's the thing is that eventually you're going to face that one relationship where you don't want to run away and that's where it usually happens so my wife and i in our relationship started something we call the art of arguing and the art of arguing between she and i because we used to argue a lot especially when we were young and in our we've been together 17 years and we've been married for 15 and we used to fight a out about money, about how to raise, you know, nothing brings out a culture clash like raising children. And, you know, my wife and I come from two totally different points of view. You know, I grew up in the city. I grew up in San Diego and Tijuana. She grew up in the farm in the South Lake

Tahoe area, sorry, in a Salt Lake City area. She grew up Mormon. I grew up Catholic. So raising children comes, you know, brings out a culture clash. All right. So the art of argument came like this my grandfather always taught me that if you're about to put your foot in your mouth button your lip if you already put your foot in your mouth button your lip even harder something my grandfather said and he passed away when i was 14 years old yeah but it stuck with me so when me and my wife would be fighting because here's the thing when couples come and ask me for advice i always ask them the same question do you guys want to stay together if they both say yes the rest is easy because that mutual yes is the motivator that allows us to get through the

hurdles of a lot of stuff someone who's just simply dating when they reach that first hurdle they'll break up you know kind of the way you were describing or you run away you break up but then you meet someone who it's a little bit more committed and you reach that first hurdle and that yes is a little bit stronger and you'll go through a few hurdles and you hit that one hurdle that's like Samantha Jones would say it's a deal breaker yeah you break up then you have that one relationship where that yes is that strong and you're willing to work through it because this person this relationship is worth the effort you know like my dear friend Kirk would say is the juice worth the squeeze which to me means is the consequence worth the effort is the relationship

worth the effort and if we both say yes that's easy if they both say no that's also easy because they're both saying the truth it's difficult when one says yes and the other one says no that's where it's complicated so for me in the arguments my wife and i were having you know normally yes we would break up whatever but this relationship is worth it so i'm realizing i'm about to say something stupid which to me means i'm about to say something that's going to hurt her and that's the thing that happens when you have a couple eventually you get to know where the trigger points where the where the bullseye is in and all you have to do is just say the word and you hit the bullseye because all you want to do is win the argument right all right i'm about

to say something stupid i don't want to hurt her so what i did was i buttoned my lip but i'm about to say it again and I walked away. I left the room. That was my first attempt. And she felt abandoned. Yes. She followed me going,

hey, where do you think you're going? And of course, boom, you know, I blew up. I said it and there it is. Later, I told her, love,

I'm leaving because I'm about to say something stupid. I'm about to hurt you and I don't want to say it. So I leave. My wife said, well, when you do that,

it feels to me like you're not living. listening to me and you are not taking me into consideration and you're disregarding me and i said no love that's not what i'm doing what i'm doing is i'm about to say something stupid i can't stop it and the only way to stop it is if i leave the room she said fine you do that with a promise that once you diffuse yourself you come back in right you don't blow it off you don't blow it off you you take that time and here's what happens when we start doing this when we came back in my willingness to hear her went up and her willingness to hear me went up all of a sudden

we're able to once again dialogue talk to one another communicate you know that's the other secret communicate with one another and all of a sudden we realize that if we have a disagreement in finances that doesn't mean that i don't love her or i don't think she's smart or visa versa it's we began to separate apples to apples oranges to oranges our talk about raising children has nothing to do with our relationship our talk about finances has nothing to do with our relationship we were able to separate the different topics by understanding each other where we came but it first had to we had to diffuse our triggers and get out even neurologically that makes sense because you're getting at it when we're triggered and we're in anger or intense fear we're in our

amygdala that reptilian part of the brain when you leave and diffuse you're calming down and you can activate the thinking part of your brain that can actually take in information and process but let me ask you this using you and your wife as an example since that's what we're talking about You've now cooled off. You're back in your prefrontal cortex. You come back together. You're able to really listen to each other. But after listening to each other, let's say it's about public school or private school or homeschool or a big decision. right and at the end of talking about that really listening to each other both of you still have your yes and your no what happens then well we compromise okay and also one of the things we have to learn is we had to no longer see compromise as a dirty word because when you want to fight when you domestic part of domestication is if you're right you're worthy of love you're worthy

acceptance you're worthy of whatever image your ego is trying to set now here's here's a good entry to the other question you had about the difference of knowing a boundary a boundary that's set by ego yeah ego the function of ego is easier to understand as a function rather than a concept yeah the function of ego is to protect the illusion and usually the illusion is the model by which we domesticate ourselves that image of self that we have what is to be a man what is to be a woman what is to be macho and all kind of thing personal importance yeah and we will use it yeah it's being right it's one of the things that i have to be right in order to be worthy and if i'm wrong then i'm a loser compromise is a loser's bet from that point of view of ego one of the

things you as was required is to detach compromise as not being such a dirty word and it's something that allows us to co-create something that allows us to find that common ground that allows us to navigate the choices that's in front of us you can say but part of the debate you know this is being having been a debate team and learning how to do that the whole point the origin of a debate is finding the idea that's going to help the tribe best so that's why that was the whole point of for everyone's highest good yes what is the plan that serves at the highest good but somewhere along the line a debate became a battle who is right who's wrong and i prefer to be right and you wrong and this is where we begin to start telling lies and distorting and spinning and

doing all that because it's all about winning but if you're willing to find that common ground all right what is the thing that serves us what is the thing so from that point of view is it requires one very important thing the willingness to listen the willingness to see it from someone else's point of view to see it where they're coming from what does it mean to them because if you say no right off the bat it's a very powerful thing but if you're saying no you're shutting down any form of communication you're shutting down the ability to introduce an idea and also it's going it's kind of going putting your fingers in your ears and going i'm not listening at that moment all ability to listen is over but the thing is when you listen

you're able to give scrutiny to what you perceive and if you're able to maintain what is the purpose what is the focal point what what do i want what do we want to create then okay what is the best for our children need right you know we move yeah what's the need you know for my son for my daughter for example with my we we're in a crossroads where how to raise a son with special needs without sacrificing my daughter who is excelling at school finding that balance she is doing really good in this environment and if i change the environment she may not she might suffer from that even if it's something good from our son so what is the thing that allows us to serve both our children and our ability for she and i my wife and i to talk and come together

allows us to find that common solution all right we want to move all right audrey is doing great in this so alejandro is doing great but we're thinking about transitioning as he becomes an adult is where we live in a good place for him to be that no the answer is no should we move somewhere else yes should we move now no Audrey's doing good okay so in four years when she graduates we will do a shift where are we gonna go Phoenix, Rockland, Portland, San Diego at that moment we won't take anything out of the equation because we need to see what is good for him as Audrey goes off to college so it's one of those things that putting on the table and keeping the momentum because if i get attached to going back home to san diego and i have to go to san diego then i'm

going to make that decision and it turns out to be the worst decision for both of them especially if i'm not really checking in and i am the husband she has to do what i say all of this at that moment i am closing all channels of communication and i don't know if i'm about to make decisions that have consequences that are contrary so in order for that to happen i let go of my personal importance i and the way to do that is to heal from the wounds of conditional love left in my heart to let go of my conditioning let go of domestication and once i'm able to do that I no longer have a barrier, a hurdle that stops me from listening to the needs of my wife, my kids, my daughter. And to me, that sounds like the fundamental principle of when you talk

about being able to listen is that once you get out of your trigger, you diffuse, you've done healing, you know, whatever it takes, right? Then you can listen with an open mind. You can be flexible not so much to the what you can focus on the how you know not so much on the how you can focus on the what it is that you both have as common ground and achieve you know what i like to call the win-win right that compromise where both of you are really getting fundamentally what you need maybe not in the package you originally anticipated but but what about an important important thing is that you know even though we've done the work we get triggered so one of the big things to happen is to be aware when you know and you can tell you know what i have my triggers my

wife has her triggers and we can both tell when they're up when that happens we take a step back all right yeah i'm out yeah like basically you know because she ended up doing the same thing i ended up doing and you know the whole walking away yeah she has a walking away point and she walks away to give me that time to diffuse myself especially if i've been triggered or Lisa Versa I've learned calling it out doesn't work oh honey what do you mean I'm like all right that doesn't work let me try a different way patience okay patience helps me I just say you know what I'm and I I take responsibility even if it's really him and his trigger I say you know what I'm feeling kind of in persona and in my trigger right now so I'm

gonna move away even though it's secretly him that's in his trigger and that's the thing it It comes back to me because one of the common questions I get is, well, what about this other person? What about my spouse? What about this? I'm like, I tell them, remember, you don't control them. No, go back to your center. If you realize they're being triggered, take the step back. Now, mind you, I'm not saying cower or recluse yourself.

This is the difference between knowing your boundary. All right, I want my boundary. I'm going to take the step backwards. But I'm going to stay in my boundary of my assertion. And when the moment comes, I will re-engage. And it's an ability to create space or hold space for dialogue. Yeah, I think that's so powerful and important. And the hardest thing to do, I mean, that's where most of us fail.

And like that's what leads to the spiral in relationships is not being able to have that kind of healthy dialogue where you're not in your triggers, where you're really able to empathize and hear one another. And I think, you know, you were talking about like, you know, that it's not it's an ego based boundary, not sort of a healthy boundary when you're in your anger. I would add to that from my perspective, even from lots of women, although women often go to anger, is fear. Right. Anytime you're in fear or anger, probably like what I've started to do as someone who's learned. And I'm curious what you think about this as someone who's learned a lot about erecting and holding our own boundaries over the past five to 10 years is that if I'm in doubt, which I'll very quickly do, because that's sort of my knee jerk trigger. I literally run what I'm thinking. The only way I can describe it is that I run it through my heart. I like hold, I put all of my attention in the center of my chest and I hold that thought of what I'm struggling to say yes or no to my boundary in that moment.

And if it feel, if my, if I feel a clench, then I kind of think, and it's, and I, you know, that I can sometimes touch into, okay, this isn't real, what I'm reacting to, you know versus that sort of open full body yes feeling that says okay sister this is a good boundary yeah and that's the thing it's like you got to got to know yourself and this is a very important thing it's like if you want to be that change in that relationship you're the first person to take it now and in that awareness you come to realize that fear and anger are the same In fact, the function of fear is to keep us safe. Irrational fear is the abuse of it, kind of like abusing alcohol or drugs.

We abuse fear like that. Fear is expressed through fight, flight, or freeze. And there's also fear. And the examples of this is flight is, you know, if you have someone in a real danger in front of you, like a snake or someone with a gun, flight is you're gonna run faster than you ever expected you never realize you can run a 5k that fast even though you've never trained for it you can run it that's what fear does all of a sudden all you can freeze is also when you and also you you stop making a choice you just freeze and just hope that everything blows over right that's the deer in the headlights that's that's fear response

fight is anger yeah it's a whenever you feel anger it's really fear something about this situation has triggered your fight or flight response and the adrenaline that's going through your body is rushing through you that allows you that if you choose to fight you're not going to feel the pain not until the adrenaline goes off and all of a sudden you just feel where that smack happen or whatever then you feel like that that's what anger is anger is fight the fight response and fear finish finish is when you want it to end for example my brother likes this analogy and i'll use it because it comes to the point he was in an airport once and he saw there was a couple there looking through the magazines the husband had picked up a magazine and oh he looked

a little excited a little happy and he looked at it going i want to get this you know that was the expression in his face he turns to his wife and says look what i got and she says his name and says well let's just say harold that's just for example oh hell that's not like you no that's not you and the man looks at the magazine yes you're right and he puts it back in the in the rack basically that's example of finish meaning i am not going to even try and i'm going i know that if i finish it you know that was me in my early adulthood i'm not i was a finisher okay fine yeah so you basically at that moment you diffuse the situation by letting this person control and dictate everything so this is fear you know you you're afraid of your yes or no it's a it's a form

of finish is basically a form of freezing but freezing requires not taking a single choice finishing you're making the choice to give in or subjugate yourself yeah now irrational fear is the analogy i have of it is imagine going to movie theater and you watch a horror movie you know for for me poltergeist or the bear wish project the first time i saw it that was scary yeah the first time yeah the second time i was like okay i can see how they did it and then it's not but the first time i saw it man i've never seen anything like it i felt fear flight fight freeze and even finish came in you know fight is when you scream ah that's fight you In the movie theater, when people scream, that's the fight response.

Fleeing is when you close your eyes and you put your fingers on your ears. I don't want to hear, I don't want to hear, I don't want to hear. Freeze is great. And you gasp and you stop. And finish is when you walk out. Or something like that. Here's the thing. It's light being projected onto a screen with a sound system.

yeah you're not in real danger but the body the body the mind gets so into the story that they can't tell it anymore they're completely involved and they will feel that you will feel fear now here's the thing the mind is more powerful than any movie projector we will project the what ifs about life and answer it with the worst case scenario yeah and we will respond with that fear we will project onto life that which we're afraid of which is the what if and the answer that we don't like yeah and we will respond that way and the thing is that we take action yeah when we're really i mean it's one thing to walk out of a movie theater it's another thing to walk out of your relationship right so yeah and that's the thing is like a lot of fights happen because

we made an assumption about with jealousy jealousy is basically comparing myself to someone else and me falling short every time or insecurity where like i'm saying no before i give life the chance to say no to me you never know if you ask life might say yes but it's the it's the thing that in our lives in our relationships kind of like while we're talking about parenting before the secret of our relationship is that we have no idea what we're doing we're playing it by ear because just like when we're raising a child the person we're raising is changing right in front of their eyes they're changing physically emotionally intellectually in front of us yeah our beloved is also changing now this is where release comes in the willingness to let

go of the image my wife is not the same person she was when she was 28 30 35 40 and i'll stop right there my wife has changed because life has happened so if i treat her the same way i treated her when she was 28 years old i'm in complete disconnect with my relationship i'm in relationship with an illusion the willingness to see her the willingness to listen to her the willingness to be pay attention and more importantly to hold space it took me a long time when she came home and she would complain about her job she's not expecting me to fix anything all she wants is someone to hear her yeah it took me a long time a lot of guys have a hard time with that oh it's yeah because i i see that whenever someone brings a problem to me oh you're expecting me to

have a solution but in reality she doesn't want me to fix a single thing all she wants it's an ear yeah and i'm learning how to do that now i'm my mom my mom is entering her 70s and you know she's i'm she's talking a little differently she's you know i can hear her age i love her very much but i'm learning how to take steps back and realize my my mom my mom you know is sometimes confused about what something she made her memory is not the same as she used to be so I take a step back and trying to figure out what she's saying instead of reacting the way I used to react when I was a teenager or young when I was younger taking a step back and realizing this is a woman who's doing the best with what she's got and she's learning how to be in her 70s and her memory

wasn't what it was. She's a little confused, but she's still trying her best to stay present. That's the fundamental example of empathy, right? What you're saying is that when we deal with our own stuff and we can become aware of our own triggers and we let go of our own domestication, which is a never-ending process, as you say, because you're always going to get triggered, that's when we can really do that for our partners and create that in our relationship. Yeah, because we're not going to – we have complete confidence that we're not going to get lost in this. Yeah. You know, sometimes that's the big fear.

I'm going to lose myself. All of a sudden, they realize you never really lose yourself. No, you never realize. You never really lose yourself. No. You're just making choices or making – saying yes and no that become automatic. And the only reason why they become automatic is that we stop thinking about it. We go to the automatic yes and the automatic no because we've done it so many times.

we become a masters of our own conditional love but if we take that step back and realize what we've done and what direction I want to go to you know today we're the youngest we will ever be how do we want to spend the next few years of our life what do I want to experience what we want to engage what do I want to feel yeah the beautiful thing about that is that I get to answer that you know and even with my wife you know we've been together for 17 years and we'll continue to change and evolve my kids they're in the middle of their teenage years and they're figuring themselves out and just in the same way i describe my mom i'm describing my daughter and my son because you know i took him a step back and i realized it's their journey and my job is

to be there for them i don't know whether i heard you saying this or read this but i sort of made this metric here where you are saying you know basically this idea that when we heal our own wounds we can trust more and then we can open up more and then we can create more intimacy and when we're and completely show ourself be vulnerable right and and that's really what creates intimacy and you can't you can't give what you what you don't have so as as i'm always saying too you're saying it in in in your way and and i've said it too in mine is that the key to every healthy relationship and and healing your relationship starts with yourself the love we have is it john lennon the love we have to give is equal to the love we live you know so i thank

you so much uh the the book that most recent book and i want to just quickly hear about your upcoming book but seven secrets to healthy happy relationships uh is the name of the book what's the new but you do you have a book coming out soon you said right yeah October the mastery of life is coming out it's a book that is yeah it's it's a book that I wrote I started writing when I I took on some apprentices and I began to teach in the framework of Teotihuacan and the original title was the working title the first one was the path of the apprentice and then I changed it to the other path of a master because that's what we you know become and then my as my my publisher we're walking through it my publisher comes as you know what you're really doing here is this

is the mastery of life and i'm like oh yeah okay and basically you know when you have a title like that you know you really up the game because all right this is the stuff and here's the thing when we talk about mastery it's not about imposing my will upon something we're not talking about that the mastery is about putting into practice what we've learned you know if i become a master by putting into practice that which i've learned and every time i apply it i gain more confidence in myself to be able to do it to say yes to it and as i gain confidence in my ability to make that choice or take that action it becomes faith i have faith in myself to be able to manifest this yeah and that's everything

we will be looking for that book and you can follow don miguel ruiz jr on social media right is there anything you can tell them if they want more information the best place to go on your books or your workshops or if you want to go to a shamanic gathering well you can go to my father's website is it turns out to be the family website miguelruiz.com i have a website my own miguel ruiz jr.com miguelruizjr.com but miguelruiz.com that's my father's website and that's the family's website so you can find everything that the ruiz family is doing there i gotta tell you one more thing um about speaking of your family about your brother jose who i obviously saw speak a lot over this weekend as well and one of the things he says has become a mantra with my girlfriends

friends who were with me because he was talking about this inner dialogue and our inner domestication, right? And the ways that, and he was using his self as an example. I don't even remember the example, but the ways he said he was giving lots of different examples of the ways that he would negatively talk to himself or doubt himself or whatever. And he said, and I would just say, silencio, Jose, silencio, Jose. I was like, that encompasses everything. So whenever my girlfriend starts to talk that way I'll look at it and I'll say silencio Jose and she's like oh I know

you should put that on a t-shirt silencio Jose yeah he just watched silencio Bruno it's a it's a good one because that's exactly when I heard silencio Bruno for the

first time I'm like that's it that's it that's the whole the individual dream is the relationship between me and me If I'm the voice that's talking inside my own mind, who's listening? I am. If I'm the one who's listening, who's talking? I am. So whenever a shout comes in, Silencio Jose, Silencio Bruno from Luca.

It's a really powerful quote and instrument. So yeah. Good. Well, tell them thank you for that. And thank you for all the beautiful work you are doing, your whole family is doing. I look forward to the next book. And I thank you for spending your time with us. Thank you so much, Laura.

I appreciate it. Thank you. where some see heroes and others see egos bloomberg sees the era of billionaire athletes