The One You Feed - don Miguel Ruiz

Episode Date: October 27, 2015

© Noel Cianci, 2012[powerpress] This week we talk to don Miguel Ruiz about the stories we tell ourselvesDon Miguel Ruiz is a renowned spiritual teacher and internationally bestselling author. He has spent the past three decades guiding students to personal freedom through his profound insights regarding the nature of human reality. His forthcoming book is called THE TOLTEC ART OF LIFE AND DEATH: A Story of Self Discovery written with Barbara EmrysCombining Toltec mythology and scientific perspectives, don Miguel has been able to merge ancient wisdom with modern physics and practical common-sense, forging a new philosophy for seekers of truth and personal authenticity.  His landmark bestselling book, The Four Agreements, contains practical steps for long-term, personal transformation and has been read by millions around the world.First published in 1997, The Four Agreements has since sold over five million copies in the United States and seven million worldwide. It has been translated into 38 languages, appeared on the New York Times bestseller for over seven years, and was the 36th bestselling book of the decade. Don Miguel is also the author of The Mastery of Love, The Voice of Knowledge, and the New York Times bestseller, The Fifth Agreement, a collaboration with his son, don José Ruiz.  Each of his books are international bestsellers.Our Sponsor this Week is Spirituality and Health Magazine. Click here for your free trial issue and special offer. In This Interview Miguel and I Discuss...The One You Feed parableHis new bookThat truth is life engergy, the force that moves matterHow we don't need to believe in the truth, it just existsThe fact that we are all artists and the greatest creation we have is the story of our livesHis near death experienceThe fifth agreementWe learn to love by how others love us - with conditionsHow we can start to love ourselves and others unconditionallyThe fact that we are not responsible for other people's minds or other people's actionsHow suffering is really in the mind and of the mindThat if we change our attitude, everything will changeThe wonderful truth that you have control of your own lifeThe lesson that has taken him the longest to learnWhy he likes Popeye the Sailor Mandon Miguel Ruiz Links don Miguel Ruiz Homepage don Miguel Ruiz Twitter don Miguel Ruiz Facebook don Migue Ruiz YouTubeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The dog doesn't know that it's a dog. The cat doesn't know that it's a cat. We call them dogs. We call them cats. But they don't care. They just exist. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.

But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction. How they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you we have the answer go to really know really.com and register to win 500 a guest spot on our podcast or a limited edition sign jason bobblehead the really know really podcast follow us on the iheart radio app apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts thanks for joining us our guest on this episode is Don Miguel Ruiz, a renowned spiritual teacher and internationally best-selling author. He has spent the last three decades guiding students to personal freedom through his profound insights regarding the nature of human reality. His forthcoming book is The Toltec Art of Life and Death, A Story of Self-Discovery.

Before we get to the interview, a couple of quick announcements. The first is that we have now added women's cut t-shirts to the t-shirts that are on the website. So if you would like a t-shirt, go to oneufeed.net slash shop. And these have a limited edition, hand-drawn version of the Wolf logo on them. They're incredibly comfortable, and I love them. The other announcement is, if you tried to contact us via the website and never heard back from us, I just realized a couple weeks ago that a lot of that stuff was going into the spam folder, and I wasn't seeing it.

So if you tried to reach out to us via the website contact form, you never heard back. It's not because we're jerks. It's because we didn't know about it. So please reach out again. We always love to hear from you. Thanks. This episode is brought to you by Spirituality and Health Magazine. For your free trial offer, go to spiritualityhealth.com slash one you feed to get a free no obligation issue. If you love the magazine, then OneYouFeed listeners will receive a VIP offer of two years for just $19.95. Again, that's SpiritualityHealth.com slash OneYouFeed. And that's all spelled out O-N-E-Y-O-U-F-E-E-D. Thanks. And here's the interview with Don Miguel Ruiz.

Welcome to the show. Oh, it's a big pleasure to be with you, Eric. Well, it's a pleasure for me, too. So, we'll start the show like we always do, with the first question, which is about the parable that our show is based on. And in the parable, there's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson, and he says, In life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second and he looks at his grandfather and he

says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you, you know, what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Okay, first of all, I really like this parable. My son Jose, he always uses it as his teaching. And he changed some things, but it's exactly the same thing that he is teaching. And my life has been like that, like everybody else also. That applies to every single human. You know, for centuries and millennia, we used to believe that there's good and bad in us, but our mind had to battle between good and bad. Well, it's not exactly true.

Good and bad is just a result of the real conflict that exists in the human mind. And the real conflict in the mind is between the truth and life. The truth is only one. Life are millions of life. And the truth exists long before the creation of humanity and will exist long after the extinction of humanity. The truth doesn't need to be proved. On the other hand, the lies exist only because we believe in those lies.

And the lies are nothing but the distortion of the truth. And that distortion can go very, very deep and create all those superstitions. Then the result of believing in all the superstitions in all those lives is that we are bad in different degrees. It depends how strong is the superstition that we defend. And when we feed the bad wolves, they really create more superstition and defend the superstitions. When we feed the good dog, they're really feeding ourselves with the truth.

And I think that this parable is really a big help for every single human. So let's talk a little bit more about your new book. You've got a new book called The Toltec Art of Life and Death. And why don't we start by going a little bit into kind of what you were just saying, which is let's talk about what is that truth? What is the truth for us as humans? Well, the truth is that force that moves matter. It's that energy. It's pure energy. And as we say, matter only can move if a force is moving matter.

Right. And if it's moving, it only can be stopped if a force stops matter. And if this movement only can be stopped if a force stops matter. Well, that force that moves matter is energy, is life. And we can see that all the universes, all the systems, is just a binary system, just like the computers. The computers function only with zero and one. And the combination of these two digits create all that we can see

in the computer, all the sounds that we can hear, etc., etc. But it's the same with the whole reality, with the whole existence. The binary system is matter and the force amongst matter, which is life. Then it manifested everything that we perceive and what we don't perceive that exists.

If that exists long before humans learn to speak, we don't need to believe in the truth, it just exists. How can we apply that knowledge if we were to see that and recognize? How does that help us day to day? What do we do with that knowledge or that information? Okay, we perceive the truth all the time. But what we perceive is distorted in our mind, with our beliefs. And then what we believe is true is not exactly the truth. The truth is the force, let's say see that moves every cell of your body who has the equilibrium in your physical body and you

don't need to think or believe about that in order for that truth to exist right in the other hand the distortion of that truth the reflection of the truth in the brain, we create a mind that will try to explain everything that we perceive. That an apple is not just an apple. We have to describe that apple. By using language, we will say the apple is a fruit, could be red, could be green, cetera, big or small. We qualify it. And this is true for us. But it's just a description of that apple.

That apple doesn't care if we call it apple or not. It just exists. But we learn that this is an apple. And we qualify it. We share it with everybody. But if we go to another country who speak a different language, it's no longer an apple. They will have another name that millions of people will agree and name that apple in their own particular way. There are hundreds of languages around the world. And everything that we know is only true for us,

but not for everybody. And that way we can see that every single human has its own truth, but it's not true. It's a distortion of that truth, and that is the reason why we think that everybody is wrong that only we are right right I've heard you talk about the fact that we are all artists and our work of art is the story about our lives that we tell ourselves

yes that's what it's both those techniques with these artists because they be translating any language around the world. When we talk about the Toltec wisdom, we are talking about the wisdom of the artist. And yes, every single human is an artist. And the greatest creation that we have is the story of our lives. And this book is really based in the story of my life. It's a story that happened

when I had a massive heart attack in 2002. And I was nine weeks in coma. Then I had this wonderful dream during the time that I was in that coma. And the story is about the recollection of my life. You know, everybody says that when we are dying, our life goes in front of us very, very fast. Well, that really happened to me. I had the heart attack. I knew that I was dying. I had the heart attack. I knew that I was dying like any nation who has three main powers.

One power is the one who creates the rules, like a congress, who creates all the rules and create a constitution. Then there's the other part, who have the authority to impose that law, like the police or the army. And the other one is the individual, the one that receives the effect of the laws and the authority that imposes laws on us. And this is the main character of the story, which he could be a victim of the story that he created, or then becomes the president, the one who rules the nation. Then in this book, what we see is this main character of the story, with the help of my mother,

is remembered the most particular memories who changed the life of Miguel. And it was an encounter with the truth. But it was an encounter with the truth. And in the encounter with the truth, many of the lies just disappear, dissipate, because the lies don't exist because we don't live in those lies. If we no longer believe in those lies, then all those lies just go away. And what is remaining is the truth, even if we don't know exactly what the truth is but we feel it we see it we see the manifestation and we understand it and when we try to explain it it's really no longer the truth but it's getting closer and closer to that truth that in this dream, we can say that Sarita, my mother,

faith, then my knowledge, that we give a name to that knowledge, and that name is Lala. It is the retention of Lala, the retention of my knowledge. And to redeem the knowledge, the knowledge gives faith in the truth again and again and again. And it's dissipating more and more and more. Then what we can see in that story is that every single human is being possessed, not by the devil or a demon, but is possessed by knowledge.

The knowledge is really that dog who we feed with all those lies. And we are afraid of that knowledge. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer.

And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And now back to the interview with Don Miguel Ruiz.

So if we're the artist of our own stories, what are ways that we can learn to work with those stories, with that knowledge in a more productive way or in a way that feeds the good wolf, so to speak? Are there some ways to think about the world or some things that we can do that help separate the truth from the lies? One of the things that I say in most of my lectures when I speak directly to the public, I ask for help and I ask them, please help me to change the world. Of course, I'm not looking to change the world of humanity, but the world that they create.

Their own story. And in these days, I write a little story of my own life that they can compare with theirs, that they can see how I changed my world so they can also change their own world. Then that story is a parallel with 7 billion stories. When you read this book, if you shift the name and you put your own name, you can see how you create your own reality. You will see all the loss that you create against

yourself. And you can see that becomes a big adventure for the victims to start facing all those lives, to start shifting those lives with the weapon of the truth. What we use is the fifth agreement, the one that my son Jose wrote. Be skeptical, but learn to listen. We're very skeptical. We don't believe ourselves. We're very skeptical. We don't believe ourselves. We don't believe anybody else. Then we can hear what people say. We don't believe, but we listen to what they say.

And what works for us, we keep it. And that will help us to change our own story. And specifically, we need to listen to ourselves, what we say, the lies that we tell to ourselves. If we don't believe our own lies, the truth will break those lies. And every step, we become more and more free. And we're really changing our own world. Then when they see the parallel in this book with their own story, we can see that they can change their own world. It's something that I tell to everybody all the time is, if I can do it, you can do it. And if you can do it, everybody can do it. And if you can do it, everybody can do it. And so really what we're talking about here is that looking at the stories that we tell ourselves, we completely mentally construct a world based on all our memories, our experiences,

all of those things. And you're saying by learning to question those things, being a little bit skeptical of them and looking at them from different perspectives, we can set ourselves free from some of those lies? We are helping ourselves to see the whole creation in a completely different way. But we have to start always with ourselves. We cannot give what we don't have. First, we have to start always with ourselves. We cannot give what we don't have. First, we have to respect ourselves. If we want to give love, first we want to love ourselves. That seems to be a theme in the new book and in a lot of your work, which is really that one of the things that we do is we punish ourselves very much

for not being who we think we should be. Yes, and we can see the core of the whole problem. We can see that all this conflict exists because we learn to love the same way that everybody else loves. We learn to love the way that our parents love us, the way our brothers love us, when we go to school, the way our friends love us. The way they love us is with conditions, it's conditional love.

That we can say that 99.99999% of humans, they love with conditions. Which means I love you if you let me control you. If you do whatever I want you to do, then I love you. And that's how we love everybody. But everybody also loves us the same way. They love us if we do what they want us to do. And that's the reason why we want to please everybody. they want us to do. And that's the reason why we want to please everybody. And the worst part is that we learn to love ourselves exactly the same way. I love myself if I can be the way I

should be according to everybody else's opinion and according to my own opinion. opinion and according to my own opinion. When we understand this point, we also will understand every single conflict that exists in the human mind, every injustice, every violence, starvation, including war. It's because everybody tried to control everything, the outcome of everything. And this is because we all love with conditions, and that conditional love is just a reflection of the real love, the unconditional love, the love that we had when we were born. Then when we understand all of this, we also can understand the reason why we believe what we believe,

why we create all those superstitions, and why we are so fanatic defending our beliefs to try to impose our opinion to everybody including to ourselves we've learned to love in a way that we've been taught over our lifetime uh to love conditionally and because that's the way we were loved in the way we were taught how do you start to love unconditionally when really the only kind of way you've known to love is conditionally? That's a, it's one thing to see it and hear it. You say it. How, how do I make that part of my life?

Well, this is not as easy as it looks like. It's easy to understand the reason why, but we are practicing this condition of love all of our life. It becomes a habit. And we love that way. And to change it is more difficult, not even because of ourselves,

but because everybody else loves the same way. And we can see these egos all around. they try to impose to us. And of course, we need to defend, to put our own limits, to avoid those kind of interactions. And we do that because we are learning to love ourselves just the way we are, to love ourselves just the way we are. Because we need to understand that we are perfect the way we are.

Even with that conditional love, everything is really perfection. Then we need to accept ourselves just the way we are, and then we can love ourselves just the way we are. And that starts changing everything. What we are doing once again is changing our world. And the way to do it is to love ourselves unconditionally. We gain the respect and we gain the inner peace. Then we can give what we have.

We can give the love. We can give the respect. We can give the respect. We can give peace. Just by existing, we don't need to go and preach all of that. We just need to be ourselves and to apply what we do in any direction of life. We don't need to be teachers. No. We can work in whatever we are doing and apply that in that direction.

We can apply that with our family, with our children, with our friends, but of course mainly with ourselves. We create a wonderful environment where we can live. And we have to understand that we are not responsible for other people's mind, for other people's action. But yes, we need to take action when they cross the limits. That's why we have laws and we have police. That is the best way that I can describe love in words. Knowing that a son of aata used words is no longer true, but it's close to the truth. Right. By talking about it, you lose the essence of it to some degree, but we have to do the

best we can. That brings up a question that I bring up on the show a lot, and it's one that I wrestle with, which is, you're a very successful man. You, uh, you know, written, you know, bestsellers. So you're clearly have some degree of ambition or striving. You know, you do things, you create things, you put things out there. And it seems like I wrestle with the balance between being ambitious or wanting things to be different, wanting life to be a little bit better or myself better to make something that's important. And then the opposite of that is kind of exactly what you just said, which is to accept ourselves exactly the way we are. How do you balance those two drives within yourself?

Try. I'm just that way. You know, I live in a physical body. We've been crippled since I had the heart attack. When I wake up from the heart attack, who has been crippled since I had the heart attack. When I wake up from the heart attack, my heart was working only with the 16% of its capacity.

The doctors told me that I may live one more year if I'm lucky. And they recommend me to stay at home, not to walk that much, that I cannot have the same life that I had before. And of course, as soon as I feel better, I start doing exactly the opposite. I start teaching again, taking people to different places. And all that is what I call my will, the will to enjoy my life. And yes, my body, it was in physical pain for eight and a half years because I didn't die in one year, like the doctor said, until I have a heart transplant in 2010.

But it's all about the will, the will to enjoy life. Then the physical pain is not a reason to suffer because the suffering is really in the mind. Yes, we have pain, whatever, but we can use it. We can enjoy life anyway. when you talk about suffering you're really talking about all the things that we add on top of the physical pain. So you have physical pain, but the suffering is all the stories we tell ourselves about it, what it means. Is that kind of what you mean by the suffering in that case? Well, it's feeding myself pity.

Yeah. And feeding my ego, pretending that everybody has to do something for me. And it's not true. Whatever helped me, because they want to, not because they have to. And when you're crippled, you feel that everybody has to help you. That they have the responsibility of you. And it's not true. When you accept yourself just the way you are, you don't need really too much help.

And you give also so much that they really love to be around you. You don't need even to ask, but you have to ask when you need. But we have to be reasonable because we need to respect other people's points of view. And it's very, very important for people who have, let's say, have cancer to have an accident, and they're paraplegic, et cetera, et cetera. You know, we feel sorry for ourselves. We create a big, big problem in our lives because we demand hardly anybody want to be around us. If we change our attitude, everything will change.

People will help us without any hesitation. They would love to be around us. If we change our attitude, everything will change. People will help us without any hesitation. They would love to be around us. Like you said, that's one of those things that's easier to say than do in a lot of cases. Yes, of course. It's easy to understand, but to take the action is different. And that's the reason why I ask everybody, please tell me. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really Know Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like

why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor. We got the answer. Will space junk block your cell signal? The astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer. We talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you. And the one bringing back the woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer.

And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us tonight. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman.

And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really No Really. Yeah, really. No really. Go to reallynoreally.com. And register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

To change the world, the world that you create, you don't need to be the victim. You can have control of your own life. Because it is true. Everybody can change the way they live their lives. Everybody can create their own particular heaven instead of living with all those traumas that we create. We need to take responsibility of ourselves, of every action, of every opinion. And enjoy it. Because, yes, we can enjoy our life.

We do the best if we really want to. Because life is so wonderful. It's so beautiful. What lesson has taken you the longest to learn personally in your life? When I was around 10 years old, one of my older brothers died. That changed my life completely because I see all the people around pretending to be what they're not.

And that really was a little shock for me to see that everybody's pretending they're not authentic. Another time is when I have a dialogue with my grandfather and he let me know that I am not what I believe I am. Yes, the name of my main character is Miguel Ruiz, but Miguel Ruiz is my creation. And I create Miguel Ruiz trying to give an equilibrium to the opinion of everybody around me and my own opinion about myself. That Miguel Ruiz is just an image and is not real, but the whole story is about Miguel Ruiz.

He is the one who makes all those decisions for good or for bad. It is using everything that knows. It's an authority in order to take those decisions. Then knowing that I am not what I believe I am, when someone asks you, well, what are you? I don't have to justify my existence by saying, hey, I'm a medical doctor. I'm an author. I'm describing everything that I like and what I don't have to justify my existence by saying, hey, I'm a medical doctor. I'm an author. I describe everything that I like and what I don't like. Because the honest truth is that I don't know what I am. But I am, and here I am alive, and that's why it's important.

The dog doesn't know that it's a dog. The cat doesn't know that it's a cat. We call them dogs. We call them dogs. We call them cats. But they don't care. They just exist. The same with us. We just exist.

If we go into science, I will say, well, I am matter and life moving matter, which is very close to the truth. But still, as long as I do the worst, it's not true any longer. When I say I am, now, it's even closer. Because I am whatever I am. That's why I like Popeye the Sailor.

I am what I am. That's all what I am. You're talking about letting go of the construction of what we think we are, and all the things that we tie to that and really learning to more, it sounds like move out of that intellectual thinking mind, the hyper-stimulated thinking mind that's always trying to figure everything out and just trying to be present in the moment that we're in. You know, this is the beauty of this book, because in that way we are facing all our beliefs, all our superstitions, and our own fanaticism. We can see all the structures falling apart. And by the end, in the redemption,

that knowledge that hardly has any life anymore, we can see how it gets so close to the truth. And this is what I call the redemption of knowledge, the redemption of Lala. And to see that every single human can do the same thing with their own creation. But they have to really go to that Odyssey to face every single superstition as a big monster that comes with the action of the fanaticism. And every time that we face one of those three lies, when we win, we see how they dissipate.

The world's not even real because the reality is visual. It's not even true. Everything that I believe is not true. Everything that you believe is not true. But it's only true for the main character. You know, in the moment that you're dying, you can see how irrelevant was everything that you did in life. All the reasons why you get upset with other people that you love,

all the judgments that you have about everybody, everything, is completely irrelevant. Because you leave your physical body, and the whole story goes. Not you because you are immortal, because you are life. Your body, yes, will go because it's matter. But you who give the life to your body, you cannot die. Energy cannot be destroyed, only transformed.

And this is the beauty. Death really doesn't exist. It exists only in the human mind. It exists only in the human mind. But as life, you just see how you manifest yourself in all the different species. You see the generations, you place all the generations in generations. It is completely normal. There is not really death.

Death is only in the human mind. That's why we can say when we die, nothing really happens. But it's an impact in the story that we create and in the story of the people who live around us, because they have awareness that someone lives the physical body and the body is death. Very similar to the Buddhist idea that the self that we think exists is entirely self-constructed. It's not what we think it is. That's exactly true.

Thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. It's a real pleasure to have you on. Your new book will be out very soon, and hopefully listeners will get a chance to check that out. Yes, I hope that everybody will love this book. They will see themselves in that book. Well, I hope you have as much success with it as you did with The Four Agreements, which was obviously very successful and has helped a lot of people.

So thanks so much for your time. Okay, all my love to all of you and to everybody who is listening to us. Okay, thank you. Take care. You're very welcome. Bye. All right. Bye. you can learn more about this podcast and Don Miguel Ruiz at one you feed.net slash Don