Miguel Ruiz - The Mastery Of Love - A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship

Your reaction comes from a belief that is deep inside you. The way you react has been repeated thousands of times, and it becomes a routine for you. You are conditioned to be a certain way. And that is the challenge: to change your normal reactions, to change your routine, to take a risk and make different choices. If the consequence is not what you want, change it again and again until you finally get the result you want.

I have said that we never chose to have the Parasite, which is the judge, the Victim, and the Belief System. If we know we didn't have a choice, and we have the awareness that it's nothing but a dream, we recover something very important that we lost -something that religions call "free will." Religions say that when humans were created, God gave us free will. This is true, but the Dream took it away from us and kept it, because the Dream controls the will of most humans.

There are people who say, "I want to change, I really want to change. There is no reason for me to be so poor. I am intelligent. I deserve to live a good life, to earn much more money than I earn." They know this, but that is what their mind is telling them. What do these people do? They go and turn the television on and spend hours and hours watching it. Then how strong is their will?

Once we have awareness, we have a choice. If we could have that awareness all the time, we could change our routines, change our reactions, and change our entire life. Once we have the awareness, we recover free will. When we recover free will, in any moment we can choose to remember who we are. Then, if we forget, we can choose again, if we have the awareness. But if we don't have the awareness, we have no choice.

Becoming aware is about being responsible for your own life. You are not responsible for what is happening in the world. You are responsible for yourself. You didn't make the world the way it is; the world was already the way it is before you were born. You didn't come here with a great mission to save the world, to change society, but surely you come with a big mission, an important mission. The real mission you have in life is to make yourself happy, and in order to be happy, you have to look at what you believe, the way you judge yourself, the way you victimize yourself.

Be completely honest about your happiness. Don't project a false sense of happiness by telling everyone, "Look at me. I'm a success in life, I have everything I want, I am so happy," when you don't like yourself.

Everything is there for us, but first we need to have the courage to open our eyes, to use the truth, and to see what really is. Humans are so blind, and they are blind because they don't want to see. Let's look at an example.

A young woman meets a man and she feels a strong attraction for him right away. Her hormones go all the way up, and she just wants the man. All her girlfriends can see what this man is. He's on drugs, he's not working, he's got all those traits that make a woman suffer so much. But she sees him, and what does she see? She only sees what she wants to see. She sees that he's tall, he's handsome, he's strong, he's charming. She creates an image of the man and tries to deny what she doesn't want to see. She lies to herself. She really wants to believe the relationship will work. The girlfriends say, "But he's on drugs, he's an alcoholic, he's not working." She says, "Yes, but my love is going to change him."

Of course, her mother hates the man, and the father does, too. Her parents are worried about her because they can see where she is going. They say, "This is not a good man for you." The young woman says, "You are telling me what to do." She goes against Mom and against Dad to follow her hormones, and she lies to herself trying to justify her choices. "It's my life, and I'm going to do whatever I want to do."

Months later, the relationship brings her back to reality. The truth starts coming out, and she blames the man for what she didn't want to see before. There's no respect, there's a lot of abuse, but now her pride is more important. How can she go back home when Mom and Dad were right? That will only give them satisfaction. How long will it take for this woman to learn the lesson? How much does she love herself? What is the limit of her self-abuse?

All that suffering occurs because we don't want to see, when it is so clear before our eyes. Even when we meet someone and he tries to pretend to be the best he can, even with that false mask, he cannot avoid presenting the lack of love, the lack of respect he has. But we don't want to see it and we don't want to hear.

That is why an ancient prophet once said, "There is no worse blind man than the one who doesn't want to see. There is no worse deaf man than the one who doesn't want to hear. And there is no worse madman than the one who doesn't want to understand."

We are so blind, we really are, and we pay for that. But if we open our eyes and see life as it is, we can avoid a lot of emotional pain. It doesn't mean we don't take a risk. We are alive and we need to take risks, and if we fail, so what? Who cares? It doesn't matter. We learn and we move on without judgment.

We don't need to judge; we don't need to blame or feel guilt. We just need to accept our truth and intend a new beginning. If we can see ourselves the way we are, that is the first step toward self-acceptance – toward stopping the self-rejection. Once we are able to accept ourselves just the way we are, everything can start changing from that point forward.

Everyone has a price, and Life respects that price. But that price is not measured in dollars or in gold; it is measured in love. More than that, it is measured in self-love. How much you love yourself – that is your price – and Life respects the price. When you love yourself, your price is very high, which means your tolerance for self-abuse is very low. It's very low because you respect yourself. You like yourself the way you are, and this makes your price higher. If you don't like things about yourself, the price is a little lower.

Sometimes the self-judgment is so strong that people need to be numb just to be with themselves. If you don't like a person, you can walk away from that person. If you don't like a group of people, you can walk away from those people. But if you don't like yourself, it doesn't matter where you go, you are right there. To avoid being with yourself, you need to take something to numb you, to take your mind away from yourself. Perhaps some alcohol is going to help.

Perhaps some drugs will help. Perhaps eating – just eat, eat, eat. The self-abuse can get much worse. There are people who really feel self-hatred. They are self destructive, killing themselves little by little, because they don't have the courage to kill themselves fast.

If you observe self-destructive people, you will see they attract people just like them. What do we do if we don't like ourselves? We try to get numb with alcohol to forget our suffering. That's the excuse we use. Where are we going to get alcohol? We go to a bar to drink, and guess who's going to be there? People just like us, who try to avoid themselves also, who also try to get numb. We get numb together, we start talking about our suffering, and we understand each other very well. We even start to enjoy it. We understand each other perfectly because we vibrate in the same frequency. We are both being self-destructive. Then I hurt you, you hurt me – a perfect relationship in hell.

What happens when you change? For whatever reason, you no longer need the alcohol. It's okay now to be with yourself, and you really enjoy it. You no longer drink, but you have the same friends, and everyone's drinking. They get numb, they start getting happier, but you can clearly see that their happiness is not real. What they call happiness is a rebellion against their own emotional pain. In that "happiness" they are so hurt that they have fun hurting other people and hurting themselves.