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

In the mystery schools around the world, this is called the awakening. It is as if you awake one day, and you no longer have emotional wounds. When you no longer have those wounds in the emotional body, the boundaries disappear, and you start to see everything as it is, not according to your belief system.

When you open your eyes and you don't have those wounds, you become a skeptic – not to increase your personal importance by telling everyone how intelligent you are, or to make fun of other people who believe in all those lies. No, when you awake, you become a skeptic because it's clear in your eyes that the Dream is not true. You open your eyes, you are awake, and everything becomes obvious.

When you awake, you cross a line of no return, and you never see the world in the same way. You are still dreaming – because you cannot avoid dreaming, because dreaming is the function of the mind – but the difference is that you know it's a dream. Knowing that, you can enjoy the dream or suffer the dream. That depends on you.

The awakening is like being at a party where there are thousands of people and everyone is drunk except you. You are the only sober person in the party. That is the awakening, because the truth is that most humans see the world through their emotional wounds, through their emotional poison. They don't have the awareness that they are living in a dream of hell. They aren't aware that they are living in a dream just as fish swimming in water are not aware that they are living in water.

When we awake and we are the only sober person in the party where everyone is drunk, we can have compassion because we were drunk too. We don't need to judge, not even people in hell, because we, too, were in hell.

When you awake, your heart is an expression of the Spirit, an expression of Love, an expression of Life. The awakening is when you have the awareness that you are Life . When you are aware that you are the force that is Life, anything is possible. Miracles happen all the time, because those miracles are performed by the heart. The heart is in direct communion with the human soul, and when the heart speaks, even with the resistance of the head, something inside you changes; your heart opens another heart, and true love is possible.

There is a an old story from India about the God, Brahma, who was all alone. Nothing existed but Brahma, and he was completely bored. Brahma decided to play a game, but there was no one to play the game with.

So he created a beautiful goddess, Maya, just for the purpose of having fun. Once Maya existed and Brahma told her the purpose of her existence, she said, "Okay, let's play the most wonderful game, but you have to do what I tell you to do." Brahma agreed, and following Maya's instructions, he created the whole universe. Brahma created the sun and the stars, the moon and the planets. Then he created life on earth: the animals, the oceans, the atmosphere, everything.

Maya said, "How beautiful is this world of illusion you created. Now I want you to create a kind of animal that is so intelligent and aware that it can appreciate your creation." Finally Brahma created humans, and after he finished the creation, he asked Maya when the game was going to start.

"We will start right now," she said. She took Brahma and cut him into thousands of teeny, tiny pieces. She put a piece inside every human and said, "Now the game begins! I am going to make you forget what you are, and you are going to try to find yourself!" Maya created the Dream, and still, even today, Brahma is trying to remember who he is. Brahma is there inside you, and Maya is stopping you from remembering what you are.

When you awake from the Dream, you become Brahma again, and reclaim your divinity. Then if Brahma inside you says, "Okay, I am awake; what about the rest of me?" you know the trick of Maya, and you can share the truth with others who are going to wake up too. Two people who are sober in the party can have more fun. Three people who are sober is even better. Begin with you. Then others will start to change, until the whole dream, the whole party, is sober.

The teachings that come from India, from the Toltecs, the Christians, the Greeks – from societies all over the world – come from the same truth. They talk about reclaiming your Divinity and finding God within you. They talk about having your heart completely open and becoming wise. Can you imagine what kind of world this would be if all humans opened their hearts and found the love inside? Of course we can do it. Everyone can do it in his own way. It's not about following any imposed idea; it's about finding yourself, and expressing yourself in your own particular way. That is why your life is an art. Toltec means "artist of the spirit." The Toltecs are the ones who can express with the heart, the ones who have unconditional love.

You are alive because of the power of God, which is the power of Life. You are the force that is Life, but because you are able to think at the level of the mind, you forget what you really are. Then it's easy to see someone else and say, "Oh, there is God. God will be responsible for everything. God will save me." No. God has just come to tell you -to tell the God in you – to be aware, to make a choice, to have the courage to work through all your fears and change them, so you are no longer afraid of love. The fear of love is one of the biggest fears that humans have. Why? Because in the Dream of the Planet, a broken heart means "Poor me."

Perhaps you wonder, "If we are truly Life or God, why don't we know it?" Because we are programmed not to know. We are taught: "You are a human; these are your limitations." Then we limit our possibilities by our own fears. You are what you believe you are. Humans are powerful magicians. When you believe you are what you are, then that is what you are. And you can do that because you are Life, God, Intent. You have the power to make yourself what you are right now. But it's not your reasoning mind that controls your power; it's what you believe.

You see, everything is about belief. Whatever we believe rules our existence, rules our life. The belief system we create is like a little box we put ourselves inside of, we cannot escape because we believe we cannot escape. That is our situation. Humans create their own boundaries, their own limitations. We say what is humanly possible, and what is not possible. Then just because we believe it, it becomes truth for us.

The prophecies of the Toltecs have foreseen the beginning of a new world, a new humanity where humans take responsibility for their own beliefs, for their own lives. The time is coming when you will become your own guru. You don't need other humans to tell you what the Will of God is. Now it's you and God face-to-face, without any intermediary. You were searching for God, and you found God within you. God is no longer there, outside you.

When you know that the power that is Life is inside you, you accept your own Divinity, and yet you are humble, because you see the same Divinity in everyone else. You see how easy it is to understand God, because everything is a manifestation of God. The body is going to die, the mind is going to dissolve also, but not you. You are immortal; you exist for billions of years in different manifestations, because you are Life, and Life cannot die. You are in the trees, the butterflies, the fish, the air, the moon, the sun. Wherever you go, you are there, waiting for yourself.

Your body is a temple, a living temple where God lives. Your mind is a living temple where God lives. God is living within you as Life. The proof that God lives within you is that you are alive. Your Life is the proof. Of course, in your mind there is garbage and emotional poison, but God is also there.

You don't have to do anything to reach God, to reach enlightenment, to awaken. There is no one who can take you to God. Whoever says they will take you to God is a liar, because you are already there. There's only one living being, and want it or not, resist it or not, effortlessly you are with God already.