The Mastery Of Love : A Practical Guide To The Art Of Relationship - Don Miguel Ruiz

The Mastery Of Love : A Practical Guide To The Art Of Relationship

Be the master of your body, mind, and spirit

To introduce you to the values that Toltec inspires, the author started things off with a parable that is deeply rooted in love and compassion. In this analogy, a young man captivated by the words of a guru had a strong urge to invite the guru to his home. Once the master accepted his invitation, he got to work and got the finest food, clothes, and wine to offer the master.

However, to his disappointment, the master did not show up. Instead, three strangers, at three different occasions, came knocking. And on each occasion, he fed and clothed them with the food, wine, and clothes he had prepared for the master. At the end of the day, he realized that the propensity to give out what he had prepared for a special guest to total strangers was, in fact, an act of kindness that the master would have expected from an astute student like him.

As such, his disappointment disappeared, and he reveled in the fact that he had put words into actions. In essence, he had become a master since the words of the guru lived in him, and he had learned to act on them. Like this man in this parable, you too are a master. You have created different versions of yourself that define how you see and react to other people. Depending on the classification the people around us fall into, we project a specific personality or image that we have created to deal and communicate with such class of people.

"I think the reward for conformity is that everyone likes you except yourself.” ~ Rita Mae Brown

Note that these images are what we want people to think of us, they get us accepted. As masters, you determine your mastery, and in most cases, we master anger, envy, jealousy, and other negative behaviors, and they slowly become who we are. The same way you have mastered all these negativities; you have to master love. Still, many find it hard to accomplish this feat.

This difficulty stems from the fact that we have taught ourselves to conform to the norm of our society. When you were a child, you were always laughing, you made friends easily, and you hardly bothered about the past or the future. But, as you grew older, your parents and family, in the name of education, started to mold your mind to align to a particular standard.

The punishment and reward system bends our will, it tells us how to dream, how to behave. And in the end, we grow to become a shell of the carefree and joyous child that we once were. Alas, what we are left with is fear – fear of being ignored or rejection — and this manifests in different ways. It leads us to master those negative attributes, and we shield ourselves from the truth by believing in a lie.

We believe in these lies to the extent that they become our truth. More so, we create excuses to back up these lies, and down the line, we slowly forget about our true nature.

The loss of innocence drives you to punish yourself for not being perfect

Perfection is not a term a child will naturally give meaning to. As a child, you were hardly aware of how the world perceived you or your place in your society. All that mattered was expending your energy on doing what you wanted to do — the things that were fun. However, your relationship with your parents, siblings, and other adults taught you something — that there are things the world expects from you.

And so, this notion slowly poisoned you as you start to align your thoughts and actions to beliefs that were imposed on you. You lose your innocence, and the older you still find it hard to do away with these beliefs. Therefore, you limit yourself, you distort your capacity to love, and what you got left is a poisoned mind that often revels in the standard set for you by others.

The same mind limiting framework governs the way you relate with others. Because an individual had an abusive relationship with her parents, she might find herself always gravitating towards abusive relationships. The susceptibility to crave abuse is a result of a poisoned mind, as she has come to believe that being abused is the only way to get attention, or It is the only way to remind herself that she deserves to be punished for not being good enough.

“Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage.” ~ Lao Tzu

Relationship, on the other hand, must have its foundation in true love and not in the need to get someone to validate your actions or make you happy. Happiness comes from within, and you will discover that relationships do not last because we subject our happiness to the actions or inactions of the people we love.

In essence, someone that claims to love you should not shoulder the responsibility to make you feel good. If you cannot teach yourself to cherish your joy, you will discover that the people you depend on for your daily slice of happiness will one day let you down. So, what will you do when these people disappoint you? Does it mean that they do not love you? Certainly not. Instead, our relationship with them is not borne out of love, but from fear.

Love or fear could govern your relationship with others

Many confuse love for fear because the narrative that everyone interacts majorly for companionship hides our true intent. In this book, the author did enough to separate relationship with love as its foundation and the one that relies on fear to exist.

For one, love does not depend on obligation or expectations. On the other hand, it is fear that drives you to demand that the people you claim to love to conform to a particular standard. You expect them to act in a certain way, you ask that they do something, so you too could have a reason to reciprocate.

The same way, love is respect. You should not go all out to control or change the people you love. Furthermore, love is always kind. In contrast, fear drives you to anger, which is basically a mask for fear itself.

“We love the things we love for what they are.” ~ Robert Frost

Love embraces responsibility. If you truly love someone, you will never shy away from the responsibilities that the relationship places on you. Likewise, love is unconditional. There is no reason to be ashamed of the people you claim to love. You do not judge them or look for justifications to tie your feelings to.

Judging from these requirements, you will agree that love thrives when two people with matching preferences and goals come together. You will only love a man or a woman that you don’t feel the need to change or improve. Remember that love is unconditional, therefore, you must identify the strengths and the flaws of your partner, and accept them.

Also, do not project your sadness on your spouse. Realize that everyone has his or her own baggage, and so, carry yours. However, this kind of love is embedded in self-discovery. You cannot choose the right person when you don’t know who you are and the things you cherish. You will also find it difficult to accept your spouse for who he or she is if you are yet to accept yourself.

You should go into a relationship for all the right reasons

Why do people get addicted to love? People go into relationships for all the wrong reasons. They know what loneliness is, what rejection is. Therefore, as soon as they get a sniff of love, irrespective of who it is coming from or the person’s intentions, they jump at it. This type of love is devoid of the analysis mentioned in the previous chapter, as the major motivator is the fear of being alone.

This same fear will spur such people to become obsessive. They are scared of returning to their state of loneliness, and so, they hold on for their dear life. Instead of loving out of fear, the author advised that you first take the step to love yourself. Self-love will help you cherish being alone, which will stop you from jumping into a relationship for the wrong reasons.

Once you learn to love and respect yourself, it becomes difficult to settle for less. It becomes clear to you that relationships should emanate from a desire to want and not a survival instinct that propels neediness. However, in most cases, we tend to gravitate towards the latter. It is not like we are oblivious of our mistakes, but we hide from the truth.

We see the consequences of our decisions, and we decide to wallow in our suffering, just because we think that we cannot do better or because we don’t want others to see our flaws. Regardless of how much suffering you have learned to withstand, you can heal, you can master your flaws and fears, and you can change your story.

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” ~ Plato

Mastering fear and subjecting your reactions and decisions to scrutiny is what the Toltecs called the Mastery of Transformation. It entails that you put away the lies you have used to mask your pain, find its source, and take action to correct them. You have to become responsible for your happiness, you ought to change yourself before you attempt to change the world.

Nonetheless, you could find it hard to trail this path if you do not learn to put aside your pride or those things — such as drugs or alcohol — you have used to become numb to your reality. And though you have the capacity to redesign your beliefs, we often remain in the same state because the things that have held us captive have their roots in our mind. One of the biggest beliefs that you could battle is what sex should mean.

Right from when we are children, people have told us what sex is, the things that make sex acceptable, how to dress to look sexually appealing. All this information has become the yardstick by which we judge our sexuality. More so, the moment we succumb to our body’s sexual urge that contradicts what we have come to believe as the accepted sexuality, our mind tortures us till we self-destruct.

In light of this, you must separate the needs of your body from the tricks of your mind. This approach will allow you to discern when your mind is tricking you into believing that you are undeserving of redemption.

Your redemption stems from self-love and unearthing your truth

It is impossible to heal without accepting who you are. Your definition of a perfect body has always been influenced by external factors. As a result, you often see yourself through the eyes of others, you ask them for validation, and their judgment determines how you rate your body. Whereas, the only person you should seek validation from is you.

You have to learn to love your body and accept it in its entirety. The relationship you have with yourself influences your confidence and how you relate with your spouse. If you believe that your body is not good enough, then you will likely fall into the temptation of thinking that you are not good enough for your partner.

“If you have the ability to love, love yourself first.” ~ Charles Bukowski

When you start loving yourself more, it starts getting easier to see the truth. Also, it becomes easy to block those lies that people keep telling you. They tell you that you are not capable, that you are a failure, that you will never achieve socially imposed goals. All these are lies and the second step of healing is, as the author puts it, seeing through them. Likewise, you should uncover the truth to those lies you have always used to limit your growth.

The next stage of healing is forgiveness. Now, your truth has changed the way you see things, you have come to know why you are hurting, and the person or people to blame. Whoever these people are, even if you are the source of your hurt, you owe it to yourself to forgive so you could become whole. Forgive yourself. Forgive those who have wronged you and also seek forgiveness from those you have wronged.

Only then will you transcend the illusion that you had to believe about yourself and the world around you. You become wise not by acquiring knowledge, but by seeking the truth and living by it.

Conclusion

There are a few things that you have the power to change, and one of them is you. Only you can choose to see the truth when all the world tries to feed you lies and illusions. You can master your body and your mind, define your own goals, and you can stop letting other people set them for you.

Try this:
Write a list of things or memories that hurt you or those that still haunt you. Trace these memories or events to a source and work on forgiving he or she that you believe had cause them. Remember that you can be the source of your hurt.