T HE V OICE OF K NOWLEDGE Also by don Miguel Ruiz T HE F IFTH A GREEMENT A Practical Guide to Self-Mastery T HE F OUR A GREEMENTS A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom T HE F OUR A GREEMENTS C OMPANION B OOK Using the Four Agreements to Master the Dream of Your Life T HE M ASTERY OF L OVE A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship P RAYERS A Communion with our Creator L OS C UATRO A CUERDOS Una guía práctica para la libertad personal C UADERNO DE T RABAJO DE L OS C UATRO A CUERDOS Utiliza Los Cuatro Acuerdos para gobernar el sueño de tu vida L A M AESTRÍ A DEL A MOR Una guía práctica para el arte de las relaciones O RACIONES Una comunión con nuestro Creador L A V OZ DEL C ONOCIMIENTO Una guía práctica para la paz interior A P RACTICAL G UIDE TO I NNER P EACE A Toltec Wisdom Book T HE V OICE OF K NOWLEDGE DON M IGUEL R UIZ WITH J ANET M ILLS A MBER -A LLEN P UBLISHING S AN R AFAEL , C ALIFORNIA Copyright © 2004 by Miguel Angel Ruiz, M.D. and Janet Mills Published by Amber-Allen Publishing, Inc. Post Office Box 6657 San Rafael, California 94903 Editorial: Janet Mills Typography: Rick Gordon, Emerald Valley Graphics Cover Art: Nicholas Wilton, Studio Zocolo Author Photo: Ellen Denuto All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permission from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ruiz, Miguel, 1952- The voice of knowledge : a practical guide to inner peace / Miguel Ruiz with Janet Mills. p. cm. — (A Toltec wisdom book) 1. Conduct of life. 2. Peace of mind. 3. Toltec philosophy. I. Mills, Janet, 1953- II. Title II. Series: Ruiz, Miguel, 1952-. Toltec wisdom book. BJ1595.R745 2004 299.7’92–dc22 2004045051 ISBN 978-1-934408-04-9 I dedicate this book to the angels who have helped to spread the message of truth all around the world. C ONTENTS Acknowledgments The Toltec 1 …A DAM AND E VE The story from a different point of view 2 …A V ISIT WITH G RANDFATHER A simple truth is discovered 3 … T HE L IE OF O UR I MPERFECTION Childhood memories are recalled 4 … A NIGHT IN THE D ESERT An encounter with the infinite 5 …T HE S TORYTELLER Exploring the characters in the story 6 …I NNER P EACE Taming the voice with two rules 7 … E MOTIONS A RE R EAL The voice of knowledge is not real 8 …C OMMON S ENSE AND B LIND F AITH Recovering our faith and free will 9 …T RANSFORMING THE S TORYTELLER The Four Agreements as favorite tools 10 … W RITING O UR S TORY W ITH L OVE Life as an ongoing romance 11 … O PENING O UR S PIRITUAL E YES A reality of love all around us 12 … T HE T REE OF L IFE The story comes full circle Prayers About the Authors Acknowledgments I WISH TO EXPRESS MY GRATITUDE TO JANET MILLS , the mother of this book. I would also like to thank Gabrielle Rivera, Gail Mills, and Nancy Carleton, who lovingly and generously contributed their time and talents to the realization of this book. The Toltec T HOUSANDS OF Y EARS AGO, THE TOLTEC WERE KNOWN throughout southern Mexico as “women and men of knowledge.” Anthropologists have spoken of the Toltec as a nation or a race, but, in fact, the Toltec were scientists and artists who formed a society to explore and conserve the spiritual knowledge and practices of the ancient ones. They came together as masters (naguals) and students at Teotihuacan, the ancient city of pyramids outside Mexico City known as the place where “Man Becomes God.” Over the millennia, the naguals were forced to conceal the ancestral wisdom and maintain its existence in obscurity. European conquest, coupled with rampant misuse of personal power by a few of the apprentices, made it necessary to shield the knowledge from those who were not prepared to use it wisely or who might intentionally misuse it for personal gain. Fortunately, the esoteric Toltec knowledge was embodied and passed on through generations by different lineages of naguals. Though it remained veiled in secrecy for hundreds of years, ancient prophecies foretold the coming of an age when it would be necessary to return the wisdom to the people. Now, don Miguel Ruiz, a nagual from the Eagle Knight lineage, has been guided to share with us the powerful teachings of the Toltec. Toltec knowledge arises from the same essential unity of truth as all the sacred esoteric traditions found around the world. Though it is not a religion, it honors all the spiritual masters who have taught on the earth. While it does embrace spirit, it is most accurately described as a way of life, distinguished by the ready accessibility of happiness and love. T HE V OICE OF K NOWLEDGE What is truth is real. What is not truth is not real. It’s an illusion, but it looks real. Love is real. It’s the supreme expression of life. 1 A DAM AND E VE The story from a different point of view A BEAUTIFUL AND ANCIENT LEGEND THAT ALMOST everyone has heard before is the story of Adam and Eve. It is one of my favorite stories because it explains with symbolism what I will try to explain with words. The story of Adam and Eve is based on absolute truth, though I never understood it as a child. It is one of the greatest teachings ever, but I believe that most people misunderstand it. Now I will tell you this story from a different point of view, perhaps from the same point of view as the one who created it. The story is about you and me. It’s about us. It’s about al of humanity because, as you know, humanity is only one living being: man, woman — we are only one. In this story, we call ourselves Adam and Eve, and we are the original humans. The story begins when we were innocent, before we closed our spiritual eyes, which means thousands of years ago. We used to live in Paradise, in the Garden of Eden, which was heaven on earth. Heaven exists when our spiritual eyes are open. It is a place of peace and joy, freedom and eternal love. For us — Adam and Eve — everything was about love. We loved and respected one another, and we lived in perfect harmony with all of creation. Our relationship with God, our Creator, was a perfect communion of love, which means that we communed with God all of the time, and God communed with us. It was inconceivable to be afraid of God, the one who created us. Our Creator was a God of love and justice, and we put our faith and trust in God. God gave us complete freedom, and we used our free will to love and enjoy all of creation. Life was beautiful in Paradise. The original humans saw everything through the eyes of truth, the way it is , and we loved it. That is the way we used to be, and it was effortless. Well, the legend says that in the middle of Paradise stood two trees. One was the Tree of Life, which gave life to everything in existence, and the other was the Tree of Death, better known as the Tree of Knowledge. The Tree of Knowledge was a beautiful tree with juicy fruit. Very tempting. And God told us, “Don’t go near the Tree of Knowledge. If you eat the fruit of that tree, you may die.” Of course, no problem. But by nature we love to explore, and surely we went to pay a visit to the tree. If you remember the story, you can already guess who lived in that tree. The Tree of Knowledge was the home of a big snake full of poison. The snake is just another symbol for what the Toltec call the Parasite , and you can imagine why. The story says that the snake who lived in the Tree of Knowledge was a fallen angel who used to be the most beautiful one. As you know, an angel is a messenger who delivers God’s message — a message of truth and love. But for who knows what reason, that fallen angel no longer delivered the truth, which means he delivered the wrong message. The fallen angel’s message was fear, instead of love; it was a lie, instead of truth. In fact, the story describes the fallen angel as the Prince of Lies, which means that he was an eternal liar. Every word coming out of his mouth was a lie. According to the story, the Prince of Lies was living in the Tree of Knowledge, and the fruit of that tree, which was knowledge , was contaminated with lies. We went to that tree, and we had the most incredible conversation with the Prince of Lies. We were innocent. We didn’t know. We trusted everyone. And there was the Prince of Lies, the first storyteller, a very smart guy. Now the story gets a little more interesting because that snake by itself had a whole story of its own. That fallen angel talked and talked and talked, and we listened and listened and listened. As you know, when we are children and our grandparents tell us stories, we are eager to hear everything they tell us. We learn, and it’s very seductive; we want to know more. But this was the Prince of Lies talking. No doubt about it — he was lying, and we were seduced by the lies. We believed the fallen angel’s story, and that was our big mistake. That is what it means to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. We agreed and took his word as the truth. We believed the lies; we put our faith in them. When we bit into the apple, we ate the lies that came with knowledge. What happens when we eat a lie? We believe it, and boom! Now that lie lives in us. This is easy to understand. The mind is very fertile ground for concepts, ideas, and opinions. If someone tells us a lie and we believe it, that lie takes root in our mind. There it can grow big and strong, just like a tree. One little lie can be very contagious, spreading its seeds from person to person when we share it with others. Well, the lies went into our mind, and reproduced a whole Tree of Knowledge inside our head, which is everything that we know. But what is it that we know? Mostly lies. The Tree of Knowledge is a powerful symbol. The legend says that whoever eats the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge will have knowledge of good and evil; they will know the difference between what is right and what is wrong, what is beautiful and what is ugly. They will gather all of that knowledge and begin to judge. Well, that is what happened in our head. And the symbolism of the apple is that every concept, every lie, is just like a fruit with a seed. When we place a fruit in fertile ground, the seed of the fruit creates another tree. That tree reproduces more fruit, and by the fruit, we know the tree. Now each of us has our own Tree of Knowledge, which is our personal belief system. The Tree of Knowledge is the structure of everything we believe. Every concept, every opinion, forms a little branch of that tree, until we end up with the whole Tree of Knowledge. As soon as that Tree is alive in our mind, we hear the fallen angel talking very loudly. The same fallen angel, the Prince of Lies, lives in our mind. From the Toltec point of view, a Parasite was living in the fruit; we ate the fruit, and the Parasite went inside us. Now the Parasite is living our life. The storyteller, the Parasite, is born inside our head, and it survives inside our head because we feed it with our faith. The story of Adam and Eve explains how humanity fell from the dream of heaven into the dream of hell; it tells us how we became the way we are right now. The story usually says that we took just one bite of the apple, but this is not true. I think we ate all of the fruit of that tree, and we became sick from being so full of lies and emotional poison. Humans ate every concept, every opinion, and every story the liar told us, even though it was not the truth. In that moment, our spiritual eyes closed, and we could no longer see the world with the eyes of truth. We began to perceive the world in a completely different way, and everything changed for us. With the Tree of Knowledge in our head, we could only perceive knowledge, we could only perceive lies. We no longer lived in heaven because lies have no place in heaven. This is how humans lost Paradise: We dream lies. We create the whole dream of humanity, individually and collectively, based on lies. Before humans ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, we lived in truth. We spoke only truth. We lived in love without any fear. After we ate the fruit, we felt guilt and shame. We judged ourselves as no longer good enough, and of course we judged others the same way. With judgment came polarity, separation, and the need to punish and be punished. For the first time we were no longer kind to one another; we no longer respected and loved all of God’s creation. Now we suffered, and we began to blame ourselves, to blame other people, and even to blame God. We no longer believed that God was loving and just; we believed that God would punish and hurt us. It was a lie. It was not true, but we believed it, and we separated from God. From this point, it is easy to understand what is meant by original sin . The original sin is not sex. No, that is another lie. The original sin is to believe the lies that come from the snake in the tree, the fallen angel. The meaning of the word sin is “to go against.” Everything that we say, everything that we do against ourselves is a sin. To sin is not about blame or moral condemnation. To sin is to believe in lies, and to use those lies against ourselves. From that first sin, that original lie, all of our other sins are born. How many lies do you hear in your head? Who is judging, who is talking, who is the one with all the opinions? If you don’t love, it’s because that voice doesn’t let you love. If you don’t enjoy your life, it’s because that voice doesn’t let you enjoy it. And not only that — the liar in our head has the need to express all those lies, to tell its story. We share the fruit of our Tree with others, and because others have the same kind of liar, together our lies become more powerful. Now we can hate more. Now we can hurt more. Now we can defend our lies and become fanatics following our lies. Humans even destroy one another in the name of these lies. Who is living our life? Who is making our choices? I think the answer is obvious. Now we know what is going on in our head. The storyteller is there; it is that voice in our head. That voice is talking and talking and talking, and we are listening and listening and believing every word. That voice never stops judging. It judges whatever we do, whatever we don’t do, whatever we feel, whatever we don’t feel, whatever everybody else does. It is constantly gossiping in our head, and what comes out of that voice? Lies, mostly lies. These lies hook our attention, and all we can see are lies. That is the reason we don’t see the reality of heaven that exists in this same place, at this same time. Heaven belongs to us because we are the children of heaven. The voice in our head doesn’t belong to us. When we are born, we don’t have that voice. The voice in our head comes after we learn — first the language, then different points of view, then all the judgments and lies. Even when we first learn to speak, we speak only truth. But little by little, the whole Tree of Knowledge is programmed into our head, and the big liar eventually takes over the dream of our life. You see, in the moment when we separated from God, we started to search for God. For the first time, we started to search for the love we believed we didn’t have. We started to search for justice, for beauty, for truth. The search began thousands of years ago, and humans are still searching for the paradise we lost. We are searching for the way we used to be before we believed in lies: authentic, truthful, loving, joyful. The truth is we are searching for our Self. You know, it was true what God told us: If we eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, we may die. We did eat it, and we are dead. We are dead because our authentic self is no longer there. The one who is living our life is the big liar, the Prince of Lies, that voice in our head. You can call it thinking . I call it the voice of knowledge . P OINTS TO P ONDER • The mind is fertile ground for concepts, ideas, and opinions. If someone tells us a lie and we believe it, that lie takes root in our mind and can grow big and strong, like a tree. One little lie can be very contagious, spreading its seeds from person to person when we share it with others. • Knowledge goes into our mind and reproduces a structure inside our head, which is everything that we know. With all that knowledge in our head, we only perceive what we believe ; we only perceive our own knowledge. And what is it that we know? Mostly lies. • Once the Tree of Knowledge is alive in our mind, we hear the fallen angel talking very loudly. That voice never stops judging. It tells us what is right and what is wrong, what is beautiful and what is ugly. The storyteller is born inside our head, and survives inside our head because we feed it with our faith. • Heaven exists when our spiritual eyes are open, when we perceive the world through the eyes of truth. Once lies hook our attention, our spiritual eyes are closed. We fall from the dream of heaven and begin to live the dream of hell. • Heaven belongs to us because we are the children of heaven. The voice in our head doesn’t belong to us. When we are born, we don’t have that voice. Thinking comes after we learn — first the language, then different points of view, then all the judgments and lies. The voice of knowledge comes as we accumulate knowledge. • Before we eat the lies that come with knowledge, we live in truth. We speak only truth. We live in love without any fear. Once we have knowledge, we judge ourselves as no longer good enough; we feel guilt, shame, and the need to be punished. We begin to dream lies, and we separate from God. • In the moment when we separate from God, we begin to search for God, for the love we believe we don’t have. Humans are continually searching for justice, for beauty, for truth — for the way we used to be before we believed in lies. We are searching for our authentic self. 2 A V ISIT WITH G RANDFATHER A simple truth is discovered I CONSIDER MYSELF LUCKY BECAUSE I GREW UP learning from an ancient tradition known as the Toltec. My mother was a great healer, and to witness miracles was nothing extraordinary because I didn’t know anything else. I grew up believing that anything is possible, but what I learned about the Toltec was full of superstition and mythology. I remember seeing superstitions everywhere, and as a teenager, I began to rebel against all of the lies that come from this tradition. I learned to challenge everything until certain experiences opened my eyes to the truth. Then I knew that what I had learned from the ancient Toltec was no longer a theory. I knew, but I could not explain it with words. In this book, I want to tell you about some of the experiences that changed my point of view completely. With each experience, I realized something that was always obvious, but that I had never seen before. Perhaps the way I will relate these stories to you is not exactly the way they happened, but it’s the way I perceive them and try to explain them to myself. Maybe you have had similar moments when you realized, as I did, that most of what we believe is not the truth. Opportunities to perceive the truth always come to us, and my life has been full of these opportunities. Many of them I just let go, but others opened my spiritual eyes and made the transformation in my life possible. One of these opportunities came from a visit with my grandfather when I was a teenager in college. My grandfather was what they call an old nagual , which is like a shaman. He was close to ninety years old, and people used to visit with him just to learn, just to be around him. Grandfather had been teaching me since I was a child, and I had worked hard all my youth to be good enough to earn his respect. Well, this was a time when I was pretending to be an intellectual, and I wanted to impress my grandfather with my opinions about everything I was learning in school. I was ready to show the one who had been the biggest influence on my life how smart I was. Good luck! I went to my grandfather’s house, and he received me the way he always did — with a big smile, with enormous love. I started to tell him my point of view about all of the injustice in the world, about the poverty, about the violence, about the conflict between good and what I then called evil . My grandfather was very patient, and he listened very carefully to everything I said. This encouraged me to speak even more, just to impress him. At a certain point, I saw a little smile on his face. Ooh! I knew something was coming. I was not impressing him at all. I thought, “Oh, he’s making fun of me.” He noticed my reaction, and looked directly into my eyes. “Well, Miguel, those are very good theories that you’ve learned,” he said. “But they are only theories. Everything you have told me is just a story. It doesn’t mean that it’s true.” Of course I felt a little badly about this. I took it personally right away, and I tried to defend my point of view. But it was too late because now my grandfather started to talk. He looked at me with a big smile and said, “You know, most people around the world believe that there is a great conflict in the universe, a conflict between good and evil. Well, this is not true. It’s true that there is a conflict, but the conflict only exists in the human mind, not in the universe. It’s not true for the plants or the animals. It’s not true for the stars or the trees, or for the rest of nature. It’s only true for humans. And the conflict in the human mind is not really between good and evil. The real conflict in our mind is between the truth and what is not the truth, between the truth and lies. Good and evil are just the result of that conflict. The result of believing in the truth is goodness, love, happiness. When you live your life in truth, you feel good, and your life is wonderful. The result of believing in lies and defending those lies creates what you call evil ; it creates fanaticism. Believing in lies creates all of the injustice, all of the violence and abuse, all of the suffering, not only in society but also in the individual. The universe is as simple as it is or it is not , but humans complicate everything.” Hmm. … What my grandfather told me was logical, and I understood what he was saying, but I didn’t believe him. How could all of the conflict in the world, all of the war, violence, and injustice, be the result of something so simple? Surely it must be more complicated than that. Grandfather went on to say, “Miguel, all of the drama you suffer in your personal life is the result of believing in lies, mainly about yourself. And the first lie you believe is you are not: You are not the way you should be, you are not good enough, you are not perfect. We are born perfect, we grow up perfect, and we will die perfect, because only perfection exists. But the big lie is that you are not perfect, that nobody is perfect. So you start to search for an image of perfection that you can never become. You will never reach perfection in that way because that image is false. It’s a lie, but you invest your faith in that lie, and then you build a whole structure of lies to support it.” In that moment I didn’t realize that my grandfather had given me a great opportunity — something as simple as having the awareness that every drama in my life, all of the suffering in my life, was because I believed in lies. Though I wanted to believe what my grandfather said, I only pretended to believe him. And it was so logical that I said, “Oh yes, Grandfather, you’re right. I agree with you.” But I was lying. There were too many lies inside my head to accept something as simple as the truth. Then my grandfather looked at me very kindly and said, “Miguel, I can see that you are trying hard to impress me, to prove that you are good enough for me. And you have the need to do this because you are not good enough for yourself.” Ouch. He got me right there. I didn’t know why, but I felt as if he had caught me in a lie. I never realized that my grandfather knew about my insecurities, about the self-judgment and self-rejection, about the guilt and shame I felt. How did he know that I was pretending to be what I was not? Grandfather was smiling again as he told me, “Miguel, everything you’ve learned in school, everything you know about life, is only knowledge. How can you know if what you’ve learned is the truth or not? How can you know if what you believe about yourself is the truth?” At that point I reacted and said, “Of course I know the truth about myself. I live with myself every day. I know what I am!” Grandfather really laughed at that and said, “The truth is that you have no idea what you really are, but you know what you are not . You have been practicing what you are not for so long, that you really believe your image is what you are. Your faith is invested in all those lies you believe about yourself. It’s a story, but it’s not the truth. “Miguel, what makes you powerful is your faith. Faith is the power of creation that all humans have, and it doesn’t have anything to do with religion. Faith is the result of an agreement. When you agree to believe in something without a doubt, you invest your faith. If you have no doubt about what you believe, then for you it is truth, even though it may really be a lie. Your faith is so powerful that if you believe you are not good enough, you are not good enough! If you believe you will fail, you will fail, because that is the power and magic of your faith. As I said before, you suffer because you believe lies. It’s that simple. Humanity is the way it is because collectively we believe so many lies. Humans have carried the lies for thousands of years, and we react to the lies with hate, with anger, with violence. But they’re only lies.” I was wondering, “Then how can we know the truth?” Before I could ask this question out loud, my grandfather answered it: “The truth needs to be experienced. Humans have the need to describe, to explain, to express what we perceive, but when we experience the truth, there are no words to describe it. Whoever claims, ‘This is the truth,’ is lying without even knowing it. We can perceive truth with our feelings, but as soon as we try to describe it with words, we distort it, and it’s no longer the truth. It’s our story! It’s a projection based on reality that is only true for us, but still we try to put our experience into words, and this is something wonderful, really. It’s the greatest art of every human.” Grandfather could see that what he had just said wasn’t clear to me. “Miguel, if you are an artist, a painter, you try to express what you perceive through your art. What you paint may not be exactly what you perceive, but it is close enough to remind you of what you perceive. Well, imagine that you are very lucky and you are Pablo Picasso’s friend. And because Picasso loves you, he decides to make a portrait of you. You pose for Picasso, and after many days, he finally shows you your portrait. You will say, ‘This is not me,’ and Picasso will say, ‘Of course it is you. This is how I see you.’ For Picasso, this is true; he is expressing what he is perceiving. But you will say, ‘I don’t look like that.’ “Well, every human is the same as Picasso. Every human is a storyteller, which means that every human is an artist. What Picasso does with colors, we do with words. Humans witness life happening inside us and all around us, and we use words to make a portrait of what we witness. Humans make up stories about everything we perceive, and just like Picasso we distort the truth; but for us, it is the truth. Of course, the way we express our distortion could be something other people enjoy. Picasso’s art is highly valued by many people.