Book Report - The Mastery of Love

Quick Take

Don Miguel Ruiz is a terrific author who has done a marvelous job with The Mastery of Love. Ruiz starts the book off by explaining key concepts, like emotional wounds, emotional poison, personal dreams, self-love, and fear.

Once the reader has a grasp of these concepts he gets to work. He ties the ideas beautifully to explain the magical kitchen, our dreams, accepting others and ourselves, focusing on our half, control and manipulation, hunting, healing, the force called life, and finally, the God within you.

Ruiz does a great job of building his messages based on the ideas and concepts he explains in the previous chapter. Ruiz is an excellent storyteller who utilizes metaphors, personification, symbolism, and many other literary devices to paint vivid pictures for his readers.

Key Concepts

Ruiz presents many concepts that might be new to his readers. His unique writing style helps the concepts “stick.” In this section, I will do my best to capture a few concepts that touched me.

The Magical Kitchen

One of my favorite concepts by Ruiz is that of the magical kitchen. The magical kitchen is a kitchen where you have access to all the food in the world. It has the best food in the world and it’s never-ending. You can invite all your family, friends, neighbors, and whoever else you want into your magical kitchen to eat as much as they want, as long as they respect the kitchen.

Now consider you have this magical kitchen and you hear your doorbell ringing. A pizza man arrives with a pie and tries to sell it to you, the cost? The pizza man will give you this pie if you allow him to control and manipulate you. Now if you have a magical kitchen, obviously you will turn down his ridiculous offer, and you might even be inclined to invite him into your magical kitchen.

Now let’s assume that you don’t have a magical kitchen, and you’re starving. It’s been days, weeks and now months without anything to eat and the same pizza man is at the door. Will you take his deal?

Self-Love

The magical kitchen is a reference to self-love. If you have self-love, you will have a never-ending supply of love. If you love yourself, you can easily share your love with all those in your life. You can share the love with no strings attached, you don’t have to bargain, barter or worry. As long as the person you are sharing your love with has the same values and ideals, as long as they respect you and your magical kitchen.

If you don’t have self-love, if you don’t have that magical kitchen, or worse, if you don’t have any food in the kitchen then you’re in danger. You’re in danger of falling into the trap of the pizza man. If you have no self-love you might look for love externally. You might look for love in others, but others might not be inviting you into their magical kitchen.

Instead, they might be attempting to control and manipulate you. People can do this by coming to your “rescue” with a pizza, but that pie comes with a price. To avoid finding ourselves in painful relationships where we are being controlled, used, and hurt, we should look to build our magical kitchen.

Once we build our magical kitchen we don’t have to find love in others, we have it in ourselves. From that point forward we can easily share our love. If someone tries to control or manipulate us in exchange for their love, we can easily let them go. It all starts with self-love, it all starts with our magical kitchen.

Our Dreams

We all have dreams, we wouldn’t be who we are without them. Having dreams is encouraged, we should all dream, but we need to have dreams for ourselves, not others. Ruiz constantly touches on our half. This concept is incredibly important and ties perfectly with our dreams.

So what is our half? In short, our half is the part of any relationship that we are responsible for. I any relationship that you have with someone, whether it be your parent, your spouse, your coworker, your friend, or anyone else, you are only responsible for your half, not theirs.

Throughout the entirety of the book, Ruiz builds upon the concept of our half. We are responsible for ourselves and what we bring to the table. We are not responsible for our counterparts and what they bring, that is on them. In the same manner, it is not our place to force our counterparts to bring things to the table.

A Cat is a Cat, A Dog is a Dog

Dogs are fun-loving, happy, affectionate animals. When you’re not home they’re sad and they miss you. Once you get home, they rush to the door to show you love. They’re always by your side, no matter what. What you feel, they feel, they truly are our best friends.

Cats on the other hand are cold, isolated, and methodical. They don’t care about you that much. They’ll come up to you when they want to be pet. They’ll eat when they’re hungry, and ultimately, their world doesn’t revolve around you, it revolves around them.

So, what’s better, a cat or a dog? The answer is subjective to who you are and what you want. If you want a happy pet who is in love with you and wants to be your best friend, you might want to get a dog. If you want an animal who’s around occasionally and doesn’t think of you as the center of their universe, then you might want a dog.

If you want a pet that waits for you to come home and jumps on you when you get in, then don’t get a cat. The cat will not do that. Now, you can try to make the cat go against its nature and try to train it so it waits for you by the door, but that’s not who the cat is. It’s not what the cat wants, it’s what you want, it’s your dream for the cat.

We shouldn’t try to force our cat to be a dog, our cat is a cat. If we want a dog, we can look at a cat and appreciate the cat for what it is, we can still love cats, enjoy playing with them and their company, but ultimately, we should get a dog. If we try to get a cat and make it act like a dog, we are pushing our dreams onto the cat. We are trying to force the cat to be something that it is not, by doing so we hurt the cat, the relationship we have with the cat, and ultimately, ourselves.

Love People For Who They Are, Not Who We Want Them To Be

In the same way, we should love a cat for what it is, we should love people for who they are. If person A is outgoing, loud, spontaneous, we should accept that and appreciate them for who they are. We should love them for who they are. If instead, you want someone quiet, regimented, and introverted, then you shouldn’t try to push this dream of ours onto Person A. Either love Person A for who they are or let them be. Don’t try to push your vision or dreams for Person A onto them.

Now there’s a difference between pushing your dreams onto someone and providing guidance and helping someone grow. Let’s go back to Person A, if you love them for who they are, but you realize that every time they make a spontaneous decision, they end up blowing through their money, and because of that, they aren’t able to meet their financial goals. It’s okay to talk to Person A and advise them to be a bit more conscious of their patterns and help them meet their goals. That’s part of being a good friend, calling your friends out, keeping them accountable, and helping them improve.

But there’s a big difference between, “hey, you should be less spontaneous because I don’t like it”, and “hey, our spontaneous trips are great, but you’re not saving for your future, maybe you should try to budget our spontaneous adventures so you can meet your financial goals?” In the first example, you’re pushing your dreams onto Person A, in the second example, you allow Person A to be who they are, but you’re also being a good friend and helping them grow and improve.

Ultimately, if you want a cat, get a cat, if you want a dog, get a dog. If you’re a dog, tell the world who you are, wear it proudly. Don’t hide your dreams for yourself because others might want to change them. Be who you are, and if others try pushing their dreams of you onto you, reject them. On the flip side, recognize people for who they are and love them for who they are. If you can’t, that’s okay, but don’t try to shape them into your dream of them.

A Force Called Life

Ruiz speaks on the force called life, and he does so in a beautiful manner. I truly could not do it justice by attempting to summarize it. Instead, I will capture the impact of this message. Within The Mastery of Love, Ruiz states, “You are Life passing through your body, passing through your mind, passing through your soul. Once you find that out, not with logic, not with the intellect, but because you can feel that Life - you find out that you are the force that makes the flowers open and close, that makes the hummingbird fly from flower to flower. You find out that you are in every tree, and you are in every animal, vegetable, and rock. You are that force that moves the wind and breathes through your body. The whole universe is a living being that is moved by that force, and that is what you are. You are Life.”

This message is one that I can’t ever forget. I have always felt a deep connection to nature. In the summer of 2020, I was in the southwest where I went to a few national parks (The Grand Canyon, Zion, Bryce, Capitol Reef, Arches, and Canyonlands). The sheer beauty that I experienced was awe-inspiring and completely breathtaking.

The night sky in Arizona was so clear that I could see and feel the universe. When I felt the grandeur of the Grand Canyon I didn’t feel like dust in the wind, instead, I felt just as big as the canyon itself, as cliche as it may sound, I felt like I was one with the canyon. The last park I went to was Canyonlands, and while I was looking down at the Buck Canyon and the clouds in the sky, I truly felt the force called life within me. I was in tears, not just by the sheer beauty of the sight, but by the bond I felt.

At the time, throughout my journey, I thought the connection I was feeling to all the places, sights, and moments was the connection between myself and them. But now I can characterize it differently. The reason these moments were so significant to me is that for the first time in my life, the life within me felt a clear connection with the life all around me. The life of the Earth through the Buck Canyon, the life of the universe through the stars, the life of the people around me through our shared experience. I felt so extremely bonded and connected, for the first time, I felt the true strength of this force called life, without even knowing it.

Finding God Within Ourselves

Ruiz starts his final chapter will an incredible story:

There is an old story from India about the God, Brahma, who was 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 do what I tell you to do.” Brahma agreed and following Maya’s instructions, he created the whole universe, the sun and the stars, the moon and the planets. 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 an animal that is so intelligent and aware that it can appreciate your own 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 and find yourself!” Maya created the Dream and still, even today, Brahma is trying to remember who he is. When you awake from the Dream, you become Brahma again and reclaim your divinity. You now know the trick of Maya and can share the truth with others who are going to wake up too.

This chapter touches on so many wonderful points and ties the entire book together, but this one passage stuck with me. I read it out to my friend Trevor, and we both had chills when I was done.

The story of Brahma and Maya is a touching one. We all are made up of this force called life. But it’s not just us humans, the same life force runs through the trees, through the bees, and through the breeze. This life force is all around us, and it is truly divine. Our mind and body will die, but Life will not. Life will continue its divine journey as it always has. Our life will go back into the Earth, it is the same life I was connected to at the Buck Canyon, it is the same life I was connected to when my eyes wondered upon the stars, it is the same life that originated from Brahma.

We are divine beings, and our life is connected to the life all around us. Regardless of what we might think or consider. So when you are considering your worth and looking at the Grand Canyon, don’t for a second believe that you are just a spec of dust. Instead, understand that the same divinity that gives the Grand Canyon its energy, is the same divinity within you. All you need to do is wake up to it.

Final Take

I picked this book up on a casual walk to my local book store. I wasn’t sure what I was going to find, but I can assure it, it wasn’t this. The Mastery of Love is an incredibly powerful book that can open all of our eyes. Many of the concepts that Ruiz touches on were already in the back of my mind. Ruiz helped give these concepts life, and then he helped connect them all, piece by piece.

I would recommend this gem to absolutely anybody. If you are on a spiritual journey, and unafraid to look for love within, this should be your next read. Thank you, Don Miguel Ruiz, for this masterpiece.