What Don Miguel Ruiz Said About What

Ruminations on Ruiz 1: What?

“Love what you are.”

I’ve read this sentence and I’ve heard it read several times before, but today it struck me as something so profound that it’s somewhat a surprise it took this long to comprehend. But then again not, because its wisdom is hid behind that kind of simplicity I think we too often take for granted. I know I do.

The key word here is “what.” Notice he didn’t say “who.”

For the ‘who’ in our recovery is that old dream infested with knowledgeable lies and a strong wrong-headed belief. That we can set aside. (I think sometimes our difficulty in loving ourselves is exactly this. We confuse the who with the what.)

But the ‘what’ is the essential, that life force, the soul within us burning. This is our true essence, our absolute reality, our eternal divinity. Recognize and love it. With all your heart.

That is the beginning, and in many ways an end in itself. In between, you may create a new “who.” And know that it’s a dream and a story and can be a loving creation.

But it’s just not the what.

‘Ruminations on Ruiz’ are sporadic personal insights into the writings of Don Miguel Ruiz written so that I may remember them and in a manner that I feel pays respect to the words themselves. Don Miguel Ruiz is the author of ‘The Four Agreements’ and the master work, ‘The Voice of Knowledge.’ Although well-known (and maybe dismissed) as a New Age Avatar, he is, in essence, a masterful synthesizer of our great wisdom traditions, and, to that purpose, a contemporary prophet.