Seems like I’m always reading a book about love but I don’t think I would be me if I didn’t. Each book on the topic I open, and dive into, I’m reassured of why I’m such a lover of Love, and it’s because I should be, that’s what’s natural to me. I sought to master love in an attempt to master and significantly transform every connection and relationship I have for the rest of my time here. By connections I mean interactions with others, people, places and things. By relationships I mean, familial, platonic and romantic.
Don Miguel Ruiz, as you can assume, details how we, as our true authentic selves can master love in this life we live. He starts by discussing the presenting issues as to why love is complicated and difficult for us. He states that the human mind is wounded and carries many emotional wounds keeping us from falling into and embracing love in all areas of our lives. We struggle with emotional wounds that hurt to touch. They hurt so much we, ourselves, neglect to touch them, and in the same stroke expect others to love us loudly, unconditionally and without fear. We have not learned to love ourselves in this fashion but demand it from others. Validation from another is empty if you have not learned to first validate yourself. The Mastery of Love is about mastering the love of and within self. When this is done love flows effortlessly in all things you do, touch, and experience. Most of us don’t make it to the space where we are leading with love and experiencing its wonder with or without another because of our deep emotional wounds.
There is a chapter that talks about the loss of one’s innocence as a child that plants the seeds for these emotional wounds. This could be childhood trauma, things, thoughts and behaviors learned from one’s environment, or simple experiences that just slightly adjust our emotional processing. As a child we are absorbing our surroundings like crazy, learning and creating brain wiring and patterns etc. when you spank your child for the first time for example, this will slightly shift their emotional processing and continue to shift the more it is experienced. Like Ruiz says we are naturally sensitive beings with such a large emotional sense, knowing and perception. Our emotions hold vibrational frequencies. As children, we are closest to our truest and most natural form as human beings. This all becomes negatively impacted with each hurtful moment, or triggers to our emotional selves, as we get older and acclimate more to the learned experiences, rather than our God given natural ones. The more triggers we experience the bigger and deeper the wound. Neglecting to heal those wounds as we grow into conscious (and wounded) adults is what perpetuates this living hell. We struggle with 100% of the issues we don’t heal whether we are aware of this or not. Reading about how we lose our innocence, experience after experience allowed me to have much more compassion for my wounds than I already had, is that not self-love? I think it’s safe to say that self-compassion is most definitely an extension of self-love, an extension of mastering love.
Another aspect I became wise to reading this book is how many of us truly don’t recognize what love even feels like, but we know we want it, need and gotta have it. Ruiz tells the story of The Man Who Didn’t Believe In Love, (If you’d like to read the entire story I’ve linked it to the title). The Moral of this story is that there was a man who did not believe in love. He stood on the fact and shared with everyone that he felt that what humans referred to as love was nothing but “a relationship based on fear and control,” lacking respect, and actual love. He was adamant about not allowing someone to manipulate him emotionally and mentally and calling it love. He soon met a woman who agreed that love doesn’t exist. He was shocked and happy to finally find an ally in his unpopular opinion. They had a lot in common and became best friends. He respected her, they were both happy together, they did not need things from one another, he did not feel jealousy or envy. One day he thought maybe what he felt for this woman was actually love. He was overjoyed by this and entered a relationship with this woman because of his feelings. This all came to an end one night when a strange miracle happened and he pulled a star from the night sky, and then his soul infused with this star. He was so happy that all he could think about was giving this star to the woman. When he went to give her this star, filled with his soul and the source of his immense happiness, she dropped it in a moment of doubt and it shattered into pieces. His mistake was achieving his happiness within self and immediately wanting to give it away. Your happiness will always crumble when you put it in the hands of another. When you give your happiness to someone else they have the ability to take it with them if and when they leave. This applies to love as well. We lack the proper amount of love within self and place the responsibility of receiving love on others. We generally can’t wait to find “the one” but have no clue as to what this consists of, or what it feels like. When you do experience love, without the proper information (knowledge and love of self) you might make the same mistake the man made, basing your love and happiness on another.
Mastering Love is primarily about self-love because when you properly love yourself you properly recognize it in others and all around you. No one can alter or shift your love of self because it does not come from them. Leading in love is a decision you make, an expression you feel, and action you put forth in your daily life. Mastering love is mastering your natural vibration, its giving and sending others what you know they need because you need it too, and it does nothing but lift you higher.
I’d highly recommend this book if you wish to ascend in your efforts, pursuit, and expression of love moving forward in your life.
Be True. Be Beautiful. & Be Blessed
With All My Love.
-B
“In the Toltec tradition, three fundamental masteries guide us to our true nature, which is happiness, freedom, and love.
The first is the Mastery of Awareness. This mastery teaches us to be aware of what we really are. It is the first step towards freedom, because we cannot be free if we don’t know what we are looking for. The Toltec said, ‘Let us see ourselves with truth,’ and they created a mastery just for awareness.
The second is the Mastery of Transformation, which teaches us how to be spiritual warriors, and stalk our actions and reactions so we can break free of the knowledge that enslaves us. This mastery shows us how to change the dream of our life by changing our agreements and beliefs.
The Mastery of love is the result if the first two masteries. From the Toltec perspective, everything is made of love. Love is Life itself. When we master Love, we align with the Spirit of Life passing through us. We are no longer the body, or the mind, or the soul; we are Love. Then every action we take is an expression of love, and love in action can only produce happiness. When we master Awareness, Transformation, and Love we reclaim our divinity and become one with God. This is the goal of the Toltec.”
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