The Mastery of Love was one of the first books I ever read voluntarily, if not the first.
My totally gnarly Uncle Brian gracefully gifted me this book when I was about 14 years old, but I didn't bother picking it up until three years later.
The book is referred to as a practical guide to the art of relationship. But it's not just about your relationships with others, it is about making the relationship you have with yourself much healthier. Through ancient Toltec stories, Don Miguel Ruiz (the author) teaches us how to squash the fear that destroys relationships, heal our emotional wounds, and find joy and freedom. By the time I had finished reading this book, my self-image and relationships had been radically transformed.
Here were my top 4 takeaways from The Mastery of Love:
- The mastery of love is SELF-LOVE and SELF-RESPECT.
- Relationships from Hell - Relationships from hell are formed when the primary method of communication with another person is by relating through our wounds. They go into the relationship with the disillusionment that they can heal each others' wounds, which is untrue because only you can heal your wounds.
- The Perfect Relationship - A dog is a dog. A cat is a cat. We can't make a dog change into a cat. So, if we want a cat, it wouldn't make any sense for us to get a dog, would it? If you want a cat, get a cat. If you want a dog, get a dog. We must be specific and honest with ourselves on what we really want in a partner. Another aspect of the perfect relationship is that each person is responsible for themselves; there is no ownership. There is no overbearing control or power struggle. Rather, each person is responsible for his/her part of the relationship. We must stay in our own lanes if we want to experience the perfect relationship. The next aspect of the perfect relationship is what makes the whole thing work ... without this, nothing else happens: We must love ourselves FIRST.
- The Wounded Mind - Many of us walk around with wounds infected with emotional poison, which bubbles to the surface in the form of hate, anger, jealousy, sadness, and hypocrisy. We live in continuous fear of being hurt, and we classify that as normal, but it is definitely not normal. We go into denial, lying to ourselves, choosing not to see our own wounds. It is too painful to look at ourselves as we are, too painful to let others see us as we are. So, we put up barriers to keep others away and to prevent our wounds from being touched. Toltects call this the dream of hell.
This book is immensely powerful, so implore you to check it out on Amazon, just click HERE.
My rating for this book: 5/5
“...What you are is a force--a force that makes it possible for your body to live, a force that makes it possible for your whole mind to dream...You are life”
“The Master lives within everyone. When you give food to the one who is starving, when you give water to the one who is thirsty, when you cover the one who is cold, you give your love to the Master.”
“Humans hunt for love. We feel that we need that love because we believe we don’t have love, because we don’t love ourselves. We hunt for love in other humans just like us, expecting to get love from them when these humans are in the same condition as we are. They don’t love themselves either, so how much love can we get from them? We merely create a bigger need that isn’t real; we keep hunting and hunting, but in the wrong place, because other humans don’t have the love we need.”
“Life is nothing but a dream, and if we are artists, then we can create our life with Love, and our dream becomes a masterpiece of art.”
