Don Miguel Ruiz, the Four Agreements and the Mastery of Love

Posted by David J. Shestokas Jul 20, 2009

I have written two articles recently about the earliest books of Don Miguel Ruiz. The first article is about the Four Agreements and the second is about the Mastery of Love. In the articles I explain rather dispassionately what the books are about. That's the nature of article writing, it requires passion about the subject and a desire to communicate information, but limits commentary of a personal nature. The blog has no such restrictions.

As to the work of Ruiz, it is coming in handy during a difficult time. Our family dog of 15 1/2 years recently passed. The story of Cochise talks about that at length. She is still missed, and will be for a long time. There are other stressors that we all have in our lives, and the beauty of the Ruiz books is that they explain the source (at least for me). I have only discovered Ruiz in the last few weeks. Amazed I did not know of him before as the first book was on the New York Times best seller list for seven years, but nevertheless, he and his thoughts are new to me.

The thoughts can be found in the articles in detail, and of course by getting the books. In reading the material, I was amazed at how he dealt with very complicated and deep personal issues in such simple language and fairly straightforward manner. He essentially advises a change in thought process that can change your life.

I decided I would try it and see if happiness and love could in fact be achieved through altering my thought process. It has been difficult, but I can see the possibilities. There are moments when using Ruiz' advice replaces unhappiness with smiles. I have used it to reinterpret memories, changing them from sad to happy.

I think it will take perserverance to have the happiness Ruiz says is possible and I carry the Four Agreements with me to read when I need to do so. For those of you who have read the books and trying to adapt your life to them, I hope you can do so. I hope I can. I have seen flashes of time where the help in changing thinking has been great, and am working on the permanency of the change. As it has taken 57 years of unconscious thought patterns to arrive at where I am, I am sure a week or two of working on it will not do the trick, but I am determined to work on it and wish the best to anyone else wishing to make that committment.