Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. Yes. Thank you so much. How are you?

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. These transitions are all about life. Sometimes life transitions make you unhappy. I remember the time when I was a child when my father took me to the park one day and after playing sometime, my dad found me crying on the edge of it. He asked me why I’m crying and I said, “I was too big for the swings.” I’m too big to play and I was so sad because it’s something I enjoyed to do, something I loved to do and I was so carefree about it and then, it came the day where I went to the swings, I went to the park and I was too big. I couldn’t fit. It was uncomfortable and I lost something and it was heartbreaking. Right now, we’re transitioning and we are going through so many unique life transitions. We’re making the slow process. Moving is always slow and it’s a process. Moving from California to Nevada and I’m watching not just my wife’s and my transition but I’m watching my kids and it’s the same concept. We lived in a home we love and enjoy but we get to the point where it no longer fits. The lifestyle and the functionality don’t fit and it’s time for a transition in order to adapt to a new reality. So some life transitions are intentional which make us happy. Some types of transitions are life such as when someone passes away and when someone is born. And it’s so true because my younger brother is having a new baby next month so we going to have a new Ruiz member. That’s one of the reasons why we’re moving and it all comes down to attachment. The attachment of a dream that we thoroughly enjoyed, that we thrived in, that we made lifetime bonds. We have neighbors and friends whom we’re going to be friends for the rest of our lives. We know that. Yet, there’s a moment where it doesn’t fit anymore and we’re going to transition to a new place and we’re going into the unknown. In the unknown, at certain patterns, we know will repeat themselves but still the unknown and a huge emotional part of us wants to hold on to something that makes us happy, makes us feel comfortable.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. Relearning and if something happens when we’re transitioning, we think we can’t do this again.For instance, someone who goes through a breakup had first thought “I’m never going to love again. How am I going to fall in love again? I will never have a relationship like that.” And then, you found out the next relationship is even bigger and better than the last one because you found a relationship that fit who you are as an individual.  

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. Some would say, “Take the risk” but it’s really not a risk. It’s just simply, “Take the step to the new stage in life,” whether it’s the death of someone we love, the birth of someone we’re going to love, or just simply letting go of a dream where you saw your kids grow up the next last 6 years. They’re going through a dream where they’re not going to be the kids. They’re going to be teenagers and what their teenage years are going to be is life transitions. A person going through life transitions is like the serpent that sheds it skin and because he loves the skin so much, he carries with him wherever he goes all the skins he’s left behind and it’s just a huge mess. But in order to survive, he let go of it all and engaged in the new environment.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. I remember a joke that Woody Allen said. It is, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.” Funny enough my grandma used to say the same thing. Today was my daughter’s first day of school. It is one of important life transitions in a child’s life. She’s going to school even though we’re transitioning. Here she was planning how her day is going to be, planning her clothes, and what she’s going to say. She has all these things prepared and then, she shows up, and everything she thought of wasn’t really going to apply because the environment changed everything enough that her whole routine just changed and she has to improvise.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. In reality, when we enter a new stage, you’re relying more on your ability to improvise and re-engage in a new environment, which is to be aware of where your new setting is, what the environment is like, who the people are. The willingness to see again instead of projecting on to life what you want to see and expecting that’s what you’re going to see. That’s where everything falls apart during some life transitions. Negative emotional reaction kicks in because it’s not going as you plan, as you think it should be, and people are not behaving the way you think they are. You’re already going in to scenario with a preset of ideas and beliefs that to some degree we’re attached too. But, if we learn to detach, be willing to be in the environment, and not to expect a single thing allows us to be better prepared for what’s ahead because the constant is oneself. So the one thing that you can expect to see is you. You are the constant in every room you’re in and in every cycle you’re in. Even as our transitions into new stage in life, you are the constant. So if there’s a practice in applying towards life transitions, it’s learning not to project or anticipate how it will be even though it’s fun to come up with potential stories but not to get attached to them so that we can actually see what’s in front of us. And it’s true, not just with a new environment but within ourselves.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. So the practice simply means to take in a breath. Allow yourself to take that breath and focus all your attention there and realize that is the beginning point. When you open your eyes you’re starting a new transition. You’re starting a new stage in life. What do you see? What do you hear? What are you engaging? From there, inspiration comes in, because instead of thinking of what should be, you see what is and you get to play with that play.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. Yeah, the narrators.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. I’m going to combine that question with the commentators or the narrators because there’s the emotional factor. Personal journey or personal transformation could be easy if we were all robots to avoid of any emotion. If we allowed simply logic to reign in our bodies, then we wouldn’t need self-help. It’s easy to transition but we are emotional beings. We are beings who perceive life throughout this spectrum of emotions ranging from complete joy to complete anger, to complete misery. And, we go through all those stages. We get to that and experience that. The emotions are real during all life transitions. What has been true to them may not be and that’s where the combination of the narrators kicks in because our narrators are the voice of our thoughts. My father would have called, “Voice of knowledge“. The narrators are basically are thoughts or beliefs and ideas that tell stories about the unique life transitions. The thing about a narrator, which simply a word to describe that voice of thought, that tree of thought that happens in our mind, is the same energy I use to move my leg and to move my arm. It’s the same energy I use to create a thought and at the root of every belief I have there is a yes, giving it life. There’s nothing in my belief system that I say, “No” to. Thus, our narrators are there because we give them life as our life transitions. So we’re telling the story. We love to tell stories. We love to put into words what we perceive whatever happens during the life transitions. Like the expression, “Action speaks louder than words” but we use words to describe every action. We describe actions with our words and those words have an emotional charge. We can paint a scary painting, a scary story, or the most illuminating, hilarious, wonderful experience. It can be shifted immediately. We can paint the moving to transition as this and they’re going to love again or I’m never going to experience happiness again. I’m never going to make friends the way I had them here. When you paint that picture with that narrator, then the unknown, which is the future, looks grim, dreary, and terrible. But if you’ll see it from the point of view of joy or happiness, it’s going to be happy and it’s going to be great. But when you respect that emotions are real and respect what our emotions are, you find that they have great benefit and when that happens, you’re no longer allowing the emotions to take actions for us. We take the action during emotional life transitions. That’s the whole point of the mastery of self. We become aware that I control my,”Yes” and I control my, “No,” I control the energy that controls and animates this body and this mind during life transitions from doubt to self-confidence. But, in honoring our emotions, which is I think the clouds are perception when we move or a transition that blinds us and what feels are narrator’s story. When we honor our emotions, we’re no longer blinded by our emotions which is one of the key to handle life transitions. We get to see what’s in front of us and that’s very important because in front of us, are multibillion opportunities, an infinity of possibilities. For example in my case, the move to Reno could be disastrous or it could be the most wonderful experience there is because we’re moving to be near my brother, his wife, and new baby Julius. We rebuild our dream around family. The kids have a place to run around near Lake Taho. This completes the story and of course, things that can go wrong, but that’s going to be truth if we stay in Rockland or not. It’s about who is telling the story. Am I allowing to tell the story? Am I allowing my emotions to tell the story as life transitions? Or am I allowing life to tell the story? And when we allow life to tell the story, then we can clear the narrator because when life tells the story, you realize that it’s a dance. A dance between the choices I make in life and the consequence that life gives back. It’s a beautiful balance which helps us to find peace during life transitions. For example, we just made three offers and we changed our mind on the first two because we realize we like the house and that felt good.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. To able to trust your own judgement and to trust your own capacity to change your mind when it’s needed because you also realize that’s not going to reflect my reality and not because I’m being fickle or being wishy washy, it’s because I’m realizing that the consequence of that choice may not reflect the consequences I want to experience in life. And then, allowing myself to change my mind to respect myself, to have a voice, allows me to finally find that one place where I said, “You know what? I like it. I want it” and you know it’s the correct one when you make the choice and it feels good and there’s no doubt behind it. That’s how you clear the narrator. The narrator can either be the parasite during critical life transitions, which basically distorts everything I see, controls my actions and my judgement of myself, controls me through this image of like, “No, you have to fall through it because you got to do this, you got to do that” or you have the narrator be the ally. The ally is the one that tells the story that reflects life as is as opposed to a narrator that describes life as an illusion. To me, the whole point of the Toltec tradition is to regain confidence in yourself to make a choice, to express to yourself, “This is what I want. This is what I don’t want,” and actually listen to it.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. Yeah, the man that came back from the coma was not the same man that went into it. The reason why is because life puts these obstacles in front you and it’s the time where you realize you could walk to walk and as fast as you can talk to talk. The doctors told him to spend the rest of his days in a sofa resting and my dad said, “No. I’m going to live.” The man climbed the top of the Pyramid of the Sun with 15% heart capacity. He came back of his coma. He was with a heart that’s only 15% capable of functioning. His body was full of pain and he was given a very delicate balance of medications. People would give him all this talk and give him homeopathic this, homeopathic that, medicine here, medicine that. Anything they really would introduce would actually kill him, because you never know how his body reacts. That’s the thing about medicine. There’s a fine balance.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. Learning how to live with that balance was very interesting to watch my father do and yet, not allowing pain to stop him from living was an even bigger thing. Like you were describing, watching your clients becoming aware that he can pay attention to the narrators and he can choose. That’s what we called “Angel Training.” It’s actually very advance work for us because it is the moment where you become aware of that I am not the voice inside of my own mind but at the same I am. Sometimes life transitions very interestingly. For example, if I’m the voice that’s talking to my own mind, who’s listening? I am. I am listening. If I’m the one who’s listening, who’s talking? I am. I am not this body, I am also not this mind but I am the energy that animates both and my mind is this infinite possibility because I can dream and perceive in so many directions. The voices that are going to be the loudest  during our life transitions are basically the voices that we give attention to. What I mean by voices is, “Thoughts”. They are the thoughts in our minds because we’re constantly interacting within ourselves. We’re the individual dream. So what we call, “Angel training” is learning to be the messenger and basically giving attention to the voices or also known as thoughts or beliefs in our mind that we want to give attention to. Because whoever we give our attention to, that’s what’s going to control how we respond, “Yes” or “No.” I become aware that I control my will. And that’s something I wished with my father during his life transitions. When he decides to take a step to climb the Pyramid of the Sun, even with that much pain, he adapted. He didn’t run it the way he used too. He figured out a way that allowed him to do it, which is to do it slowly, take a few steps, sit down, have the patience. Also, it was an exercise in patience rather than strength because that’s what we’re used to. If we’re so used to achieving something with this one instrument and we think we can’t do it in any other way except for this instrument. In this case, it’s force or strength that helps you out in handling life transitions. To build up the strength of the heart, to build up the strength of the body to go up to the pyramid but also if you don’t have those tools, if you don’t have the heart and you don’t have the muscle, then what you got? What’s in front of you? Patience and will. So now, you learn how to use that instrument, patience and will. You’re going to listen to the voice that’s going to nurture it. From that point of view, the voice that’s going to speak the loudest is the one that’s going to help you in the environment you are in. That’s choosing which one to control, which voice, which narrator is going to help us. That’s what we know as the ally. And for that, I am aware of what I give my attention to, aka what I give my power to, which belief I give a power to in surviving major life transitions. There’s an image that my brother has that I love to use and apparently it’s not just my brother but it’s everywhere. There’s a story of an old, Native American talking to his young grandson how you can manage your life transitions using your willpower. The grandfather tells the son,”There are two wolves inside of you. One is good and the other is compassion. The other one is evil and it’s anger and lack of compassion, and they both exist within you.” The grandson said “If I’d make them fight, which one will win?” And the grandfather will say, “The one you feed.” Whichever one of these beliefs, knowledge, ideas, voices, or narrator, be it fear or anger or love or compassion, the one that’s the strongest is the one that we give attention to. So, with that in mind, the change in my father after his heart attack, even after his heart transplant, was the faith in himself and who’s he going to give attention to, the voice of fear, the voice of doubt, or the voice of patience and the voice of resilience. Two of them will help him, two won’t. One will feed the fear and the other will feed his ability to accomplish what he wants. From that point of view, we go back to the previous question. How to silence the mind as our life transitions through various stages? How to take out those filters? It is to become aware that the filters don’t control you. You control the filters. You control what goes on in our mind. For example, my dad gave me this technique. If you find you’re having a negative thought in your mind and is making you miserable in the way you know that makes you miserable by the way you feel. The best way to change it is to let the thought finish. When the thought finish, redirect your attention. You see, there are gaps between thoughts. There’s a gap between the first thought and when you finish the thought, our thought begins. There is silence between the two thoughts. When you become aware of that gap, you slowly focus first your attention on how your thoughts end. When you become aware on how to catch it, you shift your direction. You shift your attention to go on a different direction.Be it the sound of your breath, or sound of music. You’re able to prolong the space between thoughts, which means you are able to prolong silence. And it’s an exercise in the strengthening of the will to make the most of our life transitions. But it’s also this exercise of becoming aware of the voices in our own mind, the thoughts, or the narrators. So, when we become aware of that gap. The game my father always wanted to play is to teach us how to prolong that gap because what happens in that gap is that you’re no longer projecting, you are perceiving. That’s what I’ve come to learn. You begin to perceive what’s around you.  That’s what the gap is. It’s the silence of life that’s allowing you to perceive it. Because when we have a thought, we’re projecting. Once again, the function of the mind in the Toltec tradition is to dream, which simply means to perceive and to project as our life transitions. Projection is the thoughts. Projections are the least that we have. That we’re saying at the beginning of show about transitions, we’re projecting into the unknown. A possible story that we want to have and we may be happy and may be sad but the moment we stop projecting is when we learn to perceive, listen, see and, be in the moment. It’s what they call, “The zone”. It’s when you become aware of life moving not only around you but within you. I’ve found my father more in that space and me, growing up, being in that space was difficult because there are a lot of consequences to my father being there. There are a lot of consequences and decisions and the insurance and bills and all kind of thing that had to be paid because to have a heart attack and being in a coma is a very expensive thing. It costs a lot of money and the wrong choice can have a stronger ramifications. So you have to be aware of what choices you make and how you do it, why you do it. My father usually calls this, “Being in the eye of the hurricane”. Letting the hurricane go around you but you stay in the center. And what I’ve become aware of is to stay in the center and find that gap in between thoughts and even then, going back to how we perceive those voices and narrator which you listen to.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. When you control that gap between thoughts, you all of a sudden control what the narrator is going to talk that eases life transitions. It becomes a lot easier because it’s like giving someone permission to talk in your presence. All of a sudden, you realized, it’s been you. You’ve been giving that narrator permission to talk, to control, and to drive all that time.That’s where honoring the emotion comes in. Once again, we honor this is how we feel. We feel that sadness, we feel that anger, and we feel that thing. For example, yesterday, I made an offer on the house and I watched the emotional reaction on all four of us, my wife, myself, my daughter, and my son. And I realized, as I pay attention to that, I could have let the narrator on my head continuously say, “No, no, no. This is this house. This is the house,” and force myself to do something that may not be the right thing. If I listened to it and change my point of view and see what does this one do, then all of a sudden, one voice got happy. My daughter got happy but my wife didn’t get happy. Her narrators were going off. Then we made a choice and then, I resented the offer. After talking, I’m realizing this one made my daughter happy, this one made my wife happy, this one made my son happy. Now, this one is going to make me happy if I just change my perception on this one little thing that I didn’t like about it. Now that I changed it, I’m like “Hey, wait a minute. That does work. All right, fine. I’m saying yes to it” and also, all four of us are saying, “Yes”. That’s the gap you need to fill in carefully during the life transitions.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. Yeah, it’s a thing that reflects my love for them. To love someone unconditionally is the willingness to see them for who they are rather than a projected mask as our life transitions. If you pay attention to what we were talking on the show, it’s all about the projected mask. Sometimes, we’re so attached to that projection that we are forcing life to fit that projection but, sometimes life doesn’t fit that projection. When you make it fit, it’s like trying to put up you through a cylinder hole which is not going to work. Even though you may try it, you might draw all the force and you might actually break it because you’re trying to make it fit during the life transitions. It’s not going to work. The way to do it is to be patient. Now, the unconditional love is the willingness to see life, to define the balance between having the confidence in yourself to make a choice, which is to take that step into the transition and be confident in yourself to not project what that step is going to look like but be completely aware of what that step is. Because, in being flexible way to decision, in changing your mind and going “This is what I want”. The difference between having the confidence to make a choice and changing your mind versus not having confidence in yourself and changing your mind is not because you can see what’s in front of you but you’re afraid to make a choice. There’s a huge difference in the two. It looks dramatically different. One is to not have confidence in your choice thus, you’re allowing the elements around you to control you choices. In this case, family, a realtor, or a family friend, and they make the choices for you. But if you have confidence in yourself and you listen to the realtor, the friend, and the family, you’re going to find the one step that satisfies all and that’s the one that works because it satisfies yourself  too.

Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. Thank so much Luis. I really appreciate the opportunity. Kamala, thank you for having me on your show.