[Don Miguel Ruiz, The Voice of Knowledge: A Practical Guide to Inner Peace (San Rafael, CA: Amber Allen Publishing Inc., 2004). This is labeled VK. Don Miguel Ruiz, The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Inner Freedom (San Rafael, CA: Amber Allen Publishing Inc., 1997). This is labeled FA. Miguel Angel Ruiz and Mary Carroll Nelson, Beyond Fear: A Toltec Guide to Freedom and Joy (Tulsa, OK: Council Oaks Books, 1997). This is labelled BF. All italics in the original.]
Many spiritual teachers say that in higher states of consciousness people get beyond polarities. They stop seeing only one side of an issue or situation and get a more encompassing view. In his series of popular books, Don Miguel Ruiz has a polarity at the core of his worldview: the heaven of early childhood versus the hell of adulthood. He says that when children are very young, they are totally happy and live in the moment. Everything is great for them as they are born good and young children are “completely authentic.” (VK, p. 29) Ruiz says that “if we observe humans who are two years old, we find that most of the time these humans have a big smile on their face and they’re having fun….they don’t worry about the past, don’t care about the future, and only live in the present moment.” Their “tendency is to enjoy life, to play, to explore, to be happy, and to love.” (FA, p. 94-5) Ruiz even states that we have stories of the Garden of Eden, nirvana, and heaven because everyone’s childhood was idyllic like these places. He says of these places “you were there when you were born, and during the first and second years of your life, you were physically there.” (VK, p. 214)
Children lose this blessed state because they are trained to live by society’s rules and trained to feel bad about themselves. Ruiz calls this process being domesticated by society. This process is so bad, Ruiz says “all our normal tendencies are lost in the process of domestication.” (FA, p. 8) Once children are domesticated, they lose their authenticity, and sense of connection and worst of all, they criticize themselves by saying they are not good enough as they are. (VK, p. 34-5)
Ruiz offers a solution to the loss of our blissful childhood, which he calls the four agreements. Ruiz’s prescriptions for how we should act is most likely helpful to many people. For example he says that we should not take things personally (FA, p. 48) and also not make assumptions about other people. (FA, p. 63) When I take things personally or make assumptions about others, I get in trouble in my relationships. So I can understand that implementing these ideas would be helpful to many people.
Most people who read his books are centered on his prescriptions and probably spend little time thinking about the fundamental paradigm underlying these prescriptions. That makes sense for them as their concern is getting their life to work better. My concern though is helping us all find a more spiritual way of living in the modern world. That means I am interested in looking at the underlying structure of what he says about how people got into their predicament. The reason I do that is because we spiritually oriented people need to have the proper view of the human situation and our relationship with the divine. Only if we understand that in the right way, will our spirituality work in the long run. And only if we do that well will mainstream people find our ideas convincing.
My first concern is that his view of human experience has a sharp dichotomy between childhood when things were absolutely wonderful and adulthood when things are like being in hell. (FA, p. 14) Everything about childhood he paints in rosy colors while everything about adulthood is painted in black. Can anything in life be this simple? When he says that we are all born totally pure and good, this seems to be a romantization of childhood.
I have memories of some of my past lives and I can see how karma from those lives has carried over to this life. Thus I think that people in general carry over karma from their past lives and people are not born totally pure, good, and innocent. How could we be pure if we bring negative karma over from our previous lifetimes? Many other spiritual people remember their past lives or believe we have them. I hope they see that Ruiz’s view of children being pure and totally good is inconsistent with any notion of negative karma from past lifetimes.
In Ruiz’s worldview, each person has absolutely no responsibility for losing her sense of deep connection to the Oneness. Instead Ruiz puts all the responsibility on society or, sometimes, a negative force he calls the prince of lies. He says our teachers or parents domesticated us and we followed them because we were too young to know better. (FA, p. 5-6) While I can see how that message might be useful to some people who are overcritical of themselves, it does not match my experience of following my spiritual path. I often get pulled from my connection to God/the Universe by my lower wants and desires. I want more social status or social acceptance than I get from following the Universe’s will and these wants sometimes pull me off my spiritual path. When I relate to other people, I often am not perfect as I am; I sometimes do things that hurt them and sometimes do not give them the things they need because I am too stuck in my own selfish concerns. So it is not just society’s fault for pulling me out of connection with God: it is my fault too.
Clearly lots of people are receptive to Ruiz’s message because his books are so popular. But is it a good message for people? Why shouldn’t we be humble and see ourselves as less than perfect? Why shouldn’t we take some responsibility for losing our connection to the divine instead of blaming it on society?
Ruiz says we have no blame for losing connection to the deeper spiritual reality because of the nature of our relationship to each other and God. He says that each person sees herself as a separate individual, but she is not; instead we are all One. “We might recognize ourselves by our names, our personalities, our seperateness, but when we alter our point of view, the concept of individuality seems very limited. We are not individuals. We are one.” (BF, p. 38) More than just being all one, we are all God: “I am God. But you are also God. We are the same…We are God.” (FA, p. xviii) From this Oneness with God, he says it follows that we are perfect. Ruiz says “Only perfection exists…I realized that I am perfect because I am inseparable from the infinite…I don’t need to be what I am not.” (VK, p. 52) He makes this point about perfection clear: “ the first lie you believe is that you are not: you are not the way you should be, you are not good enough, you are not perfect. We are born perfect…only perfection exists.” (VK, p. 20)
I am quite aware that it is an extremely popular idea among spiritual people that we are all one and that we are perfect because of that. I have gotten messages from my Higher Self telling me such things as to quit college and to have children. I have been led to wonderful things by these messages. I often have other deep intuitive feelings that lead me to wonderful synchronicities. So I have extensive experience in my personal life that we have a deeper connection to the spiritual realm than the mainstream culture says we do. But I do not experience my connection to the divine as being oneness with the Universe. I experience a deep connection, but not oneness. Moreover, thinking of the relationship to the spiritual realm as oneness does not lead to a practical way of surviving in the modern world if one has children and needs to eat. On the other hand, thinking of our relationship to the spiritual realm as one of connection but not oneness leads to a very practical way of existing in the modern world while being spiritual. {See the critique of Pema Chodron’s bodhisattva ethics on this site. She preaches an ethic of oneness from a Buddhist perspective. In that essay I show there are many insoluble problems living that way if one is concerned for one’s body, one’s relationships, or one’s children.}
Getting messages from one’s Higher Self or getting deep intuitive feelings are common experiences spiritual people have. These things are evidence of a connection to the spiritual realm but do not lead to the stronger view that we are all one. The evidence for the much larger claim of oneness is that some people get into states of consciousness where they experience a oneness with all things. These people report that they lose their sense of separate self and experience themselves as one with nature or God. So many credible people report this experience of oneness that it would be silly to say they are making it up or being deluded. It would seem they are experiencing some kind of oneness.
What I disagree with is the larger intellectual conclusion that these experiences show that we actually are one with all things and if we just rose to a higher state of consciousness we would see that we are all one. Sometimes people can get into states of oneness but these are extraordinary states of consciousness when for a short time people rise above their embodiment in physical bodies that separate us. But that does not mean that oneness is our natural state or our deepest state. It does not mean that we should try to live in the world based on this short experience of oneness. Too many spiritual people move from the extreme position of the mainstream culture which says that we are totally separate and detached from the spiritual realm to the other extreme that we are one with God and have all the powers of God. I advocate a spirituality that is in the middle: we are connected to the Spirit/God/Flow but we are not one with it.
Each person is connected to the spiritual realm, but each one has her own separate reality and concerns. If we try to live a lifestyle based on total oneness we will be denying our bodies and not be able to take care of the people we are responsible for such as our spouses or children. Too many teachers in the New Age movement are making a mistake embracing a spirituality that rests on total oneness with all that is. Spiritual people would do better to embrace a spirituality of connectedness to the divine, but not oneness with it.
Copyrighted 2009
My name is Joseph Waligore. I currently have a part-time job teaching philosophy and religious studies at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point. More information about me can be found at my MySpace profile or my Facebook profile.
This website is one of four websites I have. At makingyourconnections.com I have a posted a significant portion of a self-help book I am currently writing. This book helps people succeed in the world by making their connections, the special people in their lives. Another website, www.followingtheflow.com is for spiritually oriented people and discusses very similar ideas from a more spiritually oriented perspective. Another one, www.josephwaligore.com is for academically or intellectually oriented people. It has my writings about spiritual philosophies such as Stoicism, Socrates, the Deists, the Enlightenment period, and the rise of modern science.
There is a Facebook group called Flowing. People interested in meeting other people who are interested in these ideas and/or participating in discussions about these ideas are invited to join the group.
Many people reach this site through keyword advertisements. It might be of interest that Joseph got the money for these ads through his daytrading profits.
So I should live life like a baby. I can crap my pants. Live a totally selfish life. Rely 100% on others. Walk blinded into dangerous situations. Cry until someone gives me what I want.
Don’t live life focused on yourself, focus on others. That couldn’t be more opposite than a baby.
There is no denial of the fact that most little children are happier and more care-free than most adults. Just as someone who is meditating, praying, or even using drugs or alchogol may feel happier and care-free.
Yet is it also a fact, that majority of adults are busy with both challenging and mundane life decisions. And there is no permanent escape from them. It is what it is. The happiest adults are the ones who find a working recepie for dealing with what life gives them with an authentic smile.
There is a misconception that oneness and individuality are mutually exclusive. Just as light can be observed as a wave and, paradoxically from our limited perspective, a bunch of particles, so too can God be One and many. It seems you are putting limitations on what God can be. I have experienced myself as part of the body of my greater self, or Christ, or Brahman, or whatever you want to call it. I was still aware of an even greater presence, an even higher level, that was separate from the body of Christ as I witnessed it simultaneously as a cell in the right arm and as the whole body looking with it’s eyes at myself as a skin cell in my own right arm. The other cells of the body, I knew, were all of humanity. We were all one in the body of Christ, literally. I also experienced a companion spirit which made me think of Adam and Eve in paradise, which was natural as that was my first thought as I entered this realm: it started out as complete greenness and just touched me that way.
The previous commenter is correct that having such a vision or experience can lead one to a sense of hubris, that they have something they must share, that they must change others to save the world from its sickness, before they spend the time and emotional work to heal their own sickness. All religions stem from this very fact. They feel they were shown such things because they were “ready.” Ready to see, yes, but ready to understand and act upon responsibly and with love, not necessarily. I can attest to this personally. As I left my vision I had the definite sense that I had to come back to save someone or something that is lost in this dream, and though it may be true, I had years of personal work and therapy to do to get past my upbringing.
This brings me to your assessment of Ruiz’s ideas regarding the innocence of childhood. From what I have read of his work, my understanding is that he wasn’t using the word innocence in reference to our larger spirituality and true nature, but to our lack of what he calls “knowledge” which are really the lies, the illusions, of this world. He’s talking about when we learn to fear the consequences of our own actions in regards to what others want (as opposed to consequences of, say, running in front of a car). No one is born with that “knowledge” despite their supposed karma, a notion I don’t buy – just another way of looking at sin and feeling guilty and judging others as getting what they deserve. This “knowledge” is that we can do wrong, make people sad or angry, and be punished. It is with this “knowledge” that we start trying to be what we think society wants us to be. Or we start fighting it one. But this is false knowledge. It is false because it leads us to feel responsible for the happiness of others, but we aren’t. We aren’t responsible for the happiness or love of another person.
Everything in the universe is a manifestation of energy. I have also experienced this state of being, as a body of particles floating in a galaxy of light particles, and I knew that this also was another representation of existence and that this mass of energy represented all beings who ever lived or will live. I don’t understand your dilemma with living as though we are all connected verses living as though we are all part of God. To me they mean the same. It seems you are clinging to the idea that you and your family are more important than others: “If we try to live a lifestyle based on total oneness we will be denying our bodies and not be able to take care of the people we are responsible for such as our spouses or children?” There you go with the idea of responsibility. Responsibility and love are not the same thing. Loving your body and/or your family and feeling responsible for them are actually incompatible. The idea of responsibility comes from fear not love. Whose responsible? Who should be glorified or punished? It’s all about judgment and separation. Who hurt who? Who caused the pain? Who touched who’s sore spot? This is the sickness in the world that keeps food and clothing from the poor and causes people to hold grudges, to seek revenge in the name of justice, to go to war. If we can cause others to be unhappy, then our own unhappiness must be the fault of others. Says our knowledge.
I argue that on the other hand, if we can see ourselves as part of a greater whole, spiritually and worldly, after much work of learning to love and forgive others and ourselves, we can be at peace.
It seems you are implying that personal contentment and doing one’s best are also mutually exclusive. I disagree. Contentment comes from love of oneself and others, and through that love you serve them the best you are able, just as you always have, only as a content being, your ability to serve is increased, not diminished.
Maybe you have another concern though. Maybe you are concerned with the idea that love for your family and country requires action which is incompatible with the idea of oneness: violent action against others as a means of self-defense. In this case you would be correct. Self-defense is a natural biological response. We have evolved from the animal kingdom and this has served us well to a certain point. And to judge yourself or anyone for responding in such a way is pointless and only exacerbates the problem. On a logical level, with no consideration for morality, violence is not a solution to violence. It never leads to lasting peace, neither in the mind or in the world. The idea of self-defense itself is a very slippery slope: its easy to go from “I need to defend myself” to “I need to protect myself”, to “I need to protect my interests” and “I need to attack someone who may want to attack me one day, just in case . . .” This need to protect the body comes from the notion that you really think you are the body and not part of something greater. To attain some sense of immortality men want children to pass on their genes and name, they want fame and recognition, they want power, they want to accumulate wealth, land and possessions to pass to their heirs who did nothing to earn it and they want to keep it from others who they perceive as separate. This is the world we live in. The idea that Christ consciousness and a united world of beautiful loving individuals, aka heaven on earth, is impossible, is wrong. The idea that we can’t be loving AND caring AND fearless, is absurd.
Thank you for your review of the book. I must say that there are many misinterpretations to tackle in your review, but, for the sake of time, I’ll focus on one. You talk about how Ruiz purportedly paints childhood in “rosy colors” and that people bring negative karma from past lives and that, thus, “Ruiz’s view of children being pure and totally good is inconsistent with any notion of negative karma from past lifetimes.” I’ve read many of his books, including The Four Agreements, and that assessment is incorrect. What Ruiz is saying is not that childhood is perfect and devoid of anything imperfect or negative until “society” interferes; instead, Ruiz is saying that children tend to live in the moment and are therefore happier in general. Moreover, this does not preclude the fact that even kids may have accrued negative karma from past lives, as many Buddhists and others believe.
Contrary to your assertion that “society” is the main purveyor of the lies that start to make people feel inadequate or broken starting during childhood, Ruiz clearly states that parents are the biggest influence on their children and that they often unknowingly spread the lies that they themselves were taught by their own parents, or that they’ve learned from assumption or taking things personally. This makes kids start to doubt themselves, even if they were born with the tools we all inherently have to help us lead a happy life.
Maybe in another post I’ll tackle your lack of belief in the idea that we are all born perfect and how that is not mutually exclusive with living humbly and with deep respect for the perfection in others.
life is a running river we are a particle of water hitting the rock and obstacle on the way at the moment we experience the transparent light therein. And the beauty of things around then we are thrown in the Ocean. We are human so we can feel the coldness of certain part of our ambience. and the warmness . We still survive until we emerge ourselve and dissolve in the big ocean of truth and love.
Dear Joseph:
Thanks for your well documented comments on some spiritual teachers, as I have read them also I notice That you have thoroughly studied them. I read your comments on Tolle, Chopra, Wilber and Ruiz. I agree with you that we can receive information and messages from the higher world and flow with the intentions of God. But at the same time it is also true that we can experience oneness with God and having spouse and children as Lahiri Mahasaya showed while alive in india from 1860´s to 1890´s the problem is that is extremely difficult for the mayority of people to get that level so for the most people is better what you say about embracing connectedness with the divine instead of oneness with it as you pointed out. In this topic is important that every individual measure his own state and tries to leave according to it and not to pretend to do something far beyond his present possibilities. The latter is the problem of some people who try to leave in oneness with God while they still have many wordly and personal duties in this world. The other important matter about some self proclamed spiritual teachers is that because they have reach experiences of oneness with God they think after they descend from the experience that they are perfect. And for this reason they suffer from hubrys and commit a lot of mistakes on behalf of their spiritual experiences.Arthur E. Powell wrote a book called “the causal body”where he explains the problem of geniuses that even though they have gained mastery over one skill still they have a lot of difficulties in their personalities and wordly life. This same happen with these spiritual teachers; they are great meditators and we can say they are spiritual geniuses that have rejected to clean their personalities of all their baggage, they have been overwhelmed by their spiritual experiences and they have problems to accept that their personalities are far behind their spiritual experiences. There are very rare world known spiritual teachers who have attained oneness with God with a clean and purified personality and they are the ones who have attained liberation. Finally, we should remember that we as humans beings are evolving and we are subject to defects and imperfections and we need to be humble enough to recognize that we can be great in something while we are small in other areas. In spite of the defects or mistakes in their teaching I like Ekhart Tolle for his humbleness and I think he has a clean personality in spite of his rejection to past and future that you refer in you comments and that I agree on in terms that the past and future are also important and necessary at times and according to each one´s level. I also like Deepak Chopra because he has an integral life with wife and children and has the ability to express his ideas in a good way even though he may commit mistakes or be wrong in some aspects. And I like ammachi, the indian saint for her loving approach to mankind, her selfess work and her amazing detachment to things in life.
I would like to thank you Joseph for sharing your ideas in the web about other spiritual teachers with education, good manners and good information of their work and life.