The Toltec Art of Life and Death Quotes

“Freedom begins when each individual mind dares to liberate itself from the prison it created. We are free when the war in our heads is over.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“it was considered a warrior’s greatest challenge to rise beyond his own beliefs. Now it is seen as a tactless assault against one’s identity. In my day, we would chase anger to its borders, cutting through thorn and weed until we found our way to the open fields of awareness.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“Miguel,” he said, when he felt my defenses weakening, “the conflict you speak of exists in the human mind, and it is not actually a conflict between good and evil; it is a conflict between truth and lies. When we believe in truth, we feel good and our life is good. When we believe in things that are not true, things that encourage fear and hatred in us, the result is fanaticism. The result is what people recognize as evil—evil words, evil intentions, evil actions. All the violence and suffering in the world is a direct result of the many lies we tell ourselves.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“Confess. Admit that you’ve sinned—that you have harmed your own human being in some way. Repent—that is, make an agreement to stop. Do penance, which means to offer yourself forgiveness. Modify your behavior from that moment forward.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“We poison ourselves with judgment and fear, and then we spread the toxin to living beings all around us. To heal ourselves requires self-love, the white magic that works wonders on the dream of humanity.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“Words don’t need to be spoken to devastate. They have only to be thought. Words band together to form opinions, which strut along the back roads of our minds, inciting doubt and controversy. Opinions rally toward a cause—a belief.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“I encourage people to love themselves. I show them how respect can open doors, while fear only closes them. Respect rules heaven, and heaven is within our grasp with every choice we make.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“Transformation is the result of big shifts in perceptions and responses. The process can be uncomfortable, since the mind is reluctant to notice itself, to take responsibility for its stories, and to change. When the mind is in acute resistance, the emotional body pays a price.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“We were brought into this world as authentic beings, and then we began to practice “who we are” until it became a mastery. At any stage in our adult lives we can unpractice; we can let go of our attachments to an identity . . . and we can be.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“Being a lover is part of the warrior’s life, maestro. You would do well to consider that. A lover must stay alert and prepared for action.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“Your nature is to love; remember your nature. If you are acting against your nature, you’re pretending to be another species. You’ve pretended so long that you actually are another species. Awareness means seeing, and remembering, the truth—it never went away. It never was gone, but your attention has been on the lies.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“My best students are still hunters, but they feed on different foods now. They were one thing, and now they’re something else. They are loyal to the human, creating realities based on gratitude and generosity. Where the mind used to control and to punish, now it serves. Where it may have behaved like a villain, now it’s a hero. Where once it craved only poison, now it has a taste for nectar.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“We can externalize all our biggest demons, we can scare ourselves with images of devils and ghouls—or we can look inward, listen, and recognize the voice of knowledge that lives and speaks to us on a constant basis. That voice can sound very scary. We are not accustomed to hearing ourselves, and so we rarely acknowledge the messages of selfishness and cruelty that we deliver on a daily basis. It’s an act of self-love to pay attention to what we think, and to modify that internal conversation.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“If the mind can hear itself, it can make changes. Self-judgment may be among its favorite foods, but that appetite has to be recognized before it can be modified. The moment the mind identifies itself as a predator, it has committed to becoming an ally. The mind can create chronic problems for the human, but it can offer miraculous solutions as well. It has the ability to imagine. We routinely imagine conversations that haven’t happened. We imagine alternate realities and phenomena yet to be discovered. We reimagine the past and fantasize about the future. We imagine gods and demons. We imagine horrors and wonders.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“Love would determine everything, as it always has. My heart is full, even now.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“I saw humans more clearly. I saw them as exceptional creatures under the tyranny of knowledge, helpless to change their circumstances. The human animal is helpless, that is, until the mind decides to change and until knowledge has lost its supreme authority.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“We are life. We are the result of life’s power, and we are the channels through which that power courses. We want truth, but we reach for more knowledge instead—and then we must defend what we believe. Knowledge makes a small impression on the world compared to the power of truth—even when it serves life, elevating awareness and creating dreams of impeccability. How can knowledge serve better? How can we stop it from doing harm and creating conflict? First, we can see knowledge for what it is—all the agreements we make about reality—and get some perspective. Then we can listen to ourselves. We can modify both our thinking and our emotional attachment to thought. We can win the war in our heads, one that has gone on long enough. We can nurture a belief in ourselves and drift away from the crowd.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“Not believing their strongest opinions was the most powerful tool for awareness. Not believing their own thoughts, and the stories they’d created, was the best path to freedom. They fed on superstition, and my message to them was one of common sense. Appetites would have to change.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“Each one of them was a potential warrior, capable of facing the battle within himself, but they’d all devoted too much energy to fighting outward battles instead. They would have to confront their own lies.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“I was being selfish. I was afraid for myself, and not even thinking of you.” Sitting on the bed, he took his father’s hands in his. “I can do as you say—I can rise above fear. I can hear knowledge speaking, and choose to disbelieve it. I can hear the way people spread poison, and choose to ignore it. I’m ready.” José looked directly into his teacher’s eyes and said, “I’m with you now.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“the pressures of a relationship had brought out old fears, the fears of a dejected adolescent. Euphoria and anger still played against each other, and the result was considerable drama in a dream that should have felt safe.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“He had spent a lifetime cleansing his mind of poison. He had searched his heart, found the corruption, and removed it. He had torn away the lies—lies he’d been told and had believed, and lies he had devised and used against himself. This was his mastery—the purification of the mind and the recovery of authenticity. This scene symbolized the mastery of death, the awakening.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“Awakenings happen to the living. A man can wake up, see the prison he has made, and decide to choose freedom. He can end his appetite for lies and discover the sweet taste of truth. He can persevere, changing his point of view from mind to matter to the dream of light, and then to the exquisite realization of himself as life. The reflection can be redeemed; the mirror image can come within a heartbeat of its maker, see itself, and then shatter into total awareness. It can happen in one man’s lifetime.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“Just as we would like to be perceived without assumptions or past prejudices, we can allow their unique qualities to impress us all over again . . . expecting nothing, and accepting them as they are.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“Early in its education every mind learns how to use words to threaten, to punish, and to destroy. If that fact sounded harsh to his apprentices, he had only to remind them of how they spoke to themselves—how they attacked themselves on a daily basis. The mind is its own kind of predator, whether it belongs to the body of a bashful woman or a brawny man.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“The mind shifts with small abuses of truth,” he said. “A new idea is sometimes enough—a change of perception, or one brief look into itself.” His voice was soft, but carried force. “The biggest shifts come from experiencing the pure sensations of life, without commentary. Stop thinking, and there’s only sensation. Stop trying, and you rise in love.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“Knowledge follows us everywhere, like a concerned friend or a persuasive lover. It’s the discreet noise in our head, whose meaning we think we understand. It asks that our ears ignore what we hear and our eyes deny what we see. It attempts to tell our hearts whom to love and what to hate. At its most intrusive, knowledge is a ruthless autocrat. It will abuse us and demand that we abuse others. One thought can take us far from our normal instincts and compassions. One idea can justify atrocities. It’s a simple thing to say that we are knowledge, swept from our own authenticity by words and meanings, but not so simple a thing to grasp, and to change. It’s challenging, of course, but faith in ourselves makes it possible, even inevitable.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“Life is full of choices,” Miguel said sweetly. “Do you want to choose unhappiness?”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“She did not need Miguel to explain that love, unconditional and unremitting, is the essence of life. She knew well that love based on conditions is a twisted copy of the truth, and yet it is there that humanity plays—there, in the shade of a metaphorical tree that wavers like a sullen mirage and scatters the seeds of a million lies.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death

“We humans comprehend truth through emotion and physical intimacy, but notice how quickly we turn against truth with stories of blame or resentment. We make the human body pay for our ideas of good and evil. I learned early in my life that the truth can be felt without a story. Love, the truth of us, transforms reality on its own.”
― Miguel Ruiz, The Toltec Art of Life and Death