Jose Ruiz > Quotes

“Silent knowledge is the deep, innate wisdom that is in all things. It comes from the interconnectedness of all beings and creatures. It is the wisdom of the universe. For instance, if you've ever simply known the answer to a question without any logical way that your brain could have discovered it—like when a mother can feel that her child is in danger or when you know the moment a relative transitions into death—this is all silent knowledge. It is the universal wisdom that has always been at our fingertips, but that we often neglect to tap into, either because we don't know or have forgotten how.”
― Don Jose Ruiz, Wisdom of the Shamans: What the Ancient Masters Can Teach Us about Love and Life

“The simple truth is that every person is an artist, and the art that we create is the story of our life.”
― Don Jose Ruiz, Wisdom of the Shamans: What the Ancient Masters Can Teach Us about Love and Life

“Each one of us has our own truth inside ourselves. The quest of the shaman is to find, live, and express it.”
― Jose Ruiz, Wisdom of the Shamans: What the Ancient Masters Can Teach Us about Love and Life

“When you no longer rely on others to tell you what kind of person you are, your love for yourself stops being conditional. You know that you are a great person, and it's no longer important for anyone else to say so.”
― Jose Ruiz, Wisdom of the Shamans: What the Ancient Masters Can Teach Us about Love and Life

“If we allow ourselves to suffer, it takes its chance to have power over us, feeding us with lies and making us feel mortal so that it can feel immortal.”
― Don Jose Ruiz, My Good Friend the Rattlesnake: Stories of Loss, Truth, and Transformation

“When you sleepwalk through life, you get caught in the traps of negativity and emotional poison, and you fail to realize that in so many cases you are the cause of your own suffering.”
― Jose Ruiz, Wisdom of the Shamans: What the Ancient Masters Can Teach Us about Love and Life

“Part of our journey together in this book will be about removing the negative practices and beliefs from your internal medicine bag and replacing them with things like self-confidence, faith, peace, courage, access to your intuition,”
― Jose Ruiz, The Medicine Bag: Shamanic Rituals & Ceremonies for Personal Transformation

“Celebrating life starts with having fun! So often we search for our own personal freedom with such diligence and seriousness that we forget that the shamanic path is also about having fun. We can get so devoted to our inner and outer work that we forget that a strong belly laugh is one of the best cures for the mind's addiction to suffering.”
― Jose Ruiz, Wisdom of the Shamans: What the Ancient Masters Can Teach Us about Love and Life

“Conversely, when you do the hard work of freeing your mind from judgment, fear, and negativity, you naturally uncover a wellspring of unconditional love.”
― Don José Ruiz, The Shaman's Path to Freedom: A Toltec Wisdom Book

“This process begins in childhood, when well-meaning adults tell us to “be quiet” or explain that the singing that brings us pure joy will never be “good enough.” We internalize these agreements and pass them on to other humans in turn, adding more suffering to the world. Addiction to suffering and domestication are games we cannot win, and they tie us to an unending cycle of suffering.”
― Don José Ruiz, Shamanic Power Animals: Embracing the Teachings of Our Non-Human Friends

“We forgive not because the other person needs it or even deserves it, but because the burden of carrying that negativity inside of us keeps us from moving forward.”
― Jose Ruiz, Wisdom of the Shamans: What the Ancient Masters Can Teach Us about Love and Life

“In a metaphorical sense, we each have an inner medicine bag that we've been carrying with us for most of our lives. If we don't realize this, then it has also probably never occurred to us to wonder what tools we've been carrying around in it. I'm talking about the tools we reach for out of habit: judgments, angry reactions, regrets, fears, and more. We put these tools to work building negative realities for ourselves and others in a constant effort to feed the mind's addiction to suffering.”
― Jose Ruiz, The Medicine Bag: Shamanic Rituals & Ceremonies for Personal Transformation

“life as you perceive it is a reflection of your perceptions and beliefs. It is not real, but rather a dream. To some this may sound negative, but in fact it is positive because if your life is a dream, and you become aware of the fact that you are the dreamer, then you can consciously create the dream you want to see and live the life you want to live.”
― Don Jose Ruiz, Wisdom of the Shamans: What the Ancient Masters Can Teach Us about Love and Life

“May you soar and roar, dig down into the earth and dive deep into ocean currents. May you build and weave, protect and restore, at all times perceiving the living world in new ways and opening to new insights. May you carry the teachings of our scaled, furred, and feathered siblings on your journey of healing and wholeness, and may these lessons guide you as you break free from the human mind's addiction to suffering and claim your birthright as the artist of your own life.”
― Don José Ruiz, Shamanic Power Animals: Embracing the Teachings of Our Non-Human Friends

“The process of awakening is often referred to as unlearning, because you begin to see how you were domesticated in the Dream of the Planet and you can consciously choose which ideas and beliefs you want to keep and which you want to let go.”
― Jose Ruiz, Wisdom of the Shamans: What the Ancient Masters Can Teach Us about Love and Life

“Creativity is an act of drinking water from the infinite, a way of communicating with the divine.”
― Jose Ruiz, The Medicine Bag: Shamanic Rituals & Ceremonies for Personal Transformation

“and most critically, love for yourself and others. Love is the most important tool of all in your inner medicine bag; in fact, it is the birthplace of every other positive tool you can ever possess. The contents of your outer medicine bag have a mysterious ability to support the transformation of your inner medicine bag. Meaningful objects, prayers, and symbols of the natural world help you call on the strength of the nagual that is inside and all around you. Furthermore, the rituals and ceremonies in these pages are designed to open pathways into powerful concepts and abilities like discovering your own divinity, intuition, healing, and awareness. Through these rituals, even as the mind continues its powerfully convincing dream, you can recognize the truth: that everything is already perfect—as it should be—and this includes you.”
― Jose Ruiz, The Medicine Bag: Shamanic Rituals & Ceremonies for Personal Transformation

“The medicine bag is such a tool, both literally and metaphorically. In a literal sense, a medicine bag is usually a small pouch, about the size of your hand, which is often worn around the neck and can also be carried in your pocket or handbag. It can vary in size, material, and contents; the idea to remember is that a bag like this has been used by thousands of people before you as they progressed on their own journeys of awakening. It may carry written prayers, sticks, bones, rocks, feathers, or seashells. It may contain an object that is the symbol of a vision, a piece of nature from a meaningful place, a talisman of an animal totem. The contents of the medicine bag are physical representations that guide the inner journey of the wearer. In the next chapter, I'll go into detail about how to make or choose your own medicine bag, and the remaining chapters in this book will explain how to begin creating or choosing items to carry inside to help you on your own journey.”
― Jose Ruiz, The Medicine Bag: Shamanic Rituals & Ceremonies for Personal Transformation

“the wisdom of the ancient masters was not something primitive or reserved only for men, but a complex and powerful series of teachings available to all of humankind. It is the wisdom of waking up, of finding your own personal freedom, of living in peace and harmony, and of being of service to others and the planet.”
― Jose Ruiz, Wisdom of the Shamans: What the Ancient Masters Can Teach Us about Love and Life

“Beyond mere survival, or the pursuit of warlike domination over others, Toltec people were purposefully creative and expressive. In fact, the very name Toltec means “artist” in Nahuatl. The use of the word artist in this context expands beyond the meaning of a person who paints, sculpts, or makes traditional forms of art. The Toltecs taught that every one of us is an artist, and the art we are creating is the story of our lives.”
― Jose Ruiz, The Medicine Bag: Shamanic Rituals & Ceremonies for Personal Transformation

“Since everyone has the nagual energy inside them, we say in the Toltec tradition that everyone has the potential to be a Nagual, or shaman. In one sense, you already are.”
― Jose Ruiz, Shamanic Power Animals: Embracing the Teachings of Our Non-Human Friends

“Domestication: The primary system of control in the Dream of the Planet. Starting when we are very young, we are presented with either a reward or a punishment for adopting the beliefs and behaviors of what others find acceptable. When we adopt these beliefs and behaviors as a result of either the reward or punishment, we can say we have been domesticated.”
― Don Jose Ruiz, Wisdom of the Shamans: What the Ancient Masters Can Teach Us about Love and Life

“It is necessary to say no to others sometimes, and doing so is having love and respect for ourselves. Saying yes when you really mean no is disrespecting yourself, and it only sets you up for suffering in the future.”
― Jose Ruiz, Wisdom of the Shamans: What the Ancient Masters Can Teach Us about Love and Life

“The truth is that beliefs and ideas only exist in one place: the human mind. They are not “out there” in the world, but rather the filter by which everything we perceive gets sorted. If left unchecked, they are how we can corrupt the world.”
― Jose Ruiz, Wisdom of the Shamans: What the Ancient Masters Can Teach Us about Love and Life