The Mastery of Love: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship: A Toltec Wisdom Book by Don Ruiz

Just finished this book with my Spiritual Book Club readers. I wish the topic of love and relationships was an actual subject taught and discussed in schools. Understanding how to love yourself first opens the pathway to unconditional love for others. This book created some powerful moments for me, I couldn't put it down. Some lines from the book that really hit home:

To master a relationship is all about you.?

If you are aware that no one else can make you happy, and that happiness is the result of love coming out of you, this becomes the greatest mastery of the Toltecs, The Mastery of Love.

The only way to master love is to practice love. You don’t need to justify your love, you don’t need to explain your love, you just need to practice your love. Practice creates the master.?

Every relationship in your life can be healed, every relationship can be wonderful, but it’s always going to begin with you. You need to have the courage to use the truth, to talk to yourself with the truth, to be completely honest with yourself.?

Once we have awareness, we have a choice. If we could have that awareness all the time, we could change our routines, change our reactions, and change our entire life. Once we have the awareness, we recover free will. Once we recover free will, in any moment we can choose to remember who we are.?Becoming aware is about being responsible for your own life. You are not responsible for what is happening in the world, you are responsible for yourself. The real mission you have in life is to make yourself happy, and in order to be happy, you have to look at what you believe, the way you judge yourself, the way you victimize yourself. Be completely honest about your happiness.

The love we need to hunt is inside ourselves, but that love is difficult to prey. It is so difficult to hunt inside yourself, to get that love from inside you. To capture the love inside yourself, you have to surrender to yourself as the hunter and the prey.?Love is the medicine that accelerates the process of healing. There is no other medicine but unconditional love. Love yourself, love your neighbor, and love your enemies. This is simple, common sense, but we cannot love others until we love ourselves. That is why we must begin with self-love.

There are millions of ways to express your happiness, but there is only one way to be really happy, and that is to love. There is no other way. You cannot be happy if you don’t love yourself. That is a fact. You cannot share what you don’t have, if you don’t love yourself, you cannot love anyone else either. Love coming out of you is the only way to be happy.?

When you are aware that you are the force that is Life, anything is possible. Miracles happen all the time, because those miracles are performed by the heart. The heart is in direct communication with the human soul and the when the heart speaks, even with the resistance of the head, something inside you changes: your heart opens another heart, and true love is possible.?Three simple points: the truth, forgiveness, and self-love.?

Prayer for Self-Love: Starting today, help us to love ourselves so much that we never set up any circumstances that go against us. Clean our minds of emotional poison and self judgements so we can live in complete peace and love. Let our self-love be the power that changes the dream of our life. Help us start our life over beginning today with the power of self-love. Help us to enjoy our life, to enjoy our relationships, to explore life, to take risks, to be alive, and to no longer live in fear of love. Help us to become Masters of Gratitude, Generosity, and Love so that we can enjoy all your creations forever and ever. Amen.?