'Living a Life of Awareness' Author Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. Challenges the Concept of Identity, Offers Spiritual Advisement

This article is part of Palabras, the Latin Post Latino Author Series.

Like his highly-acclaimed father before him, author Don Miguel Ruiz Jr. is a creator of self-help spiritual texts that examine the principles of belief, wisdom and health. However, Ruiz's books, "Living a Life of Awareness" and "The Five Levels of Attachment," have set him apart as an independent self-help authority due to his matchless perspective.

From a young age, Ruiz translated the prayers, lectures and workshops of his Mexican-born grandmother while watching her awe-inspiring spirituality and intent to heal people. At the same time, he trained under his father, the highly respected Don Miguel Ruiz Sr., to become a Nagual, which would allowed him to help others discover optimal physical and spiritual health, and achieve their own personal freedom.

While lessons and tools of his family's traditions played a large part in Ruiz's career as an author, his fascination with storytelling was also provoked by school writing and reading, and stories read to him by his influential father. Additionally, he was inspired by movies, such as "The Dead Poet's Society," starring the late Robin Williams. The influences were distinct; they collaboratively impacted him, shaping him and his concept of self-help.

"While both of my books fall into the same genre of spirituality, they're both written in two totally different ways. The first book, 'The Five Levels of Attachment,' is a self-help book that explains our attachment to knowledge. The more attached we become to knowledge, the more it begins to control our will," Ruiz told Latin Post. "Knowledge controls us to the point where we become fanatical about our beliefs and ideas, where we become discriminatory and we see people not as beings, but symbols that we don't agree with."

According to the author, that's the problem that the book proposes and looks to resolve. The book seeks to offer insights and paths to educating individuals on how they can open their minds and make it so they aren't controlled by their beliefs, knowledge or instruments. Today, the way individuals have chosen to control their knowledge provokes the question, "Do I control knowledge or does knowledge control me?"

"Living a Life of Awareness," Ruiz's second book, is a half-year daily meditation guide. The two books differ because "Five Levels" begins and closes an arch (or pathway toward freedom, discovery), while "Living a Life of Awareness" opens the arch, but doesn't close the arch. Instead, the book leaves the arch open for the interpretation of reader, made possible by readers having the space to write and learn about exercising meditation.

"People who are going to close the arch will close it, and the reader is going to close it in their own way, with their own experience. 'Living a Life of Awareness' was a tougher book to write because I had to provide readers an aha moment that they could read and process, and use to look into their own lives and see how it fits," said Ruiz. "As an author you don't have any control over that. But the beautiful thing is that it's a step that a reader can take if they want to. ... if they don't want to, they won't take it. But if they do want to, it's an extraordinary experience. The intent behind it is to become more aware of yourself, the power behind intent in life and your own personal intent."

Ruiz also discussed how the concept of identity works in contrast to self-exploration. According to the author, identity, like words, is a "mask or an empty symbol whose definition is completely subject to agreement." Words and the concept of identity can mean something in one nation and something totally different in another place, which is why defining it can be a challenge.

"When understanding language from that point of view, one of the things that will disappear is identity, because identity is just a symbol. It's just an idea, and it means whatever definition I give it. I might use identity to honor my family, or describe myself or my status in life, or describe my ancestry in the form of nationality or my parent's nationality," said Ruiz. "We paint with the words we know to describe an image, a message, content, or even just a single movement.

"As an author, it means taking the extra step to making sure that I'm expressing, to the best of my abilities, this images that I have in my mind, and I must convey it in words that someone else can understand. But, if I force my writing to fit an identity then I'm limiting myself, the idea, the concept and the structure. You have to make language adaptive, like clay. That's what I've learned. That's the beauty of language."

The author recently finished his third book, which is awaiting publication. That book will examine the journey of self-realization, staying enlightened and practicing self-discipline.