The Mastery of Love x Don Miguel Ruiz . . A read that’ll transform your perception of the world, but most importantly, of yourself. In this book, Ruiz details all of the societal factors that play a part in our false enactment of what we believe to be as “love”. Do you truly know what love is? What love feels like? We must study love more than we study anything else. We must practice self-love more than we practice anything else. If we do not love ourselves, we cannot love others. We tend to mask lust, infatuation, pain, codependency, insecurity, and expectation as “love”. But what love truly is, is the practice of whole acceptance of the other beyond our material world. Love is a spiritual practice. Love is revolution of self. Once we decolonize our minds, our bodies, our spirits, we begin to understand what self love really feels like. We must be kinder to ourselves, speak to our bodies with positivity, and differentiate from what our minds are telling us we want/need from what our bodies are telling us what we want/need. We must find happiness only within ourselves and not seek the other to provide happiness for us. My favorite analogy in this book, is the analogy of the star. The man saw a star at night and it was the most beautiful thing he saw that it brought him an abundance of joy. The star began getting closer and closer until it finally landed in the man’s hand. This made him so happy that he wanted to share this happiness with his significant other. He ran to her and gave her the star hoping it’ll make her as happy as it made him. The woman dropped the star and it fell into many pieces. She couldn’t bare the star’s energy, it was too much for her. The man learned he could not provide her happiness. He could only provide it for himself. Only we can provide our happiness. We must love ourselves so much that we don’t seek anything outside of what’s within ourselves. We must love each other as we already are and not try to create a version of the other we want them to be. Not allow anyone to create a version of us they want us to be. I love myself as I am, and so I love you as you are... unconditionally. 💫