mastery of love book review

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• Nov 1, 2023

The Mastery of Love: Review and Summary

Book author: don miguel ruiz.

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Dive into the complexities of love and human relationships with "The Mastery of Love" by Don Miguel Ruiz. This classic work offers profound insights and practical advice for enhancing emotional well-being and cultivating healthier relationships. Explore the self-limiting beliefs that inhibit love and personal freedom, and discover valuable tools for self-discovery and personal growth. Learn how self-love is essential for forming fulfilling relationships and how understanding, compassion, and forgiveness can resolve conflicts. Uncover the impact of fear on genuine connection and gain psychological insights on improving emotional well-being. "The Mastery of Love" is your comprehensive guide to personal development and creating more satisfying relationships.

5 Reasons you should read this book today

Insightful Wisdom: The Mastery of Love provides profound understanding and wisdom on love that can change your relationships and your life.

Life-changing Lessons: This book holds life-changing lessons on fear, love, and happiness that can greatly contribute to your personal growth and development.

Universal Themes: The themes in this book are universal, addressing love in all its forms, making it a relevant read for anyone and everyone.

Practical Guidance: Apart from theoretical wisdom, the book offers practical guidance on how to introduce love and happiness into your life and relationships.

Simple and Understandable: Despite its deep and profound messages, the book is written in a simple and easy-to-understand manner, making it accessible to everyone.

Summary of 'The Mastery of Love'

'The Mastery of Love: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship' is a thought-provoking book by Don Miguel Ruiz that explores the concept of love from a new perspective. The book, which originates from ancient Toltec wisdom, unravels the often complex dynamics of love and relationships, leading readers on a journey towards self-discovery and personal growth.

Background and Concept

The book is rooted in the belief that love is not something we need to find or earn but rather an inherent part of us that we need to acknowledge and express. Ruiz challenges conventional ideas about love and points out how societal norms and unwritten rules often create unrealistic expectations, leading to disappointment and suffering.

Main Themes

The book is divided into different sections, each dealing with various aspects of love and relationships. The author explores themes like self-love, fear in love, the concept of 'domestication' in relationships, and the practice of forgiveness. He explains how our beliefs and assumptions about love can form the basis of our relationships and how changing these can transform our lives.

Practical Guidance

Throughout the book, Ruiz provides practical advice on how to apply these principles in daily life. He guides readers on how to heal emotional wounds, let go of the past, and build relationships based on respect and love rather than fear and control. The book also includes spiritual exercises and meditations to help readers reconnect with their inner self and cultivate a deeper understanding of love.

Impact and Legacy

Since its publication, 'The Mastery of Love' has had a profound impact on readers around the world. It has helped many to question their beliefs about love, let go of negative patterns, and embrace a more fulfilling way of living and loving. The book's timeless wisdom and practical advice continue to inspire and guide individuals in their journey towards personal growth and deeper relationships.

Analysis of "The Mastery of Love"

Don Miguel Ruiz's "The Mastery of Love," a classic work on personal development and relationships, presents profound insights into the complexities of love and human relationships. Examining it from a psychological perspective, this book is a valuable guide for individuals seeking to enhance their emotional well-being and cultivate healthier relationships.

This book takes a deep dive into the self-limiting beliefs that inhibit love and personal freedom. It explores the fears and assumptions that create emotional suffering, leading to a cycle of misery and discontent. From a personal development perspective, the book's focus on self-awareness and self-improvement is highly beneficial. The emphasis on emotional intelligence and introspection offers readers valuable tools for self-discovery and personal growth.

An essential theme in "The Mastery of Love" is the concept of self-love. Ruiz underlines this as a significant factor in forming healthy and fulfilling relationships. The book's assertion that one must love themselves before they can truly love others is rooted in psychological principles. This perspective aligns with the concept of self-acceptance in psychology, which asserts that individuals with a high level of self-acceptance are more likely to have satisfying relationships.

Additionally, the book’s approach to dealing with conflict within relationships is remarkable. It emphasizes understanding, compassion, and forgiveness as keys to resolving disputes. This non-confrontational approach aligns with the principles of conflict resolution in psychology, which advocate for empathy and understanding as essential elements in resolving disagreements.

From a psychological perspective, the book's exploration of fear and its impact on relationships is noteworthy. Fear, according to "The Mastery of Love," often acts as a barrier to genuine connection. This observation is consistent with psychological theories on anxiety and attachment, which suggest that fear can interfere with the formation of healthy relationships.

In conclusion, "The Mastery of Love" provides a comprehensive guide to personal development and cultivating healthier relationships. It offers practical and psychologically grounded advice that can lead to improved emotional well-being and more satisfying relationships.

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The Mastery of Love: Strengths

The Mastery of Love , written by Don Miguel Ruiz, stands out as a remarkable piece of writing due to several key strengths. These include the use of relatable metaphors, the application of ancient Toltec wisdom, and the author's ability to communicate complex ideas in a simple, digestible manner.

Relatable Metaphors

One of the major strengths of The Mastery of Love is its use of relatable metaphors. Ruiz masterfully employs metaphors to convey profound truths about love and human relationships. These metaphors are not only impactful but also practical, making it easier for readers to grasp the essence of the message and implement it in their own lives. This contributes to the book's overall success in communicating its message effectively and memorably.

Application of Ancient Toltec Wisdom

A unique strength of Ruiz's work is his application of ancient Toltec wisdom. The Toltec civilization, known for its profound philosophical insights, is woven through the fabric of the book, adding depth and authenticity to the text. This ancient wisdom provides a fresh perspective on love, relationships, and self-mastery, resonating with readers in a powerful way.

Simple and Digestible Communication

The author's ability to distill complex ideas into simple, straightforward language is another strength of The Mastery of Love . The book is filled with profound insights, yet it's accessible, making it easy for people from all walks of life to understand and apply its teachings. This strength greatly enhances the book's appeal, making it a valuable resource for anyone seeking to improve their relationships and personal wellbeing.

Critiques of "The Mastery of Love"

The book "The Mastery of Love" by Don Miguel Ruiz has received a broad spectrum of responses from readers, and while many have praised it for its enlightening perspectives on love and relationships, it is not without its flaws. This critique aims to shed light on some of these weaknesses, focusing on the book's vague terms, repetitive content, and the lack of practical application.

Vagueness in Terminology

One of the most noticeable weaknesses of "The Mastery of Love" is the ambiguity and vagueness that pervades its terminology. Ruiz frequently employs metaphysical concepts and terms, such as "energy", "awareness" and "agreements". While these terms may resonate with some readers, many others find them confusing and abstract. Without clear definitions or concrete examples to anchor these concepts, readers may struggle to comprehend their significance or relevance in their lives.

Repetitive Content

Another criticism directed towards "The Mastery of Love" is its repetitive content. Numerous readers have reported that the book tends to repeat the same concepts and ideas throughout its chapters, which can become monotonous over time. This repetition, while designed to reinforce the author's points, may instead contribute to a lack of engagement on the reader’s part. The book's repetitive nature may diminish its effectiveness, as readers might find themselves disengaged and unable to absorb the lessons fully.

Lack of Practical Application

Moreover, "The Mastery of Love" is often criticized for its lack of practical application. While the book provides a unique perspective on love and relationships, it does not necessarily provide clear, actionable steps that readers can implement in their day-to-day lives. Many readers have expressed frustration over this lack, stating that although they appreciate the book's philosophical insights, they struggle to translate these into practical actions that would help improve their relationships.

Who is the author of "The Mastery of Love"?

The author of "The Mastery of Love" is Don Miguel Ruiz. Born on August 27, 1952, Don Miguel Ruiz is a renowned spiritual teacher and an internationally bestselling author. He is a member of the ancient Toltec tradition, a lineage of knowledge dating back to the ancient shamanic traditions of the Mexican highlands.

Can you provide a brief summary of Don Miguel Ruiz's career?

Don Miguel Ruiz embarked on his career as a spiritual teacher after experiencing a near-death incident. Prior to this, he had a thriving medical practice as a surgeon in Mexico. However, a car accident led him on a different path, and he started exploring the teachings of the ancient Toltec. He later shared these principles with the world through his writings, lectures, and workshops. Ruiz's teachings focus on transforming lives by fostering awareness, wisdom, and love in personal relationships.

What are the significant works of Don Miguel Ruiz?

Don Miguel Ruiz is best known for his book "The Four Agreements," which offers a practical guide for personal freedom based on ancient Toltec wisdom. The book became a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into 46 languages. Following its success, Ruiz authored several other books including "The Mastery of Love," "The Voice of Knowledge," and "The Fifth Agreement," each expanding on different aspects of Toltec wisdom.

What is "The Mastery of Love" about?

"The Mastery of Love" is a self-help book that focuses on love and relationships. Ruiz uses traditional Toltec wisdom to illustrate how one can overcome fear-based beliefs and assumptions to achieve harmony in relationships. The book is structured around several key themes such as healing emotional wounds, abandoning fear and judgment, and embracing unconditional love.

What is the impact of "The Mastery of Love"?

"The Mastery of Love" has resonated with a global audience and has been translated into several languages. Its teachings about love, forgiveness, and emotional healing have helped many readers transform their personal relationships. The book's impact is evident in its positive reviews, high sales, and its enduring popularity among self-help literature.

Explore Further: The Mastery of Love

Other published books by the author:.

The Four Agreements : In this book, the author presents four simple yet profound agreements that can transform our lives and relationships. These agreements are based on ancient Toltec wisdom and guide us towards personal freedom and happiness.

The Fifth Agreement : Building upon the teachings of The Four Agreements, this book introduces the fifth agreement, which encourages us to be skeptical, listen carefully, and use our words wisely. By understanding and living this agreement, we can transcend the limitations of our beliefs and create a new reality.

The Voice of Knowledge : Exploring the power of the human mind and the beliefs that shape our perception of the world, this book guides us towards a deeper understanding of ourselves. By unlearning the lies we have been conditioned to believe, we can regain our authenticity and reconnect with our true nature.

Prayers: A Communion with Our Creator : This book offers a collection of prayers that can help us connect with the divine and cultivate a sense of gratitude and love. By practicing these prayers, we can open our hearts and transform our lives with the power of prayer.

The Mastery of Self : Building on the wisdom of The Four Agreements, this book provides practical tools and exercises to help us master ourselves and create a life of happiness and fulfillment. Through self-awareness and self-love, we can break free from self-limiting patterns and live authentically.

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The Mastery of Love: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship, A Toltec Wisdom Book Paperback – 30 Mar. 1999

"Happiness can only come from inside of you and is the result of your love. When you are aware that no one else can make you happy, and that happiness is the result of your love, this becomes the greatest mastery of the Toltec: the Mastery of Love." -- don Miguel Ruiz

• Part of series A Toltec Wisdom Book
• Print length 224 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Amber-Allen Publishing
• Publication date 30 Mar. 1999
• Dimensions 12.85 x 1.52 x 18.42 cm
• ISBN-10 1878424424
• ISBN-13 978-1878424426
• See all details

Product description

About the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Amber-Allen Publishing (30 Mar. 1999)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1878424424
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1878424426
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 12.85 x 1.52 x 18.42 cm
• 421 in Romantic Relationships
• 1,821 in Practical & Motivational Self Help
• 5,804 in Social Sciences (Books)

About the authors

Janet mills.

Janet Mills is the founder of Amber-Allen Publishing and co-author (with don Miguel Ruiz) of the international bestselling “Toltec Wisdom Series” including “The Four Agreements,” “The Mastery of Love,” “The Voice of Knowledge,” “The Four Agreements Companion Book,” “The Circle of Fire,” and “The Fifth Agreement.” The Toltec Wisdom books have sold over 15 million copies in the United States, and have been published in 52 languages worldwide.

Mills has published an online course, "The Four Agreements for a Better Life," for people who want to deepen their understanding and practice of these deceptively simple agreements. Information about the course is available at TheFourAgreements.com.

Mills is also the editor of and publisher of Deepak Chopra's international bestselling title “The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success” (over 2.5 million copies sold), and the publisher of 11 world-renowned “Seth” books by Jane Roberts, which have been credited with launching the New Age movement.

Mills credits the books she publishes for inspiring her belief system and transforming her life. Her personal mission is to share universal wisdom in the language of our times and to help inspire others to live the life of their dreams. She lives in San Rafael, California.

Miguel Ruiz

www.miguelruiz.com

Don Miguel Ruiz is a renowned spiritual teacher and internationally bestselling author of the “Toltec Wisdom Series,” including “The Four Agreements,” “The Mastery of Love,” “The Voice of Knowledge,” “The Four Agreements Companion Book,” “The Circle of Fire,” and “The Fifth Agreement.” The Toltec Wisdom books have sold over 12 million copies in the United States, and have been published in 46 languages worldwide.

don Miguel has spent the past three decades guiding students to personal freedom through his profound insights regarding the nature of human reality. His newest book, THE ACTOR (Ediciones Urano) written with Barbara Emrys was published November 3rd, 2020.

The youngest of thirteen children, don Miguel Ruiz was born in rural Mexico to parents who were healers and practitioners of ancient Toltec traditions. As a young adult, he graduated from medical school in Mexico City and practiced neurosurgery with his older brother in Tijuana. A near-fatal car crash forever changed the direction of his life, however, causing him to leave medicine and to examine the essential truth about life and humanity. With his mother’s help, and through her ancestral teachings, he discovered his own path to awareness, which evolved into a deep understanding of the physical universe and the virtual world of the mind.

Combining Toltec mythology and scientific perspectives, don Miguel has been able to merge ancient wisdom with modern physics and practical common-sense, forging a new philosophy for seekers of truth and personal authenticity. His landmark bestselling book, The Four Agreements, contains practical steps for long-term, personal transformation and has been read by millions around the world.

First published in 1997, The Four Agreements has since sold over nine million copies in the United States and seven million worldwide. It has been translated into 46 languages, appeared on the New York Times bestseller for nearly ten years, and was the 36th bestselling book of the decade. Don Miguel is also the author of The Mastery of Love, The Voice of Knowledge, Prayers, and the New York Times bestseller, The Fifth Agreement, a collaboration with his son, don José Ruiz. Each of his books are international bestsellers.

The wisdom don Miguel has brought to the world has earned him respect around the globe. He has dedicated his life to sharing his message through practical concepts in order to promote transformation and ultimately change lives for the better. Don Miguel is the recipient of numerous recognitions, including a U.S. Air Force ‘challenge coin’ engraved with “The Four Agreements.” He is the recipient of an Honorary Degree in Cultural and Social Education from the American Cultural Institute of Mexico, and referenced as a “national treasure” in his native country.

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Customers find the book thought-provoking, inspiring, and unique. They describe it as simple, concise, and practical. Readers also appreciate the great terminology used to explain.

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Customers find the book thought-provoking, inspiring, and insightful. They say it offers a unique outlook on mental health and speaks a lot of truth. Readers also mention the book profoundly changed their lives.

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• Nov 26, 2022

Don Miguel Ruiz - The Mastery of Love book review

Today we are starting a new cycle and a new category of posts on the Empowerment Coaching blog. We will publish reviews of valuable books regularly. These are books worth reading at least once in your life, and often worth returning to discover new insights. These are books that moved us or inspired us to make a big change. They are also books that contain valuable knowledge and practical tips on personal development leading to a better, fulfilled life.

We start our series with the book "The Mastery of Love" by Don Miguel Ruiz.

Title and author of the book: "The Mastery of Love", Don Miguel Ruiz

A practical guide to the art of relationships.

1. What is this book about

The book "The Mastery of Love" reveals the secrets of personal development and a conscious approach to building relationships. "It is only by loving and accepting yourself as you are that you can truly exist and express your personality. It would be best if you did not pretend to be someone else. If you pretend to be someone you are not, you will always fail."

Using the wisdom of the Toltecs, Miguel Ruiz shows how to apply this knowledge in our daily lives. The author teaches us how to build happiness first in ourselves so that we can open up to mature and conscious relationships. In a very accessible way, he shows us how to throw off masks and heal our own emotions, how to learn to truly forgive and accept ourselves and others. It proves that each of us has the power to direct our own lives and that happiness does not come from outside - its source is within ourselves.

The author also shows how to avoid common ways of thinking and acting that distance us from the happiness and joy in life. It teaches us to recognize illusions and helps us to enter the path of personal development that leads to freedom, true happiness, and love.

2. Who is this book primarily for?

I recommend the book to people who want to better understand the relationship with themselves and the relationships with others with whom we form relationships. I recommend it to people who are in a relationship and encounter challenges in their relationship, those who are going through a breakup, and those after breakups who want to enter a new stage of life. I recommend the book to all those for whom personal development and work on themselves are important because the book supports the development of self-awareness, self-acceptance, and self-confidence. It shows how to be happy and accept yourself as you are.

3. What are the main advantages of this book

"The Mastery of Love" is a book written in clear, simple, and understandable language, which is why reading it is a real pleasure. The text is intertwined with short, inspiring, golden thoughts highlighted in a frame, which allows reflection and a moment of attachment. The book is small, which means that you can take it with you in a backpack or handbag and use it whenever you need to stop in the rush of thoughts, look for inspiration, or simply return to important content.

4. The reviewer's opinion about the book "The Mastery of Love"

I am grateful that I came across "The Mastery of Love". This happened at a time when I was working a lot on building my self-awareness, I was analyzing my behavior and the behavior of people closest to me in a relationship, trying to understand these behaviors and the mechanisms that govern them. This book has changed my life and self-perception a lot, and it helps me build more mature relationships. She showed me a new perspective, encouraged me to change the way I think about myself and my partner, and gave me a sense of release and happiness.

I will quote two golden thoughts that have stayed with me:

"Happiness never comes from outside"

"There are two halves in every relationship. Of those two halves, you're only responsible for your half. You're not responsible for the other half."

I have this book in my library and refer to it often.

This book also became an inspiration and opened a new perspective for one of my clients, with whom I worked in the coaching process and one of the areas of work was the topic of building lasting partnerships.

5. Evaluation of the book "The Mastery of Love" on a scale of 1-10

I rate the book a 10 . It opened my eyes to many aspects of my life and made it more mature and fuller.

6. A few words about Don Miguel Ruiz, the author of the book

Don Miguel Ruiz was born in Mexico on August 27, 1952, into a family of Mexican healers. The family expected that Miguel would also begin to explore the centuries-old healing tradition of the family and the spiritual knowledge of the Toltecs. Still, he chose modern medical studies and soon became a doctor. The event that could have cost him his life completely changed him. Falling asleep at the wheel, accident, leaving the body...

Deeply moved by this experience, he undertook intensive practices aimed at getting to know his essence. He devoted himself to the study of ancient knowledge and then passed on the teachings of the ancient Toltecs to representatives of the Western world. It is Miguel Ruiz who is today one of the most devoted propagators of Toltec knowledge and wisdom.

Who were the Toltecs? According to anthropologists, they are ancient people living in what is now south-central Mexico. The word Toltec itself means "artist, master", but in the circles that cultivate the teachings described today, it is assumed that the field of this artistic activity was life. Toltec knowledge is supposed to help shape lives and make them a work of art.

Miguel Ruiz is the author of the world's best-selling books on self-development and a spiritual guide. He is the author of the books "Four Agreements", "The Fifth Agreement", "The Mastery of Love" discussed today, and "Three Questions".

The author of the book review "The Mastery of Love" is Agnieszka Kucza, Coach and Mentor at Empowerment Coaching Kraków.

Agnieszka works with clients in the field of life coaching, career coaching as well as managerial coaching and mentoring. Her extensive professional experience in the areas of Purchase-to-Pay, Financial Projects, transformation, and the use of LEAN in Finance makes her understand the needs of business clients well.

Knowing perfectly the realities of the operation of smaller and larger companies, Agnieszka also understands well what their employees struggle with daily.

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Search this blog, a book review: the mastery of love.

The Mastery of Love is an invitation from Don Miguel Ruiz and Janet Mills to take a different perspective on love and relationship. It is based on the ancient teachings of the Toltec, ``the women and men of knowledge”, the masters of science and art, also known in southern Mexico as the naguals. Don Miguel Ruiz is a nagual who comes from the line of the Eagle Knight. The Mastery of Love is one of the books in The Toltec Wisdom Series written by him, together with his co-author, Janet Mills,  who is the founder and president of Amber-Allen publishing.

-There are two main things in life: an outer image and an inner image. The outer image is everything that we believe about ourselves and about the world around us; the inner image is the real us. The outer image is a dream. The inner image is pure love; it is Life.

-We are an emotional body with wounded skin that when triggered by another person or a circumstance, we get hurt. The pain is caused by the habitual practice of operating from a place of fear.

-The Dream instilled in us a Belief System that hurts and limits us from living our authentic selves. In Toltec, this is the Parasite in our head.

- The Parasite churns out poison from our reaction to what we believe as injustice. We pass the poison on to others by getting into an argument with them. In this way we catch their attention and attach it to our drama. After the fight, we feel better but the other person who received all of our complaints doesn't so he or she fires back with his/her drama, hooking our attention, transferring his/her poison to us. This back and forth transfer of poison shows how we treat each other nowadays.

- Love and forgiveness can heal emotional wounds and help us get out of the misery that the Parasite created. We are the force that can make change happen. 

- Becoming a hunter is the first step of change. Be aware of every reaction you have, arrest it, surrender it to love, and let love flow from your heart. 

- In a relationship, we are only responsible for our half ; the other half is taken care of by our husband, or wife, or son, or daughter, or a dog, etc. Drama ensues from taking responsibility for the other half. 

- The need of our mind is not necessarily the need of our body. When we are hungry, we eat to satisfy the needs of the body. We don’t feel hungry anymore but our mind still thinks the body needs more food so we binge eat. Being aware about what our mind needs and what our body needs can help us control our impulses.

My Thoughts 

The Mastery of Love is interesting but sometimes confronting. It’s take on love and relationship challenges what I know and believe about love and relationship.  I thought we are like empty vessels looking for people or things to fill us up with their love. In this book, we are likened to an overflowing fountain that is abundant with love, moving in a perpetual motion from our heart to the others, nurturing our relationship with them. We are not scared to love others or not to receive love from others because in us love is already present and abundant. This way of thinking is transformative.

The Toltec teachings are presented in a way that is general and abstract. The stories are theoretical but  they were able to make me retrieve my own concrete experiences to make them sensible to me. The book is repetitive at times to fully emphasize its message. However, I felt it was too much to take in all the big statements, generalizations, and examples. That's why I needed to take time to understand them fully and absorb their core message. 

I appreciate Don Miguel Ruiz’s advice; “Don’t believe me.” He asked the readers to not believe him but to “think and make choices." As I’ve said, reading this book is an invitation and it’s up to the readers to allow the book to transform their notion of love and relationship. It did change mine. 

Discussion Questions

1. What is your idea of a relationship? How about love?

2.Did your idea of love and relationship change after reading this book?

3. What is the most surprising information from this book?

4. What questions came up as you read the book?

5. Would you apply the teachings in this book in your life? Why or why not?

Further Information

Title: The Mastery of Love: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship --Toltec Wisdom Book

Author: Don Miguel Ruiz, Janet Mills

Genre: Self-Help

Publisher: Amber-Allen Publishing (July 7, 2011)

Publication Date: ‎ July 7, 2011

Print length: 135 pages

ASIN:  B005BSQWVM

The Mastery of Love – Book Review

Overview : According to The Mastery of Love by Don Miguel Ruiz, humans are naturally very sensitive creatures. We are born with the ability to feel and perceive with our emotional bodies. Our inherent state of being is one of exploration and joy, and one of love . However, over time, we are conditioned out of this natural state of freedom and joy as we learn the ways of the world and begin to accept the “Dream” of humanity.

This dream is wrought with self-rejection, fear, aggression, and judgments. These conditions create wounds in the emotional body and fill them with poison. Meanwhile, the big Judge inside our minds has learned to be critical, demeaning ourselves and others. The big Judge believes it needs to protect itself from the pain caused by others when they touch our emotional wounds. Thus, we become masters of defense, denial, judgment, and all the lies about ourselves and others that keep the narrative strung together.  

The Mastery of Love explains how we begin to search for love to heal the pain of these emotional wounds. Usually though, we search externally and find ourselves in all sorts of toxic relationships. Our children, family members, partners... we expect love from them, but as soon as they touch our emotional wounds, like infected skin, we lash out. We become aggressive, defensive, and find any way to inject the pain we feel into those around us.

Thus, endless cycles of emotional poison are born .

However, once we learn that this is not our natural state, we can escape these harmful toxic cycles. Instead of reaching for a lover to feel loved, we learn to look within our own hearts . Instead of taking an insult personally, we can recognize the assault as someone else lacking love, and we can share our love with them instead. Entering into this realm, the Dream of Love, we begin to understand that although we have emotional poison, our own wounds to heal, we don’t need to dump our pain and toxicity onto others.

Learning to relax into vulnerability, we develop endless compassion for our own being and all others. The process of self-acceptance and forgiveness is a life-long journey, but one well worth exploring . Through it, we may learn to exist in harmony with the limitless love that fuels our minds, hearts, and universe.

Memorable Quotes : “That image of perfection changes the way we dream. We learn to deny ourselves and reject ourselves. We are never good enough, or right enough, or clean enough, or healthy enough, according to all those beliefs we have.” “ If we have awareness, we have the opportunity to heal our emotional body, our emotional mind, and stop the suffering .” “Life brings you exactly what you need. There is perfect justice in hell. There is nothing to blame. We can even say that our suffering is a gift. If you just open your eyes and see what is around you, it’s exactly what you need to clean your poison, to heal your wounds, to accept yourself, and to get out of hell.” “But first you will need to take a step back. You have to accept yourself and love yourself just the way you are . Only by loving and accepting yourself the way you are can you truly be and express what you are. You are what you are, and that is all you are. You don’t need to pretend to be something else. When you pretend to be what you are not, you are always going to fail.” “You find out that you are in every tree, you are in every animal, vegetable, and rock. You are that force that moves the wind and breathes through your body. The whole universe is a living being that is moved by that force, and that is what you are. You are Life .”

Strengths :

Simply written and deep diving Approachable, comforting, yet challenging

An honest look at how we can learn to live in harmony with love

Further Discussion :

As with all Ruiz’s books, there is an underlying motif of spirituality innate with ‘Creation’. Some readers may not totally jive with these ideas. 

The Bottom Line : We have the choice to rejoice in Heaven, or suffer in the depths of Hell. We live these choices every day. We either choose to move closer to love and joy, or we are unwilling and fail to see ourselves fully. The Dream of Love is the most beautiful of dreams. Through it, our life may become an ongoing romance, a masterpiece, a work of art. With it, we may rejoice in the abundant love we feel in ourselves and our wish to share it with all others. Which do you choose? Consider ordering  The Mastery of Love today. 

Change Your Reality w/ Don Miguel Ruiz

Zef is the founder of LifeGarden Productions. He is a community organizer, musician, plant chef, lucid dream mentor, rights advocate, energy worker, freelance writer, as well as a promoter of health and wellness. Stay connected with Zef Rem: LINKTREE

The Voice of Knowledge – Book Review

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The Mastery Of Love Summary, Quote, And Review (Commentary)

The Mastery Of Love Summary by Miguel Ruiz  discusses why most of us are emotionally wounded due to our false beliefs, and how we can heal our wounds using the power of love. And thus make our relationships with our family and friends better.

The Mastery Of Love Summary [PDF]

Ever thought, why do we keep judging ourselves for every little thing?

Why do most relationships lack happiness?

How do we create more Self-love?

This book summary will answer such questions.

In this book summary, I’ve shared the best lessons I learned from this book: The Mastery Of Love by Miguel Ruiz .

This is the second book I’m summarizing by the same author.

Previously, I summarized The Voice Of Knowledge , which talked about Toltec wisdom. This book summary focuses more on our relationships with Self and others.

So without further ado…

Let’s dive right in!

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Lesson #1: We all are mentally sick and wounded due to our false beliefs and opinions

It might sound harsh.

But it’s the truth.

The author says that we all have some kind of mental sickness.

But the irony here is that it’s not visible with the naked eyes.

Only people with wisdom can see through that thick skull of ours.

Our minds are full of fear, guilt, shame, self-judgments, opinions about others, etc.

And all of this is so rooted inside our minds that we believe that “what we think” is genuine.

We carry those false ideas in our heads and try to impress those same ideas on others.

So, this mental disease is contagious.

It spreads like crazy.

We discuss other diseases and take them seriously, but we always fail to realize the most prominent condition of all time.

It’s the mental sickness that has brought suffering to humanity.

Most new physical diseases are here due to our mental illness or stupidity.

We are not supposed to be this way.

Our nature is to be happy. To be beautiful.

But are we like that?

Are we all blissful and enlightened?

I doubt so…

We are afraid to reflect on our ideas and investigate whether they are true or not.

And this fear keeps eating us from within and makes us mentally weak.

Why can’t our minds be like two or three-year-old children?

Why can’t we feel empty, light, and playful inside our minds?

This inquiry concludes that it’s because we are holding on to false beliefs.

Those beliefs rule over us. They don’t allow us to see the truth.

In reality, we all are beautiful.

But our knowledge makes us think that we lack something; we don’t deserve to be happy.

Just watch any adult. They all have secrets they don’t want to share with other people.

With experience, we learned that vulnerability is weakness.

Everybody lies because TRUTH sometimes makes us vulnerable.

Why does speaking the truth make us vulnerable?

That’s because there is a huge mess inside our minds that we don’t want to accept.

There is self-judgment and self-criticism.

We learn that respect and power mean everything at some point in our lives.

So, we blindly start pursuing them without realizing which tendencies of our minds are working behind this.

We create fake personalities to gain respect in society.

That’s the reason why there are many fake people in the world.

We don’t get satisfied with just one fake image.

There are many…

One for school, One for office, One for friends, One for family, One for ourselves, etc.

And guess what do these images bring us? Suffering.

If you just focus on who you are in reality, you won’t bring unnecessary suffering to you.

I don’t mean to imply that you will never suffer if you just stop projecting images.

There is already so much pain and suffering. So, why invite more?

Why invite more conflicts and drama into our lives?

Shouldn’t we stop pretending what we are not?

Who will heal all those mental wounds that we or the society have inflicted on ourselves and others?

Will God heal them?

Or can we heal them ourselves?

Someone has to take the responsibility, right?

We can’t play victim all the time.

Related summary: Freedom from the Known by J Krishnamurti

Lesson #2: The sense of injustice takes away the innocence of children

In the 2nd chapter, the author talks about the domestication of children.

A newborn child is full of innocence and love.

But by the time he becomes a teenager, parents and society start throwing their opinions on him.

One can’t deny that there is a lot of injustice in this world.

Bad people have an unfair advantage over good people.

People who shouldn’t have POWER have all the power in the world.

By the word “power,” I mean money and capital.

People who favor truth face consequences. Nobody likes them.

That’s because we fear the truth. So, we hide behind the lies.

When children see the acts of injustice, the author says, they lose their innocence — little by little.

Which is not a great thing, or is it?

Kids watch their parents fighting with each other over silly issues.

And then those same kids are taught that “fighting is wrong.”

This creates a conflict inside their minds.

They don’t understand such concepts.

Guess what happens then?

There is an impression of injustice on the child’s mind as we don’t remember facts or concepts. We remember how we feel.

Emotions win over logic most of the time.

There is nothing wrong with emotions.

It’s just that if there is any conflict between emotions and logic, we tend to go along with feelings.

So, what does a little kid do when he feels a sense of injustice? He gets an emotional wound.

And that wound keeps growing over time.

By the time he becomes an adult, he has lost his love.

He has lost touch with his true nature.

That’s one of the reasons that adults find it hard to trust other people.

Just think about it…

Where do we learn how to lie?

Where do we learn the concepts of right and wrong?

We get it from other people.

And these concepts take our innocence away from us.

The emotional wounds that we get produce a sense of fear and guilt within us.

Related summary: The happiness trap by Russ Harris

Lesson #3: Your happiness is your business. Take charge of it.

In the 3rd chapter, the author talks about happiness and relationships.

First, let’s talk about happiness.

Often people find it hard to feel happy.

They think that happiness is somewhere outside.

So, they hunt for it. They consume products. They look for other people to satisfy their need for happiness.

Do they ever find happiness? No. And there is a reason for it.

The question is:

Do we even need to find happiness?

Happiness is a human need. No doubt.

But the concepts we have about happiness are wrong.

There is an underlying assumption that we are not happy by default. So we think that we have to look for it in other places — other than us.

It’s no surprise we struggle to find it.

The point is:

Happiness is in our nature if we just realize it.

Never put your happiness in other people’s hands.

Because when you are trying to find happiness outside, you are looking in the wrong place.

And trusting other people with your happiness is a big mistake because they can make you sad if you don’t fulfill their needs.

If two persons hunt for happiness outside them in any relationship, they will find more pain.

Your happiness is your business.

And only you can take the best care of it.

Let other people handle their happiness.

Don’t expect the other person to make you happy.

A healthy relationship is one where two or more people have free will. There are no obligations.

When you have expectations in a relationship, it loses freedom. Someone has to compromise.

And when you compromise, you lose a bit of happiness.

Another thing is:

Happiness should not be the priority. Blissful Living is better.

Happiness is still the dopamine rush you feel inside your brain.

When your desire is fulfilled, you feel happy.

But it’s still short-term thinking.

Blissful Living is entirely different. And that is what I think the author recommends.

You become blissful when you realize that your true nature is to love.

You are already beautiful, to begin with.

What makes our minds ugly are the false concepts that we pick up during our childhood.

The takeaway here is:

Stop finding happiness outside. It’s already within you if you dig deeper and realize it.

No matter how much your partner loves you, you can’t be truly happy unless you dig deeper.

Don’t put the burden of your needs and expectations on other people. And, if possible, ask them to do the same.

Related summary: The courage to be disliked by Ichiro Kishimi

Lesson #4: No relationship is perfect. So stop trying to change your partner all the time.

A perfect relationship is a myth.

In an ideal sense, if a relationship has to be perfect, then the people involved must be mind readers.

And we all know it: It only happens in the movies.

You can’t be the Professor X. (Like in the X-Men movies)

The content of everyone’s mind is different.

If you look at it, there is always some drama going inside our heads.

But they are not the same.

Both the dramas are different.

And this drama is the problem. They cause conflicts in any relationship.

Let me explain…

The drama confuses you. It drains your mental energy.

So, a little energy is left to understand the drama going inside your partner’s head.

There will always be a difference.

If you are too involved in your drama, you will try to fit every person or situation into that.

But your partner has nothing to do with it.

The thing is:

We get so involved in our mess that we start changing other people.

And this is pure selfishness.

Surprisingly, we start calling this love.

Love has nothing to do with selfishness. Instead, they are opposite to each other.

Love is liberating. While selfishness is binding.

Everyone must understand the difference between love and possessiveness.

Most people try to control the other person in the name of love.

The reason is we all want happiness.

But as we know, happiness is a by-product of love. You don’t have to control your partner to achieve that.

A person who truly loves other people understands and respects the differences.

He doesn’t force his drama or opinions on the other person.

Another thing you should learn is that:

If a person is angry, it doesn’t mean that they hate you personally.

Keep in mind that we all have mental issues to deal with.

Although we don’t discuss them with other people, they put a toll on our minds.

If a person is not behaving right with you, have some empathy and understand that he is hurt inside. He needs more love than ever.

But do we think like that? I don’t think so.

We start opposing it when we hear something against our rigid beliefs.

We try our best to guard our opinions.

We don’t want to get hurt.

And that’s okay in a sense. We are programmed to act this way.

But still, we can take the initiative and try to change this impulsive behavior.

When you start seeing everything as one, you realize and accept the differences.

You start seeing the emotional wounds of other people.

That is love!

Love is not about being selfish. It’s about being empathetic.

Related summary: The way of the superior man by David Deida

Lesson #5: You are the Life that flows through everything in the universe.

The author says that we are the life; we are the force that runs this universe.

By “Life,” he means that we are not mere bodies with a mind.

And when we talk like this, we enter into the realm of Spirituality, which is unknown to many people.

Spiritual wisdom says that we are the energy or life behind everything in the universe.

But since we are so ignorant, we never realize this thing.

We think that we are limited to just our bodies.

We think that the problems of our minds are the biggest in the world.

It’s hard to imagine and comprehend that we are a breathing universe in ourselves.

To understand this, you can think about all the cells in your body.

Think of all the cells as humans. And think of your body as a giant planet or universe.

If you try to search for God, you won’t find him anywhere.

Maybe God is not what we think it is.

Considering the example above, we are the Gods to millions of cells and bacteria that live in our bodies.

In a way, we are God to them.

This is not to feed your Ego, though.

This example is to make you realize that life is everywhere.

If you open your eyes, you’ll see that the entire creation is beautiful.

We are so occupied by the dramas we create that we don’t even acknowledge the beauty present within and around us.

If you have a clear perspective, your journey on this planet can be beautiful.

We simply need to broaden our perception.

We must look at the larger picture.

Most of our problems are due to our beliefs.

Those beliefs turn into knowledge after they mature.

And that knowledge causes unnecessary conflicts in our thoughts.

We take our thoughts seriously when they are nothing but the echo of our knowledge and experiences.

The best way to think is to create some distance between our thoughts.

Once you realize this truth, you are not your thoughts. Once you see that you are the life that runs this universe, you stop taking your inner drama seriously.

It unlocks a way to a blissful life.

You stop feeling incomplete when you see that you are the whole thing in the universe.

You stop feeling imperfect.

I don’t mean to imply that you stop learning.

Don’t fall into that trap.

The point here is: You do everything with a sense of love and perfection.

That way, you are deliberately learning and improving yourself. You are not doing something because you have to. You are doing it because you want to.

There is a massive difference between “wanting to do something” and “having to do something.”

Always think and act from a sense of completion.

If you do it the other way, you will never be fulfilled.

Every pleasure will only give you momentary satisfaction.

This is something you should think about.

Related summary: The power of intention by Wayne Dyer

Lesson #6: Forgive your enemies. Let go of any grudges. And heal your emotional mind.

It’s hard to forgive our enemies.

And yes, some people don’t deserve any forgiveness.

The author doesn’t want you to forgive for the sake of it.

There is a more profound meaning.

You hurt your emotional body when you keep holding to the hatred inside you.

That way, you lose your time and mental energy.

The best thing you can do is:

Just let go of all those bad experiences and thoughts.

Maybe your friend hurt your feelings. Perhaps your dad or mom failed to stand up to your expectations.

It’s all a thing of the past.

You might be saying:

It’s easy for you to say.

But trust me, if you just let go of all that poisonous thought, you will feel much better.

Forgive all the evil deeds done by your enemies.

Not for them. But for yourself.

You don’t have to hate them to feel good.

You can feel good by having compassion for yourself.

Love is much better than hatred, as it doesn’t eat you from inside.

It’s the source of all the beautiful creations.

But no matter what people say…

Most people will still prefer to hold on to a grudge.

Why? Because it hurts our pride.

But that grudge only makes us suffer more.

Doesn’t it?

Aren’t you only adding more fuel to the fire if you are hurting yourself?

Your enemy wants to cause you damage.

So, why not put a full stop to all that damage? Why cause yourself more pain?

It makes much more sense to forgive the other person and let go of that deadly grudge you hold so tightly if you think logically.

Lesson #7: Truth hurts because it operates on your emotional wounds.

Have you ever thought about why truth hurts so much?

It hurts because it opens up our mental wounds and carves out disease.

Think of truth as medicine.

It tastes bitter when you eat it.

But then what happens? You gradually heal and feel better.

The exact phenomenon happens when you try to address your mental issues.

You hear the truth. It hurts. But you heal over time.

Your mental issues are solved.

They are not fixed all at once, though.

It’s a slow process.

Just like you can’t expect your body to transform into a lean muscular one in just one day, you can’t expect a chronic mental disease to be healed overnight.

I recommend that you keep taking small doses of truth.

And it’s easy. Just keep reading good books on psychology.

Gradually, all your mental health problems will alleviate.

Most people are so afraid of the truth that they agree to live with sickness.

And no doubt, they feel dissatisfied with their lives and always keep struggling to find happiness.

Fortunately, you don’t have to be like them.

You have all the tools at your disposal.

You have all the information you need here and now to live blissfully.

Related summary: Your erroneous zones by Wayne Dyer

The Mastery Of Love Quotes

Here are some of the notable quotes from The Mastery Of Love by Miguel Ruiz:

The whole universe is a living being that is moved by that force, and that is what you are. You are Life.

The only difference between beauty of one person and the other person is the concept of beauty that people have.

You see, everything is about belief. Whatever you believe rules our existence, rules our life.

You are not what you believe you are, because you never chose your beliefs.

People who like this book also like

[amazon box=”1938289692,1878424688,1878424548,1804220337,B08QBB3MTG, 1952569362″ grid=”3″]

The Mastery Of Love Review

Here is the critical analysis of this book:

What I like:

• Packs a lot of spiritual wisdom.
• A more in-depth explanation of complex topics like love, forgiveness, etc.
• The ideas are simple to understand.
• The book might be helpful to spiritual seekers, but keep in mind that it doesn’t go too deep in it.

What I dislike:

• A bit repetitive in the last 4 to 5 chapters.
• Some ideas don’t make sense.
• The book could be more concise.

Overall, this book is better than most self-help books with no connection with reality and is only written to make you feel good about yourself.

It’s okay to feel good if it’s based on facts.

But once you lose touch with reality, it’s not a great thing.

I would give this book a rating of 7/10.

Purchase this book from Amazon: Paperback | Audiobook

Other books by the same author

[amazon box=”1878424688,B006Q76AJG,B000BID9EK,193828982X,B01B98MHFM” template=”table”]

Who should read this book?

If you have read The Voice Of Knowledge by the same author, you don’t need to read this book.

This book focuses on relationships using similar concepts from the other book I mentioned above.

Indeed, this book will help you strengthen your relationships.

I found it much more practical than other books like “How to win friends and influence people.” I know it’s a classic bestseller of all time.

I suggest the learners focus more on the concepts than tips and techniques.

So yes, if you want to strengthen your relationships using the concepts of Spirituality, read this book. You will learn lots of cool stuff.

Get your copy on Amazon: Paperback | Audiobook

FAQs about The Mastery Of Love by Miguel Ruiz

What is the mastery of love book about.

The Mastery Of Love is about building a solid bond with the other person such that there are no obligations, only freedom of expression.

What genre is mastery of love?

The Mastery Of Love is both in the Self-Help and Spirituality genre.

What is mastery in a relationship?

Mastery in a relationship is not about possessing the other person to fill the incompleteness within the mind. A good relationship is based on Love that comes from a sense of understanding between the two persons.

Who wrote the mastery of love?

Don Miguel Ruiz wrote the book The Mastery Of Love.

How do you master love?

You master Love by building a strong emotional or mental connection with the other person without becoming possessive.

How Long Is the Mastery of Love?

The book is 210 pages . It should take 5-6 hours to finish if you read slowly. And 2-3 hours if you read fast.

Now it’s your turn!

There you have it: The Mastery Of Love Summary.

If you enjoyed reading this book summary, share it with your friends and strengthen your friendship.

Leave a comment to let me know your thoughts.

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The Mastery of Love Summary

Summary of  The Mastery of Love   Book by Don Miguel Ruiz

What’s inside, you’ll learn.

• Ways to use your pain for good
• Why you should put yourself first
• How the idea of ​​perfection ruins your life
• Where to look for a source of strength

Table of content

• Summary of The Mastery of Love

About the author

What is the mastery of love about, who should read the mastery of love, topics in the mastery of love, life is full of many unexpected twists and turns that everyone must learn to navigate, your mastery of anything depends on the choices you make.

The loss of innocence drives you to punish yourself for not being perfect

The quality of any relationship depends on the attitude of all the parties involved, to ensure a happy relationship, one has to go into it for only the right reasons, healing is rooted in self–love and truth.

"The Mastery of Love" is a practical guide that offers profound insights into the art of building and nurturing relationships. Drawing from ancient Toltec wisdom, the author provides transformative teachings on how to overcome fear, let go of past wounds, and cultivate self-love. With practical exercises and powerful anecdotes, this book empowers readers to create fulfilling and harmonious connections, fostering a deep understanding of love and its transformative power in our lives.

Individuals seeking to improve their relationships and find lasting love.

Those interested in applying ancient Toltec wisdom to their relationships.

Anyone looking for practical advice on cultivating love and happiness.

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A Lover’s Theory of Marxism

In sally rooney’s novels, love is always being bought, sold, or reduced to tropes. but this is also what makes it real..

It’s that time again: Sally Rooney has written a novel. Her books are spoken of in such epochal terms — “ the first great millennial novelist ,” the New York Times has called her — that one forgets that, until this week, she had written only three: Conversations With Friends , Normal People , and Beautiful World, Where Are You . These are thoughtful, well-written books about young people falling in love, and they have attracted, with the logic of a lightning strike, a degree of mass popularity that is rarely achieved by what is marketed to consumers as “literary fiction.” This feat appears to baffle even the author, a self-described Marxist who believes human existence is being eroded at every level by the “transactional framework of capitalism.” Somewhat unwillingly, Rooney has become an emblem of a (perhaps imaginary) millennial ethos, one in which that generation’s anticapitalist beliefs sit uneasily alongside its quiet but determined pursuit of a conventional life (traditional marriage, income stability, affordable housing) that appears to be vanishing. This tension seems to be exemplified by Rooney’s own commercial success. The industry will not soon forget the yellow bucket hats that Rooney’s publishers doled out to influencers in 2021 during the publicity campaign for Beautiful World, which also stationed a coffee truck bearing the novel’s cover art outside select New York bookstores.

Unsurprisingly, with the hype has come criticism: that Rooney is writing the same novel over and over; that she is writing the upmarket equivalent of a romance novel ; that her prose is too accessible to be the stuff of serious literature; and, above all, that her professed Marxist values, much dwelt on in the press, are at odds with a theme as transparently bourgeois as romantic love .

Now, it is simply untrue that Rooney’s prose resembles that of a commercial romance; her sentences are spare, exact, and disarming. Normal People, about a pair of lovers who cannot quit each other, frequently exhibits Rooney’s ability to draw marrow from bare bones: “He looked up at her, directly, with total attention. She knew he was going to kiss her, and he did.” As for the putatively oxymoronic character of a “Marxist romance novel,” it is worth pointing out that Rooney has never claimed to be writing Marxist novels, only to hold Marxist beliefs. If anything, her belief in class as the structuring principle of society makes her more pessimistic about the role of the novel in socialist struggle. “If the book is turning a profit for shareholders, then the book cannot meaningfully be critiquing the system by which that profit is turned,” she said during press for Normal People , whose U.S. sales hit 1 million copies this year. “Even if the book is full of Marxist propaganda, it’s still sealed off from any real political potential.”

What Rooney has defended, quite vigorously, is what she sees as the novel’s primordial connection to love, locating its origins in the early-modern tradition of “amatory fiction” that reached a higher synthesis in the work of Jane Austen. “If the stakes of the Greek epic are war and peace, and the stakes of the Renaissance tragedy are life and death,” she argues in a 2022 lecture on James Joyce , “then we might say that, at least since Austen, the stakes of the English-language novel are love and marriage.” Even Ulysses , for all its formal chaos, is ultimately for Rooney a low-stakes novel about the romantic lives of some young people in Dublin. Of course, Rooney is aware a novel may be about all sorts of things besides love (technology, agrarian reform, whales); her point, I think, is that by engaging the reader’s personal sympathies, the novel is always on the side of love, even when it has little of note to say about sex or marriage. “This, to me, is the beauty — we might even say the magic — of the novel as a literary tradition: its ability to involve us emotionally in the relationships of its protagonists,” Rooney concludes. “I think we have to admit that the feeling itself is important.”

So we may safely assume that Rooney would have no problem being called a romance novelist — after all, she believes the novel is an “almost intrinsically erotic narrative form.” But when critics say Rooney “merely” writes romance novels, they are not just accusing these novels of unseriousness. They are also accusing them of being commodities. Romance accounts for something like a quarter of all fiction sales in the U.S.; Colleen Hoover, author of the recently adapted It Ends With Us , outsold the Bible in 2022 . Indeed, the novel may owe an unpayable debt to the marriage plot, but it was also arguably the first kind of fiction to undergo what Marx called “real subsumption” — the remaking of the labor process to suit capital’s purposes. For instance, we might think of the centuries-long consolidation of literary conventions into easily identifiable genres — thrillers, mysteries, that latter-day chimera known as romantasy — as a way of automating the creative labor of novel writing in accordance with the demands of the market. This is one reason why, in our less generous moods, we write off the romance novelist as a hack, that is, an unskilled laborer whose job consists of pressing buttons and pulling levers: Our impression is that the millions of romance novels that are sold every year have basically “written themselves.”

So in this criticism — that Rooney writes about love because readers love that sort of thing — we find an important, if largely unconscious, observation about the intersection of literature and capitalism: that the novel form and the commodity form are dialectically entwined, to the point that a given novel’s literary qualities may be impossible to distinguish from its economic ones. The funny thing is that this is precisely what Rooney writes novels about. Her young lovers are painfully aware that love, like the novel itself, may traffic in stock characters and exhausted tropes; that love, also like the novel, may easily be reduced to a source of private profit within a punishing system of exploitation and domination. Over and over, Rooney’s characters put their faith in love as a means of escape from the conventional roles assigned to them by society and by each other; no sooner have they achieved this than they are rudely confronted with inequalities of wealth, status, and power that are clearly fatal to their idealism — but not to love itself. I take this to be the modest provocation of Rooney’s novels: the idea that love is real precisely because it is a product, one created by social conventions, by market forces, by systems of violence, and, behind all of this, by human beings themselves. This is not, I admit, a Marxist theory of love. It is something more unexpected: a lover’s theory of Marxism.

Rooney’s new novel, Intermezzo, is not her best work — that honor still belongs to Normal People — though it is a marked improvement on Beautiful World, whose experiments with autofiction can feel dull and moralistic in the way that autofiction so often does. (That book features a best-selling Irish novelist named Alice who is ambivalent about being rich and famous.) Intermezzo is a pleasant return to form: the free indirect style at which Rooney generally excels cycles among three characters, one of whom stumbles about Dublin in a Joycean haze of grammatical fragments. Plotwise, it is closest to Conversations With Friends, Rooney’s 2017 debut about a 21-year-old bisexual communist who has a torrid affair with a married actor ten years her senior. Intermezzo reimagines this dynamic several times over, such that one is forced to use the shorthand of a dating site to describe it: Peter Koubek (32m), a human-rights lawyer, finds himself in a love triangle with Naomi (23f), a college student and sometime sex worker, and Sylvia (32f), a chronically ill English professor who broke his heart years ago. Meanwhile, Peter’s younger brother, Ivan (22m), a possibly autistic chess prodigy, strikes up an improbable relationship with Margaret (36f), a program director at an arts center who is separated from her alcoholic husband.

As in Rooney’s previous novels, very little happens. The drama is largely relational, as the Koubek brothers and their paramours wrestle with the conventions that pervade their lives. The awkward Ivan, who feels as if he has been created “with something other than life in mind,” wonders how to express his sexual interest in Margaret without offending her. The unwritten rules of social interaction, it seems to Ivan, have always been more transparent to Peter, who can deliver legal arguments just as easily as he can chat up a woman at a bar. Margaret, meanwhile, spends most of Intermezzo concealing her relationship with Ivan from her mother and neighbors, fearing what her small town will think if they learn she is seeing a 22-year-old — a “desperately embarrassing situation” that seems to negate her career, her previous marriage, and her own personal values. “And yet, accepting the premise, allowing life to mean nothing for a moment, doesn’t it simply feel good to be in the arms of this person?” Margaret asks herself as Ivan kisses her. “Why does one thing have to follow meaningfully from another?”

This question lies at the heart of the novel itself. In his 1914 study The Theory of the Novel, the Marxist literary theorist György Lukács argues that the bourgeois novel as it emerged in modern Europe featured a critical split between the hero’s interior life, which contained their moral ideals and unspeakable desires, and the “world of convention,” a system of arbitrary rules that gave the hero’s life objective meaning but was itself inherently meaningless. It is not, after all, a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife; at best, this only happened to be true among the landed gentry of Regency-era England, whose irrational customs Austen so carefully reproduced. Everything that drives the Bennet sisters to marry in Pride and Prejudice — the etiquette of courtship, the laws of inheritance, class relations between landowners and tenant farmers — all of these are what Lukács calls “recognized but senseless necessities,” not organic expressions of human nature. It horrifies Elizabeth, for instance, when she learns that her prudent best friend intends to marry for “worldly advantage” rather than for love. “The more I see of the world the more am I dissatisfied with it,” Elizabeth laments, “and every day confirms my belief of the inconsistency of all human characters.”

What this theory suggests is that, by showing us people trying to reconcile themselves with an arbitrary system, the novel is constantly dramatizing its own struggle with the formal conventions that make it a novel. In Intermezzo, the first time Margaret sleeps with Ivan, the very inconceivability of the act fills her with a queasy elation. “Life has slipped free of its netting,” Rooney writes. “She can do very strange things now, she can find herself a very strange person.” Like Elizabeth Bennet, Margaret sees love as her best chance — maybe her only chance — to break free of the world of convention, to abscond from the collective fiction that is society and emerge into what Margaret, letting her young lover caress her hand at a restaurant outside of town, perceives as “the borderless all-enveloping reality of life.” Yet convention has a way of reasserting itself. In her more sober moments, Margaret reminds herself that “life is itself the netting, holding people in place, making sense of things. It is not possible to tear away the constraints and simply carry on a senseless existence.” Sure enough, learning that Ivan has told his brother about their relationship, Margaret cannot help but imagine with horror the kind of person Peter must think she is: “a middle-aged woman taking advantage of a naive grieving boy, and for what, for her own gratification, her own pleasure.”

It is as if, on some level, Margaret grasps that she is a character in a novel, bound by its specific laws and customs (the requirements of the marriage plot, the classic romantic archetypes, the flattening effect of Rooney’s prose), and all these strike her as an alien imposition on her very being. Love, in this sense, is the lover’s name for the desire not to be fictional: It is a tunnel out of the novel that, being part of a novel, is always bound to collapse. Even the casual reader of Pride and Prejudice, for instance, knows that Elizabeth will fail to escape her circumstances, that she will get married precisely because she says she will not, and that she will fall in love with Darcy precisely because he is the “last man” she would ever choose . In accepting his proposal, she merely superimposes her vibrant inner life onto the dead world of convention, acting out of pure feeling while, as if by happy accident, making the most advantageous match in the entire book. This, I think, is what Lukács means when he writes that the novel’s characters are “compelled by irony.” In attempting to assert their freedom, they come face-to-face with their existence as characters; the senseless mass of conventions that looms overhead is ultimately the novel itself. It is no accident that Pride and Prejudice, however groundbreaking in its day, is now the comp of all comps in the romance industry, which is hell-bent on supplying readers with an abundance of mass-produced and utterly fungible Darcies.

For Austen, sexual desire formed the unspeakable outside of their intricate social conventions, whereas Rooney’s characters, young and modern, feel the pressures of conventionality nowhere more acutely than in their sex lives. Rooney is known for the quiet urgency of her sex scenes, which are both genuinely erotic and, as one character puts it, “aggressively heterosexual” — that is, vanilla, domestic, and almost universally concluding in the bathos of male ejaculation. (No man orgasms in a Sally Rooney novel without apologizing.) Much has been written about the persistent ambivalence directed by her characters at any sexual habits they regard as “very strange things,” to borrow Margaret’s phrase. In Beautiful World, Alice reproaches Felix for watching “rough anal” porn on his phone, and the only lesbian relationship of any substance, encountered in Conversations With Friends, after pages and pages of straight sex, is chaste enough to satisfy Regency sensibilities. Sadomasochism is particularly suspect. Marianne’s desire for her boyfriends to hit her during sex is repeatedly depicted in Normal People as a pathological response to her trauma, one that Connell’s more innocent love will eventually cure her of.

But if Rooney’s novels really are against kink — an open question, to my mind — this is only because they are generally against role-playing of all kinds. “I didn’t need to play any games with you. It was real,” Marianne tells the purehearted Connell, whereas with her sadistic boyfriends, “it’s like I’m acting a part.” The problem with kink in Rooney’s novels is not its deviation from normative sexuality; it is the way it takes the living reality of love and handcuffs it to an artificial frame. “Look, it’s different for your generation. You’re all going around getting strangled and spitting in each other’s mouths or whatever,” Peter teases Naomi after she points out his dominant streak. “I’m thirty-two, okay, we’re normal.” But Peter is not condemning the eroticization of submission as such; he is objecting to the genericness of the sex acts in question, which he accuses Naomi’s generation of adopting en masse like a new bit of slang — and which Peter himself has adopted with great, albeit guilty, pleasure. Real-life BDSM is more like a game of chess than a fight in the alley: a quirky subculture of enthusiasts acting out mutually pleasurable fictions. “We were both playing games,” Naomi admits to Peter at the end of Intermezzo. “And yeah, I wanted to win, and so did you.”

​​What really distinguishes kink is that it makes no attempt to conceal the formal conventions that structure it — unlike vanilla sex, whose tropes tend to be partially submerged in the fantasy of something natural, normal, or true to life. But they can always rise to the surface. When Marianne asks Connell to hit her during sex, the request disturbs him. Filled with shame, she flees to her family home, where she receives the desired act of violence from her older brother in the form of a broken nose — only to be rescued by Connell, who threatens to kill her brother if he ever touches Marianne. “I’m not going to let anything like that happen to you again,” Connell tells her. Marianne lets herself become the shivering female victim of domestic abuse, while Connell strides easily into the role of the selectively violent male protector, and together they adopt a virtuous new sexual dynamic: “He understood that it wasn’t necessary to hurt her. He could let her submit willingly, without violence.” But the artificiality of these roles is not lost on Marianne herself, who despite settling into a “normal” sexual relationship with Connell cannot unsee the trappings of genre that contain them. “Was it just a game, or a favour he was doing her? Did he feel it, the way she did?” she asks herself. “Did he love her?”

In becoming “normal,” Marianne has been forced to give up the illusion of having transcended the tropes and archetypes that have, in truth, been quietly sustaining her all along — in a word, her literariness. The literary novel is, as it were, the missionary position of literature: In order to pass itself off as a representation of “real life,” it must deny the inherent conventionality common to all novels, whether “literary” or not. Compare genre fiction, where the same conventions may be used as selling points in marketing campaigns and openly consumed by fans.

The critic Sarah Brouillette has smartly pointed out that Rooney’s novels are essentially competing with erotica for readers — something Rooney herself appears to toy with in Beautiful World. There, Eileen initiates phone sex with Simon by inventing a fictional encounter between him and his “little wife,” a character she conjures for his enjoyment. Simon’s little wife is sweet, naïve, and classically submissive; she and Simon have utterly conventional sex in their marital bed. At the last moment, however, the story takes an unexpected turn: “Just for a second or two when you’re inside her, and she’s trembling and shivering and saying your name, you’re thinking about me, about things we did together when we were younger, like in Paris when I let you finish in my mouth, and you’re remembering how good it felt.” This sudden glimpse of Eileen’s consciousness through the blinds of fiction is what makes Simon come. Of course, the reader knows the truth: Eileen is a fiction too.

This burst of reality, this precious flash of mutual awareness, is something of a holy grail for Rooney’s characters. They prefer to communicate through looks and pregnant pauses, as if they were trying to overwhelm the seawall of language with a wave of private meaning: Later in Beautiful World, a stunning six-page flood of memories passes silently between Eileen and Simon when he catches her eye. Yet such “total communication,” as Rooney puts it in Normal People, seems always to involve a disturbingly lopsided relation of vulnerability. Power, rather than language, becomes the medium through which the message is communicated. This is nicely illustrated by Ivan’s exhibition match against the captain of the local chess club, which ends with the latter’s silent agreement that his defeat is inevitable: “Ollie looks up at Ivan now and gives a little nod, and Ivan nods back.” A nearly identical look will be shared by Peter and Naomi. After she is arrested for resisting her eviction, he bails her out and lets her stay in his flat, where they desperately make love. “Just use me,” Naomi tells him over and over. Afterward, sensing that a “long pretence” has been dropped, Peter offers to lend her some cash: “She lifts her gaze finally to meet his. The feeling however futile and senseless is in its own way mutual.”

This raises an unsettling question. Is the reality of love nothing more than one person’s power over another? Ivan acknowledges that material things — money, sex, housing — have an objective reality that feelings of love or affection clearly lack: “Of course, whether or not there is a beautiful woman in his life who enjoys being kissed by him, he still has to pay rent: he accepts this.” He tells Margaret about his stint working as a driver for a food-delivery app, when his interactions, however grueling, seemed to reflect a rational relation of use value to exchange value: “Someone wanted a Big Mac, and I brought it to them, and the amount I got paid was like, what it was worth to that person not to have to collect their own burger.” The delivery service had no value outside its material context; its cost, Ivan understood, concealed a complex of social relations among himself, the customer, the delivery company, the workers at McDonald’s, and so forth. “At least,” he tells Margaret, “I knew what I was doing.” Marx’s name for this phenomenon was commodity fetishism : the way the products of human labor assume a “phantomlike objectivity” that obscures the productive forces churning beneath them. For the Marxist, the commodity is in fact a dynamic relationship between people that is only pretending to be a self-contained thing — a hamburger, for instance.

Rooney’s protagonists discover that the same is true of many actual relationships. “Someone just seems like they have to be exploiting someone here,” Peter thinks of Naomi and himself. “He her, financially, sexually. Or she him, financially, emotionally. It can be exploitative to give money; also to take it.” After all, love is easily deconstructed from a Marxist perspective: It is ideology par excellence, an obvious means of inducing people to willingly reproduce the inequalities on which capitalist society depends. Who is more delusional than Elizabeth Bennet, who uses love to justify an economic system that treats her physical body as a means of production and will also entitle her to enjoy, without lifting a finger, the rent that Darcy charges his tenant farmers? In Conversations With Friends, Frances and her ex-girlfriend, both self-identified communists, text each other performatively about the contradictions of love, which promotes selflessness but more often results in the uncompensated transfer of goods or services. “Love is the discursive practice, and unpaid labor is the result,” Frances texts. “I’m anti-love as such.” Yet she is more than happy to accept the groceries bought by her wealthier lover, whose affection she pursues to the point of self-destruction. “You don’t like to be reminded how powerful you like to feel,” she tells him. Neither does she.

I suspect this is why Rooney’s characters often try to imagine a totally disinterested kind of love, one that would sidestep the quagmire of material relations altogether. “Maybe we both thought we could get away with it,” Peter thinks. “To be loved, yes, for no reason, with no imaginable reward.” Ivan seems to experience a version of this with Margaret, who at first hopes that the pair might find a way to “show each other affection and understanding” while promising each other nothing. But Ivan realizes he cannot even speak the words I love you without introducing his own needs and wishes into the situation. Then again, what is a relationship other than these needs and wishes? “Christ commands us universally to love one another,” Peter reminds himself, but this feeble call to agape is just a half-hearted way of trying to rationalize the fact that he loves two women at once. Marx, as it happens, had little patience for the idea of universal love. “Love is an uncritical, un-Christian materialist,” he wrote in 1845, shortly after marrying his childhood sweetheart, Jenny von Westphalen. What he meant was that one falls in love not with the abstract idea of humanity but with a particular person, and that this person will always belong to the same material world where labor, money, and all manner of contingent and highly specific desires hold sway.

The lover thus shares with the Marxist a certain drive to demystify, to push past the curtain of ideas and uncover the real forces at work — to discover “the rational kernel within the mystical shell,” as Marx put it. This discovery comes at a risk: There is no guarantee one’s desires will align with those of the beloved. When Marianne asks Connell to hit her during sex , she is effectively reneging on the promise, made only moments before, that he can do “anything” he wants with her. Her general willingness has narrowed into a particular will, and this burst of Marianne’s reality — the reality of her desire as the complex expression of the class guilt she feels toward Connell, her alienation from her body, her history of childhood abuse — forces Connell to reckon with the conflicting reality of his own desires. In short, the young lovers realize something important: They possess at all times the capacity to want different things. Love boasts no inherent magic by which these differences may be neatly expunged; each one must be resolved, or left open, in the total concretion of experience.

That is the heart of it: To be loved for no reason is not to be loved at all. In recent years, Rooney has flirted with the idea that the novel, by asking us to love fictional people that will “never love us in return,” provides readers with a unique opportunity to practice a kind of love for one’s fellow man. “When I read books, I do experience desire: I want Isabel Archer to be happy, I want things to work out for Anna and Vronsky,” Alice writes in an email to Eileen. There is something to this. At university, Connell finds himself strangely agitated when he is forced to leave off at the awful moment in Emma when Mr. Knightley appears on the brink of confessing his love for another woman: “It feels intellectually unserious to concern himself with fictional people marrying one another. But there it is: literature moves him.” Yet Connell of all people, whose pretentious classmates use novels to seem superior, should know that the love of literature is hardly disinterested. One can certainly convince oneself, as Elizabeth does with Darcy, that one loves Pride and Prejudice for itself and not because loving it can make for an appealing personality trait. Rooney’s own career gladly testifies to the novel’s uses as a marker of status or generator of profit. One loves her novels, if one loves them at all, with no greater selflessness than Naomi, broke and homeless, loves Peter — or vice versa.

Is it even true that the novel cannot love us back? I am not so sure. We will certainly have a hard time defending this idea to the thousands of readers who will wait in line for hours to tell Colleen Hoover that her novels have “changed their lives.” Rooney has lamented a literary culture that fetishizes the author’s “real” life over the substance of the work. “What do the books gain by being attached to me, my face, my mannerisms, in all their demoralising specificity?” Alice asks Eileen. “Nothing.” But the reader who searches for the author within or behind the work is also doing precisely what the characters in a Sally Rooney novel learn to do: She is refusing to see the novel as an abstract quantity. She is insisting that it is a relationship between people.

This may strike you as a surprisingly rosy account of mass consumption under capitalism, especially from a critic who keeps quoting Karl Marx. And it’s true: The fact that love consists of nothing but real relations between real people who all inhabit the same real world means that love, for a person or for a novel, will never be an escape from conventions or a relief from power. But this fact about love, what we might call its demoralizing specificity, is also the best evidence we have that love exists. I do not think we will ever be able to imagine love outside of capitalism unless we are first able to imagine love within it. Then again, I just got engaged.

Intermezzo by Sally Rooney is out September 24.

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The Mastery of Love: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship, A Toltec Wisdom Book Paperback – March 30 1999

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• Part of series A Toltec Wisdom Book
• Print length 224 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Amber-Allen Publishing
• Publication date March 30 1999
• Dimensions 12.85 x 1.52 x 18.42 cm
• ISBN-10 1878424424
• ISBN-13 978-1878424426
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About the author, product details.

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Amber-Allen Publishing; 24th edition (March 30 1999)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1878424424
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1878424426
• Item weight ‏ : ‎ 1.05 kg
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 12.85 x 1.52 x 18.42 cm
• #3 in New Age Self-Help
• #29 in Clinical Psychology (Books)
• #32 in Counselling (Books)

About the authors

Janet mills.

Janet Mills is the founder of Amber-Allen Publishing and co-author (with don Miguel Ruiz) of the international bestselling “Toltec Wisdom Series” including “The Four Agreements,” “The Mastery of Love,” “The Voice of Knowledge,” “The Four Agreements Companion Book,” “The Circle of Fire,” and “The Fifth Agreement.” The Toltec Wisdom books have sold over 15 million copies in the United States, and have been published in 52 languages worldwide.

Mills has published an online course, "The Four Agreements for a Better Life," for people who want to deepen their understanding and practice of these deceptively simple agreements. Information about the course is available at TheFourAgreements.com.

Mills is also the editor of and publisher of Deepak Chopra's international bestselling title “The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success” (over 2.5 million copies sold), and the publisher of 11 world-renowned “Seth” books by Jane Roberts, which have been credited with launching the New Age movement.

Mills credits the books she publishes for inspiring her belief system and transforming her life. Her personal mission is to share universal wisdom in the language of our times and to help inspire others to live the life of their dreams. She lives in San Rafael, California.

Don Miguel Ruiz

www.miguelruiz.com

Don Miguel Ruiz is a renowned spiritual teacher and internationally bestselling author of the “Toltec Wisdom Series,” including “The Four Agreements,” “The Mastery of Love,” “The Voice of Knowledge,” “The Four Agreements Companion Book,” “The Circle of Fire,” and “The Fifth Agreement.” The Toltec Wisdom books have sold over 12 million copies in the United States, and have been published in 46 languages worldwide.

don Miguel has spent the past three decades guiding students to personal freedom through his profound insights regarding the nature of human reality. His newest book, THE ACTOR (Ediciones Urano) written with Barbara Emrys was published November 3rd, 2020.

The youngest of thirteen children, don Miguel Ruiz was born in rural Mexico to parents who were healers and practitioners of ancient Toltec traditions. As a young adult, he graduated from medical school in Mexico City and practiced neurosurgery with his older brother in Tijuana. A near-fatal car crash forever changed the direction of his life, however, causing him to leave medicine and to examine the essential truth about life and humanity. With his mother’s help, and through her ancestral teachings, he discovered his own path to awareness, which evolved into a deep understanding of the physical universe and the virtual world of the mind.

Combining Toltec mythology and scientific perspectives, don Miguel has been able to merge ancient wisdom with modern physics and practical common-sense, forging a new philosophy for seekers of truth and personal authenticity. His landmark bestselling book, The Four Agreements, contains practical steps for long-term, personal transformation and has been read by millions around the world.

First published in 1997, The Four Agreements has since sold over nine million copies in the United States and seven million worldwide. It has been translated into 46 languages, appeared on the New York Times bestseller for nearly ten years, and was the 36th bestselling book of the decade. Don Miguel is also the author of The Mastery of Love, The Voice of Knowledge, Prayers, and the New York Times bestseller, The Fifth Agreement, a collaboration with his son, don José Ruiz. Each of his books are international bestsellers.

The wisdom don Miguel has brought to the world has earned him respect around the globe. He has dedicated his life to sharing his message through practical concepts in order to promote transformation and ultimately change lives for the better. Don Miguel is the recipient of numerous recognitions, including a U.S. Air Force ‘challenge coin’ engraved with “The Four Agreements.” He is the recipient of an Honorary Degree in Cultural and Social Education from the American Cultural Institute of Mexico, and referenced as a “national treasure” in his native country.

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