The Voice of Knowledge: A Practical Guide to Inner Peace

As little children, we know how to live in the moment and be completely authentic. But then something damaging happens to us, according to author Don Miguel Ruiz: we are given “knowledge” about how to live in the world. Parents tell us how to behave in order to be a “good” boy or girl. Teachers tell us what it takes to be a “winner” or a “successful” adult. This collective “voice of knowledge” is not only false–it is frequently poisonous, explains Ruiz, bestselling author of The Four Agreements. It makes us imagine that “It’s not that I am the way I should be; it is not okay to be me.” Drawing upon the story of Adam and Eve, Ruiz refers to the forbidden tree of knowledge and likens the abandonment of the true self to the fall from heaven. What Ruiz calls “the voice of knowledge” others spiritual teachers might call ego–the hidden and carefully defended belief system that prevents us from living and expressing who we really are. “The structure of our knowledge makes us feel safe….When we discover that we don’t seem to be what we imagine we are, the foundation of our entire reality begins to collapse.” In the Toltec tradition, Ruiz says every human is an artist, “and the supreme art is the expression of the wonderful thing about our spirit.” He explains that there are two kinds of artists: “the ones who create their story without awareness, and the ones who recover awareness and create their story with truth and love.” The recovering of awareness is what this fourth book in the Toltec Wisdom series is all about. This makes for a good bedside spiritual growth book. Each chapter closes with “Points to Ponder”–summary thoughts to sleep upon as you create the more authentic story of your life. –Gail Hudson

With more than 2.7 million copies of his The Four Agreements sold, Ruiz returns to readers with a new volume that presents his latest thoughts on the ways and means of inner knowledge and healing. Written in the first person with frequent apostrophic addresses (“You wish to have to challenge every belief that you use to pass judgement on yourself, to reject yourself, to make yourself little”), the book moves gracefully and anecdotally from “Adam and Eve: The Story from a Different Point of View” to “The Tree of Life: The Story Comes Full Circle,” with 10 chapters in between, including “The Lie of Our Imperfection,” a chapter that covers “emotional pain as a symptom of abuse” and one on “Writing Our Story with Love,” with frequent stops for “Points to Ponder.” For Ruiz, life can be a matter of storytelling, to ourselves and to others. His reflections on the process of how people tell these stories, and how they may be able to change their narratives, draw on the lore of his native Mexico and feel both centered and earned.
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