RUIZ

“In The Wisdom of the Shamans, don Jose Ruiz,

my second son, shares the sacred teachings
of our family’s shamanic tradition.” the
wisdom
don MIGUEL RUIZ, author of The Four Agreements

The wisdom of the shamans

For generations, Toltec shamans have passed down their wisdom through
teaching stories. The purpose of these stories is to plant a seed of knowledge in the
mind of the listener, where it can grow and bloom into a new and better way of life.
In The Wisdom of the Shamans, Toltec shaman and master storyteller don Jose
Ruiz shares some of the most popular stories from his family’s oral tradition, and
offers lessons that illustrate the larger ideas within each story.
of the
shamans
According to Ruiz, this ancient wisdom is not reserved for a chosen few initiates;
instead, it is a powerful series of lessons on love and life that are available to us all.
To that aim, he has included exercises, meditations, and shamanic rituals to help
you experience the personal transformation these teachings offer.
The shamans taught that the truth you seek is inside of you. Let these stories,
lessons, and tools be your guide to finding the wisdom that lives within.

About the Author

As a shaman, don Jose Ruiz brings new insights to ancient wisdom, translating W h at t h e A n c i e n t M ast e r s
complex ideas into practical concepts that promote transformation through truth, C a n T e a c h U s a b o u t L ov e a n d L i f e
love, and common sense. He is the coauthor of The Fifth Agreement, which he wrote
in collaboration with his father, don Miguel Ruiz.
don JOSE RUIZ
$16.95 Foreword by don MIGUEL RUIZ,
author of The Four Agreements

RUIZ_WisonOf the Shamans.indd 1 2/25/19 12:54 PM

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 The
Wisdom
of the
Shamans
What the Ancient Masters
Can Teach Us about Love and Life

Don Jose Ruiz

Copyright © 2018 by Don Jose Ruiz

First Paperback Edition © 2019

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 Contents

Foreword vii

Preface xi

Explanation of Key Terms xv

Introduction xix

1. The Eagle and the Snake

Finding Your Own Truth 1

2. The Riverman
Flowing with the Cycles of Life 19

3. The Birth of Quetzalcoatl

Ignite Your Imagination and Creativity 39

4. The Jungle
A Lesson in Awareness 55

5. The Rattlesnake Initiation

The Power of Ritual 73
6. The Devil’s Cave
Embracing the Shadow Self 91

7. Divinity and Discernment

The Lessons of Madre Sarita 107

8. The Day of the Dead

Death and Honoring Our Ancestors 123

Afterword 141
 Preface

Much has been said and written about the North

and Central American shamans since Europeans
first began arriving in the Americas en masse
over 500 years ago. They have been called every-
thing from witch doctors to medicine men and
even sorcerers. Their ideas about life were often
considered primitive, uneducated, superstitious,
and otherwise not as “enlightened” as their Euro-
pean counterparts.
Shamans were almost always assumed to be
men, a presumption proven to be based more
on the bias of those who wrote about them than
on historical fact. Personally, this idea never
occurred to me, because when I was growing up,
my grandmother was the most powerful shaman
in our family.
Linguistically, the word shaman would have
meant nothing to the vast majority of native
cultures outside those groups in northeast Asia
where the term likely originated. In my own tra-
dition, that of the Toltec people of what is now
Mexico, the shamans were called naguals, mean-
ing “the awakened ones,” in our native Nahuatl
language. It’s interesting to point out that the
word nagual has an additional meaning: it is also
the word for the life force energy, the divinity
that we all have inside of us. Taken together, we
can see that the Toltecs believe that everyone is a
nagual, but the shamans are the ones whose eyes
are open to this realization.
For uniformity, and because any word in itself
has no meaning without our agreement, I will use
shaman throughout this book to describe a person
who is awakened to the realization that we are all

xii THE WISDOM OF THE SHAMANS

this fundamental life force energy, as this is the
most familiar term in the modern world.
On a global scale, shamanism refers to the
spiritual tradition or religion of native cultures
around the world. These spiritual traditions are
said to have certain things in common: a respect
for nature, a respect for all life, and a respect for
their ancestors. While this is all true, this is only
the barest of beginnings of what it means to prac-
tice shamanism.
The good news is that we are seeing these old
ideas about shamanism open up more in recent
times, thanks in part to the work of my father,
don Miguel Ruiz, as well as Carlos Castaneda and
many others. The modern world is beginning
to catch up to what my family has known and
passed down via oral tradition for more than a
thousand years, namely that the shamans were
both men and women and that their ideas were
anything but primitive. In fact, the roles they
played in their communities were a sophisticated

Preface xiii
combination of philosopher, spiritual leader,
medical doctor, psychologist, and friend.
Seen in this context, certain questions begin to
arise: What did these ancient masters know? How
did they acquire and pass down this knowledge?
And can this knowledge help us in the way we live
our lives in the modern world? Answering ques-
tions such as these is the purpose of this book.
As you will see in the pages that follow, it is
my personal belief that the wisdom of the ancient
masters was not something primitive or reserved
only for men, but a complex and powerful series
of teachings available to all of humankind. It is
the wisdom of waking up, of finding your own
personal freedom, of living in peace and harmony,
and of being of service to others and the planet.
Quite simply, it is the wisdom of love and life.

xiv THE WISDOM OF THE SHAMANS

 Introduction

The wisdom you seek is inside you.

Take a moment and feel the truth of those
words.
One of the most important aspects of sha-
manism is that within every one of us is the light,
the divinity, or as my ancestors would say, the
nagual. Each one of us has our own truth inside
ourselves. The quest of the shaman is to find, live,
and express it.
Unlike some other traditions, shamanism
is not based on hierarchy and deference to past
teachers or following a sacred text with blind
belief, but on uncovering the truths within your-
self and bringing them out into the world to
become a messenger of truth, a messenger of love.
 The path of the shaman is largely an individual
journey. Rituals, books, tools, and even other sha-
mans only serve as guides to help you find the wis-
dom that comes from deep inside of you. No two
shamanic journeys are alike, as we each ultimately
make our own unique path, create our own art, and
express ourselves in our own beautiful way. That’s
why I often say that you are both the student and
the teacher on the shamanic journey, and life is
expressing itself through you.
In my own tradition, that of the Toltec people
of south central Mexico, we say that we are all art-
ists. In fact, the word Toltec means “artist.” This
is not confined to the traditional understanding
of the word as painters, sculptors, etc., or just to
members of my ancestral tribe; this designation
extends to every human being on this beautiful
planet. The simple truth is that every person is
an artist, and the art that we create is the story
of our life.

xx THE WISDOM OF THE SHAMANS

 If the Toltec tradition is the way of the artist,
then we can say that the shamanic path is really
an invitation to you, the artist, to create your
own masterpiece, to use everything in your life
as a brush to paint your own picture of personal
freedom.
We also say in the Toltec tradition that every-
one is dreaming all the time. This is because you
can only ever see life through your own filters—
the filter of “Jose” in my case. Therefore, life as you
perceive it is a reflection of your perceptions and
beliefs. It is not real, but rather a dream. To some
this may sound negative, but in fact it is positive
because if your life is a dream, and you become
aware of the fact that you are the dreamer, then
you can consciously create the dream you want to
see and live the life you want to live.
There are actually two dreams that make
up what we call life. First, you have the personal
dream, which is your own perspective. It is how
you see the world around you and how you make

Introduction xxi
sense of it in your mind through the stories you
tell yourself about what you perceive. Things such
as “My name is Jose,” “My parents are Miguel and
Maria,” “I was born in 1978,” “I live in this place,
that is my car, my house, my spouse, etc.”—this is
your own personal dream.
There is also the Dream of the Planet or the col-
lective dream we are all having. The Dream of the
Planet is the sum total of all our personal dreams,
and together they make up the world in which
we live. Together we have created the oceans, the
mountains, the flowers, the wars, the technol-
ogy, the concepts of good and bad—all of it. The
Dream of the Planet is the combination of all our
personal dreams and forms the basis for how we
interact and communicate with one another.
The Toltec understood that in both cases, per-
sonally and collectively, what we are perceiving
as life is not real. Our perception of life is really
just a complex set of overlapping stories, held
together by our concept of time. In my family’s

xxii THE WISDOM OF THE SHAMANS

traditions, the shamans, who were called naguals
in our native language, were “the ones who are
awake,” because they had woken up to that fact
that we are all dreaming, that we are all story-
tellers, and that while the truth of who and what
we really are is ultimately indescribable, the best
way to say it is that we are life itself.
I find it interesting that halfway around
the world more than 2,500 years ago, a man sat
under a bodhi tree for forty days and nights until
he realized his true nature, and when he got up
from the tree and returned to his friends, they
could tell this experience had changed him. They
asked him, “What happened to you?” And the
man replied in his native Pali language, “I am
awake.” The word for awake in the Pali language
is “Buddha.” In both Buddhism and shaman-
ism, those who are masters in each tradition are
referred to as awakened.
So who can be a shaman? Anyone who has the
desire to awaken from the dream and find his or

Introduction xxiii
her own personal freedom is a shaman. Of course,
this is easier said than done, because the dream
has several mechanisms it uses to keep us asleep,
many of which we will look at in greater detail
throughout the course of this book.
To be clear, waking up involves more than
just knowing intellectually that everything
around you is a dream. It is easy to be told some-
thing and believe it with your mind, but much
more difficult to put it into practice. The point
of the shamanic path is to have the experience
of awakening, which involves something beyond
the thinking mind or intellectual knowledge.
For instance, when I tell you that you are
dreaming all the time, you may trust me and
believe it, but it isn’t until you integrate that
knowledge and experience it for yourself that
your world begins to change. Prior to that it is only
a belief. Once this belief becomes your experience,
then it becomes a part of your personal reality.

xxiv THE WISDOM OF THE SHAMANS

 So at first, the shaman tells you that you are
asleep, that you are dreaming, and offers you a
path to awaken to who you really are. The sha-
man wants you to come to know yourself beyond
the little story you have created, the little you.
The shaman can do this because he or she has
come to know him- or herself as an individual
expression of this divine life force and that this
divinity, this life force, is in all things. That’s why
shamanism is so connected to the natural world
that surrounds us. The shaman knows that all
life is connected, all life is one. And this doesn’t
just refer to the bodies we can see, but the space
between everything as well. We are connected
through the air we breathe, through the ground
underneath our feet, the water we share that
makes up so much of our bodies, and everything
else that constitutes this planet and beyond. The
connection is so obvious to the shaman, but the
illusion of the mind and its constant dreaming
prevent many people from seeing this truth.

Introduction xxv
 As a simple example, think of an oak tree.
This tree is the culmination of so many things—
earth, sun, water, air, an acorn blown by the wind
or carried by a bird—all of which have worked
together to manifest this beautiful creation of art
that we call a tree. If you were to take away any
one of any of these things, this tree would not
exist. The same can be said for you, for all of us,
everything. We are a creation of all that has gone
before us. Yet the mind clings to the illusion of
separateness. But it is only that: an illusion, and
the shaman is the one who sees through the illu-
sion to the interconnectivity between all things
and beings.
Many of us are lost in the dream for many
years before the seed of awakening begins to
manifest in us, and when it finally does, it is more
akin to a process of unlearning rather than learn-
ing. In other words, you have been taught so
much, starting when you were very young. You
were told your name, who your parents were,

xxvi THE WISDOM OF THE SHAMANS

where you came from, what you liked and didn’t
like, and you agreed with it. In the Toltec tradi-
tion, we call this process domestication. Although
some forms of domestication can be negative, it’s
important to remember that domestication itself
is not necessarily negative. It is a normal and nec-
essary process; it is the way we create the Dream
of the Planet.
For example, when you were young, your par-
ents likely domesticated you to be respectful and
kind to others, to share, and to develop friend-
ships. In this way, they were giving you the tools
you need to interact with the Dream of the Planet.
The point here is that not all domestication is bad,
even though the word itself often carries with it a
negative connotation. Other forms of domestica-
tion are obviously negative: racism, sexism, and
classism are easy examples, and then there are the
subtler forms, such as when we adopt ideas like
“I must succeed in life to receive love” or “I must
have a perfect body in order to receive love.”

Introduction xxvii
 The process of awakening is often referred to
as unlearning, because you begin to see how you
were domesticated in the Dream of the Planet
and you can consciously choose which ideas and
beliefs you want to keep and which you want to
let go. When you begin unraveling your domes-
tications, you see that you were fed all of these
ideas about yourself and you used these ideas to
build the story of who you are. As any architect
will tell you, a structure built on faulty founda-
tions will ultimately collapse, and that is what
happens to every story.
Perhaps you have already experienced the
collapse of your story, and that is why you picked
up this book. The truth is that any story of your
life is just that, a story, and its collapse is a beau-
tiful thing, because when it collapses you find
out who you really are; you discover that you are
really life itself.
This process of unlearning is our personal jour-
ney and unique to each individual. Although there

xxviii THE WISDOM OF THE SHAMANS

may be similarities, no two people wake up in the
exact same way. This is a major tenet in shaman-
ism: everyone’s path will be different. Certainly
we will receive help and guidance from others, but
because we are all unique, our awakening will be
unique as well. That is our own art. While some of
the rituals and things we do will be the same as
or inspired by what others have done, the shaman
mimics no one, not even other shamans.
For instance, many people do not know this,
but my father’s most famous book, The Four Agree-
ments (Amber-Allen Publishing, 1997), is really
the story of his own awakening. He overcame his
inner negativity and the self-created problems
in his personal dream by practicing those four
agreements in every area of his life. He saw how
he was giving his power away through not being
impeccable with his word, taking things person-
ally, making assumptions, and not doing his best.
As a result, he formed these four agreements
with himself so he could live in his true power.

Introduction xxix
Practicing these four agreements was really a
process of unlearning all the negativity he had
adopted in his own personal dream.
When he awoke, he wanted to be of service
to others, and that book is a manifestation of his
art. In his case, this art was recognized around the
world as truth and helped many people wake up
(as of this writing The Four Agreements has sold over
seven million copies worldwide). That is a wonder-
ful thing, but my father will tell you he had nothing
to do with that. In other words, while he chose to
share his work with millions in the form of a book,
he knows his work is no more important than that
of the shaman who wakes up and helps those in
his own community. They are the same, and in fact
one could not exist without the other. Like the oak
tree, my father would not have awakened without
inspiration and guidance from the myriad of sha-
mans who have awakened before him.
As my father’s example illustrates, once the
shaman awakens to who she really is, she sees

xxx THE WISDOM OF THE SHAMANS

that the best thing to do for herself and the world
is to serve the great mother, or life itself. She sees
the divinity in all beings, and she wants to help
others awaken to this truth. She does so not out
of any desire for personal gain (such as getting
into heaven or gaining merit for rebirth), but
because she has reached a state of peace, clar-
ity, and awareness hitherto unknown to her. She
has become a vessel of love, and when you fill
yourself up with love, it begins to overflow. This
overflow of love is what the shaman shares with
others, because that is all that is left. That is why
the shaman wants to help others wake up to the
fact they are dreaming.
To make another comparison to Buddhism,
this is very similar to the concept of the bodhisat-
tva in the Mahayana branch of Buddhism, where
the bodhisattva is the one who awakens but stays
in the world and devotes his or her life to helping
others. We see this care and concern for others
in all the great masters of the world’s religions,

Introduction xxxi
including Jesus, the Islamic poet Rumi, and many
of the Hindu avatars from India. In each great tra-
dition there is always someone who has woken
up and then begins to spread a message of awak-
ening to help others.

The Importance of Stories

One way that the shamans plant the seeds of
awakening in others is through storytelling.
Because the shamans realized that the mind is
always dreaming and creating stories, they began
to tell stories as a way to pierce the veil of the
mind. In this way, the shamans were and are mas-
ter teachers, as they use the mind’s own love of
stories to awaken it from the dream.
In this book, I will share some of the para-
bles, legends, and true stories told by the sha-
mans in my family’s tradition, and together
we will discern their deeper meaning. You will
see how the shamans shared these stories to
plant the seed of awakening in the people who

xxxii THE WISDOM OF THE SHAMANS

listened to them. I will also use these stories to
introduce you to the shamanic tools of aware-
ness, forgiveness, recapitulation, power objects,
totem animals, and other instruments that are
designed to help you on your own journey. At the
end of each chapter I have included exercises and
meditations, which can help you put these teach-
ings into practice in your everyday life. As I said
earlier, it’s not enough to just read about these
teachings, you must incorporate them in your life
through action to receive the benefits. The exer-
cises and meditations will help you do that.
Even as you begin to awaken, I want to be clear
that awakening to the dream doesn’t mean you
will stop dreaming. Dreaming is simply what the
mind does in the same way that the heart beats
and the lungs draw breath. Awakening means that
you realize you are dreaming. When you become
aware of the fact that you are dreaming, you can
then focus your energy on creating a beautiful
dream rather than a nightmare.

Introduction xxxiii
 A nightmare, in the terms of Toltec teachings,
is whenever you live life unconscious of who and
what you really are, and the result is that you suffer
needlessly. When you sleepwalk through life, you
get caught in the traps of negativity and emotional
poison, and you fail to realize that in so many cases
you are the cause of your own suffering. The sha-
mans in my family’s tradition saw this pattern as a
collective human condition that can be described
as an “addiction to suffering,” and this addiction to
suffering is a habit of the mind.
Some of you reading this may recoil at the
idea that we as a species are addicted to suffer-
ing, but take a moment to think about all the ways
humans cause problems for ourselves and others.
For instance, turn on the nearest television. If you
watch any news channel for just a few minutes, you
can see several ways we cause our own suffering.
Next, turn the channel to any soap opera or drama.
Have you ever wondered why we watch shows
where the entire purpose is to create heartache

xxxiv THE WISDOM OF THE SHAMANS

and emotional pain inside us? Think about your
own life for a moment. When things are going well
for too long, do you look for a “problem” to stir
things up?
Shantideva, the eighth-century Indian mystic
and poet, noted this addiction to suffering in the
following lines:1

For beings long to free themselves from misery;

But misery itself they follow and pursue.
They long for joy, but in their ignorance destroy it
As they would a hated enemy.

I could not agree with him more. So the ques-

tion arises, why do we pursue suffering? First,
we do so because we are unconscious, because
we don’t realize what we are doing, and that is
the purpose of waking up. Second, we do so out
of habit. Creating suffering is simply a habit of

1
This translation of Shantideva’s famous work can be found in No Time
to Lose: A Timely Guide to the Way of the Bodhisattva by Pema Chödrön.
Boston: Shambhala Publications, 2007.

Introduction xxxv
mind. Even as we begin to wake up, the old hab-
its of suffering continue to ensnare us, and that’s
why the shamans refer to it as an addiction. As
with any addiction, the first step to ending it is to
be aware of it and admit that it exists.
As we move into the stories from my family’s
tradition in the pages that follow, I invite you to
see how the lessons from them might apply in
your own life. Also, keep in mind what I have said
about the human mind’s addiction to suffering
because as you will see, this is a recurring theme
throughout these stories.
Lastly, while I will offer my own interpreta-
tions of these stories, please remember that you
may find other meanings or truths that are more
relevant to you and your own life. That is the
beauty of shamanism: it encourages you to find
your own truth, to follow your own heart, and to
see that the answers you seek are already inside
you. Let these stories, and this book, be your
guide to finding them.

xxxvi THE WISDOM OF THE SHAMANS

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