In the early morning hours of December 14, 2022, doctors in Los Angles called don Miguel Ruiz to say that a healthy new heart awaited him there. The transplant took place twenty-two hours later. By the end of the surgery, a dying man was brought back to life. A few weeks later he was amazingly fit, with a strong pulse and a clear mind.
In the months before he got that call, don Miguel had resigned himself to a natural death. His heart was failing, he knew, but his life had been full. His mind was at peace. Everyone close to him was happy and safe, so it seemed a good time to go. Still, when the call came, he said, Yes, I’ll be there.
He chose, in that moment, to save his body and revitalize his dream. Saying yes to life may seem an obvious choice to most people, and yet...well, it’s a choice we have the opportunity to make every day, any hour of the day, but we don’t. It’s a choice we can make with awareness and intent, but we don’t.
After all, nobody’s calling us in the wee hours, asking us to risk everything for few more years on Earth. Nobody’s saying, it’s now or never– are you ready to embrace your future? And because most of our days unfold without a crisis, we don’t see an urgent need to affirm our commitment to life.
Consider this: there was a moment, many years back, when you burst in to being. You were life in potential...and then you were life incarnate. Sperm met egg, and you began to take form as a human being. At the instant of your birth, you dropped into a strange dream. You quickly learned the rules of that dream...and since then, you’ve been too busy obeying the rules to remember: you are life.
You are life, still. You have the ability to see yourself as pure potential, even while you exist as a human. At any time, you can wake up within your own frenzied dream and recognize yourself as the eternal force of love. In fact, that’s been the deal from the moment you were conceived.
Maybe you don’t remember ever making that deal, but it’s written within your biological blueprint: you were programmed to see the truth in your own eyes. You were designed to learn from the human experience. You were built to accept loss and pain and to transcend the heaviness of this dream. You were directed to live.
The collective dream often seems stronger than life’s command, but it’s not. Human knowledge seems more convincing than truth, but it’s not. It’s tempting to believe you have no choice in anything, but you do.
If you ever happen to wake up from your own dream, even for an instant, don’t hesitate. Don’t think. Fall hopelessly in love. See everything in your world as the miracle it is. Renew the timeless contract: say yes! to life. Say yes, whatever comes.
Thank you, don Miguel, for choosing well. We love you.
❤ B.E.