How to Make FEAR Your Ally

DON MIGUEL RUIZ JR. DISCUSSES TEACHINGS FROM HIS NEW BOOK, THE POISONED ARROW.

- KAREN BRAILSFORD

While holding his then-newborn son in what should have been a blissful moment, don Miguel Ruiz Jr. suddenly and inexplicably became overwhelmed by dread. The term "Sudden Infant Death Syndrome" entered his mind, and immediately his body responded with terror. "The only thing that changed in that room was a thought," he remembers. "My whole body felt it. My emotion was real—what triggered it was not."

More recently, during routine lab work following a concussion, Ruiz says his doctors discovered anomalies in his bloodwork and suspected chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). For nearly two months, he was left to live with the uncertainty as he waited for an appointment with an oncologist. “The mind can go really crazy,” he admits, describing how his thoughts spiraled through worst-case scenarios. Ultimately, the diagnosis turned out to be monoclonal B-cell lymphocytosis, a condition that can precede CLL but is not cancer itself and required him to make diet and lifestyle changes.

In his latest book, The Poisoned Arrow: A Toltec Guide to Overcoming Fear, Ruiz offers a deeply personal and transformative exploration of these kinds of fears—those not based in reality but in the psychological. The Toltec approach, which he learned from his father, don Miguel Ruiz Sr. (author of The Four Agreements), and grandmother, Madre Sarita (a faith healer), offers a path to acknowledge and release these fears rather than be controlled by them. Beyond demonstrating how to overcome such fears, The Poisoned Arrow unearths where they come from and why we have them to begin with.

THE EFFECTS OF FEAR