The Four Agreements
don Miguel Ruiz: Message to the World
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQeSJD1mBPM
Toltec Teachings of don Miguel and don Jose Luis Ruiz
The Four Agreements (don Miguel Ruiz)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX90DZq2OLA
Don Miguel Ruiz about Human Mind
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKCWH4KT1Xc&NR=1
The Four Agreements
BE IMPECCABLE WITH YOUR WORD
Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.
DON’T TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.
DON’T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS
Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.
ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstances, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.
The Fifth Agreement
THE FIFTH AGREEMENT: DON'T BELIEVE ME, DON'T BELIEVE YOURSELF, AND DON'T BELIEVE ANYONE ELSE.
Don Miguel’s Fifth Agreement is excellent advice for seeing the world with new eyes and exposing the beliefs that don’t serve you: “Don’t believe me, don’t believe yourself, and don’t believe anyone else.”
Abbreviated Glossary
The Book of Law
Just as a government has a book of law that rules the society’s dream, our belief system is the Book of Law that rules our life. Whatever is in our Book of Law is our supreme truth. We base all of our judgments on this Book of Law, even if these judgments go against our own inner nature.
The Domestication of Humans
Humans are domesticated the same way we train a dog or other animal: through a system of punishment and reward. In human domestication, information from the outside dream is conveyed to the inside dream, creating our whole belief system, and teaching us how to be a human.
Dreaming
Dreaming is the main function of the mind, and the mind dreams twenty-four hours a day. When the brain is awake, there is a material frame that makes us perceive things in a linear way; when we go to sleep we do not have the frame and the dream has a tendency to change constantly.
The Dream of the Planet
Society’s dream, or the dream of the planet, is the collective dream of billions of personal dreams. Together these create a dream of a family, of a community, of a city, of a country, and finally a dream of all humanity. The dream of the planet includes all of society’s rules, beliefs, laws, religions, governments, schools, and social customs. In this dream it is normal for humans to suffer; fear is an important part of this dream.
The Image of Perfection
During domestication, we form an image of perfection to please other people to be good enough for them. But we are never perfect from this point of view, and so we begin to reject ourselves. The image of perfection is the reason we abuse ourselves; it is the reason we reject our own humanity. We also judge others according to our image of perfection, and they can never measure up to that ideal.
The Judge
The inner Judge uses what is in our Book of Law to judge everything we do, everything we think, and everything we feel. Every time we do something that goes against the Book of Law, the Judge says we are guilty, we should be ashamed, and we need to be punished.
Mitote
The Toltec use this term to refer to the condition of the human mind. The mitote can be compared to a huge marketplace where thousands of people are talking at the same time, and nobody understands each other. The mitote is also like a fog that blinds us from seeing the truth.
The Parasite
The Toltec compare the Judge, the Victim, and the belief system to a Parasite that invades the human mind. The Parasite is a living being made of psychic or emotional energy. It can also be compared to a program that dreams through our mind and lives through our body. From the Toltec point of view, all humans who are domesticated are sick because we have a Parasite that thrives on the emotions that come from fear and suffering.
Personal Importance
During the period of our domestication, we learn to think we are responsible for everything: “Me, me, always me.” Personal importance, or taking things personally, is the maximum expression of selfishness because we make the assumption that everything is about “me.”
The Victim
The victim is the part of our mind that receives the judgments, and carries the blame, the guilt, and the shame. The Judge decrees, and the Victim suffers the guilt and punishment. The Victim is always crying, “Poor me” because of a deep sense of injustice: It doesn’t matter what the Victim does to please the Judge, it is never good enough.