Miguel 4 Agreements
Natalí Stibb
Though simple, I have found these four agreements to be incredibly powerful. In my case, I have found that my kindness stops at the boundary of fear. I am kind until I fear becoming hurt, until I fear that I will be mocked or not liked, until I fear I will be abandoned. And once caught up in fear, it is very difficult for me to be kind, both to others as well as to myself. The Four Agreements help to scare off and to calm the fear.
If you break an agreement, begin again tomorrow, and again the next day. It will be difficult at first, but each day will become easier and easier, until someday you will discover that you are ruling your life with these Four Agreements. And, you will be surprised at the way your life has been transformed.
According to don Miguel, NOW it is time for us create New Agreements for ourselves and for our planet to really dream a new world into being. He has recently launch a new on-line course entitled The Agreements for Life which includes 30 profound lessons via video, a companion workbook to support you in applying the lessons and a daily prayer.
DMR: I live everyday full of gratitude for the body in which I live treating it with great love and respect. It allows me to enjoy life experiencing everything that I perceive and exploring the events that hook my attention; modifying what I can change and letting go whatever I cannot change.
DMR: What makes me the happiest are the times I get together with my family. Those times when I am with my children, grandchildren, my brothers and sisters and my very close friends, as well as, when I am with my extended family in each one of my lectures and power journeys. My greatest joy is just to be alive!
DMR: It is a program to help people to become more and more authentic. I created the program because most people say the five agreements are very simple; but difficult to apply. The Agreements for Life is taking everyone step-by-step to their own authenticity. It consists of 30 short videos with a prayer included and homework assignments.
A little over a year ago, I got chatting to someone called Jack outside Gertrude & Alice, just prior to hosting The Bondi Literary Salon. As I often do when I meet someone new, I asked Jack for a book recommendation, and he told me to read The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. Happily, Gertrude & Alice had a copy in stock, and while it took me a while to get around to actually reading it, it was well worth the wait.
Essentially a guide that will help its readers change their outlooks on life, in The Four Agreements, Ruiz outlines four simple to follow, which Ruiz claims form the basis of a happy and peaceful existence. From being impeccable with your word, to not taking anything personally, to not making assumptions, and, last of all, always doing your best, while the agreements may be simple in nature, they carry the sort of weight and substance that can really make a difference.
In the tradition of the Toltec, a Nagual guides an individual to personal freedom. Combining new insights with old wisdom, don Miguel has dedicated his life to sharing the ancient Toltec wisdom by translating it into practical concepts that promote transformation through truth and common sense.
Don Miguel Ruiz was born into a family of healers, and raised in rural Mexico. The family anticipated that Miguel would embrace their centuries-old legacy of healing and teaching, and carry forward the esoteric Toltec knowledge. Instead, distracted by modern life, Miguel chose to attend medical school and become a surgeon. A near-death experience changed his life. Stunned by this experience, he began an intensive practice of self-inquiry. He devoted himself to the mastery of the ancient ancestral wisdom, studying earnestly with his mother, and completing an apprenticeship with a powerful shaman in the Mexican desert. In the tradition of the Toltecs, a nagual guides an individual to personal freedom. Don Miguel is a nagual from the Eagle Knight lineage, and is dedicated to sharing his knowledge of the teachings of the ancient Toltecs.
The combined dreaming of us all, from the ground up, is what creates the world. The dreams of law, of religion, of culture, of art, of family, of relationships...the Toltec consider them as a dream that we all create together. Paying careful attention lets us know the dream for what it is.
When we are children, we are taught by some system of punishment and reward to act and behave in certain ways and not in others. This creates a belief system that goes with us wherever we go. This belief system is made up of the many hundreds if not thousands of 'agreements' we have accepted and internalised as being true.
'The belief system is like a Book of Law that rules our mind. Without question, whatever is in that Book of Law, is our truth. We base all of our judgments according to the Book of Law, even if these judgments go against our own inner nature.'
We eventually become our own 'domesticators' in that we learn how to modulate ourselves and decide what it is we do, what is right, what is wrong. We do this according to the belief system that we have had imprinted on us, which is something that we do not explicitly choose ourselves.
The definition of hell is where you are punished multiple times for the same thing, again and again and again. Humans punish themselves multiple times, for example, by reliving the things they've done in the past and internally berating themselves for what they perceive to be bad actions.
'Death is not the biggest biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive-the risk to be alive and express what we really are. Just being ourselves is the biggest fear of humans. We have learned to live our lives trying to satisfy other people's demands.'
We start each day with a certain amount of personal power that is depleted throughout the day by the things that happen and the ways we react to those things. The act of simple 'maintaining agreements' takes up a good chunk of this power, especially if those agreements are negative and damaging in their nature.
When we take things personally, we take offence. When we take offence, we defend ourselves. When we defend ourselves, we create conflict. When we create conflict, we inflict harm. On ourselves and on others.
'Whatever people do, feel, think, or don't take say, it personally. If they tell you how wonderful you are, they are not saying that because of you. You know you are wonderful. It is not necessary to believe other people who tell you that you are wonderful.'
Even your own opinions about yourself aren't necessarily true. Don't take them personally, either. When we take things personally, we suffer a lot. not doing so gives us immunity to all sorts of things.
'If you keep this agreement, you can travel around the world with your heart completely open and no one can hurt you. You can say, "I love you," without fear of being ridiculed or rejected. You can ask for what you need. You can say yes, or you can you say no whatever choose -without guilt or you self-judgment.'
'Making assumptions in our relationships is really asking for problems. Often we make the assumption that our partners know what we think and that we don't have to say what we want. We assume they are going to do what we want, because they know us so well. If they don't do what we assume they should do, we feel so hurt and say, "You should have known."'
'We also make assumptions about ourselves, and this creates a lot of inner conflict. "I think I am able to do this." You make this assumption, for instance, then you discover aren't able to do it. You overyou estimate or underestimate yourself because you haven't taken the time to ask yourself questions and to answer them. Perhaps you need to gather more facts about a particular situation. Or maybe you need to stop lying to yourself about what you truly want.'
Your 'best' always changes from one moment to the next. if you always do your best, though, there is no way that you can feasibly judge yourself. If you do less than your best, though, you will subject yourself to guilt and growing self judgment.
'Action is about living fully. Inaction is the way that we deny life. Inaction is sitting in front of the television every day for you are afraid to be alive and to take the risk of expressing what years because you are. Expressing what you are is taking action.'
Our normal human tendencies are to enjoy life, to play, to explore, to love and to be happy. This is what we're like as children before we ever learn any agreements or are 'domesticated' into the way we act and behave in 'normal life'.
'Just use your imagination and a tremendous thing will happen. Imagine that you have the ability to see the world with different whenever you eyes, choose. Each time you open your eyes, you see the world around you in a different way.'
'To be Toltec is a way of life. It is a of life way where there are no leaders and no followers, where have your own truth and live your own truth. A you Toltec becomes wise, becomes wild, and becomes free again.'
What does this mean to you? To me, it means saying only what you want to say, writing only what you mean, and avoiding wasteful gossip. This means using the word, one of the greatest human inventions, to love, heal, and move forward with grace. Thanks to the word, we can share with others how we feel, how much we love them, and the future we are working toward.
On Thursday afternoon, I was walking on a sidewalk when I came across a custodian who was raking leaves and picking up plastic bottles. We locked eyes. After a pause, she said: \u201CYou have beautiful eyes.\u201D Her words stopped me and made me smile. I thanked her, then paused, trying to let her kindness marinate in my soul. Who doesn\u2019t appreciate a genuine compliment from a stranger, whose motive is purely out of the goodness of their heart? It\u2019s not often that strangers \u2014 no cell phone in sight \u2014 pause to smile and compliment others, so I wanted those words to linger.
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