The Four Agreements
Domestication and the dream of the planet
Attention is the ability we have to discriminate and to focus only on that which we want to perceive.
The only way to store information is by agreement. The outside dream may hook our attention, but if we don’t agree, we don’t store that information. As soon as we agree, we believe it, and this is called faith. To have faith is to believe unconditionally.
Domestication of humans - Creation of our belief system. We are constantly taught what is right, what is wrong, what behaviour is acceptable, the whole concept of a man and a women as well. We are domesticated the same way as any other animal for that matter.
The reward feels good, and we keep doing what others want us to do in order to get the reward. With that fear of being punished and that fear of not getting the reward, we start pretending to be what we are not, just to please others, just to be good enough for someone else
The fear of being rejected becomes the fear of not being good enough. Eventually we become someone that we are not.
This is because you become the product of the environment you grow in. You pick beliefs from people around you. You’ll need a great deal of courage to challenge your own beliefs.
Another part of us which takes blame for all these - The Victim
True justice is paying once for each mistake and true injustice is paying more than once for each mistake.
If you consider hell as a state of mind, then hell is all around us.
When you don’t see the truth, check your beliefs. You may be blinded by them in some form.
To be alive is the biggest fear humans have. Death is not the 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 ourself is the biggest fear of humans.
During the process of domestication, we create an image of what perfection looks like in our mind and spend the rest of our lives trying to get there. You’ll try to please everyone around you as a part of this process. In the end of the process, you become someone who you are not portraying a not so real image to the outside world.
After you fail in that process, you reject yourself and judge others to our levels of expectations and they are bound to fail.
But nobody abuses us more than we abuse ourselves.
Nobody would have ever abused you more than yourself. If someone abuses you more than you abuse yourself, you walk away from that person. If someone does that less than you abuse yourself, you tend to stay with them and tolerate it.
Our image of perfection is the reason we reject ourselves; it is why we don’t accept ourselves the way we are, and why we don’t accept others the way they are.
The First Agreement
Be impeccable with your word.
This one’s simple yet so powerful. Words are like a two edged sword. With this, you can either create everything around you or destroy eveything around you. Treat your mind like a fertile land, the seeds of thought what you plant today gets translates to the action you do and the words you speak tomorrow. Pick the ones you want to plant and nurish wisely. Some classic examples from history - Hitler - Planted seeds of fear in people and fully achieved mass destruction.
With the impeccability of the word you can transcend the dream of fear and live a different life. You can live in heaven in the middle of thousands of people living in hell because you are immune to that hell. You can attain the kingdom of heaven from this one agreement: Be impeccable with your word.
The Second Agreement
The second agreement is - don’t take anything personally.
Humans are addicted to suffering at different levels and to different degrees, and we support each other in maintaining these addictions. Humans agree to help each other suffer. If you have the need to be abused, you will find it easy to be abused by others.
Telling yourself the truth about it may hurt, but you don’t need to be attached to the pain. Healing is on the way, and it’s just a matter of time before things will be better for you.
The moment you take things personally, you feel offended and try to defend based on the values what you believe and increase the chances of creating or being in a conflict. Following this will help you break many habits and routines that trap you in hell of suffering. You can break away from the emotional poison what others try to inflict on you. The amount of freedom you get when you break out of this is huge. Then You can be in the middle of hell and still experience inner peace and happiness. You can stay in your state of bliss, and hell will not affect you at all.
The Third Agreement
The third agreement is - Don’t make assumptions
This sounds simple but one of the hardest to follow. We tend to make assumptions on the facts and things which we don’t know and then we tend to believe that they are the truth. It’s always better to ask questions instead of setting up assumptions on something. And, when we fail, this hits our mind saying - “You should have known”. Not making assumptions and asking questions promotes clear communication and
We only see what we want to see and hear what we want to hear. We don’t perceive things the way they are.
If you don’t understand, ask.
Information or an idea is merely the seed in your mind. What will really make the difference is action.
The Fourth Agreement
There is just one more agreement, but it’s the one that allows the other three to become deeply ingrained habits. The fourth agreement is about the action of the first three: Always do your best.
Everything is alive and changing all the time, so your best will sometimes be high quality, and other times it will not be as good. When you wake up refreshed and energized in the morning, your best will be better than when you are tired at night. Your best will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick, or sober as opposed to drunk. Your best will depend on whether you are feeling wonderful and happy, or upset, angry, or jealous.
Action is all about living fully. Do your best and don’t expect in return. The person who does more will be richly rewarded. Forrest Gump is a good example to support this.
If you do your best always, over and over again, you will become a master of transformation. Practice makes the master. By doing your best you become a master. Everything you have ever learned, you learned through repetition. You learned to write, to drive, and even to walk by repetition. You are a master of speaking your language because you practiced. Action is what makes the difference.
The Toltec Path to Freedom
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The problem with most people is that they live their lives and never discover that the Judge and the Victim rule their mind, and therefore they don’t have a chance to be free.
There are three masteries that lead people to become Toltecs.
- Mastery of Awareness - Be aware of who you are and things around you.
- Mastery of Transformation - Be free of domestication
- Mastery of Intent - Make good use of your energy
Be free of the parasite in you
- Attach it head on - Face fears one by one and conquer them.
- Stop feeding it - Gain control of emotions and stop feeding them with fear.
- Initiation of the dead - Symbolic of death which kills it without harming it.
Forgiveness is the only way to heal. We can choose to forgive
because we feel compassion for ourselves.
You will know you have forgiven someone when you see them and you no longer have an emotional reaction. You will hear the name of the person and you will have no emotional reaction.
The truth is like a scalpel. The truth is painful, because it opens all of the wounds which are covered by lies so that we can be healed.
If we surrender to the angel of death we will be happy forever and ever. Why? Because the angel of death takes the past away in order to make it possible for life to continue. For every moment that is past, the angel of death keeps taking the part that is dead and we keep living in the present. The parasite wants us to carry the past with us and that makes it so heavy to be alive. When we try to live in the past, how can we enjoy the present? When we dream of the future, why must we carry the burden of the past? When are we going to live in the present? That is what the angel of death teaches us to do.
The New Agreement
But there is really no reason to suffer. The only reason you suffer is because you choose to suffer. If you look at your life you will find many excuses to suffer, but a good reason to suffer you will not find. The same is true for happiness. The only reason you are happy is because you choose to be happy. Happiness is a choice, and so is suffering.
Maybe we cannot escape from the destiny of the human, but we have a choice: to suffer our destiny or to enjoy our destiny. To suffer, or to love and be happy. To live in hell, or to live in heaven. My choice is to live in heaven. What is yours?