Best Tribal & Ethnic Religious Practices

1 The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book)

Score: 93 / 100

Average Price: $7.77

In The Four Agreements, bestselling author don Miguel Ruiz reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. She is the co-author, with don Miguel Ruiz, of six books in The Toltec Wisdom Series , creator of “The Four Agreements for a Better Life” online course, and editor of Deepak Chopra’s bestselling title, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success .

Reviews

"I am an undergrad student of philosophy and linguistics, a branch of the humanities. I also deeply love this series of books because of its obviousness and simplicity. There is a huge tradition of skepticism in linguistics, especially about how language is used in various cultures to create belief systems. A belief system is basically a set of instructions inside your brain based on language. These instructions help you navigate the stressful world around you so you can survive. We are psychologically wired to think our belief systems are accurate and experience deep stress if we find them to be inaccurate. You may not be surprised to find out that philosophy majors have not come up with answers to these questions because there is always a case where we are going to be wrong or have a counter argument. Much of the study of philosophy is the collection of vocabulary words to describe beliefs. They even have a mathematical component called propositional logic, where one takes sentences and reduces them to symbols and creates "proofs" but even prop-logic is under fire from academics for its complete inability to predict anything. I believe Miguel Ruiz must have taken a linguistics course as well--as his first agreement attests to the power of language. Both Saussure and Derrida (and many, many others) did work on how we form ideas in our heads based on language. The gist is this: we have something called a "symbol" in our brain which is composed of two parts: the word and the visual representation of the object (look up semiotics for further detail). These symbols are in our mind and work together to form meaning, then belief. If you really want a deeper understanding on how linguistics has saturated our belief systems I recommend reading some of their academic essays or get Rivkin and Ryan's literary theory books. To simplify: scientists and academics in the millions have tried and tried and tried to find "the true belief" for thousands, maybe tens of thousands of years and we have not yet arrived at any truth. The need to be right is so ingrained within us that we create a huge drama when someone contradicts our beliefs. - I take all gurus, religions, indictments and gossip with quite a high level of benevolent skepticism, which allows me to be free from the fear that goes along with these stories."

"Both are based on the philosophy of the Toltec, ancient people of southern Mexico who were known as women and men of knowledge. The author at times anticipates such problems on the part of the reader, and is indeed accurate in that regard. The Toltecs were not a race or tribe, or nation, but scientists and artists formed to explore and conserve the spiritual knowledge and practices of the “ancient ones”. The Toltec recognize that some 3000 years ago a human studying to be a medicine man woke to the realization that everything is made of light and that all that exists is one living being, and that light is the messenger of life because it is alive and contains all information. As children we believe what adults say, especially our parents, and our world becomes a dream, a reality built on symbols from others, not the silent feelings and observations that we experienced as infants. We live in a dream ruled by fear and filled with emotions of anger, jealousy, envy and hate. To escape our dream of hell, we must break the old agreements that are fear based and reclaim our personal power. The author suggests four basic agreements that you must make with yourself to reclaim your own power and find a heaven on earth, a life of joy and fulfillment. He feels that a sin is anything that goes against yourself, and being impeccable is not gong against yourself, taking responsibility for your actions, but not judging or blaming. He feels that gossip is the worst form of black magic, for it is judgmental language about others, even those we do not know. He gives the simple example of a child being told by her mother to shut up her singing because her voice was “ugly”. These are the type of agreements that we make in life that are harmful and destructive, that lead us into our dream of hell. And as you use such words, first by expressing love for yourself, you break all the many agreements that make you suffer, and begin to build your own dream of heaven on earth. Couldn’t someone’s anger be about us if our word was less than impeccable, but instead filled with the black magic mentioned by the author? I raise these questions in my mind because at times, as I read through this, it sounds as if one can “get a pass” for less than sterling behavior because he need not take others reactions personally. (True sadness from the passing of a child or similar “objective” tragedy is hard to relate to assumptions or taking things personally) I have found that people often assume my meaning, and sometimes take offense at something that was never intended to harm. I don’t know exactly why we are afraid to ask for clarification, maybe it roots back to those days when we were reluctant to ask questions in school. I think these two agreements about taking things personally and making assumptions are really part of a self centeredness that “it is all about me”. In fact it is really important to realize that it isn’t always about you, especially when the assumptions made generally do assume so and lead to taking things personally. Not making assumptions would seem to be one of the easier agreements to live up to, as it only involves a little bit of inquiry. I see his book as being primarily focused on reaching an internal contentment and happiness, not on navigating one’s way through the world at large. I just find a bit of a contrast between the focus of this work and something like “Falling Upward” by Richard Rohr where he acknowledges the need to survive in the competitive world as a means of gaining some level of confidence before, in the second half of life, we are able to discard much of the baggage of the first half and seek out a more personal and spiritual contentment. All see Western culture as imposing and espousing a very competitive, win/loose guilt ridden mentality. Such mentality may or may not be necessary for the struggles that we face, but, all my readings seem to agree that at some point our thoughts need to focus on attaining a more peaceful and inclusive level of spiritual contentment. By merely listening you show respect for the other person’s dream, for the reality he or she has created. The first Four Agreements taught us that out symbols are not the truth, and that many of these symbols–our entire symbology as he calls it- are lies that lead us to blame and shame and guilt, to a living hell. It is a war against that part of our mind that makes all the choices that guide us into our personal hell. It is that point where we come back to our real state, our divine self, where we fell a communion of love with everything in existence. We experience what he refers to as a resurrection, and it allows us to be wild and free like a child, except that we have freedom with wisdom instead of innocence. These books express a philosophy couched in rather mystical terms–in dreams and symbols, attention and awareness. I think he feels that a concept like goodness is also a truth that is intrinsically recognized and internal, and not a product of a value system that is imposed on us by others. But, at least to me, he doesn’t recognize such conditioning as being a necessary part of that portion of our lives when we must learn to cope in our world. The striking thing, as I read numerous books and other writings, and watch speeches, is the basic consistency in the message of oneness and the need to abandon, at least temporarily, much of what we have “learned” in order to open our minds, or perhaps clear our minds, so that we can receive the gift of interconnectedness."

"The Four Agreements are: - Be Impeccable With Your Words. - Don't Take Anything Personally. - Don't Make Assumptions. - Always Do Your Best. -When he says be Impeccable With Your Word, he means you should always speak,with integrity. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering. - when he says Don't Make Assumptions, he means you must find the the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want."