My good friend and mentor Gina & I had so much fun recording a VI episode podcast series on the ground-breaking book The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz last Fall/2019. I am able to articulate my thoughts on the subject matter more clearly now but the goal and our passion was to simply spark awareness. Or in some cases, re-igniting it because life has a miraculous way of reminding us of the tools we already posses, but have been in storage for awhile.
The Four Agreements profoundly changed the way I feel life. Being human is complicated and difficult - but it is possible for it to become less complicated and difficult. I know this because it has for me in just the short 17 month period from when I turned the first page until now. Don't get me wrong, some days are incredibly challenging and life will come at us fast at times, but these teachings from ancient indigenous traditions has helped me build up such a heightened level of present-moment awareness, that I am able to work through stress with more clarity than I ever have before. Understanding more about the source of suffering, followed by action, is the absolute key to change. And the key to sustainable change is routine. Incorporate a new set of actionable principals into routine and you WILL feel a shift. Things slow down.
"A moment of clarity that is followed by an action of change becomes a pivotal moment in our life. But a moment of clarity that is not followed by any action is just a thought that passes in the wind."
- Don Miguel Ruiz Jr.
In this book, Don Miguel Ruiz reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and create needless suffering. Based on ancient wisdom put in a modern way, it offers the following powerful four agreement code of conduct:
The First Agreement: Be Impeccable With Your Word
The Second Agreement: Don’t Take Anything Personally
The Third Agreement: Don’t Make Assumptions
The Fourth Agreement: Always Do Your Best
Those initial agreements or code of conduct can rapidly transform our lives to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love.
“Don Miguel Ruiz’s book is a roadmap to enlightenment and freedom.”
- Deepak Chopra
In this first episode, we discuss the first chapter that educates us on the “domestication” of humans and how all the rules and values of our family and society are imposed on us through a system of punishment and reward. As children, our true nature is to love and be happy, to explore and enjoy life - we are completely authentic. But then we learn to be what others think we “should” be, and because it’s not okay for us to be what we are, we start to be what we are not. By the time we are teenagers, we’ve learned to judge ourselves, punish ourselves, and reward ourselves according to agreements that we never even chose. The Four Agreements help us to break from those self-limiting agreements and replace them with new ones.
We also discuss the "inner judge" that makes us suffer because we never measure up to our “image of perfection.” All of our normal tendencies are lost in the process of domestication, and we begin to search for what we have lost. We search for freedom because we are no longer free; we search for happiness because we are no longer happy; we search for beauty because we no longer believe we are beautiful. What we are searching for is our “self.” With practice, The Four Agreements help us to recover our “authentic self” and it’s the greatest gift that we can give ourselves.
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