August 30, 2015

The Four Agreements... ♥

I absolutely loved reading this book. I read the entire book in one day back in 2007. It truly resonated with my spirit. I couldn't put it down. It's that great! :)

"Don Miguel รngel Ruiz (born 1952), better known as Don Miguel Ruiz, is a Mexican author of New Age spiritualist and Neo-Shamanistic texts. His teaching is significantly influenced by the work of Carlos Castaneda.

His most famous and influential work, The Four Agreements, was published in 1997 and has sold around 4 million copies." [source: wikipedia]

If you would like to purchase this book, please visit don Miguel Ruiz website:

The Four Agreements — 15th Anniversary Illustrated Edition

This beautiful, four-color illustrated edition of The Four Agreements celebrates the 15th year anniversary of a personal growth classic.

The Four Agreements help us to break thousands of agreements that create needless suffering, and bring us to a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love.

Price: $19.95

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You can visit his website to read more if you're interested. I've shared the link below. I am typing the Four Agreements for those of you who need to translate. The following is taken from Toltec Spirit. Here's a a little nugget:

Living the Four Agreements: A life changing Journey

In the best selling book The Four Agreements don Miguel Ruiz gives four principles to practice in order to create love and happiness in your life. Adopting and committing to these agreements is simple. Actually living and keeping these Four Agreements can be one of the hardest things you will ever do. It can also be one of the most life changing things you will ever do.

As you practice living these four practices your life will dramatically change. In the beginning these new habits will be challenging and you will lapse countless times. With practice these agreements become integrated into your being and every area of your life and become easy habits to keep.

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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 circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.

Awakening

In actuality the problem is not that you adopted the Four Agreements. Nor is the problem that you are a failure. What is really happening is that you are having an awakening. You are waking up to how your mind makes assumptions, has emotional reactions, and is so quick to make self judgments. These realizations about the belief system in your mind are not usually pleasant but are part of an awakening. It is usually uncomfortable realization, but through it your awareness is growing.

With some more awareness and practice you can move beyond this uncomfortable awakening about the mind. You will come to see that it is not You that is judging your self for failing. It is the inner judge. With practice you will see the ridiculous expectations and assumptions for what they are and not feel like a failure when you lapse in your journey to impeccability. This comes as you gain more awareness and gain more personal power over your agreements.

The Challenge of a Spiritual Warrior

Don Miguel refers to some of these challenges throughout the book. However, in the excitement of the Truth in what don Miguel writes, people often overlook where he points out that this endeavor is not easy. The agreements may be simple, but he never says they are easy to keep.

At the same time living the Four Agreements has taken me on the most rewarding and profound journey of happiness and fulfillment beyond anything I could have imagined. The hard work in the beginning is rewarded to me in every interaction every day of my life. This is a very big return for a small investment of time and effort.

Don Miguel refers to people who decide to adopt the Four Agreements and create love and happiness in their life as Spiritual Warriors. It is Spiritual because it is about living your Life. It is also referred to as a war because you are challenging the old fear based beliefs in your mind. It will take more than a week and a half to break free of fear, the tyranny of the inner judge, and old emotional habits. There will be some battles lost along the way, but that is of minor concern in the longer term strategy of creating happiness in your life.

The Quest for Personal Freedom

The quest of a Spiritual Warrior is for Personal Freedom. Personal Freedom means freedom from fear, illusions, and the fear based beliefs in the mind. In essence it means to win the war over the beliefs in the mind. It is with Personal Freedom that we are free of the human condition of emotional suffering. Spiritual traditions around the world have their own names for this state of awareness including nirvana and heaven. It is a state that is simply described as living your life with unconditional love, gratitude, and respect, for your self, and for others.

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