justice in this dream? True justice is paying only once for each mistake.
True injustice is paying more than once for each mistake.
How many times do we pay for one mistake? The answer is thousands
of times. The human is the only animal on earth that pays a thousand
times for the same mistake. The rest of the animals pay once for every
mistake they make. But not us. We have a powerful memory. We
make a mistake, we judge ourselves, we find ourselves guilty, and we
punish ourselves. If justice exists, then that was enough; we don't need
to do it again. But every time we remember, we judge ourselves
again, we are guilty again, and we punish ourselves again, and again,
and again. If we have a wife or husband he or she also reminds us of
the mistake, so we can judge ourselves again, punish ourselves again,
and find ourselves guilty again. Is this fair?
How many times do we make our spouse, our children, or our parents
pay for the same mistake? Every time we remember the mistake, we
blame them again and send them all the emotional poison we feel at
the injustice, and then we make them pay again for the same
mistake. Is that justice? The Judge in the mind is wrong because the
belief system, the Book of Law, is wrong. The whole dream is based on
false law. Ninety-five percent of the beliefs we have stored in our
minds are nothing but lies, and we suffer because we believe all these
lies.
In the dream of the planet it is normal for humans to suffer, to live in
fear, and to create emotional dramas. The outside dream is not a
pleasant dream; it is a dream of violence, a dream of fear, a dream of
war, a dream of injustice. The personal dream of humans will vary, but
globally it is mostly a nightmare. If we look at human society we see a
place so difficult to live in because it is ruled by fear. Throughout the
world we see human suffering, anger, revenge, addictions, violence in
the street, and tremendous injustice. It may exist at different levels in
different countries around the world, but fear is controlling the outside
dream.
If we compare the dream of human society with the description of hell
that religions all around the world have promulgated, we find they are
exactly the same. Religions say that hell is a place of punishment, a
place of fear, pain, and suffering, a place where the fire burns you.
Fire is generated by emotions that come from fear. Whenever we feel
the emotions of anger, jealousy, envy, or hate, we experience a fire
burning within us. We are living in a dream of hell.
If you consider hell as a state of mind, then hell is all around us. Others
may warn us that if we don't do what they say we should do, we will
go to hell. Bad news! We are already in hell, including the people who
tell us that. No human can condemn another to hell because we are
already there. Others can put us into a deeper hell, true. But only if we
allow this to happen.
Every human has his or her own personal dream, and just like the
society dream, it is often ruled by fear. We learn to dream hell in our
own life, in our personal dream. The same fears manifest in different
ways for each person, of course, but we experience anger, jealousy,
hate, envy, and other negative emotions. Our personal dream can
also become an ongoing nightmare where we suffer and live in a
state of fear. But we don't need to dream a nightmare. It is possible to
enjoy a pleasant dream.
All of humanity is searching for truth, justice, and beauty. We are on an
eternal search for the truth because we only believe in the lies we
have stored in our mind. We are searching for justice because in the
belief system we have, there is no justice. We search for beauty
because it doesn't matter how beautiful a person is, we don't believe
that person has beauty. We keep searching and searching, when
everything is already within us. There is no truth to find. Wherever we
turn our heads, all we see is the truth, but with the agreements and
beliefs we have stored in our mind, we have no eyes for this truth.
We don't see the truth because we are blind. What blinds us are all
those false beliefs we have in our mind. We have the need to be right
and to make others wrong. We trust what we believe, and our beliefs
set us up for suffering. It is as if we live in the middle of a fog that
doesn't let us see any further than our own nose. We live in a fog that is
not even real. This fog is a dream, your personal dream of life — what
you believe, all the concepts you have about what you are, all the
agreements you have made with others, with yourself, and even with
God. Your whole mind is a fog which the Toltecs called a mitote
(pronounced MIH-TOE '-TAY). Your mind is a dream where a thousand
people talk at the same time, and nobody understands each other.
This is the condition of the human mind — a big mitote, and with that
big mitote you cannot see what you really are. In India they call the
mitote maya, which means illusion. It is the personality's notion of "I
am." Everything you believe about yourself and the world, all the
concepts and programming you have in your mind, are all the mitote.
We cannot see who we truly are; we cannot see that we are not free.
That is why humans resist life. 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. We have learned
to live our life trying to satisfy other people's demands. We have
learned to live by other people's points of view because of the fear of
not being accepted and of not being good enough for someone
else.
During the process of domestication, we form an image of what
perfection is in order to try to be good enough. We create an image
of how we should be in order to be accepted by everybody. We
especially try to please the ones who love us, like Mom and Dad, big
brothers and sisters, the priests and the teacher. Trying to be good
enough for them, we create an image of perfection, but we don't fit
this image. We create this image, but this image is not real. We are
never going to be perfect from this point of view. Never!
Not being perfect, we reject ourselves. And the level of self-rejection
depends upon how effective the adults were in breaking our integrity.
After domestication it is no longer about being good enough for
anybody else. We are not good enough for ourselves because we
don't fit with our own image of perfection. We cannot forgive
ourselves for not being what we wish to be, or rather what we believe
we should be. We cannot forgive ourselves for not being perfect.
We know we are not what we believe we are supposed to be and so
we feel false, frustrated, and dishonest. We try to hide ourselves, and
we pretend to be what we are not. The result is that we feel unau-
thentic and wear social masks to keep others from noticing this. We
are so afraid that somebody else will notice that we are not what we
pretend to be. We judge others according to our image of perfection
as well, and naturally they fall short of our expectations.
We dishonor ourselves just to please other people. We even do harm
to our physical bodies just to be accepted by others. You see
teenagers taking drugs just to avoid being rejected by other
teenagers. They are not aware that the problem is that they don't
accept themselves. They reject themselves because they are not
what they pretend to be. They wish to be a certain way, but they are
not, and for this they carry shame and guilt. Humans punish
themselves endlessly for not being what they believe they should be.
They become very self-abusive, and they use other people to abuse
themselves as well.
But nobody abuses us more than we abuse ourselves, and it is the
Judge, the Victim, and the belief system that make us do this. True, we
find people who say their husband or wife, or mother or father,
abused them, but you know that we abuse ourselves much more than
that. The way we judge ourselves is the worst judge that ever existed. If
we make a mistake in front of people, we try to deny the mistake and
cover it up. But as soon as we are alone, the Judge becomes so
strong, the guilt is so strong, and we feel so stupid, or so bad, or so
unworthy.
In your whole life nobody has ever abused you more than you have
abused yourself. And the limit of your self-abuse is exactly the limit that
you will tolerate from someone else. If someone abuses you a little
more than you abuse yourself, you will probably walk away from that
person. But if someone abuses you a little less than you abuse yourself,
you will probably stay in the relationship and tolerate it endlessly.
If you abuse yourself very badly, you can even tolerate someone who
beats you up, humiliates you, and treats you like dirt. Why? Because in
your belief system you say, "I deserve it. This person is doing me a favor
by being with me. I'm not worthy of love and respect. I'm not good
enough."
We have the need to be accepted and to be loved by others, but we
cannot accept and love ourselves. The more self-love we have, the
less we will experience self-abuse. Self-abuse comes from self-
rejection, and self-rejection comes from having an image of what it
means to be perfect and never measuring up to that ideal. 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.
There are thousands of agreements you have made with yourself, with
other people, with your dream of life, with God, with society, with your
parents, with your spouse, with your children. But the most important
agreements are the ones you made with yourself. In these
agreements you tell yourself who you are, what you feel, what you
believe, and how to behave. The result is what you call your
personality. In these agreements you say, "This is what I am. This is what
I believe. I can do certain things, and some things I cannot do. This is
reality, that is fantasy; this is possible, that is impossible."
One single agreement is not such a problem, but we have many
agreements that make us suffer, that make us fail in life. If you want to
live a life of joy and fulfillment, you have to find the courage to break
those agreements that are fear-based and claim your personal
power. The agreements that come from fear require us to expend a
lot of energy, but the agreements that come from love help us to
conserve energy and even gain extra energy.
Each of us is born with a certain amount of personal power that we
rebuild every day after we rest. Unfortunately, we spend all our
personal power first to create all these agreements and then to keep
these agreements. Our personal power is dissipated by all the
agreements we have created, and the result is that we feel powerless.
We have just enough power to survive each day, because most of it is
used to keep the agreements that trap us in the dream of the planet.
How can we change the entire dream of our life when we have no
power to change even the smallest agreement?
If we can see it is our agreements which rule our life, and we don't like
the dream of our life, we need to change the agreements. When we
are finally ready to change our agreements, there are four very
powerful agreements that will help us break those agreements that
come from fear and deplete our energy.
Each time you break an agreement, all the power you used to create
it returns to you. If you adopt these four new agreements, they will
create enough personal power for you to change the entire system of
your old agreements.
You need a very strong will in order to adopt the Four Agreements —
but if you can begin to live your life with these agreements, the
transformation in your life will be amazing. You will see the drama of
hell disappear right before your very eyes. Instead of living in a dream
of hell, you will be creating a new dream — your personal dream of
heaven.
2
THE FIRST AGREEMENT
Be Impeccable With Your Word
THE FIRST AGREEMENT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ONE and also the most
difficult one to honor. It is so important that with just this first agreement
you will be able to transcend to the level of existence I call heaven dn
earth.
The first agreement is to be impeccable with your word. It sounds very
simple, but it is very, very powerful.
Why your word? Your word is the power that you have to create. Your
word is the gift that comes directly from God. The Gospel of John in
the Bible, speaking of the creation of the universe, says, "In the
beginning there was the word, and the word was with God, and the
word is God." Through the word you express your creative power. It is
through the word that you manifest everything. Regardless of what
language you speak, your intent manifests through the word. What
you dream, what you feel, and what you really are, will all be
manifested through the word.
The word is not just a sound or a written symbol. The word is a force; it
is the power you have to express and communicate, to think, and
thereby to create the events in your life. You can speak. What other
animal on the planet can speak? The word is the most powerful tool
you have as a human; it is the tool of magic. But like a sword with two
edges, your word can create the most beautiful dream, or your word
can destroy everything around you. One edge is the misuse of the
word, which creates a living hell. The other edge is the impeccability
of the word, which will only create beauty, love, and heaven on
earth. Depending upon how it is used, the word can set you free, or it
can enslave you even more than you know. All the magic you possess
is based on your word. Your word is pure magic, and misuse of your
word is black magic.
The word is so powerful that one word can change a life or destroy
the lives of millions of people. Some years ago one man in Germany,
by the use of the word, manipulated a whole country of the most
intelligent people. He led them into a world war with just the power of
his word. He convinced others to commit the most atrocious acts of
violence. He activated people's fear with the word, and like a big
explosion, there was killing and war all around the world. All over the
world humans destroyed other humans because they were afraid of
each other. Hitler's word, based on fear-generated beliefs and
agreements, will be remembered for centuries.
The human mind is like a fertile ground where seeds are continually
being planted. The seeds are opinions, ideas, and concepts. You plant
a seed, a thought, and it grows. The word is like a seed, and the
human mind is so fertile! The only problem is that too often it is fertile
for the seeds of fear. Every human mind is fertile, but only for those
kinds of seeds it is prepared for. What is important is to see which kind
of seeds our mind is fertile for, and to prepare it to receive the seeds of
love.
Take the example of Hitler: He sent out all those seeds of fear, and
they grew very strong and beautifully achieved massive destruction.
Seeing the awesome power of the word, we must understand what
power comes out of our mouths. One fear or doubt planted in our
mind can create an endless drama of events. One word is like a spell,
and humans use the word like black magicians, thoughtlessly putting
spells on each other.
Every human is a magician, and we can either put a spell on someone
with our word or we can release someone from a spell. We cast spells
all the time with our opinions. An example: I see a friend and give him
an opinion that just popped into my mind. I say, "Hmmm! I see that
kind of color in your face in people who are going to get cancer." If
he listens to the word, and if he agrees, he will have cancer in less
than one year. That is the power of the word.
During our domestication, our parents and siblings gave their opinions
about us without even thinking. We believed these opinions and we
lived in fear over these opinions, like not being good at swimming, or
sports, or writing. Someone gives an opinion and says, "Look, this girl is
ugly!" The girl listens, believes she is ugly, and grows up with the idea
that she is ugly. It doesn't matter how beautiful she is; as long as she
has that agreement, she will believe that she is ugly. That is the spell
she is under.
By hooking our attention, the word can enter our mind and change a
whole belief for better or for worse. Another example: You may
believe you are stupid and you may have believed this for as long as
you can remember. This agreement can be very tricky, causing you to
do a lot of things just to ensure that you are stupid. You may do
something and think to yourself, "I wish I were smart, but I must be
stupid or I wouldn't have done that." The mind goes in hundreds of
different directions, and we could spend days getting hooked by just
that one belief in our own stupidity.
Then one day someone hooks your attention and using the word, lets
you know that you are not stupid. You believe what the person says
and make a new agreement. As a result, you no longer feel or act
stupid. A whole spell is broken, just by the power of the word.
Conversely, if you believe you are stupid, and someone hooks your
attention and says, "Yes, you are really the most stupid person I have
ever met," the agreement will be reinforced and become even
stronger.
Now let us see what the word impeccability means. Impeccability
means "without sin." Impeccable comes from the Latin pecatus, which
means "sin." The im in impeccable means "without," so impeccable
means "without sin." Religions talk about sin and sinners, but let's
understand what it really means to sin. A sin is anything that you do
which goes against yourself. Everything you feel or believe or say that
goes against yourself is a sin. You go against yourself when you judge
or blame yourself for anything. Being without sin is exactly the
opposite. Being impeccable is not going against yourself. When you
are impeccable, you take responsibility for your actions, but you do
not judge or blame yourself.
From this point of view, the whole concept of sin changes from
something moral or religious to something commonsense. Sin-begins
with rejection of yourself. Self-rejection is the biggest sin that you
commit. In religious terms self-rejection is a "mortal sin," which leads to
death. Impeccability, on the other hand, leads to life.
Being impeccable with your word is not using the word against
yourself. If I see you in the street and I call you stupid, it appears that
I'm using the word against you. But really I'm using my word against
myself, because you're going to hate me for this, and your hating me
is not good for me. Therefore, if I get angry and with my word send all
that emotional poison to you, I'm using the word against myself.
If I love myself I will express that love in my interactions with you, and
then I am being impeccable with the word, because that action will
produce a like reaction. If I love you, then you will love me. If I insult
you, you will insult me. If I have gratitude for you, you will have
gratitude for me. If I'm selfish with you, you will be selfish with me. If I
use the word to put a spell on you, you are going to put a spell on me.
Being impeccable with your word is the correct use of your energy; it
means to use your energy in the direction of truth and love for yourself.
If you make an agreement with yourself to be impeccable with your
word, just with that intention, the truth will manifest through you and
clean all the emotional poison that exists within you. But making this
agreement is difficult because we have learned to do precisely the
opposite. We have learned to lie as a habit of our communication
with others and more importantly with ourselves. We are not
impeccable with the word.
The power of the word is completely misused in hell. We use the word
to curse, to blame, to find guilt, to destroy. Of course, we also use it in
the right way, but not too often. Mostly we use the word to spread our
personal poison — to express anger, jealousy, envy, and hate. The
word is pure magic — the most powerful gift we have as humans —
and we use it against ourselves. We plan revenge. We create chaos
with the word. We use the word to create hate between different
races, between different people, between families, between nations.
We misuse the word so often, and this misuse is how we create and
perpetuate the dream of hell. Misuse of the word is how we pull each
other down and keep each other in a state of fear and doubt.
Because the word is the magic that humans possess and misuse of the
word is black magic, we are using black magic all the time without
knowing that our word is magic at all.
There was a woman, for example, who was intelligent and had a very
good heart. She had a daughter whom she adored and loved very
much. One night she came home from a very bad day at work, tired,
full of emotional tension, and with a terrible headache. She wanted
peace and quiet, but her daughter was singing and jumping happily.
The daughter was unaware of how her mother was feeling; she was in
her own world, in her own dream. She felt so wonderful, and she was Compartilhe com seus amigos: |