The Four Agreements are -

• BE IMPECCABLE WITH YOUR WORD - Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid useing the word to speak against yourelf or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

• DONT TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY - Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, thier own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you wont be the victim of needless suffering.

• DONT 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.

• ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST - Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as apposed to sick. Under andy circumstance, simply do your best, and you will aoid self-judgment, self abuse, and regret. 

Book - The Four Agreements

Author - Don Miguel Ruiz 

Three thousand years ago, there was a human just like you and me who lived near a city surrounded by mountains. The human was studying to become a medicine man, to learn the knowledge of his ancestors, but he didn't completely agree with everthing he was learning. In his heart, he felt there must be something more.

One day, as he slept in a cave, he dreamed that he saw his own body sleeping. He came out of the cave on the night of a new moon. The sky was clear, and he could see millions of stars. Thn something happened inside of him that transformed his life forever. He looked at his hands, he felt his body, and he heard his own voice say, "I am made of light; i am made of stars."

He looked at the stars again, and he realized that it's not the stars that create thelight, but rather light tha creates the stars. "everything is mde of light," he said, "and the space in-between isn't empty." And he knew that everything that exists is one liveing being, and hat light is the messenger of life, because it is alive and contains all information.

Then he realized that although hewas made of stars, he was not those stars. "i am in-between the stars," he thought. So he called the stars the tonal and the light between the stars the nagual, and he knew that what created the harmony and space between the two is Life and Intent. Without Life, the tonal and the nagual could not exist. Life is the force of the absolute, the supreme, the creator who creates everything.

This is wat he discovered: Everything in existance is a manifestation of the one liveng being we call God. Everything is God. And he came to the conclusion that human perception is merely light perceiving light. He also saw that matter is a mirror - everything is a mirror that reflects light and creates images of that light - and the world of illusion, the dream, is just like smoke which doesnt allow us to see what we really are. "The real us is pure love, pue ligt," he said.

This realization changed his life. Once he knew whathe really was, he looked aroun at other humans and the rest of nature, and he was amazed at what he saw. He saw himself in everything - every human, in every animal, in evry tree,in the water, in the rain, in the clouds, in the earth. And he saw that Life mixed with tonal and the nagual in different ways to creat billions of manifestations of Life.

In those few moments he comprehened everything. He was very excited, and his heart was filed with peace. He could hardly wait to tell his people what he had discovered. But there was no words to explain it. He tried to tell the others, but they could not understand. They could see tha he had changed, that something beautiful was radiating from his eyes and his voice. They noticed that he no longer had judgment about anything or anyone. He was no longer like anyone else.

He coul understand everyone very well, but no one could understand him. They believed that he was and incarnation of God, and he smiled when he heard this and he said, "it is true. I am God. We are the same you and I. We are images of light. We are God." But still the people didn't understand him.

He had discovered that he was a mirror for the rest of the people, a mirror in which he could see himself."Everyone is a mirror," he said. He saw himself in eveyone, but nobody saw him as themselves. And he realized that everyone was dreaming, but without awareness, without knowing what they really are. They couldn't see him as themselves because there was a wall of fog or smoke between the mirrors. And the wall of fog wasmade by the interpretation of images of light - the Dream of human.

Then he knew that he would soon forget all that he learned. He wanted to remember all that he had learned. He wanted to remember all the visions he had had, so he decided to call himself the Smokey Mirror so that he would always know that matter is a mirror and the smoke in-between is what keeps us from knowing what we are. He said, "I am the Smokey Mirror, because i am looking at myself in all of you, but we dont recognize each other because of the smoke in-between us. That smoke is the Dream, and the mirror is you, the dreamer."

 [report anonymous abuse]

Hello Sunshine ~ I have noticed that the Edgar Cayce teachings seemed to parallel some of the other topics so I wanted to include it. 

Hugs Audrey ~ Great post.  I am looking forward to seeing more.

 [ send green star]

Domesticantion and the Dream of the Planet

What you are seeing right now is noting but a dream. You are dreaming right now in this moment. You are dreaming with the brain awake.

Dreaming is the man function of the mind, and the mind dreams thwenty-four hours a day. It dreams when the brain is awake, and it also dreams when the brain is asleep. The difference is that when the brain is awake, there is a material frame that makes us percieve things in a linear way. When we go tosleep we do not have the frame, and the dream has the tendency to change constantly.

Humans are dreaming all the time. Before we were born the humans before us created a big outside dream that we call society's dream or the dream of the planet. The dream of the planet is the collective  dream of billions of smaller, personal dreams, which togeher create a dream of a family, a dream of a community, a dream of a city, a dream of a country, and finally a dream of the whole humanity. The dream of the planet includes all of society's rules, its beliefs, its laws, its religions, its different cultures and ways to be, its governments, schools, social events, and holidays.

We are born with the capacity to learn how to dream, and the humans who live before us teach us how to dream the way the society dreams. The outside dreams has so many rules that when a new human is born, we hook the child's attention and introduse these rules into his or her mind. The outside dream uses mom and dad, the schools, and religion to teach us how to dream.

Attention is the ability we have to discriminate and to focus only on that which we want to percieve. We can percieve millions of things simultaneously, but useing our attention, we can hold whtever we want to percieve in the foreground of our mind. The adults around us hooked our attention and put information into our minds through repetition. That is the way we leaned everything we know.

By useing our attention we learned a whole reality, a whole dream. We learned how to behave in society: what to believe and what not to believe; what is acceptable and what is not acceptable; what is good and what is bad; what is beautiful and what is ugly; what is right and what is wrong. It was all there already - all that knowledge, all those rules all those concpts about how to behave in the world.

When you were in school, you sat in a little chair and put your attention on what the teacher was teaching you. When you went to church, you put your attention on what the priest or minister was telling you. It is the same dynamic with Mom and Dad, brothers and sisters: They were all trying to hook your attention. We also learn to hook our attention of other humans, and we develope a need for attention which can become very competitive. Children compete for the attention of their parents, Their teachers, Their friends. "Look at me! Look at what im doing! Hey, I'm here." The need for attention becomes very strong and continues into adulthood.

The outside dream hooks our attention and teaches us what to believe, Beginning with the language that we speak. Language is the code for understanding and communication between humans. Every letter, every word in each language is an agreement. We call this a page in a book; the word page is and agreement that we understand. Once we understand the code, our attention is hooked and the energy is transferred from one person to another.

It was not your choice to speak English. You didn't choose your own religion or your mora values - they were already there before you were born. We never had the opportunity to choose what we believe or what not to beleve. We never chose even the smallest of these agreements. We didn't even choose our own name.

As children, we didn't have the opportunity to choose our beliefs, but we agreed with this information that was passed to us from the dream of the planet via to other humans. The only way to store information is by agreement. The outside dream may hook our attention, but if we dont agree, we dont store the information. As soon as we agree, we believe it, and this is called faith. To have faith is to believe unconditionally.

That's how we learn as children. Children believe everything adults say. We agree with them, and our faith is so strong that the belief system controls our whole dream of life. We didn't choose these beliefs, and we may have rebelled against them, but we were not strong enough to win the rebellion. The result is surrender to the beliefs with our agreement.

I call this process the domestication of humans. And through this doestication we learn how to live and how to dream. In human domestication, the information from the outside dream is concveyed to the inside dream, creating our whole belief system. First  the child is taught to name things: Mom, Dad, milk, bottle. Day by day , at home, at school, at church, and from the telivision, we are told how to live, what kinda of behavior is acceptable, The outside dream teaches us how to be human. We have a whole concept of what a "woman" is and what a "man" is. And we also learn how to judge; We judge ourselves, judge other people, judge the neighbors.

Children are domesticated the same way that we domesticate a dog, a cat, or any other animal. In order to teach a dog we punish the dog and we give it rewards. We train our our children whom we love so much the same way that w train any domesticated animal: with a system of punishment and rewrd. We are told, "You're a good boy," or "You're a good girl," when we do that Mom and Dad want us to do. When e don't, we are " a bad girl" or "bad boy."

When we went against the rules we were punished; when we went along with the rules we got a reward. We were punished many times a day. Soon we became afraid o being punished and also afraid of not recieving the reward. The reward is the attention that we got from our parents or from other people like sibligs, teachers, and friends. We soon develope a need to hook other people's attention in order to get the reward.

The reward feels good, and we keep dong 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. We try to please Mom an Dad, we try to please the teachers at school, we try to please the church, and so we start acting. We pretend to be what we are not because we are afraid of being rejected. The fear of being rejected bcomes the fear of not being good enough. Eventually we become someone thatwe are not. We become a copy of Mamma's beliefs, Daddy's beliefs, society's beliefs, an religions beliefs.

All our normal tendencies are lost in the process of domestication. And when we are old enough for our mind to understand, we learn the word no. The adults say, "Dont do this and don't do that." We rebel and say, "No!" We rebel because we are defending our freedom. We want to be ourslves, but w are very little, and the adults are big and strong. After a certain time we are afraid because we know that every time we do something wrong we are going to be punished.

The domesication is so strong that at a certain point in our life we no longe need anyone to domesticate us. We don't need Mom or Dad, the school or the church to domesticate us. We are so well trained that we are our own domesticator. We are the autodomesticated animal. We can now domesticate ourselves according to the same belief system we were given, and useing the same system of punishment an reward. We punish ourselves when we don't follow the rules according to our belief system; we reward orselves when we are the "good boy" or "good girl."

The belef system is like a book of law that rules our mind. Without question, whatever is in that book of law, is or truth. We base all of our judgements according to the book of law, even if these judgements go against our own inner nature. Even moral laws like the Ten Commandments are programmed into our mind in the process of doestication. One by one, all these agreements go into the book of law, and these agreements rule our dream.

There is something in our minds that judges everybody and everything, includeing the weather, the dog, the cat - everything. The inner judge uses what is in our book of lawto judge everything we do and don't do, everything we think and don't think, and everything we feel and don't feel. Everything lives under the tyranny of this judge. Every time we dosomething that goes again the book of law, the judge says we are guilty, we need to be punished, we should be ashamed. This happens many times a day, day after day, for all the year of our lives.

There is another part of us that recieves the judgements, and this part is called the victim. The victim carries the blame, the guilt, and the shae. It is the part ofus that says, "Poor me, I'm not good enough, I'm not intelligent enough, I'm not attractive enough, I'm not worthy of love, poor me." The big judge agrees and says, "Yes you are not good enough." And this is all based on a belief system that we never chose to believe. These beliefs are so strong, that even years later when we are expoed to new concepts and try to make our own decisions, we ind that these beliefs still control our lives.

Whatever goes against the book of law will make you feel a funny sensation in your solar plexus, andits called fear. Breaking the ruls in the book of Law opens your emotional wounds, and your reaction is to create emotional poison. Because everyting that is in the book of Law has to be true, anything that challenges what you believe is going to make you feel unsafe. Even is the book of Law is wrong, it makes you feel safe.

That is why you need a great deal of courage to challenge ur ow beliefs. Because even if we knowwe didn't choose all these beliefs,it is also true that we agreed to all of them. The agreement is so strong that even if we understand the concept of it not being true, we feel the blame, the guilt, and the shame that accur if we go against these rules.

Just as the government has a book of laws that rule the society's dream, our belief system is the book of laws that rules or person dream. All these laws exist in our mind, we believe them, and the judge insie us bases everything on these rules. The judge decrees, and the victim suffers the guilt and punishment. But who sys there is 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 answere is a thousad times. The human is the only animal on Earth that pays a thousad times for the same mistake. The ret of the animals pay once for every mistake they make. But not us. We have a powerful memory. We make a mistake, we judgeourselves, we find ourselves guilty, and we punish ourselves. If justic exists, then that was enough; we don't need to do it again. But everytim we remember, we judge ourselves again,we are guity again, and we punishourselves again, and again, and again. If we have a wife or a husband he or she reminds us of the mistake, so we can judg ourselvs 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 gain an send them all the emotional poison we feel at the injustice, and then we make them pay again for the same mistake. Is that jutice? The judge in our mind is wrong because the belief system, the book of law is wrong. The whole dream is based on false law. Ninety - five percnt of our 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 outide dream is not a pleasent 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 on the street, an tremendous injustice. It may exist at different levels in different countries around the world, but fear is controlling the outside dream.

If we campare 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, and 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 dowhat they say we should do, we will go to hell. Bad news! We are already in hell, including the people who tell us that we are aeady there. Others can put us into a deepr 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 fear manifet in different ways for each person, of course, but we experience ager, jealousy, hate, envy, and other negative emotions. Our personal dream can become an ongoing nightmre where we suffer and live in a state of fear. But we dont need to dream a nighthmare. It is possible to enjoy a pleasent dream.

Allof humanity is searching for truth, justice, and beauty. We are on an eternal search for truth because we only believe on 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 bliefs 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 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 isa fog which the toltecs called a mitote (pronounced mh-toe'-tay). Your mind is a dream where a thousand people talk at the same times, 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 persoality's notion of "I am." Everything you believe about youself and the world, all the concepts and the programming you have in your mind, are all 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; or biggest fear is takeing the risk to be alive - the risk to be alive an express what we really are. Just being ourselves 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 domesticaion, we form an image of what perfection is in order to try to be good enough. We create and 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 an Dad, big brothers and sisters, the priests and the teacher. Trying to be good enough for them, 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 in with our 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 ourselvs for not being perfect.

We know we are not what we believe we are supposed to be and so we feel fasle, frustrated, and dishonest. We try to hide ourselves, and we pretend to be what we are not. The result is that we feel unauthentic and wear social masks to keep others from noticing this. We are so afraid that somebody else will notice that we are no wa 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 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, he victim, and the belief system that makes 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 ourselve is 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 stupid,or so bad, or so unworthy.

In your whole life nobody has ever abused you more than you have abused you yourslf. And the limit of you self-abuse is exactly the limit that you will tolerate from someone else. If someone abuses yo 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 eve beats you up, humiliates you, and treats you like dirt. Why? Because in your own belief system you say, "I deserve it. this person is doing me a faor by beng with me. I'm not worthy of love andrespect. I'm not good enough."

We have the need to be acccepted and to be loved by others, but we cannot accept and love ourselves. The more self-love we have, the less we will expierience self-abuse. Self-abuse comes from sef-rejection, and self-rejection comes from having and image of what it means to be perfect and never measurng up to that ideal. Our image of perfection is the reason we reject ourselves; it is why we dont accept ourselves the way we are, and why we dont accept others the way they are.

Audrey       

 [ send green star]

There are thousands of agreements you have made with yourself, with other people, with your dream 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 imposible."

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 expand a lot of energy, but the agreements that come from love help you 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 all 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 lie 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 Four agreements - but if you can begin to live your life with these agreements, the transformtion in your life will be amazing. You will see the drama of hell disappear right before your very eyes. Instead of liveing in a dream of hell, you will be creating a new dream - your personal dream of heaven.

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 the first agreement you will be able to transcend to the level or existance I call heaven on 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 os John in the Bible, speaking of the creation of the universe, says, "In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word is God." Thrugh 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 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 an communicate, to think, an 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 you 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 create beauty, love and heaven on earth. Dependig upon how it is used, the word can set you free, or it can enslave you more than you know. 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 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 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, bu only for those kinds of seeds it is prepared for. What is important is to see which kinds of seeds our mind is fertile for, and to prepare it to recieve the seeds of love.

Take the example of Hitler: He sent out all thoe seeds of fear, and they grew very strong and beautifully achieved massive destruction. Seeing the aesome power of the word, we must understand what power comes out of our mouths. One fear to doubt planted in our mind can create and 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  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 cance 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, 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 doesnt 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 of done that." The mind goes in hundreds or different directions, and we could spend days getting hooked by just that one beliefe in our own stupidity.

Then one day someone hooks your attention and useing 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.