The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

by Miguel Ruiz

Everything is God.

Because of this basic truth, we must treat everything as such.

To have faith is to believe unconditionally.

The reward is the attention that we got from our parents or from other people like siblings, teachers, and friends. We soon develop a need to hook other people’s attention in order to get the reward. The reward feels good, and we keep doing 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 and 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 becomes the fear of not being good enough. Eventually we become someone that we are not. We become a copy of Mamma’s beliefs, Daddy’s beliefs, society’s beliefs, and religion’s 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, “Don’t do this and don’t do that.” We rebel and say, “No!” We rebel

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.

our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive — the risk to be alive and express what we really are. Just being ourselves is the biggest fear of humans.

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.

It takes most people more than half of their lives to figure this out.

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.

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

Your word is the gift that comes directly from God.

“In the beginning 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.

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 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.

We have learned to lie as a habit of our communication with others and more importantly with ourselves.

The only thing that can break a spell is to make a new agreement based on truth. The truth is the most important part of being impeccable with your word.

You can measure the impeccability of your word by your level of self-love.

Personal importance, or taking things personally, is the maximum expression of selfishness because we make the assumption that everything is about “me.”

Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. All people live in their own dream, in their own mind; they are in a completely different world from the one we live in.

You may even tell me, “Miguel, what you are saying is hurting me.” But it is not what I am saying that is hurting you; it is that you have wounds that I touch by what I have said. You are hurting yourself.

If you live without fear, if you love, there is no place for any of those emotions. If you don’t feel any of those emotions, it is logical that you will feel good.

Do not expect people to tell you the truth because they also lie to themselves. You have to trust yourself and choose to believe or not to believe what someone says to you.

Even if others lie to you, it is okay. They are lying to you because they are afraid. They are afraid you will discover that they are not perfect.

If someone is not treating you with love and respect, it is a gift if they walk away from you. If that person doesn’t walk away, you will surely endure many years of suffering with him or her. Walking away may hurt for a while, but your heart will eventually heal. Then you can choose what you really want. You will find that you don’t need to trust others as much as you need to trust yourself to make the right choices.

You are never responsible for the actions of others; you are only responsible for you. When you truly understand this, and refuse to take things personally, you can hardly be hurt by the careless comments or actions of others.

All the sadness and drama you have lived in your life was rooted in making assumptions and taking things personally.

It

is always better to ask questions than to make an assumption, because assumptions set us up for suffering.

We don’t need to justify love; it is there or not there. Real love is accepting other people the way they are without trying to change them.

The way to keep yourself from making assumptions is to ask questions. Make sure the communication is clear. If you don’t understand, ask.

Also, find your voice to ask for what you want. Everybody has the right to tell you no or yes, but you always have the right to ask. Likewise, everybody has the right to ask you, and you have the right to say yes or no.

Without action upon an idea, there will be no manifestation, no results, and no reward.

Your own body is a manifestation of God, and if you honor your body everything will change for you. When you practice giving love to every part of your body, you plant seeds of love in your mind, and when they grow, you will love, honor, and respect your body immensely.

Repetition makes the master.

We must forgive those we feel have wronged us, not because they deserve to be forgiven, but because we love ourselves so much we don’t want to keep paying for the injustice.

You will know you have forgiven someone when you see them and you no longer have an emotional reaction. You will hear the name of the person and you will have no emotional reaction. When someone can touch what used to be a wound and it no longer hurts you, then you know you have truly forgiven.

How are we to become a warrior?

The warrior has awareness.

The warrior has control.

This is key!! Channeled energy...

The big difference between a warrior and a victim is that the victim represses, and the warrior refrains.

That is why warriors are impeccable. They have complete control over their own emotions and therefore over their own behavior.

Because the angel of death takes the past away in order to make it possible for life to continue. For every moment that is past, the angel of death keeps taking the part that is dead and we keep living in the present.

Love in action only produces happiness.