The Four Agreements

"Dreaming is the main function of the mind, and the mind dreams twenty-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 perceive things in a linear way. When we go to sleep we do not have the frame, and the dream has the tendency to change constantly."

The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom by Don Miguel Ruiz fascinated me. It lays out the fundamental world view of the Toltec (intellectual/spiritual leaders in pre-Conquest South/Central America) as experienced by a modern inheritor of that tradition, and how Don Miguel believes that world view can help and heal all people. An "agreement" is a belief or choice we make about how we are going to live. The four agreements are healthy beliefs and choices: be impeccable with your word, don't take anything personally, don't make assumptions, and always do your best.

This book felt like a window into a spiritual tradition which is very different from (in some ways) but very compatible with (in other ways) my own. There were a few things that came up for me in reading it: one was the emphasis on control - I believe control is not desirable in most of life because it isn't truly possible. Ruiz posits control as a desired way of being in the world. Another was that while he talks a lot about the agreements we make within ourselves, and how they construct the way the whole world works, he doesn't talk about the agreements we make explicitly or implicitly with each other. I think those are very important, too. Finally, although I agree with some of what he says about how children experience agreements and become party to them, I don't agree with all of it. His veiwpoint falls into the "children are born innocent and are corrupted (forcibly) by the evil world" camp, and I'm just not sure that's a true view of reality. I think children are born with their own complex and not "innocent" spirits, and shape their families and communities as they shape the children.

But overall I did a lot of saying "right on" in my head while reading this book.