Growing up doesn’t mean stop exploring, and taking a defensive stance. It’s needless to say that often things flow in a predictable direction. Finally, you need to practice awareness until you master awareness. When you master awareness as a habit, you always see life the way it is, not the way you want to see it. Once we reach a state of adulthood, a person begins to lose that sense of innocence, meanwhile an opinion is formed followed by the development of a habit for making snap judgments. The Voice of Knowledge (2004) [ edit ] Once I interpret, qualify, or judge what I perceive, it is no longer real; it is a virtual world. This is what the Toltec call dreaming. With awareness, we recover the control of our story. That is the good news. If we don't like our story, we are the authors; we can change it.

According to the authors, these agreements speak to the hearts of all people—everyone who’s learned a language, participated in a culture, and grown up around other people. They’re a series of intuitively common-sense principles we are all aware of, but which few of us actually practice. Those who have mastered the five agreements, the authors say, completely accept themselves as they are, and accept everyone else as they are, and the result is eternal happiness.

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We ended up being taught both at school and home – how to behave like adults. In reality, they or in some case “we” are the ones who misbehave. In the guide, we’ll often refer to the authors, don Miguel Ruiz and don Jose Ruiz, as “the naguals.” Naguals, sometimes referred to as dreamers, masters, or scholars, act as a conduit between the spirit and the world, and pass on the teachings of the Toltec—whom the Ruizes say were the intellectual and cultural predecessors of the Aztec. To them, a Toltec is an artist of the spirit: a master storyteller who paints his own reality. In The Four Agreements, don Miguel Ruiz revealed how the process of our education, or “domestication,” can make us forget the wisdom we were born with. Throughout our lives, we make many agreements that go against ourselves and create needless suffering. The Four Agreements help us to break these self-limiting agreements and replace them with agreements that bring us personal freedom, happiness, and love.

You don't need internal dialogue; you can know without thinking. The value of cultivating a silent mind has been known for thousands of years. In India, people use meditation and the chanting of mantras to stop the internal dialogue. To have peace in your head is incredible. The moment the noise stops, you notice the silence and feel the relief, "Ahhh..." When the voice in your head finally stops talking, it feels something like that. I call it inner peace. The tools shared by don Miguel are based on common sense and shared with such simplicity, that the universal message underlying his teaching is recognized by many. don Miguel's message is simple, practical and when implemented, even incrementally, changes lives. The Fifth Agreement advises us to search for our own truth, find out who we really are, and figure out what's really important. This process comes down to understanding that we've constructed the world and the expectations we have for ourselves. We've constructed beauty, success, achievement, intelligence, and so on. According to the authors, even if words aren’t universal and their meanings are variable, they do have a powerful effect on us. The words we use to describe ourselves, our environment, and the people around us set the tone of our perceived world. In short, the language we use dictates our beliefs.If you practice doing your best, very soon it becomes a habit. When doing your best becomes a habit, everything is a set up for you to always be happy. Every artist distorts the truth, but you don’t need to judge what somebody says, or call that person a liar. All of us tell lies in one way or another, and it’s not because we want to lie. It’s because of what we believe; it’s because of the symbols we learned, and the way we are applying all of those symbols. Once you are aware of this, the fifth agreement makes a lot of sense, and it can make a very big difference in your life. The naguals say that the best stage of your life begins as soon as you completely stop judging. When you can allow yourself and others to simply exist, you lose the need to find yourself, to try to be someone else, or to “fix” yourself. Your personal story no longer describes a struggle against yourself, others, or the world—instead, it becomes a record of your existence, of the message you carry from the universe, to the universe. In short, because you’re no longer actively making yourself unhappy, you regain the childish freedom of being what you are without burden, expectation, or demand.