5 Lessons From The Book
- You are living a dream and you can wake up
- You are trapped by the the laws of society and your own belief system
- People are neither good nor bad. They will be good when they are happy and bad when they are sad or angry
- All the suffering is rooted in taking things personally and making assumptions
- We are controlled by our emotions. So you must learn to control your emotions first
The Four Agreements: Book Summary
Domestication and the dream of the planet earth
What you see and hear is nothing but a dream. You are dreaming with your brain awake at this moment. Your mind dreams 24 hours a day and the difference between a real dream and when the brain is awake is that there’s some material frame that makes us perceive things in a linear way.
The collective dream of all people living in a society and in the planet Earth is called the collective Dream. And it includes all of these societies’ rules, their beliefs, their laws, their religion, and different culture.
These rules are introduced in ourselves from the early beginning. These things are put in our minds through repetition. We have learned how to behave in society, how to believe, what to believe and what not to believe, what is acceptable and what is not acceptable, what is good and what is not good. Everything that we know is what we have learned through repetition.
We never had the opportunity to choose what to believe and what not to believe. We Did not even choose our names. We had no opportunity to choose our beliefs but agreed to information that was passed to us.
Our belief system is created by the people around us and the society we live in. The belief system is a book of law that rules and governs our minds. Whatever we have in our book, we believe it.
Our beliefs control our life. Anything that challenges what we believe is going to make us feel unsafe or uncomfortable. Even when the book of law that we have in our brain is wrong, it makes us feel unsafe or uncomfortable. We need a great deal of courage to challenge our beliefs.
95% or even more of the beliefs that we have stored in our brain are nothing but lies and we suffer because we believe in all of these lies.
Most of the time we are always looking for the truth. But there is no truth to find. Wherever we turn our head, there’s truth. All we see is the truth, but with all the agreements and the belief system that we hold in our heads, we have no eyes to see the truth.
We don’t see the truth because of the false belief that we have in our minds. We live in the middle of a fog that doesn’t let us see any further than our own knowledge.
The biggest fear men and women have is not the fear of death, but the fear or the risk to be alive and express what we really are. Of not being accepted or not being good enough for someone else. We are so scared that somebody else will notice that we are not what we pretend to be.
We have made so many agreements with ourselves that only make us suffer but also fail in life. We can break those agreements that come from fear and deplete our energy. Only when we change the agreements that we have or the belief system that we have our life will begin to transform.
Be Impeccable With Your Words
The first agreement is to be impeccable with yours. This sounds very simple, but it’s equally powerful. Word is a force and it is the power you have to express and communicate to think and thereby to create the events in your life. Being impeccable with your word is the correct use of your energy.
Most of the time we use words to cuss, to find fault in others, and to destroy others. But that’s not the correct use of energy. We misuse words in order to pull each other down and keep one another in a state of fear and doubt.
With the use of the right words, you can bring blessing in someone’s life or you can do black magic with wrong words. You have to decide what you want to do.
Gossip is one of the most prominent forms of black magic. It’s pure poison and it’s it has become the main form of communication in Human Society. People love the feeling of bringing someone down and viewing themselves raising in comparison to others.
When you are impeccable with your words, your mind will be no longer fertile for the words that come from black magic. The virus that people spread towards you won’t grow because you already have the antidote for it.
Don’t take things personally
Whatever happens around you, don’t take it personally. It’s not about you, it’s about the person who tells things. Even when someone insults you personally, it has nothing to do with you. When you take it personally, you take the poison that the other person tried to send to you.
The truth about people is that you cannot take anything they say personally, because even when they say you are really good or when they praise you, they’re not really praising you. They are just happy and expressing their emotions and feelings because the next day, the same person will see you or cuss you because he is unhappy or he’s in a good mood.
Don’t take criticism personally. Don’t take praise personally. You already know you are a wonderful person. You don’t need someone else to validate that you are wonderful.
Taking things personally will only make you suffer for nothing.
You can’t expect people to tell you the truth because they even lie to themselves. They lie because they are afraid. They are afraid that others will discover that they are not perfect.
All of the negative emotions that you have, your anger, your jealousy, your envy, all of them will disappear, and even your sadness will simply disappear if you don’t take things personally.
Don’t make assumptions
We have a tendency to make assumptions about everything. And the problem with making assumptions is that we think they are true and we even swear that they are real.
Whenever we are making assumptions, we are inviting problems.
All the suffering that you have to go through are you are going right now is rooted in making assumptions and taking things personally.
The thing about making assumptions is that we misinterpret everything and misunderstand everything. Confirmation bias is a real thing. We only see what we want to see and hear. What we want to hear.
We don’t perceive things as they are, rather we interpret reality on the basis of what we want to believe.
We make an agreement that everyone sees life the way we do. But that’s not true. Everyone views the world differently.
The day we stop making assumptions, we will communicate clearly free of any emotional poison.
Always do your best
Another innate character of humans is to compare themselves. But that’s the worst way to live. Comparison is the thief of joy.
The best way to judge yourself is to ask yourself this question, “Did you give your best?”
When you give your best to anything that you do you will be happy. You will enjoy life. And you will have more to give to the world.
When you always do your best, it is also easy to accept yourself. You act instead of thinking.
Action is the way to live life fully. And inaction is the way we deny life. Action is what makes the difference.
It’s not about driving and sitting for hours in the meditative pose. You have to stand up and be a human. And being human means to act on your intentions.
Free yourself
The real human nature is the nature of a child. He is not afraid of his past or his future. The normal human tendency is to enjoy life, to play, to explore, to be happy, and to love.
But as we grow old, we are governed by the book of laws. We are no longer free. Our belief system doesn’t allow us to be who we really are.
The real you is the little child that comes out of you. The freedom we are looking for is the freedom to express ourselves and be ourselves.
Most people are not even aware that we are not free. We are not free until our mind is controlled by belief systems set up by others.
The human brain is controlled by emotions, not the other way around. Therefore we must learn to control our emotions. It is when we lose control, we repress the emotions, not when we are in control.
New agreements are hard to form. But once you repeat the same actions over and over and over again, you will strengthen your new belief system. And these ideas will merely be your second nature.
