The Four Agreements, A Toltec Wisdom Book by Don Miguel Ruiz is likely going to be an all-time classic. I can’t tell you how many times I have read this book and facilitated groups in reading it over the years. My attention was drawn this week to the author’s statement that “As children we didn’t have the opportunity to choose our beliefs, but we agreed with the information that was passed to us from the dream of the planet via other human beings.”
That is true for all of us! Now as adults we have the opportunity to uncover or discover what beliefs we agreed to accept. We get to look objectively at what beliefs we “bought into” that have not served us well. We can then change them!
A client told me the other day that she was realizing that she had bought into the idea that she would never be an organized person. Truly, she said, to look at her affairs, nothing was very well organized! But the huge awareness was that this disorganized life was not how she really was, not how she felt comfortable being and not how she wanted to live. Rather she had bought the “tape”, so to speak, that said she was a disorganized person, and she was living-out that “program”.
Another person recently told me that the “life tape” he bought said that there was no time to play, and he had no right to play until ALL his work was complete. He is now 69 years old and reflected to me how he remembers that whether at school or at home, recess or going out to play just rarely ever happened because “his work was not done.” Both teachers and parents were adamant that recess and playing outdoors with friends were rewards for finished work, not part of a good life.
Don Miguel Ruiz makes it clear in his book that as children we truly agree with so many false ideas and evaluations; as children we just believe what we are told. In some way we were jailed by a thought, and we have kept ourselves there, long after those adults are no longer a part of our lives. We agreed that they are the adults; they know. We are children and we don’t know! From that we may have agreed that we can’t trust ourselves. We must go to the authority: Priest, parent, minister, teacher, etc. We became our own jailers with the false belief.
Well, today can be a new day in which you too can discover a “tape” to which you agreed and now know that it was not true. Yet, you see that it has ruled your life in a way that has not been productive or positive. I invite you to give this concept of a childhood agreement serious consideration. To what did you agree about yourself, about life? How can you re-record a new belief that serves you in a better way? What is the real Truth? You know what will happen when you find that Truth and decide to live from that? You will set yourself free from that jail. My personal experience of making an agreement at age 6 or 7 has been redefined with Truth and I am free. I invite you into that same freedom! It is so refreshing!
In Freedom,
Barbara Hribar
P.S. I’ll bet you have that book! Pick it up again!