The Four Agreements is a book written by Don Miguel Ruiz. These four agreements are meant to be a simple guide to life. The four agreements per Mr. Ruiz are: Be Impeccable with your word; Don’t take anything personally; Don’t make assumptions; Always do your best.
These pointers are short, simple, direct, and easy to understand. This is a suggested approach to implementing them in life.
- Be impeccable with your word.
Being impeccable with our word is more than simply being truthful. Too often we hide behind the justification we are being brutally honest as an excuse to dump our egoic sewage on others. If we are honest, we never know with certainty what is true. Our interpretation of what is true is colored by our egoic drives.
To begin with, as long as we are viewing life as an individual identified as a particular body, we don’t know who or what we are. If we don’t know what we are, how can we know what is true about anything else? We must first know what we are and what it is that is judging truth before we can begin to experientially understand Truth.
When we stop to look at “What am I?” or “What is trying to be impeccable?,” we find our essence is silent, primordial awareness. This awareness is free of egoic, personal attachments and bias. Expressing as this boundless, nonlocalized awareness, life spontaneously expresses with loving impeccability. The only way to be impeccable with your word is to let go of the illusion of personhood. Then it is no longer “your” word, it is Life’s expression as Life.
Keep it simple. Notice the unchanging awareness witnessing the mind’s play of thought. We are the eternal, the unchanging. Drop identification to what is changing and be free. Impeccability is then the effortless, spontaneous flow of Mauna.
- Don’t take anything personally.
The only way to stop taking anything personally is to stop identifying as a person. We have lived most of our lives identifying as a person. It is time to stop and see if that identity is true. The one thing we all know is “I am.” It is then assumed, “I am a person experiencing awareness.” We would suggest we are awareness within which has arisen the belief “I am a person.” When we recognize our essence as undifferentiated awareness, there is no longer the belief in the thought “I am a person.” As undifferentiated awareness, there is no one to take anything personally.
- Don’t make assumptions.
The first assumption to let go of is “I am a person.” This is the foundation for all other assumptions. When this assumption is seen through, we live life as undifferentiated awareness free from the bondage of assumptions.
- Always do your best.
Living life free from the bondage of assumptions and false identity as a person allows Life to spontaneously express as universal intelligence. Doing “your” best is a natural state of being.
In the end, keep it simple. There is no need to focus on these agreements or other guides to life. Merely stop to examine “what am I?,” and recognize our eternal, divine essence. Live as primordial awareness. Live as Mauna and be free.
In Truth, Steve and Bec