The Five Agreements (Toltec Wisdom)

The Five Agreements:

 1. BE IMPECCABLE WITH YOUR WORD Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

2. DON’T TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won’t be the victim of needless suffering.

3. DON’T MAKE ASSUMPTIONS Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

4. ALWAYS DO YOUR BEST Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are tired as opposed to well rested. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.

5. BE SKEPTICAL, BUT LEARN TO LISTEN Don’t believe yourself or anybody else. Use the power of doubt to question everything you hear: Is it really the truth? Listen to the intent behind the words, and you will understand the real message.

The Four Agreements slowly helps you to recover your authentic self, and the real you starts to awaken. With The Fifth Agreement comes the complete acceptance of yourself just the way you are, and the complete acceptance of everybody else just the way they are. The reward is your eternal happiness. The Fifth Agreement is made with words, of course, but its meaning and intent is beyond the words. The Fifth Agreement is ultimately about seeing your whole reality with the eyes of truth, without words. 

As Don Miguel says, “By practicing the Five Agreements, what you are really doing is respecting everything in creation. You are respecting your dream; you are respecting everybody else’s dream. If you use these tools, your effort is really for everyone, because your joy, your happiness, your peace, and your heaven are contagious. When you are happy, the people around you are happy too, and it inspires them to change their own world.”

The above was quoted from: http://in2deep.wordpress.com/2009/11/25/the-fifth-agreement/




About a year ago, a wise woman strongly suggested that I read The Fifth Agreement. However since I hadn’t read The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz, I started off with this book first. Once completed, and it was a fairly quick and easy read, I started venturing in to its sequel The Fifth Agreement by Don Miguel Ruiz and his son Don Jose Ruiz. Given that the original book was still fresh in my mind (having just finished reading it), I was able to scan-read ¾ of the book in order jump right in to the newer stuff – the fifth agreement teachings!

The Fifth Agreement which is “Be Skeptical, But Learn to Listen” brings us deeper, to another level of understanding, in our ‘dream’ world.

A quote from the book reads:

“When the truth sets you free, the symbols you learned are no longer ruling your world. Then it’s not about being right or wrong, or good or bad. It’s not about being a winner or loser. It’s not about being young or old, beautiful or ugly. All that is over. It was nothing but symbols.”

How much more in-depth can you get than that?

Our entire world, everything we know, we know because of how we perceive it; and how we perceive it - roots to how we were ‘domesticated’.

The words we use originated from somewhere, from someone. That someone, a human decided to call the warm puffy thing that just came out of the oven: bread. And this word “bread” - only captures its meaning in the language it’s made to be shared in. If I was to go to China, and say “bread”, the word only has meaning to me; so it’s not real. If I was to find bread and point to it, this is real – it’s there (the bread), however the words (symbols) used to identify things, aren’t. They’re created by people for agreement purposes.

Another meaning for symbols comes into play when describing things – let’s say a dandelion. If I was to describe the dandelion, the words that I use to associate to this object are rooted to my history and my perception of dandelions. I may think/believe they’re beautiful wild flowers, and that’s it. Meanwhile, someone else might not reference dandelions as objects of nature, but make note that dandelions have purposeful meaning in the medical field.

Which brings me to – judgement. Judgement can be a viewpoint perceived from what’s been ‘recorded’ in your mind… which brings forth the fifth agreement:

BE SKEPTICAL, BUT LEARN TO LISTEN Don’t believe yourself or anybody else. Use the power of doubt to question everything you hear: Is it really the truth? Listen to the intent behind the words, and you will understand the real message.

Is what’s in my mind truth? Is what I believe about something actually correct? Why do I think this way, why do I like (or dislike) something? …and is what I ‘perceive’ as ‘being right’ actually ‘right’? Aha, this then becomes the ‘real’ question… What is the truth?

The truth is the truth and there isn’t any need to reveal it because it will always be there, it’s the truth, thus there’s nothing to uncover. What’s not ‘truth’ is the fog over our eyes veiling our ‘dreams’; convincing us to conform to other people's interpretation of their truth.

Your truth, and my truth – may very well be the same, or maybe not; either way who’s to say we’re not both right? We both originate from the same source, our core ‘structure’ is the same – what is different is our ‘mind-recordings’, our beliefs.

Allowing yourself to listen and not believe, especially not believe yourself (your mind-chatter) – you come to learn to listen to meaning, to the words behind the words: The message.

This does indeed lead you to a talk-less / listen-more dream-style. Sometimes allowing our mind-chatter to come to life with words, influences more mind-chatter to be created; and this is when we need to revert back to agreement #1:

BE IMPECCABLE WITH YOUR WORD Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

We’re all one. Our core energies and mind-intentions are intertwined. Which is why/how we’re here right now. Our combined efforts bring together awareness and openness – which alone can be done, and is being done – however togetherness allows us quicker truth awareness.

Change your world, and the world around you changes.

The truth doesn’t need to be forced upon anyone, people will get it when they need it, and they’ll get what they need when it’s needed. …because if we recall: The truth is the truth and there isn’t any need to reveal it.

When the student is ready, the teacher appears.

Opening your awareness and allowing yourself to view things outside the norm is living the fifth agreement. Stop the mind chatter, don’t believe what you believe, and question everything around you -- so that you can get the real message / meaning being presented to you.

On that note, how are you messaging? What kind of messenger are you?

View an excerpts of the book The Fifth Agreement here:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Fifth-Agreement-Practical-Self-Mastery/dp/1878424688#reader_B00352B41E

http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/the_fifth_agreement_book_excerpt

Video from HayHouse: