Why I Love The Four Agreements by Miguel Ruiz

Last week I wrote about mindfulness and how we can use it to stay focused on what is actually happening, without inserting our past-based judgments and interpretations into our experiences as we do when we are on automatic pilot.  Mindfulness empowers us to make more appropriate and productive choices because we are reacting to what is actually occurring, as opposed to reacting automatically in a “knee-jerk” way with the same programmed responses we have reacted with in the past.

The Four Agreements                             

Author Don Miguel Ruiz lays out a simple formula for staying on the path of mindfulness in his book The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom (A Toltec Wisdom Book).  His four agreements are an effective guideline for mindful thinking. They are:

1.Be impeccable with your word.

2.Don’t take anything personally.

3.Don’t make assumptions.

4.Always do your best.

Ruiz ties the first agreement, being “impeccable with your word” (i.e., using words “in the direction of truth and love”), to having integrity when you speak. But all four agreements underline the importance of living authentically and honoring yourself by respecting your own integrity as well as the integrity of others.

The Ten Commandments

Reflecting on the four agreements, I found myself thinking about the Ten Commandments, the Judeo-Christian world’s gold standard for living with integrity. The Ten Commandments, as translated in the King James Version of the Old Testament, are:

1.Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

2.Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in the heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth…

3.Thou shalt not take the name of the lord in vain…

4.Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy…

5.Honor thy father and thy mother…

6.Thou shalt not kill.

7.Thou shalt not commit adultery.

8.Thou shalt not steal.

9.Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.

10.Thou shalt not covet.

Thou Shalt Not Steal

In the bestselling novel The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, the author makes the point that all of the Commandments really distill down to one Commandment: “Do not steal.”

The first four Commandments tell us not to steal from God what is due to God; the other Commandments tell us not to steal from human beings what is theirs: do not steal the honor due to our parents for bearing and raising us; do not steal the life of another; do not steal the fidelity due to our partners; do not steal the possessions of others; do not steal the reputation of others untruthfully; do not steal with desirous thoughts the house, spouse, employee, possession, or anything else that is our neighbor’s.

Mindfulness Is About Not Stealing, Too

Ruiz’s four agreements help us learn how to not steal from ourselves. Being impeccable with our word, not taking anything personally, and not making assumptions all equate to not stealing the truth by letting our fear of abandonment lead us to inaccurate conclusions by misinterpreting other people’s words or actions. As Ruiz puts it, not making assumptions helps us “avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama.” Always doing our best means not stealing our own true power and potential. When we do our best, we are doing all we can to accomplish our goals and benefit the lives of others, and, as Ruiz points out, this helps us avoid making ourselves susceptible to judging ourselves for doing less than our best.

Both the Ten Commandments and The Four Agreements guide us to integrity. Being mindful keeps us on the correct path. For me, being mindful is about integrity: the integrity of being fully in the moment, in the “here and now,” of bringing our best self to every situation. The more we do this, the more we contribute to creating a richer, happier life for ourselves and the more we are contributing to THE UNIVERSE.