“When we make judgements we’re inevitably acting on limited knowledge, isn’t it best to ask if we seek to understand, or simply let them be?”

 

This, I hope, will be a powerful month for all of us in our yoga practice.  We are going to take a break from the 8 limbs of yoga and study the Toltec teaching by Don Miguel Ruiz - The Four Agreements.  We are studying this in the cleanse this month and I thought it would be great to follow along with all of you as well.  We will study 1 Agreement a week.

 

First a quick background into the 4 agreements.

During our early life we began making what Miguel labels “agreements”.  Our parents rewarded us when we did what they wanted and they punished us when we didn’t. We also learned behaviors and habits in school, church, and from other adults and children on the playground.  The impact of other people’s opinions and reactions to us became a very strong force in the habits we created. In this process we created agreements in our mind of who we should be, what we shouldn’t be, who we were, and who we were not. Over time we learned to live our life based on the agreements in our own mind. We learned to live according to the agreements that came from the opinion of others.

 

Whatever goes against these agreements or laws we made for ourselves as to how we should live will make you feel a funny sensation in your solar plexus and its called fear. (shenpa - is what Pema Chodren calls this sensation),

Everything that is in the “book of law” has to be true, anything that challenges what you believe is going to make you feel unsafe. Even if the book of law is wrong, it makes you feel safe.

This i why we need a great deal of courage to challenge our own beliefs.  Because even if we know we didn’t choose all of these beliefs, it is also true that we agreed to all of them.  The agreement is so strong that even if we understand the concept of it not being true, we feel the blame, guilt and shame that occurs if we go against the rules.

The judge inside us bases everything on these rules and the victim suffers the guilt and punishment.

**Ninety-five percent of the beliefs we have stored in our minds are nothing but lies, and we suffer because we believe all these lies.

 

Your whole mind is a fog which the Toltecs call a mitote - your mind is a dream where a thousand people are talking at the same time, and nobody understands each other and with this mitote, you can’t see who you really are.

With all of this we form an image of what perfection is in order to try to be good enough.  Then not being perfect, we reject ourselves.   Perfection is why we don’t accept ourselves the way we are, and why we don’t accept others the way they are.

From all of this we make agreements with ourselves.  In these agreements we tell ourselves who we are, what we feel, what we believe, and how to behave.  The result is your personality.

 

THERE are 4 very powerful agreements that will help you break those agreements that come from fear and deplete your energy.

This is another spiritual solution for us to use for self study and transformation to support our practice.

*****Don Miguel refers to people who decide to adopt the Four Agreements and create love and happiness in their life as Spiritual Warriors. It is Spiritual because it is about living your Life. It is also referred to as a war because you are challenging the old fear based beliefs in your mind.

 

This week we will work with the 1st agreement:

 

1.BE IMPECCABLE (from latin means without sin) WITH YOUR WORD -

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.

 

Your word is the power that you have to create.  Your word is the gift that comes directly from God.  It is through your word that you manifest everything.  What you dream, what you feel, and what you really are, will all be manifested through the word.  Your word can create the most beautiful dream, or your word can destroy everything around you.

Your word can set you free or it can enslave you.

 

The human mind is like a fertile ground where seeds are continually being planted. The seeds are opinions, ideas, and concepts.

 

Being impeccable with your word means to use our energy in the direction of truth and love for ourselves.  With that intention, the truth will manifest through you and clean all the emotional poison that exists within you.  To release the jealously, envy, hate, blame, guilt….

The truth is the most important part of being impeccable with your word.

 

So the problem is we use our word with ourselves in a negative way too often - I look ugly, Im getting old, Im stupid, I’m not flexible, I can’t do yoga (be honest how many of you have said that, lol).  We use our words against ourselves. When you have awareness and begin to be impeccable with your word you will see changes in the way you deal with yourself and then how you deal with others.  We can use this agreement to clean our mind of emotional baggage.

You can measure the impeccability of your word by your level of self-love.  How much you love yourself and how you feel about yourself are directly proportionate to the quality and integrity of your word.

This is the 1st agreement that you should make if you want to be happy, joyous and free!  Start with yourself and tell yourself how wonderful you are, use the word to break all the teeny, tiny agreements that make you suffer.  Without intending to, my class is a chance for us to use this agreement with my positive affirmative names for the poses and the dharma weaved through he practice.

 

What’s an example? I am going to say I have an old groove, an agreement, that I am not worthy.  This plays out in a multitude of ways.  Let’s go with building our dream home recently.  That goes against my agreement and so the mitote committee in my head gets very loud…..maybe we shouldn’t have put in so many windows and doors, we should have made it smaller, I would feel more comfortable if I was struggling in some way here instead of having literally every detail exactly as I want it.  Fear, fear, fear is the committee.  My So Hum (read meditation below) is I am not worthy of this goodness, something bad is going to happen, someone compliments us and I downplay it, I’m sure the other shoe will drop because thats what I deserve - you get the idea.  So now being impeccable with my word I would claim:  I love my house! We have an amazing house and have worked hard to get it.  I am worthy of this goodness.  We are sooo blessed to be in this amazing town and amazing house!!! Much better energy!  Try it yourself!

 

Now our intention this month will help us as we study - Today I choose to Judge nothing that occurs - this will be helpful in all 4 agreements.  As you start thinking about them you may start to beat yourself up for ways you are behaving.  This is not the point! The point is to have non judgmental awareness of yourself, your life and those around you so you can learn and move forward.

 

The meditation this month is:

 

So Hum, meaning, I am that.  We will use this meditation to move from restriction to expansion.  Each time we meditate I will ask you 4 soul questions which will also help you with the study of each agreement, without judgment!

 

Here are the 4 Soul questions:

1.who am I? Make a shift to the real I - yourself and how you connect with all of existence. Ask and listen.

2.what do I want? Physical, material, spiritual. Ask and listen.

3.what is my purpose in life? How can I use my unique gifts and talents to serve myself and others? Ask and Listen.

4.What am I grateful for? This connects us to our true abundance! Ask and listen.

Its ok if no answers come to these questions, just sit in the meditation.

 

The So hum meditation will help us to focus, we can get a clearer image of our surroundings, and with our increasing levels of concentration, it helps us to remember more, and with greater clarity. It helps us to discover our inner self, and in doing so, we can go about our daily chores and practices with vividness and with these new healthier agreements.

This is a lot of information! I am setting us up for the month and the cleanse, re read, re listen a few times!