Gooday busy Bees!!
It seems the overall theme of the last couple of years has been stressful on many for various reasons life might bring about on our doorstep both individually and collectively and these things take a toll on mental health no matter how great or small, these emotions can take a toll on our bodies and the way we deal with the circumstances around us. Seldom folks feel comfortable reaching out to others about their complications because it's human nature be embarrassed of our troubles even tho we all go thru difficult situations that make us doubt our own worth at one point or another in our lives. Professional help can become costly and not everyone can afford that.
Perhaps we lack the self awareness to recognize what is even triggering these negative emotions in the first place and we just carry on hoping they go away. Some resort to masking these emotions with substances that aggravate our state of mind potentially causing addiction issues from food, drug and alcohol, self harm or actually hurting the ones we love with our broken pieces. When we get an illness or break a bone, we go see the doctor and have it tended to, then the injury can be mended until we are made whole and functional again. Why as humans do we tend to ignore these injuries when they happen to our mind and soul? Where do we even go? Why do we feel helpless and lengthen the time we must suffer? An injury is an injury after all even if it's invisible.
Our minds is the most important tool we need to function along with our physical bodies, having a proper thought pattern and being able to identify the source of our anguish clearly is crucial to solving these challenges life sends our way. The only constant in life is that change is inevitable, ready or not it will come. The only thing we can control is ourselves and how prepared we are when we encounter a curve ball. The best way to hit a homerun is to be armed with the proper tools and mindset to accept these challenges and resolve them promptly. Knowledge is power and learning to understanding ourselves isn't always an easy task.
Luckily, we live in the information age and there are many avenues for us to be able to help ourselves without feeling ashamed and airing our troubles if we wish to keep them private for any reason. One of my favorites as the age old BOOK, the written word...what a powerful thing. With so many options out there, how do we even find the right fit for ourselves? Is there such thing as a one size fits all so we don't have to do all the guess work alone even tho we want to do it alone?
Yes there is. In my late teens I came across this book presented to me by my Soul Sista, BFF, roomate...She found it in an airport duty free shop for $5. To top it off, this author and sons have an entire series! Turns out much of my problem was "I was surrounded by assholes" and I was probably one too. Aren't we all tho? Yes we are and there isn't much we can do about it outside of our personal environment. We can't keep ourselves locked in our homes forever, there is some point where we have to face society and deal with their broken pieces, get hurt to no fault of our own where self mastery becomes an asset. Often times, it is our own self limiting beliefs and learned attachments that keep us trapped in these circumstances or people that aggravate/ trigger us. Is it truly the other people's faults or our own for accepting behaviors from others when perhaps we shouldn't.
Don Miguel Ruiz and his life mastery wisdom stems from ancestral Sacred Toltec knowledge passed down as family values from the ancient times, in other words, ancestral knowledge. His book, The Four Agreements teaches us to truly understand hurt people hurt people because they may not know any better, we must forgive them. Wow that stings a little doesn't it! No, being a doormat isn't required either. The Four Agreements teaches us to not take things personally when we have these unpleasant encounters with others along with forgiving ourselves for our own unsavory behaviors when we ourselves are hurt and how to master ourselves to recognize when we are unwillingly taking the pain of others knowingly or unknowingly as our own and when perhaps we should take personal ownership of the situation and removing ourselves from what we deem harm's way.
It teaches us to recognize that we can't control anything but ourselves and it is THE ONLY control we should seek, anything more generally leads to personal grief and mental exhaustion. We can hardly save ourselves, let alone everyone around us even if it is those we love. He refers as each individual as the dreamer, we all dream our reality based on our perception. He also compares the lack of self awareness of others as being in a fog therefor perhaps can't see things clearly with relating it simply as being at a party.
Those who have been there a while are more drunk than the others, therefore judgment being more clouded compared to the new arrival that didn't begin to drink yet, the two cannot be on the same thinking field because the state of mind isn't even comparable yet we must share the same space aka the same collective dream. Many of our self- limiting behaviors are learned from our environment or shared collective dream. In other words, learned family patterns, religious beliefs, our friends, I could go on as to how many ways we can learn detrimental behaviors or thought patterns that were never our own to begin with and so many carry on life without even questioning it regardless as to how it may make us feel individually that he refers to as Agreements.
He breaks them down into 4 main categories or agreements with the first:
Be impeccable with your word. He refers to words being seeds we plant with each having the potential to grow, good or bad. What kind of seeds are you sowing towards yourself? Towards others? The seeds you plant will dictate what grows in your garden. Will it be flowers or will it be weeds? With our words, we create the universe collectively for ourselves and others even if we lack the awareness to recognize such notion.
Don't take anything personally. Wow that one can be a doozy and find the most challenging to live by to this day. It is human nature to take things personally. We always want to improve, be accepted by our peers. Our "self-ish" nature as humans is a double edge sword that we often cut ourselves with. If someone is offended by our behavior, we tend to blame ourselves. How de we know that perhaps it's the other dreamer's perception, maybe they have been at the party for a long time and they are "clouded" aka "drunk"?
Every one of us gets a bad day and might get snippy with an innocent person at a grocery store, at work, even towards our own loved ones. We are all human, all we can do is try our hardest but none of us are perfect and it is unreasonable to expect such from ourselves or others, hence forgiveness or turning the other cheek even if a valid apology is never given. The truest way to learn to give ourselves closure rather than looking for it in others. You don't have to drink other people's poison even if it is served to you.
Don't make assumptions. That's another hard one, none of us are the Oracle of Delphi, we should probably leave the guess work there. We see things from our own perspective based on our own experiences or state of mind at the current time but the person next to us may not have intended it in the way we receive it. We tend to take things personally and our minds overthink scenarios that often doesn't even apply causing undo hardships on ourselves. Learning to be impeccable with our word, voicing our concerns in a pure hearted manner can often get these hypothetical scenarios resolved much faster than ruminating on it all night and loosing sleep over it as we gain perspective outside of our own on the situation.
We often assume our loved ones know us so well that they know what we need at anytime. Our loved ones do not live inside our heads, learning to communicate our needs rather than assuming others know, a better way of ensuring these needs are met before it becomes a bigger problem than it needs to be.
Always do your best. We are all human, our best on Monday will be different than our best on Friday and that's ok. As long as we do our best, we can forgive ourselves when we fall a little short of our goals or expectations, we learn as we live and experience various scenarios, none of us are experts at "life" to be fair most of us make it up as we go along. Expecting too much of ourselves can be more detrimental than helpful. We don't expect our loved ones to be perfect, just that they do our best just like they expect of us. We are all imperfectly perfect as long as we do our best. We are all an extension of each other, how we treat ourselves is how we treat others and vice versa.
In his book he compares it to meditating for one hour or meditating for 8 hours. You probably just wasted 7 hours of your time trying too hard yet accomplishing the same due to lack of focus or mental exhaustion. We have nothing to prove to anyone, life isn't a competition and we are all at different stages of the race equipped with different tools. Your best will be different than my best.
The book is a fairly quick read with many examples provided for easy understanding of the principles behind the mastery with 138 pages of large enough font. It is available in many stores and on Amazon, alone or in a box set along with other books from the series that I will present in a part 2 and potentially part 3 of this post. I wanted to spend more time to explain my perception of his sacred wisdom since it is the root for understanding the rest of the series. His two sons continue to carry on the Toltec teachings expanding their own perspective in an equally powerful way, on the same quest to self-mastery and providing the world with what once was heavily guarded shamanistic/spiritual secrets.
For the last 20 years, it's been my go to book. I have read it probably 100 times because we tend to forget and need reminders. To be honest, I probably understand it differently every time I read it too I give this book away to those seeking guidance, right after, I go buy myself another copy. I can't even imagine life without this book, even if it's the only one of the series you ever read, it is life changing. I highly recommend anyone to have this book in their personal library.
The more ownership we take over our own lives, the less control we need to exert because our perspective becomes shaped with a better understanding of ourselves and the world around us as we all Dream together in unison rather then each individual dreams colliding together, understanding as we learn to go with the flow into shaping our surroundings in a healthy way. Learning to mend our own broken spirit not only creates a better version of ourselves but in others as well since we all learn from observed behaviors and what we experience. Be the change you want to see and it all begins with the proper knowledge.
All images taken by me with Nikon Z6 (except the one of me at the end obviously) 2 abstracts are from a Van Gogh immersive exhibit that came around Edmonton a few years back.
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