Common Sense Wisdom Based in the Four Agreements
A spiritual warrior’s life is faithful journey through two worlds. With one arm, he reaches out. With complete abandon he grasps hold of intent which hurls him through unknown worlds of his fears, to exploding fields of light, and a completely irrational, and unreasonable, experience of unconditional love.
With the other hand, he strains to touch the earth and walk a path of clear and impeccable actions in a material world of full of nonsense.
The “mitote” (me-toe-tay) as described in The Four Agreements, refers to the cacophony of voices in your head. They are all talking but none of them seem to listen.
The mitote is driven by all those false beliefs, self importance, fears, layers of denial and justifications. As you become aware the mitote can appear to be an endless stream of useless chatter talking over itself. Try to turn it off in the beginning and you get a lesson in humility. As you learn to observe it with neutrality, which is a critical step in dissolving the mitote, you find that it often tricks you by pulling your attention into the conversation.
Yes,,, it is a matrix of illusions. But you can keep it all straight when you are aware that the truth is simple, so simple that it doesn’t need words.
We were socialized to be anti-social.
Don’t talk to Strangers… instead fear strangers.
It’s important to be right… that means that you are probably going to alienate someone by pointing out how the are wrong.
You have to earn respect.
Happiness and feeling good comes with accomplishment. Therefore it is not intrinsic to what and who you are. Hold off feeling good about your self.
Lock your doors. Be afraid.
If you do something wrong you deserve to be punished. Not forgiven.
We learned to live by other people’s rules of punishment and reward. When we grow up we eventually discover that living by other people’s rules doesn’t work for us anymore.
Until we understand our socialization, what don Miguel Ruiz in The Four Agreements calls Domestication, we won’t be able to change it. The key to change is an inventory of your beliefs.
Hi Gary, There has been a lot of speculation on the doomsday theory of 2012 that many say was prophesized by the Mayans and other ancient cultures. Seeing as you would know more about Mesoamerican civilizations I was wondering if you can offer some insight on this theory or the significance of 2012 on the Mayan Calendar. Thanks, Adam.
The cycle of the Mayan Calendar and the 2012 Apocalypse. What does it mean?
The end of one of the cycles for the Mayan calendar is in 2012. It was customary in the ancient Mesoamerican tradition to periodically let go of all the old traditions, beliefs, and myths, of the past at the end of each cycle. Collectively as a culture they dropped all their baggage. They took a careful look at everything in their culture to determine what worked the best and what didn’t work. With scrutiny and skepticism they tossed outdated theories, methodologies, customs and practices and adopted a new way of life.
In this way their entire society took a leap forward in culture, science, architecture, agriculture, medicine, and spirituality. Most civilizations creep along in growth, attempting to keep the old structures but making changes to them. The result is out dated systems, bureaucracy, red tape, and superstition with changes built on top of them.
We often build systems to last but not with the flexibility to change and adapt with the circumstances, or new discoveries. The wise men and women of ancient time understood that everything changes. They understood that to evolve their society they would have to change their systems also.
Imagine doing that today. Imagine a periodic overhaul of the legal system, education system, environmental policy, health care, and energy policy. Imagine taking the best of what we know about what works in these areas and applying it 100%. Most importantly this means dropping what doesn’t work well without any resistance from the old paradigms. This is what they did. They were masters of detachment and it allowed them to make giant leaps forward in their society.
To outsiders it would appear as the end of the world. It would appear to be the end of the world of beliefs that people operated by. It would mean dramatic change by letting go of all the beliefs, ideology, habits, and customs that you were accustomed and attached to. Your world and your life would change dramatically.
When people describe Mayan prophecy of 2012 and refer to an apocalypse I have to wonder what the fears in their mind are projecting. In letting go of the world of habits that we are familiar with it is uncomfortable. We get comfortable with the familiar, even if it involves inefficiencies, hardship, and suffering. But dramatic changes in your world doesn’t mean that it has to be bad.
What if you did this same process in your personal life? Would the end of your virtual world of beliefs and emotions of suffering be okay with you? Would the end of what doesn’t work about your relationships, career, attitudes, internal dialog of thoughts, and unhappy emotions be a challenging shift? Certainly it would but the Mayans and Toltecs were not afraid of change. They knew they would adopt the best of what worked in these areas and continue on.
One of the difficulties of letting go of our old world of beliefs is that it is very difficult to imagine life with out them. In fact, in many ways it is impossible. While we are enmeshed in old paradigms we are unable to see how our new life will work. The wise men and women of ancient Mexico knew this, and so they didn’t even try. They consciously challenged and overcame their fears that would have them cling to habits of the past. They practiced letting go without knowing exactly what their future would be. It was an act of faith. It was a supreme act of detachment that ensured their freedom from fear and emotional suffering caused by attachments to their past.
In this approach to change we do not know what the coming world will be. We could even say that it does not exist because it hasn’t been created yet. With this perspective we more completely dissolve the past and live in the moment. We sidestep the mind’s tendency to project beliefs from the past into the our mental future. By saying that the world will end as we know it, we free our self from these projections of the mind and the limiting paradigms they contain. This gives us greater freedom to create with more choices in our new life.
To help accomplish this supreme act of detachment the Mayans and Toltecs even structured their language to describe it as the end of the world. They refrained from talking about or even imagining that another world would exist… until they built it for real. This is one of the artful processes of their language and spiritual practices that helped them be present and live in the moment.
The truth is that we have an opportunity to do this kind of change ritual everyday. Each night we lay down to sleep and let go. However, most people live the next day in just about the exact same patterns as previous days. How many patterns of emotions, thoughts, and relationship drama, do you live out today that you have done before? The Mayans, Toltecs, and other traditions set times and created practices to consciously make these changes so they did not fall asleep in old habits like these.
The prophecy of the Mayan calendar that the world will end in 2012 is a metaphor. However if your mind is fertile ground for fear, you will use the idea to create fearful stories and beliefs. To be aware of how your mind generates fear with stories of the end of the world is an opportunity to detach from them. And you don’t have to wait until 2012 to do so.
The audio program in Self Mastery provides a series of exercises to help you identify and change old patterns of behaviors, emotions, and beliefs.
There’s a tube down his throat to help him breathe. The tube comes out of his neck and his breath bypasses his mouth. They call it a trachea. The doctors had to do it. The infection had gotten so bad that his airway had almost swollen closed. The previous set of doctors had dismissed the periodic coughing episodes as unimportant. Now it was close to closing off his breathing. The coughing had gotten worse and difficulty breathing couldn’t be dismissed anymore.
Phlegm builds up in his throat and trachea tube every hour or two. It starts gurgling in his throat. His body convulses in a coughing gag reflex effort to clear his airway.
We tell the nurse who calls the respiratory therapist. The respiratory therapist puts a tube deep down his trachea and sucks out the phlegm. She puts it down so far that it touches is internals. It makes him heave a cough that lifts his whole upper body. It looks like torture. Not being able to breath normally. Not even being able to clear one’s own throat. Not being able to help him do something so simple that we all do so naturally all the time. So easy to take your breath for granted when it comes so easily most of the time.
With the trachea tube in his throat bypassing his vocal cords he can’t talk. He tries to write some words but that is difficult. The farm equipment accident injured his left hand years ago. That coupled with years of arthritis makes small hand manipulations difficult and his letters sloppy. The morphine he’s on for the pain tends to make his mind fuzzy so he misspells words. With sloppy writing and fuzzy spelling it is difficult to understand what he’s trying to write. He’s beyond frustrated that he can’t tell us the simplest things that he wants… needs. No way to clearly tell us what would make him more comfortable.
I can’t make him breathe easier. I can’t make his fear go away that is a reflex from choking and gagging while the phlegm blocks his throat. I can’t clear his throat. I can’t make the infection in his throat go away that started this cascading of events and discomforts. I can’t go back in time and change what transpired to have my dad end up in this hospital bed.
I’m not powerless and I don’t feel victimized. There are simply things that I can do, and others that I don’t have power over. I’m not frustrated or angry. I’m just aware that I don’t control the bodily functions, immune system, or emotions, of another human being.
I think knowing what you can’t change, and accepting it falls into the category of humility. It’s not a joy in itself. However it is far more peaceful than fighting what you can not change. Life is a big place and respecting the forces of it is part of being impeccable. Death is one of those forces on the human body to respect. Doing so can teach you a lot about savoring the moments of your life. Little moments like breathing, or being able to speak and ask for what you want.
I don’t think those folks who proclaim, “If you can dream it, you can achieve it,” ever sat with their dad through the challenges of old age and a body with ailing health.
Humility isn’t about following the overly optimistic positive side of your personality to think you can create and change anything in life. Nor is it about falling into the negative side of self importance and feeling victimized about life either. Humility has to do with transcending both sides of self importance all together: the aspect that says you are helpless, and the aspect that says you can accomplish anything you can dream. There is a middle way.
In the west our mind is so apt to put things into categories of being a winner or a loser,,, a success or a failure. These are the dual images of self importance to avoid. When you practice humility, you are no longer trapped by either of those limiting roles or labels.
When is something perfect?
When you don’t judge it to be imperfect anymore.
When will you be perfect?
When you don’t judge your self anymore.
Money and the comforts it can purchase can’t protect you from fear. A big house, in a gated community can’t protect your mind from thoughts, self judgments, and emotions.
A private plane doesn’t protect you from the fear of flying. A life insurance policy for $10,000,000 doesn’t insulate you from the fear of death, ill health, or the fear of losing a loved one.
No amount of money can protect you from an untamed mind that can take your emotions into a downward spiral of suffering.
If money buys happiness then Howard Hughes would have been one of the happiest people in the world. As it turns out his money didn’t protect him from his thoughts, beliefs, and fears.
The reason part of the mind looks for simple rules to describe the nature of emotions like happiness. What people find difficult to accept is that one exception like Howard Hughes breaks the rules. Money doesn’t by happiness. It’s just one factor of how your mind affects your happiness and your emotions.
What can protect you from fear, self judgment, and false beliefs is awareness and love. Awareness and Love can create and insure happiness.
Faith is a force you command. You have the power to put faith in something or someone. When you do we say that you believe in an idea or a person.
Confidence is the feeling you create for your self by investing your faith in something or someone. Oddly you can create this feeling of confidence even if the idea is a lie or the person you believe in is a fraud.
A spiritual warrior is aware of how his or her belief in something can create a false sense of safety.
Practices for spiritual warriors in Self Mastery
The Mitote (me-toe-tay) referred to in The Four Agreements by don Miguel Ruiz is a lot like blogs on the internet. People are pouring out the thoughts in their head and filling virtual cyberspace with opinions, ideas, rants, and their personal knowledge. It is an overwhelming volume of words that other people read, form opinions about and then write words about them in their blogs. Then more people read those opinions about opinions and write their opinion.Very seldom do any of these add any real value to one’s life. Even when good writing has a chance to have an impact, the reader isn’t likely to hold their attention and awareness with it long enough to have a real impact. Their undisciplined short attention is overwhelmed against the onslaught of more information and opinions to surf.
In the same way the mitote in the mind is like those layers of opinions. It is the cacophony of voices that make up the incessant thinking in your mind. The world of your imagination is filled with opinions, information, description, rants, judgments, and victimizations.
It has developed such a momentum that when you will your self to be still long enough and step back from them, you can’t help but notice them. You will likely be surprised at how loud those voices are. And usually right after that moment of awareness where you detach from the mitote and observe it, you form an opinion, or make a statement about what you observe.
And in that moment of forming an opinion or making a descriptive statement about the mitote, you have just lost your attention to the cacophony and contributed another layer.
One of the common misconceptions is that your spiritual journey will be filled with angelic experiences. Blissful openings of your heart, quiet epiphanies, and overwhelming moments of unconditional love inspire us to take action steps towards our personal freedom. The assumption is that these experiences will eventually lead to enlightenment where you can sit in the lotus position and magically float three feet above the cushion below you.
Yes these beautiful loving experiences happen. But they are not the only experiences to happen. Very often your spiritual journey will be one humbling experience after another. In those humbling experiences your self importance is exposed for the bloated self image that it is. Then your beliefs about your self and your self images are pierce by awareness and crushed by truth. You are humbled when you realize that you had believed such illusions and lies for so long in your dreaming slumber without awareness.
If you journey further you realize that any early hopes of grandeur at enlightenment and mastery turn about 180 degrees. You discover that humble service to your fellow human being in the manner of love and compassion is the life of the enlightened