Book Review : The Fifth Agreement by Don Jose Ruiz

Whereas the book, the Fourth Agreement is an absolute classic and beautifully and simply written, I have no idea what happened with this book. I was expecting it to be written in the same way as the previous book, with an extra Agreement of course, and some more explanation and stories.

However it is complete gobbledegook. By and large, I do not understand a word of it. It goes into spiritual principles that are complicated and nonsensical. And large parts of the book are repeated over and over and over. And yet, there are a few scraps of wisdom and some clever insights, so I will reproduce them here to save you the trouble of reading the whole book, which I do not recommend in the slightest!

By the way, I believe that the book was written by the original authors son, which explains a lot.

THE POWER OF SYMBOLS

In The Beginning

As you very young child, you know what you like, what you don't like, when you like it, when you don't. You follow what you like, and you try to avoid what you don't like. You follow your instincts, and those instincts guide you to be happy, to enjoy life, to play, to love, to fulfil your needs. Then what happens?

Your body begins to develop, your mind begins to mature, and you begin to use 'symbols' to deliver your message. Just as the birds understand the birds, and the cats understand the cats, the humans understand the humans through symbology (most commonly languages). If you were born on an island and then lived all alone, it might take you ten years, but you would give a name to everything you see, and you would use that language to communicate a message, even if it was only to yourself. Why would you do this? Well, it's easy to understand, and it's not because humans are so intelligent. It's because we are programmed to create a language, to invent an entire symbology for ourselves.

The symbols can be sounds that we speak, motions that we make, or handwriting and signs that are graphic in nature. There are symbols for objects, ideas, music, mathematics, but the introduction of sounds was the very first step, which meant we learned to use symbols to speak.

At a certain point, all the opinions of our parents and teachers, religion and society, make us believe that we need to be a certain way in order to be accepted. They tell us the way we should be, the way we should look, the way we should behave. So we start pretending to be what we are not. We start searching for something called perfection. We form an image of perfection, the way we wish to be, but we know that we are not, and we begin to judge ourselves for that. We don't like our normal selves, and we say "Look how silly I look, how ugly I am. Look how fat, how short, how weak, how stupid I am." This is when the drama begins, because now the symbols are going against us. We don't even notice that we've learned to use the symbols to reject ourselves.

Before "domestication" by parents and teachers, we don't care what we are or what we look like. Our tendency is to explore, to express our creativity, to seek pleasure and avoid pain. As little children, we were wild and free; we ran around naked without self-consciousness or self judgment. Out attention was in the present; we were not afraid of the future or ashamed of the past.

None of us has a chance of escaping the domestication process. None of us.

We are searching for love because somehow we have been taught that love exists somewhere outside us.

The Art of Humans

All of the different mythologies, religions, and philosophies around the world, all of the different beliefs and ways of thinking, are nothing but agreements with ourselves and with other humans. They're our creation, but are they true? Everything that exists in the universe is true. But the symbols that we use to construct what we know are only true because we say so.

THE FIRST AGREEMENT : Be Impeccable With Your Word

Tell the truth in every way. See the truth without symbols.

THE SECOND AGREEMENT : Don't Take Anything Personally

The sun sends light around the world and onto every object which reflects that light. The reflected light goes into our eyes and projects images of the objects into our brains. You think you are seeing all these objects, but the only thing you are really seeing is the light that is being reflected.

Everything you perceive is therefore just a reflection of what is real.

Your dream, what you believe about yourself and the world is yours to choose. If your dream is a nightmare, if there's drama and suffering, and you're not enjoying your creation, then you can change it.

Don't act or play a role for other people. All the acting is of no use anyway, because nobody actually perceives you the way you want to be perceived. Everyone is on their own path, with their own story and their own dream. Everybody's attention is focused on their own movie. Whatever people think of you, is really about the image they have of you, and that image isn't you.

The truth is you have no idea what is going on in somebody else's world - what they are thinking, what they are feeling and what they are dreaming. The weird thing is that you don't even truly know yourself! You've been acting for so long that you've mastered pretending to be what you are not. WHAT YOU PRETEND TO BE IS SO COMPLICATED THAT I DON'T EVEN BOTHER TRYING TO UNDERSTAND IT.

So you may say "nobody understands me." Of course they don't, because you don't even understand yourself. Your personality is always changing from one moment to the next, according to the role your you are playing, according to the characters in your story, according to the way you are dreaming at that time. At home, you have a certain personality. At work, your personality is completely different. With your female friends, it's one way; with your male friends, it's another way.

Now it's easy to understand why there is so much conflict between humans. We just don't understand each other or even ourselves. When people say something that disagrees with someone's point of view, they get angry, and try to defend their position. They take everything personally.

Taking nothing personally is a beautiful way of interaction with your own kind, human to human. And it's a big ticket to personal freedom because you no longer have to rule your life according to other people's opinions. This really frees you! You can do whatever you want to do, knowing that whatever you do has nothing to do with anyone but you.

THE THIRD AGREEMENT : Don't Make Assumptions

We don't have to die to go to heaven or hell. Heaven is all around us, just as hell is all around us. Heaven is a point of view, a state of mind, and so is hell.

We hear a great lie all the time which is "Nobody's perfect." It's a great excuse for our behaviour, but it's not true. Every human in this world is perfect, just as everything in creation is perfect.

It doesn't matter if you have a disability or a disease, you are still perfect.

Just imagine if humans from seven or eight centuries in the future could see what most of us believe about ourselves today. They would be shocked because almost everything we believe is a lie.

Making assumptions and then taking them personally is the beginning of hell in this world. We think too much, and thinking leads to assumptions. Just thinking "What if?" can create a huge drama in our lives.

Humans have an unnecessary need to explain and justify everything.

If we just ask questions, we won't have to make assumptions. It's always better to ask and be clear.

THE FOURTH AGREEMENT : Always do Your Best

Your best will depend on whether you are feeling physically tired or refreshed. Your best will depend on how you are feeling emotionally. Your best is going to change over time, and as you form the habit of practicing the Four Agreements, your best is going to get better.

THE FIFTH AGREEMENT : Be Sceptical, but Learn to Listen

The truth doesn't need you to believe it; the truth simply is, and it survives whether you believe it or not. Lies need you to believe them in order to exist. If you don't believe lies, they don't survive your scepticism, and they simply disappear.

Truth of fiction, you don't have to believe anyone's story. You don't have to form an opinion about what someone says. You don't have to express your own opinion. You don't have to agree or disagree. Just listen.

Even if I share an exact copy of the truth with you, I know you will distort my message as soon as it goes from my mind into yours. You will hear the message, and tell yourself the message in a completely different way, according to your point of view. This is very important to realise.

I am only one half of the message; you are the other half. I am responsible for what I say, but I am not responsible for what you understand.

Be sceptical. Don't believe me, don't believe anybody else, but especially don't believe yourself. Don't believe everything you have learned! Not believing yourself is a huge advantage, because most of what you have learned is not the truth.

Believing yourself us one of the worst things you can do because you've been telling yourself lies your whole life, and if you believe all those lies, that's why your life is unpleasant.

If you're suffering, it's not because anybody is making you suffer; it's because you obey the tyrant that's ruling your head.

Nobody judges you more than you judge yourself. Of course you try to escape from the judgment, the guilt, the rejection, the punishment. But how can you escape from your own thoughts? If you don't like someone, you can walk away. But if you don't like yourself, wherever you go, you're still there.

That's why so many people overeat, take drugs, abuse alcohol, and become addicted to various unhealthy behaviours.

Maybe it's time to unlearn the lies, and relearn how to follow the truth but following your own heart. Unlearning, or what I call undomestication, is a very slow powerful process.

Once you see the difference between what is real and what is not, you can actually enjoy both. When you go to the movies or read a novel, you know it's not true ,but you can still enjoy it right?

The Dream of the First Attention

Adults prepare us to be a part of society, and I can say without a doubt that it's a society completely ruled by lies.

We are God, but we don't know it. We start to search for God, and we believe that we have to create a temple to find God; we need a place to worship God. We sacrifice everything to reach God; we offer the pain we have created within ourselves to God. Very soon we have a big temple with thousands of people believing that they are not God. Of course, we need to give this a name, and the result is the creation of a religion.

What is possessing you right now is the virtual you. It's what you think you are; it's what you believe you are, and that image of yourself becomes extremely powerful. All these years of practice have made you a master of pretending to be what you think you are. And that distorted image of yourself is really your grave, because the real you is not the one living your life.

Who is living your life? Is it the real you who creates all this drama and suffering? Is it the real you who judges and punishes yourself, and abuses your body?

Only when you recover awareness, you resurrect and come back to life. Awareness is the key.

The Dream of the Second Attention

In this dream, we begin to doubt :"Maybe everything I learned is not the truth."

There are wars between gangs in most large cities these days. Young people sacrifice themselves and kill one another in the name of pride, in the name of profit, in the name of whatever they believe in. They fight for control of a piece of land and they fight for a symbol on their jackets.

From the smallest barrio to the largest nations around the planet (Russia), we see groups of people fighting and defending themselves for something that doesn't exist. The war is raging inside their heads, but the problem is that they send the war outside of themselves and kill one another.

Humans are the only animals on earth who punish themselves a thousand times or more for the same mistake, and who punish everybody else a thousand times or more for the same mistake.

All our lives we repeat the same action, hoping for a different reaction, and it never happens. The only way to change your life is to change the action, then the reaction cannot happen.

We make life difficult when we try to sacrifice ourselves for somebody else. Surely, you are not here to sacrifice yourself for anybody. You are not her to satisfy other peoples opinions or points of view. In the dream of the second attention, one of the first challenges is the fear of being yourself - your real self. If you have the courage to face this challenge, you find out that all the reasons you were afraid don't even exist. Then you find out that it's much easier to be yourself than to try to be what you are not. The whole dream of hell makes you tired because it takes energy to uphold an image, to wear a social mask. You're tired of faking it; you're tired of not being you. Just being authentic is the best thing you can do. When you're authentic, you can do whatever you want to do; you can believe whatever you want to believe, and that includes believing in yourself.

The Dream of the Third Attention

This is when the day comes that we finally accept ourselves just the way we are, and we accept everybody else just the way they are.

The only thing left now is to enjoy life!

Is your heart still burdened with anger, fear, guilt and regret? Stop lying to yourself and change your words.

You call yourself a human, and perhaps you identify with that word, that symbol, but in The Philippines you're not a human; in Spain you're not a human; in the UK you're not a human. Human is just one symbol, and what is the meaning of that symbol? You could write an entire book and use thousands of symbols to describe the meaning of human, and still you would leave something out! And that's just one word. Using symbols to understand what you are is nothing but nonsense. Whatever you think you are will never be the truth because symbols are not the truth.

Do animals need to know the symbol for what they are? Well, they don't know, and they don't care. They just are. They don't need symbols to justify their existence.

You're alive; you do exist, that's true, but what are you? The truth is you don't know. You only know what you believe you are, you know what you learned that you are, you know what you were told that you are, you know what you pretend to be, you know the way you wish to be seen by other people, and for you it may be true. But is it really true that you are what you say you are? I don't think so. Whatever you say about yourself is just symbology, and it is completely distorted by your beliefs.

Just imagine becoming the way you used to be as a very young child, before you understood the meaning of any symbol, before knowledge took over your mind.

You are here to unlearn, and that's it, until one day you realize you know nothing.

Becoming a Seer : A New Point of View

You'll know that you are totally free when you no longer have to be the you that you pretend to be.

Instead of believing, learn to see.

Imagine living without fear, without judgment, without blame, without guilt, without shame. Imagine living your life without trying to please other people's point of view, and not even your own point of view according to your own book of law. Imagine how different your life would be if you lived with gratitude, love, loyalty, and justice, beginning with yourself. Just imagine the union between you and your body if you were completely loyal to your body, if you were completely grateful to your body, if you treated your body with justice. Imagine being yourself, and not trying to convince anybody of anything. Imagine that just by being yourself, you are happy, and that wherever you go, heaven is going with you, because you are heaven. Imagine living with this kind of freedom. Yes, the truth will set you free, but first you need to see the truth.

How do you treat yourself? Are you kind to yourself? Do you respect yourself? Do you respect other people? How do you feel about yourself? Do you even like yourself? Are you proud of yourself? Are you happy with yourself? Is there any drama or injustice in your dream? Does your dream have a judge and a victim? All these voices in your head are distorting everything.

If you remember the way you used to be before you learned to speak, when you were just like the rest of the animals, you will see that at that time you could communicate without words. Without using your intellect, without using words, I want you to recover what you used to be long ago, to go back to the authenticity that you had before you learned to speak, and experience the truth. I want you to go directly into your heart, and search for the truth with no words, to find your authentic self, and brig it out with all your power.

The majority of humans don't have the awareness that you now have. They have no idea; they just survive. They only see their truth, which surrounds them like a wall of fog. Imagine being the only sober person in the middle of a thousand people who are completely drunk. Are you going to have a discussion with people like that? Do you really want to believe them? You know that whatever they say isn't the truth. And you know this because you used to be drunk too, and everything you said wasn't the truth either.

Being aware doesn't make you superior, and it doesn't make you more intelligent. You must stay humble.

When you are a seer, humans are extremely predictable. You can see that all humans in the dream of the victims are possessed by the main character of their story. This is their point of view - their only point of view. However, you still need to just accept them as they are. Don't look down on them. RESPECT.

Respect is about the complete acceptance of everything that exists just the way it is, not the way we want it to be. At least, this is one meaning of the word respect.

Do not allow anyone to disrespect your kingdom. Whoever disrespects your kingdom is going out of your kingdom. It's your kingdom; it's your life. You have the right to live your own life, in your own way, and there is no wrong way. The wrong way is just another judgment that we create.

Even when you are "bored", you enjoy life. Even when you create problems, you enjoy life. You are free. Unhook yourself from the dream whenever you want. The outside dream wants to hook your attention, and you allow it to make the connection, but you can break it at any time. From one moment to another, you can change what you are dreaming and start all over again.

Help me to change the world : when you're happy, the people around you are happy too, and it inspires them to change their own world.