THE FIFTH AGREEMENT

THE FIFTH AGREEMENT, a Practical Guide to Self Mastery
A Toltec Wisdom Book
Don Miguel Ruiz and Don Jose Ruiz

Several excerpted quotes from this fine, easy to read book

The mastery of awareness is to be aware of our own creation, to be aware that it’s [what we are creating from moment to moment] alive.

Every one of our beliefs, from a minimal one like the sound of a letter to a whole philosophy, is using our life force to survive. Without us, these ideas [and beliefs] could not exist; without us, the whole structure would collapse.

By the time we grow up, our faith is already invested in so many lies that we hardly have any power left to create the dream that we want to create.

If we have [regain] the awareness that we invest our personal power in everything that we believe, perhaps it will be easy to take our power back from the symbols, and those symbols will no longer have any power over us. If we take the power out of every symbol, the symbols become just symbols, they will obey the creator, the real us, and they will merely be a tool to communicate. The tyranny of the symbols is very powerful.

[You will regain the] freedom to live your own life, instead of the life of you belief systems. […]As you unlearn all the lies, […] you begin to dismantle the structure of your knowledge, and this frees your faith.

The way to measure the impeccability of your word is by your emotional reaction. Are you happy [joyous] or are you suffering?

The Five Agreements (the Mastery of Transformation)

1. Be impeccable with your word
2. Don’t take anything personally
3. Don’t make assumptions
4. Always do your best
5. Be skeptical, but learn to listen

The dream of the three attentions
1. The dream of the victim
2. The dream of the awakened warrior
3. The dream of mastery of your dreaming