The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide To Personal Freedom book pdf download for free or read online, also The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide To Personal Freedom pdf was written by Don Miguel Ruiz.
Miguel Ángel Ruiz Macías (born in August 27, year 1952), better known as Don Miguel Ruiz, is a Mexican author of Toltec spiritual and neo-shamanic texts.
His work is best received by members of the New Thought movement, which focuses on ancient teachings as a means of attaining spiritual enlightenment. Ruiz was listed as one of Watkins’ 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People in 2018. Some have linked Ruiz’s work to Carlos Castaneda, author of The Teachings of Don Juan.
Don Miguel Ruiz was born in rural Mexico, he was the the youngest sibling. He went to the medical school and became a surgeon.
The Four Agreements, published in 1997; it was a New York Times bestseller for over a decade. Other books followed: The mastery of love, The voice of knowledge, The circle of fire, The complementary book of the four agreements and The fifth agreement, a collaboration with his son Don José. His The Toltec Art of Life and Death was published in late 2015.
| Book | The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide To Personal Freedom |
| Author | Don Miguel Ruiz |
| Language | English |
| Size | 685 KB |
| Pages | 160 |
| Category | Self Help |
The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide To Personal Freedom Book PDF download for free
In The Four Agreements book, the bestselling author Don Miguel Ruiz reveals the source of self-limiting beliefs that rob us of joy and cause us the unnecessary suffering. Based on ancient Toltec wisdom, the Four Covenants offer a powerful code of conduct that can quickly transform our lives into a new experience of freedom, true happiness, and love.
The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide To Personal Freedom Book Pdf Download
It is a short and condensed book about some very important concepts in spirituality and self-development. In that sense, it is a good book because it distills the essence in a relatively small number of pages. However, the writing style really surprised me. The tone is somewhat dictatorial and absolute.
He writes as if he has been given divine know-it-all power and the privilege of telling people what the ultimate truth is and how to behave; I didn’t like that. Other than the “you should do this” / “don’t do this” there is no practical advice on how to do these things. Often throughout the book he talks about some imaginary states of perfection, pure love, knowledge, and freedom that sound great but are too abstract. This is a common theme in this book. Real-life examples are missing to help readers better identify with the theories it presents. Reading this book, I was often reminded of John Lennon’s Imagine, a beautiful but abstract message. In the limited times the author gives stories, they are not relatable.
They are clearly imaginary stories in which the outcome seems less likely than one would expect (and in which the author speaks as if the outcome were obvious; for example, a girl whose mother once yelled at her for singing told her she thought about his lifelong voice is bad and he never sang again; or another example: if you tell someone they look like they have cancer and they believe you, they will DEFINITELY have cancer in less than a year… come on…) Other stuff What alienated me was the use of words and phrases like “black magic”, “spell” and “parasite” which sound very superficial. Regardless, there were more than a few points in the book that I really enjoyed and will bookmark for future rereading.
The book begins by describing a process by which children learn to obey the rules of society through a system of rewards and punishments run by their parents, teachers, and religious leaders. The author calls this the domestication of humans. The belief system that we are forced to integrate is like a law book that governs our minds… even if the law book is wrong, it makes you feel safe.
Man is the only animal that pays for each mistake more than once, that is, through memory. What we fear even more than death is taking the risk of being alive, that is, expressing who we really are. That’s because we’ve learned to live by other people’s points of view in order to please them and be accepted. Furthermore, we are often not good enough for ourselves because we measure ourselves against an image of perfection embodied in us:
“In the entire life of yours, no one has abused you more than you have abused yourself.”
The author challenges us to reject all the “deals” we have made with society and focus instead on four deals that will radically change our lives and help us live better and happier lives:
- Be immaculate with your word: “Being immaculate with your word is the correct use of your energy; It means directing your energy towards truth and love for yourself.”
- Don’t take anything personally: It’s not just about you. If you know what and who you are, then all the opinions of others are yours and not yours.
- Do not make assumptions: Do not assume that everyone sees as we do and instead of assuming, ask questions.
- Always do your best: no more, you will get burned, but no less, otherwise you will not keep your word impeccably. But be careful: the best of you will change over time and will fluctuate from day to day. Don’t expect the best of you to always be the same.
One of the things that I surprisingly enjoyed a lot is the last part of the book where the author says a sentence. I say amazing as I usually don’t like guided prayers or meditations, but this one in particular really blew me away and it’s one I’ll keep coming back to. I found it very down to earth and a successful combination of meditative practice and religion. Two sentences that I particularly liked were the following:
“Expand your lungs with air until your body feels the need to expel that air. And then exhale the air and feel the pleasure again. Because when we satisfy any need of the human body, we enjoy it. breathe us a lot of joy. Just breathing is enough for us to always be happy, to enjoy life. Just being alive is enough.”
“Thank you for everything we are receiving today, especially the freedom to be who we really are. Amen.”
The following sentence from the book gives you a good idea of the tone of the book and sums up my view of the book:
“I want you to forget everything you’ve ever learned in your life.” …
There is a long tradition of skepticism in linguistics, particularly about how language is used in different cultures to create belief systems. A belief system is basically a set of instructions based on the language in your brain. These instructions will help you navigate the stressful world around you so you can survive. We are psychologically programmed to believe that our belief systems are correct, and we experience deep distress when we discover that they are inaccurate.
The problem is that our belief systems are ALWAYS inaccurate.
Without delving into the study of philosophy and linguistics, I’ll give you an overview here:
Philosophy – When you study philosophy, you study the belief systems about how the world works and explore important questions like “Is there a God?” or “What is consciousness?”. It may not surprise you that philosophy students have not found answers to these questions, because there is always a case where we are wrong or have a counterargument.
Much of the study of philosophy consists of collecting vocabulary to describe beliefs. They even have a mathematical component called propositional logic, in which propositions are taken and reduced to symbols and “proofs” are created, but even prop logic is criticized by academics for its complete inability to predict anything. In other words, it’s not the answer either.
Linguistics: If you study words and language, you will realize that all of our beliefs are based on language and that language can never “touch reality” because that language is just an arbitrary description of reality disguised as real. I believe that Miguel Ruiz must have also taken a course in linguistics, since the first acquaintance with him attests to the power of language. All four agreements draw heavily on Saussure and Derrida.
Both Saussure and Derrida (and many, many others) have worked on how we form ideas in our heads based on language. The gist is this: we have something in our brain called a “symbol” that consists of two parts: the word and the visual representation of the object (see semiotics for details). These symbols are in our minds and work together to form meaning and then belief. The unfortunate thing is that they are completely made up. It’s not real. Our ideas about it are not real.
If you really want a deeper understanding of how linguistics has permeated our belief systems, I recommend reading some of their academic essays or picking up Rivkin and Ryan’s literary theory books. Most of the attachments are dense, but it’s worth the effort!
Simply put, millions of scientists and scholars have tried and tried and tried to find “the true faith” for thousands, maybe tens of thousands of years, and we have yet to find the truth. Due to domestication, we think other people have it, but they don’t! “Truth” is defined as that which has the greatest predictive power. So far, mathematics, geometry, and physics have the greatest predictive power. Our belief systems just don’t.
So all beliefs about yourself can be true and also false. We can’t know. So why not choose something positive? If nobody knows anything, how can you know anything at all?
But you don’t have to study it yourself. All you have to do is think about your past, say ten years ago. Did this person have a belief system that you now believe is flawed? How is that possible? What about your future self? Will this person believe that you have a faulty belief system? Probably! How is that possible? How can you be SO WRONG? Is it because you “didn’t learn”? I really doubt it!
But we must be right! We are correct! At least we think we could be. . . maybe?
The need to be right is so ingrained in us that we create great drama when someone contradicts our beliefs. We ended relations on it! We came out like a storm! We write angry Twitter updates.
HOW THIS BOOK HELPED ME PERSONALLY:
- One person’s opinion will never again have the power to limit my options, even if that person is an authority figure.
- The opinion of a group will never again have the power to limit my options
- When people talk, they tell stories. I don’t have to argue. I don’t have to fight. I just have to listen. AWESOME!
- I can’t understand someone else’s dream. I can’t read anything against it. I can not accept.
- Even scary and aggressive people only tell stories.
- I no longer have to be ashamed of who I am or what I’ve done or where I’m going. It is not my job to attach a story or a judgment to my life.
- I no longer have to pretend to be something or work hard to get love. I only have to love who is willing to return love. It is too easy.
- I take all gurus, religions, accusations and gossip with a fairly high level of benevolent skepticism, which allows me to be free from the fear that comes with these stories. – I don’t take myself as seriously as before I used to.
Probably the most valuable of all. . .
- I feel deep sympathy for all people. We’re all stuck here together giving our best and giving our best. I don’t have to hate someone because their best effort didn’t measure up to a story I tell myself. I don’t have to insist that you believe my story.
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