The Four Agreements Book Review Discussion
The Four Agreements is a book written by Don Miguel Ruiz. In this episode we talked about the lessons we can take from it and how relevant it has been in our lives.
Transcript
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Welcome to honest talk about heartbreak, dating and relationships, relationships, the past, helping you navigate your path to happy ever after with your host, Rob McPhillips. So tonight's meetup is on is a review of the four agreements, so the four agreements in Tomago terms, terminology is a way that we agree with the world is the way that we create our reality. So. It comes across as quite literal, but for me, the way I would talk about these is the stories that we make up of reality.
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So he talks about if someone if a parent tells a child that they're bad and that they agree and you agree with it, that becomes your reality. If someone tells you that your rubbish is coming and you agree with that, that becomes your reality. So the four agreements are and where he talks about these are being agreements that you break, agreements you make with yourself to free yourself from those conditions. So the full agreements are to be impeccable with your word now are impeccable.
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The word comes from Latin means to be without sin. So it's really about using your word, without judgment, without blame, not to harm and not to hurt yourself or others. The second agreement is not to take things personally, that none of it's about you and where we take anything on. That's because we've taken it personally. The. Third agreement is to make assumptions that we tend to justify how we feel with logic, and so we justify the emotion that we feel by the reality that we create that justifies how we feel.
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And a fourth agreement is to do your best. So before so you've been in the breakout rooms and we've been you were talking about who would you be if you'd been born into a different family, into a different culture of a different gender, a different religion, different social class? So basically, all the things that are externally tell you who you are, your role, your position, the way people treat you, if all of those were different.
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Who would you be? So I'm interested in what struck anyone as they were discussing their. You might have to amuse yourself, but just tell me what I struggled to tell myself because I thought it was more about of wanting to understand other characters than actually having some sort of an internal thing that I want to be different. I guess maybe I'm just being pompous, but I'm a bit more comfortable with where I am with things. I know if that's just me.
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What do you mean as you're more comfortable with where you are things?
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Well, I mean, I don't look at it, so I wish I was I wish I was over another it or nature or organization of country or origin or anything like that. I don't have that kind of that kind of effect.
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Now, the real issue with this is not where would you have like to be born, but how much of who you think you are comes from what everyone's told you, from all the external influences and how much is come out internally? Oh, because if something that would be similar, if you were born entirely someone else and like a different gender and everything else, then there's a spark that's you. Because all the other things, because of your gender, because of your couch, because of your being in all the things that you've learned from your family and so on, are all things that come outside and tell you who you are.
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So it's about who would you be, what would still be there of your across all of those things?
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I think it will be more like what I was going was more like what I am now because I was all those social conditioning, if you like, external conditioning up until well, I guess call it a mid-life crisis if you want. But up until my 30s, 40s, in fact, and then I kind of had a situation where on the self reflecting and started to actually be more myself in a way I grew up, if you like, became more mature.
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And then recently I went through this divorce. I grew up again, and especially in this last phase, a lot more of the time because I stopped the notion of these being seeing the well, I said being the perfect father wasn't perfect, but being conditioned into being OK, the husband. So you do this and you sacrifice everything and all the rest of it. And that was at the expense of being bigger. And so what I now sort of the kind of things that will come out of it is perhaps about messing around.
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That's just me. I like to do that. Have a laugh. I mean, those things need to be serious. I can be quite serious, quite analytical, but I think I don't want to sit there and have a long career. And I mean, don't get me wrong, I like an intellectual debate, though. And again, I like it as well. But it is something I will sit there and begin to have when something comes up.
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I quite enjoyed it. So I think the key thing will be if you can't have a laugh, then it's probably not worth that moment. So for me, it's it's messing around really. Well, that will is the one thing that will come out. So spare a fun. Yeah. Yeah. Cheeky one as well, you know, and I know my my 13 year old works out sometimes he will do something wrong or whatever and I might pull him up on it and he'll have a kind of a cheeky come back on that kick.
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And you know, I take it as the understands that he's done it wrong, but he's kind of doing a cheeky comeback as well. And it's perfectly fine. You know, I like that sort of thing or I will do something and he will take the milk out of me. And that's perfectly fine. I like that. It's a bit like I went to have a chest x ray because my dick is something and I just had to jump around like this.
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And the nurse said, But you've got to take the jumper, you can't do the extra jumper. So I said, yeah, but. I don't have anything underneath it that you still have to. So I said, OK, but on the one condition that people laugh at my belly. And she looked at me and she went now she said, I want the world to love me. So I thought that was great. You know, I just I thought I'd come back.
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The love with a straight face. I wasn't quite sure, but she was joking. But the point is, is that kind of sense just humor makes you smile. For me, that's that's one of the most memorable. And keep anyone. I actually came for a old I born in one country, then my family moved to another country and I end up now in UK. So for me, I've been into different cultures. I learn three different cultures and they'll be honest.
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If I could change again, I wouldn't be the same person. I wouldn't be the same person because I wouldn't go through the same stories, the same pain, the same pleasure. That's actually what they ship us. OK, so is there a part of you that if you were. Both an entirely different family, a different gender. Completely different social background. What would be the part that would still be deciding what's the like, the part that is Janosz?
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Without any external. If the parents wouldn't be the way, they wouldn't teach me to wait, how I went through so far, probably I would still remain for that child. Kind of little behavior mentality, which actually, as you see the world, is that kookiness is that's the coldest city when you're looking out for the world to grow, to look at something, whereas the beauty is something what you want to expand experience. But it's all depending on the experience, what you got, because the stock you as a child, because you can't make it longer.
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I think I have something I wouldn't want to change my sense of independence, pushing boundaries. That's me. I like to lose, I sense I sense that from knowing you from meet ups, because your story seems to have been that you fought against what was imposed on you. So, yeah, I could sense that that was. Tom. That was something that I think is inherently a new. Were are you going to share something? Yes, hello, um, I don't know if it's right or not, but I said I wanted to be an American Indian chief, a male because of the.
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Well, I like how they go, how. And then I like they're always in charge and they're always people who get you get looked up to. So like in my family and my friends, I'm always the organizer, always the one that sorts out this, that and the other and kind of the top, like the king or the queen. And I thought it would be good to maybe have be the male side of it and also to learn the spirituality that they know, like the rain dances and the voodoo and things like that.
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How and if you were in that position, what do you think you would have in common with who you are now? Oh, I'd be really busy and really organized and just I was just trying to help everyone as well. So if there's a problem, I, I feel that the American Indian chief, the top guy is when people go to them, when they've got problems or if they just want to have a chat or whatever and maybe a bit of healing as well because, you know, talking and that with healing and stuff.
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OK, thank you. Thank you.
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Anyone else you buy that you just phrased that question when you said, what would you have in common as the other version of you with the current news? But how can you quantify that? Because we were saying that so much of who we are is our nature or nature and nurture. In other words, we don't choose our parents, so we don't choose our genetics and the personality in that sense. And we don't choose where we're born and the culture and the education.
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So how can we say what all of us in a different environment would actually carry over? Definitive and scientifically? We can't, but it's about trying to separate. All of life is a story, and it's the story of what happened to me. It's the story of the situation I'm in. So all of that is a story, and so we can't we can't really scientifically, but in somewhere in that story, there's a sense of who you intrinsically and how much has happened because of our circumstances.
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So you're right in terms of the genetics and things like that, that's very difficult. But it's more in a sense of we've talked about layers of the onion. Now, most of those on the external are what you look like, who who are like the family you came from, what you've believed, what your experiences have been. But in the core of that, somewhere there's something that's inherently you. So it's trying to get to that. Does that make sense?
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Yeah, that does make sense, but if you say this part, that's inherently you, then wouldn't that shift if you had different genetics with different parents?
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Possibly it would depend. So genetics, I'm telling you, we'll give you most of how intelligent you are that give you most of your temperament as you have your extrovert introvert whenever your how where you are neurotic spectrum. So give you lots of that. But maybe is there something to like, something you talked about that sense of independence, of wanting to be who she was, regardless of the circumstances. Everyone and Janell's talked about having a spirit of fun.
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So that's not maybe some of that's genetic, but we can't really separate because we I mean, we still don't even really know who is who is genetic and who's been and what is genetic. We're still figuring out that. But this is more in terms of because we never actually can do this. But it's a way of going, OK, what are these outliers? The army. And what's the core of who I am? So it's more of a story of how you're constructing it than actual scientific reality.
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Course, sorry, you're about to say something. Thank you for your patience, and that's fine, I think. I can't believe I picked up on it from the onset, which is what it points to, which is a fundamental philosophical question. What's at your core? I would say, Sandra, we had a good chat about it and that there is the nature nurture thing. But what about beyond that? And we were also talking about different classes.
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And it is quite common that you can have people who are from the upper echelons who are really trashy. So some of them are stuck with that in mind. It really does tap into something to say, is there a part of us which is really philosophical, but is there a part of us that comes into this world already as we are? It's not formed and changed. And I was thinking of the line from The Matrix versus the Matrix. Cannot tell you who you are, which is interesting.
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I don't really have a clear answer, but I just want to say that it definitely points to something interesting close. And that is that and this is quite a hard thing to talk about. But you can meet someone so lovely and just tick so many boxes and then there's no chemistry. So that has to relate to something deeper that connects and bonds beyond just ideas of ourselves.
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I think and I think that you've raised a really big point, that there is always that nature. But nature and nurture have to work on something that has to be a seed, that has to be something to nurture. So is so I believe that this is a blueprint and it's a blueprint of its genetics and it's it's something that's unique to you. And then that plays out in the environment. And I think of it is like a plant. If you see the plant in the wrong environment and wolves roam around.
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So it's going to wither. But if you put it in the right optimal, then it turns out to be whatever it was meant to be. So, yeah, I think there is definitely that. Sense of something beyond nature, nurture, because otherwise what is there to nurture and. Yes, so I think there is. I look at people as being an idea, like an idea, like the world, like the Matrix is a context to explore and express an idea and the idea.
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Do you think the idea is a physical thing as a biological perhaps in the brain, or do you think that idea is a non-physical thing, as in some metaphysical spirit? Well, all of this depends on all of this, depends on, you know, when we talk about connection, level of connection, the level two to the connection of life. So it depends on how you how you, whatever your representation of that is. And if if it is that you you believe in, like souls and stuff like that, then then.
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Yeah. And some people will believe it comes from past lives and there's some spirit of energy. But really, life is just energy. Everything in life is. Just a flowing energy and the energy that is ours isn't the law of energy that it can never be destroyed, can't be created, can't be destroyed. So there's just energy. And so, therefore, what we are is an expression of the energy. So if you want to take it really deep, yeah, there is nothing really personal.
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Yeah, but if if energy can't be created or destroyed, then how do we blame death? Well, Daffy's is a personal construct that is a human construct because, of course, there is a physical death. But in terms of that energy, when you look at energy. The energy cell, the body disintegrates and becomes part of the soil and then it like that soil then becomes something. So the energy just continuously flows, but it changes form.
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So while the energy may be human and then it becomes non-human. So because we look at the world from a human construct of that, everything matters in human terms, the way we have dominion over the planet. But actually the world's been going for billions like the life when you look at Big Bang has been getting millions and billions of years and we're just one expression of millions. So when we say that you like life ends because we die, it doesn't have we become if we were extinguished as a species, if the planets extinguished the energy, still something else.
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So life always goes on. Life always expresses itself. And what we cannot hear when you go really deep is what expression of life. Away right now. But what you need to start thinking about energy and life in terms that are quite difficult, in the sense that we are looking at each other, so we see our physical form. But in terms of energy, we have to think in more abstract terms. You start thinking about energy that you can't see, but you may experience, for example.
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And if you think of things and think of energy, terms of sound, light, um, wind, it's it takes you away from having a defined form.
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And in other words, I'm trying to get that there is there energies that you can't package as neatly as the human form? And in that regard, then I think it is easier for us to think of energy morphing from one state to another. And that's what it's what what happens in the real world. We move from one state to the other, energy from one state to the other. It can be excited. It can be addressed. It can be seen as light.
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It can be heard a sound. It can be seen as movement. So there are different forms of energy. And if we think of ourselves and our expressions, those are all manifestations of of energy that we emanate from us.
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But we are a manifestation of energy. Then that's interesting. When you said what did you just say? What what are we I mean, what else could we be other than what we are human?
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Well, um, so when we're looking at we're energy manifesting. So in that sense, we we're manifesting as a human human form. So. What makes energy manifest in different phones? So what makes the difference between a human, between a dog, between a flower or a tree? So maybe this is what's different is is an idea, isn't it? Yeah. Is the idea the intention behind the energy that the intention is that that is that's the difference.
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Yeah. Yeah. So which is it. I mean, could you have the intention to be a dog or plant. Well in order to to shape the energy, there has to be some intention to that blueprint, that DNA of a dog, the DNA of a human being I have a tree is what shapes the energy into. Into what it is. So we couldn't we can't go from like from the level of guy like I'm a dog and transmute that, but there is something behind like Deep...
