American History. Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers and the Media that Love Them.
She is the Hostess of Democracy Now! a great news program on TV and Radio.
http://www.democracynow.org/
Great Books: "Will" by G. Gordon Liddy.
He is most famous for Operation GEMSTONE later called Watergate.
This book is an Autobiography and speaks of his entire life. Childhood, Navy, FBI, at the Whitehouse, incarceration and then release from prison.
He was involved with many Capers... Including Arresting Timothy Leary at Millbrook.
In 1971, E. Howard Hunt and Liddy planned to drug Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers) with LSD-25 at a dinner where Ellsberg was to speak... to befuddle him and make him appear to be a near burnt-out drug case... Classic MKULTRA...
However, MKULTRA was not revealed to the Public until years later... So Gordon Had Insider Knowledge... Fortunately, this project was not approved of in time to actually carry it out...
Classic... He never really thought out the consequences of his plans... For example, Daniel Ellsberg getting up to speak and shouting out "I've Been Poisoned" then Police testing the bowl of soup... Blowback!
Project MKUltra was first brought to public attention in 1975 by the Church Committee of the U.S. Congress, and a Gerald Ford commission to investigate CIA activities within the United States.
Further Reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gemstone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemstone_File
We ALL have to thank Liddy for helping get Nixon to Resign... Without Watergate, Nixon might have been President for another three years.
Great Books: "The Four Agreements" by Don Miguel Ruiz
My Final Paper: Philosophy Class at the College of the Redwoods...
The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
Don Miguel Ruiz is a Toltec Brujo from Mexico. A Brujo is an Indian that works as a Doctor/Priest/Teacher. Don Miguel is part of a line of Brujos that stretch back to the dawn of humankind. His sons carry on his work. He is also an AMA licensed M.D.
1. Be impeccable with your word.
2. Don't take anything personally.
3. Don't make assumptions.
4. Always do your best.
Starting at birth we are told what to think by our parents, schools and church. These people give us free advice to help them live out their dreams. Their advice may not be in our best interests. By telling us what to think they mold what our reality looks and feels like. Even though we do not know it, we have made agreements with them to live our life according to their rules. Don Miguel Ruiz calls this "The Domestication of Humans". Like we have domesticated horses and bent them to serve our purposes, humans have been enslaved. The first step in breaking free of the bondage that our elders have placed us in is to realize that we are slaves. Then we may reject the agreements that were made without our knowledge and write our own. These new ways of viewing reality can be to our benefit.
Instead of living our lives helping someone else accomplish their goals, we can work to help ourselves realise our own goals. We can stop living the life of a slave and be free. The people that have been programming our minds are not neccesarily evil. They themselves have been programmed by their own parents, school and church and do not realize that they are carrying out the wishes of their elders. The Toltec Warrior's goal in life is to wake up and see the world as it is. We are all living in a dream world that is not of our own making. They are engaged in a battle for their
own minds.
1. Be impeccable with your word.
Do not lie. Do not gossip. Choose what you say carefully and if you
make promises, carry them out with action. If you break your promise or make a bad decision, admit your error. Words are extremely powerful. They can motivate people to take action. A powerful speech can convince a country to go to war. Even if the speech is based on lies, millions of people can be fooled into taking mistaken action. In recent history, our 'resident Bush gave a State of the Union speech and sent our nation to war with Iraq. The US Senate's 9/11 comission has shown that the basic reason for attacking Iraq was totally false. Whether he lied intentionally or was fooled by his advisors does not change the damage done to both Iraq and America. A lesson to be learned from his mistake is to be impeccable with your words. Check to see if what you say are facts are actually true. Making up falsehoods about other people can be fatal. Repeating falsehoods told to you by other people can be equally fatal. Don Miguel Ruiz says that gossip and words used with evil intent is black magic.
2. Don't take anything personally.
He recommends that you be skeptical about what other people say. They might be telling falsehoods. If you believe them then you may be fooled into taking action that is wrong. You have a responsibility to reject lies told to you. In order for a lie to be successful, two people have to work together. Both the teller of the lie and the believer of the lie must agree that falsehood is true. In our modern world, where we are bombarded by advertising, it is a required survival skill to reject lies. The goal of advertising is to make a profit for the company paying for the advertisement. Marketing people are trying to make themselves happy. They are not trying to make you happy. If you were completely satisfied, you would not come back and try to buy happiness later. Skillful marketing people promise that buying their product will bring happiness but intentionally make sure that there will always be an unsatisfied desire. We should always consider what the other person is going thru when evaluating their statements.
For example: A person may scold us unmercifully for a trivial error in behavior. If they make our "crime againt humanity" seem to be extremely significant, it may be because they are going thru a crisis of their own that has nothing at all to do with you. It could be that the speaker attacking you has stopped taking their psychiatric medicine and is hallucinating. This is not an uncommon event. It could be that they have learned thru
a lifetime of pretending that every silly challenge is a major crisis that "freaking out" is an efficient skill for getting their way. I have been fooled by "drama queens". The first time you witness them having a major crisis most people are sympathetic and help. After repeatedly seeing them do their act, most people are no longer fooled. The master of the "drama queen act" does their performance for new audiences in order to reap maximum benefit. We should also consider the soure when dealing with other people's actions. Let us suppose that you have been arrested for smoking marijuana. It would be useless to blame the policeman for locking you up in a cage. He has voluntarily selected to make a career out of enforcing questionable laws. Whether his behavior is morally right or wrong is not significant. He has a gun and the legal right to use it. From a practical point of view, might makes right. Even when a person is doing you harm, don't take it personally because there is no advantage to doing so. Spending your psychological energy hating the policeman will poison your own mind. Put your effort into actions that will have effect. A little
prevention could have saved you a lot of trouble. Making the effort to check for dangerous people in the immediate vicinity before you light up a joint is essential to staying out of jail. Just like looking both ways before you cross the street will prevent injury due to being run over by a car,
remembering to never break the law when a policeman is around will prevent handcuffs. If you choose to live a life of crime, take precautions! Realize that you have made yourself a convenient target. He would probably arrest anyone that was smoking a reefer in his presence. It was not a personal attack. His job review counts how many arrests and convictions he makes. His paycheck depends upon proving to his boss that he is doing his job. Feeding his children and providing shelter for them depends upon a steady stream of criminals. Even when people are praising us, don't take it personally. People often say "Don Miguel, you write such wonderful books". By taking this personally, he would start writing with the goal of getting praise from fans. This goal would cause
confusion in his reasoning and future books would be of bad quality. Keeping his mind focused on waking up from the Dream World allows clear thinking and writing.
3. Don't make assumptions.
Working from incomplete information and jumping to conclusions can
cause disaster in your life. Do research and find out enough accurate facts before making a decision. Remember that people might be lying to you and factor in bias when researching. A common error is to assume that other people know what you know. People often refer to a concept called "common knowledge". There is no such thing. We all have had different life experiences and learned different lessons. We actually live in completely different worlds because of the way we were raised. The
parents, school and church that brainwashed me had different agendas than the ones that brainwashed you. Since we describe our world using the words taught us by our elders, our entire view of the planet is filtered by their beliefs. We are so used to our own view of the world that it is
surprizing to find out that other people have never even heard of ideas that we regard as standard. A simple solution to the problem of assumptions is to speak accurately and tell the other person
exactly what you think. Then, check to see if they understood. If you assume that they understand and it turns out later that they did not, everyone suffers. Furthermore, ask them to speak accurately
and check to see if you have grasped the concepts they are explaining. Ask questions until both of you understand the subject. Communication breakdown is further degraded by the fact that many people do not speak the same language. This problem is improving as the internet spreads
worldwide and exposes vast quantities of people to English. The majority of the content on the internet is written in English and people worldwide are realizing that in order to use the power of the computer it is important to learn to read English. People that cannot read English find that the vast majority of the web pages are useless. Of course, it is possible to publish your ideas in any language but the audience is limited if you select to use non-English language. As time goes on we will find that an increasing number of people will be bi-lingual.
4. Always do your best.
Sometimes, your best may not be very good at all. If you are in bad health or confused by intoxication or distracted by gossip and lies you may make bad decisions and take bad actions. Accept this fact as an unchangeable part of history and try again. It is a very efficient way to live. All the time spent punishing yourself for past mistakes is saved and can be put to better use. It may be difficult to even remember what the four agreements are. Try again. Locate a copy of the book and reread it. Copy the words and put them on a card to keep in your wallet. You are trying to
overcome the brainwashing of a lifetime. Every time you use one of the four agreements it becomes easier to do it again. Don Miguel Ruiz says that there is not an infinite space in your mind for storing agreements. If you put a good agreement in the same space as a bad one the bad one dies. He says that the agreements we made without our knowledge have taken a life of their own and live as a paracite in our mind. We become self-domesticating animals. Our elders have brainwashed us so completely that we voluntarily brainwash ourself. We create an internal "Judge" and "Jury" to review our own actions and convict ourselves when we do not live up to impossible standards. Suppose you failed in an endeavor, the Judge and Jusy would punish yourself for failure. A Toltec Warrior
would simply realize that he had done his best, shrug off the defeat and go to battle again tomorrow.
I was first introduced to this book by a friend in Chico. He could not afford the price of purchasing this book. What he did was to go to Wal-Mart and read a chapter and then leave. He went for weeks reading and rereading this book. This is a clear example of doing your best. He could not organize his life well enough to get the extra ten dollars to purchase the book but found a way to get the information for free. I feel that this philosophy is a great way to live life. Each step builds upon the last. Just realizing that we have been domesticated is a great leap forward. If all we can do at this time is understand that we have been brainwashed by our elders and that they did it to accomplish their own goals, that is the best we can do today. Tomorrow we can understand this basic idea and be
impeccable with our word. By doing these two things, we can gradually kill the paracite that lives in our mind. With our new found power, it might be possible to take three steps and then four steps and then five steps. As a child, we had no choice about what agreements to make but we are adults now. We can voluntarily discard agreements that are not in our best interest. We can intentionally select to make Don Miguel's agreements or we can write our own. His agreements seem to make sense but we should be skeptical. Using his own concepts to judge the validity of his book is the best path to follow. I question his motivations before agreeing to accept his agreements. Is his main goal to sell books and make a pile of money? Does he wish to create a cult of brainwashed robot followers to do his bidding? Has his ego been so corrupted by praise that he has forgotten to not take things personally in his own life? In my humble opinion, I feel that he is living an impeccable life and is being
true to the diciplines of a Toltec Warrior. Of course, I may be wrong. I have only read this one book and his recent work may be poor quality. I've never met the man and know nothing about his personal life. However, this one book is of such high quality that if we ignore everything else he has done we will have a valid plan for life. The entire book can be reduced to a bumper sticker slogan.
THINK FOR YOURSELF AND QUESTION REALITY.
What would you do if your doctor told you that you had one week to live? Some people would spend that week bemoaning the fact and crying
"poor, poor, pitiful me". A Totlec Warrior would make the best of the time left. There would not be time enough to have arguments with people and spread gossip. Why bother with hatred? There is only a week to live and important tasks need to be done! Writing that love song for your wife would be very high priority. Calling your Mom and Dad and thanking them for giving birth to you would be important. Well, your doctor called and he has bad news. The only question is that he is not exactly
sure about the time frame. He says that it could be one week or it could be one day or it could be 80 years. He is not exactly sure about when it will happen but he is certain that you are going to die. Mexican celebrate El Dia de los Muertes to remind themselves that the future is uncertain and the end is always near. Putting your priorities in sensible order is essential to living life to the fullest. We all want to be happy. If we live our lives working to accomplish someone else's goals it is unlikely that we will be happy. We should reject their goals and create our own. We have the freedom to choose. We have the freedom to reject the reality taught to us by our parents, schools and church.
We can intentionally create our own reality by voluntarily selecting what agreements to make.
Don Miguel Ruiz selected to make the four agreements explained in this paper but you have the freedom to write your own. Why not live in a wonderful world?
A little historical background: Thousands of years ago, the Toltec were known throuought southern Mexico as "women and men of knowledge".
Anthropologists have spoken of the Toltec as a nation or a race, but, in fact, the Toltec were scientists and artists who formed a society to explore and conserve the spiritual knowledge and practices of the ancient ones. They came together as masters (naguals) and students at Teotihuacan, the ancient city of pyramids outside of Mexico city know as the place where "Man becomes God". In the United States, most people's knowledge of Mexican Indian culture was found in the books by Carlos Castenada. He describes the teachings of Don Juan Matues. Juan used native plants to awaken interest in spirituality in his students. After the student has been forced to acknowledge that there may be something totally outside their normal view of reality, the plants become unneccesary to the teaching. Carlos's first book gained public attention by his vivid descriptions of Psilocibin mushroom intoxication. His next ten books focus on the sober
experiences he had without the mushrooms. The stories aroused controversy because they described events that are clearly impossible (in the belief system of rational western culture). Critics argue about wheateher to put his books in the Anthropology section of the library or the fiction section. They do open the door to questions that lay outside of mainstream American thinking and for that we can only be grateful.
His books also inspired the rock and roll band Fleetwood Mac to write the song "Hypnotised". Part of Bob Welch's lyrics state:
They say there's a place down in Mexico
Where a man can fly over mountains and hills
And he don't need an airplane or some kind of engine And he never will
Now you know it's a meaningless question
To ask if those stories are right
'Cause what matters most if the feeling
You get when you're hypnotized
Seems like a dream
They got me hypnotized
His opinion is that no matter where you place the Carlos Casteneda's books in the library, The important thing is to read them with an open mind and get the feeling. Many of the basic ideas of Don Miguel Ruiz and Don Juan Mateus are similar. They appear to be derived from the same ancient wisdom. I recommend that after you read The Four Agreements you start reading the Casteneda books to help gain background knowledge. They both stress the idea that everything you take for granted about reality might be false. They both recommend that you question your fundamental assumptions and intentionally choose to create your own world. A world that is designed to accomplish your goals, not the goals of others.
She is the Hostess of Democracy Now! a great news program on TV and Radio.
http://www.democracynow.org/
Great Books: "Will" by G. Gordon Liddy.
He is most famous for Operation GEMSTONE later called Watergate.
This book is an Autobiography and speaks of his entire life. Childhood, Navy, FBI, at the Whitehouse, incarceration and then release from prison.
He was involved with many Capers... Including Arresting Timothy Leary at Millbrook.
In 1971, E. Howard Hunt and Liddy planned to drug Daniel Ellsberg (Pentagon Papers) with LSD-25 at a dinner where Ellsberg was to speak... to befuddle him and make him appear to be a near burnt-out drug case... Classic MKULTRA...
However, MKULTRA was not revealed to the Public until years later... So Gordon Had Insider Knowledge... Fortunately, this project was not approved of in time to actually carry it out...
Classic... He never really thought out the consequences of his plans... For example, Daniel Ellsberg getting up to speak and shouting out "I've Been Poisoned" then Police testing the bowl of soup... Blowback!
Project MKUltra was first brought to public attention in 1975 by the Church Committee of the U.S. Congress, and a Gerald Ford commission to investigate CIA activities within the United States.
Further Reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_MKUltra
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Gemstone
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gemstone_File
We ALL have to thank Liddy for helping get Nixon to Resign... Without Watergate, Nixon might have been President for another three years.
Great Books: "The Four Agreements" by Don Miguel Ruiz
My Final Paper: Philosophy Class at the College of the Redwoods...
The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz
Don Miguel Ruiz is a Toltec Brujo from Mexico. A Brujo is an Indian that works as a Doctor/Priest/Teacher. Don Miguel is part of a line of Brujos that stretch back to the dawn of humankind. His sons carry on his work. He is also an AMA licensed M.D.
1. Be impeccable with your word.
2. Don't take anything personally.
3. Don't make assumptions.
4. Always do your best.
Starting at birth we are told what to think by our parents, schools and church. These people give us free advice to help them live out their dreams. Their advice may not be in our best interests. By telling us what to think they mold what our reality looks and feels like. Even though we do not know it, we have made agreements with them to live our life according to their rules. Don Miguel Ruiz calls this "The Domestication of Humans". Like we have domesticated horses and bent them to serve our purposes, humans have been enslaved. The first step in breaking free of the bondage that our elders have placed us in is to realize that we are slaves. Then we may reject the agreements that were made without our knowledge and write our own. These new ways of viewing reality can be to our benefit.
Instead of living our lives helping someone else accomplish their goals, we can work to help ourselves realise our own goals. We can stop living the life of a slave and be free. The people that have been programming our minds are not neccesarily evil. They themselves have been programmed by their own parents, school and church and do not realize that they are carrying out the wishes of their elders. The Toltec Warrior's goal in life is to wake up and see the world as it is. We are all living in a dream world that is not of our own making. They are engaged in a battle for their
own minds.
1. Be impeccable with your word.
Do not lie. Do not gossip. Choose what you say carefully and if you
make promises, carry them out with action. If you break your promise or make a bad decision, admit your error. Words are extremely powerful. They can motivate people to take action. A powerful speech can convince a country to go to war. Even if the speech is based on lies, millions of people can be fooled into taking mistaken action. In recent history, our 'resident Bush gave a State of the Union speech and sent our nation to war with Iraq. The US Senate's 9/11 comission has shown that the basic reason for attacking Iraq was totally false. Whether he lied intentionally or was fooled by his advisors does not change the damage done to both Iraq and America. A lesson to be learned from his mistake is to be impeccable with your words. Check to see if what you say are facts are actually true. Making up falsehoods about other people can be fatal. Repeating falsehoods told to you by other people can be equally fatal. Don Miguel Ruiz says that gossip and words used with evil intent is black magic.
2. Don't take anything personally.
He recommends that you be skeptical about what other people say. They might be telling falsehoods. If you believe them then you may be fooled into taking action that is wrong. You have a responsibility to reject lies told to you. In order for a lie to be successful, two people have to work together. Both the teller of the lie and the believer of the lie must agree that falsehood is true. In our modern world, where we are bombarded by advertising, it is a required survival skill to reject lies. The goal of advertising is to make a profit for the company paying for the advertisement. Marketing people are trying to make themselves happy. They are not trying to make you happy. If you were completely satisfied, you would not come back and try to buy happiness later. Skillful marketing people promise that buying their product will bring happiness but intentionally make sure that there will always be an unsatisfied desire. We should always consider what the other person is going thru when evaluating their statements.
For example: A person may scold us unmercifully for a trivial error in behavior. If they make our "crime againt humanity" seem to be extremely significant, it may be because they are going thru a crisis of their own that has nothing at all to do with you. It could be that the speaker attacking you has stopped taking their psychiatric medicine and is hallucinating. This is not an uncommon event. It could be that they have learned thru
a lifetime of pretending that every silly challenge is a major crisis that "freaking out" is an efficient skill for getting their way. I have been fooled by "drama queens". The first time you witness them having a major crisis most people are sympathetic and help. After repeatedly seeing them do their act, most people are no longer fooled. The master of the "drama queen act" does their performance for new audiences in order to reap maximum benefit. We should also consider the soure when dealing with other people's actions. Let us suppose that you have been arrested for smoking marijuana. It would be useless to blame the policeman for locking you up in a cage. He has voluntarily selected to make a career out of enforcing questionable laws. Whether his behavior is morally right or wrong is not significant. He has a gun and the legal right to use it. From a practical point of view, might makes right. Even when a person is doing you harm, don't take it personally because there is no advantage to doing so. Spending your psychological energy hating the policeman will poison your own mind. Put your effort into actions that will have effect. A little
prevention could have saved you a lot of trouble. Making the effort to check for dangerous people in the immediate vicinity before you light up a joint is essential to staying out of jail. Just like looking both ways before you cross the street will prevent injury due to being run over by a car,
remembering to never break the law when a policeman is around will prevent handcuffs. If you choose to live a life of crime, take precautions! Realize that you have made yourself a convenient target. He would probably arrest anyone that was smoking a reefer in his presence. It was not a personal attack. His job review counts how many arrests and convictions he makes. His paycheck depends upon proving to his boss that he is doing his job. Feeding his children and providing shelter for them depends upon a steady stream of criminals. Even when people are praising us, don't take it personally. People often say "Don Miguel, you write such wonderful books". By taking this personally, he would start writing with the goal of getting praise from fans. This goal would cause
confusion in his reasoning and future books would be of bad quality. Keeping his mind focused on waking up from the Dream World allows clear thinking and writing.
3. Don't make assumptions.
Working from incomplete information and jumping to conclusions can
cause disaster in your life. Do research and find out enough accurate facts before making a decision. Remember that people might be lying to you and factor in bias when researching. A common error is to assume that other people know what you know. People often refer to a concept called "common knowledge". There is no such thing. We all have had different life experiences and learned different lessons. We actually live in completely different worlds because of the way we were raised. The
parents, school and church that brainwashed me had different agendas than the ones that brainwashed you. Since we describe our world using the words taught us by our elders, our entire view of the planet is filtered by their beliefs. We are so used to our own view of the world that it is
surprizing to find out that other people have never even heard of ideas that we regard as standard. A simple solution to the problem of assumptions is to speak accurately and tell the other person
exactly what you think. Then, check to see if they understood. If you assume that they understand and it turns out later that they did not, everyone suffers. Furthermore, ask them to speak accurately
and check to see if you have grasped the concepts they are explaining. Ask questions until both of you understand the subject. Communication breakdown is further degraded by the fact that many people do not speak the same language. This problem is improving as the internet spreads
worldwide and exposes vast quantities of people to English. The majority of the content on the internet is written in English and people worldwide are realizing that in order to use the power of the computer it is important to learn to read English. People that cannot read English find that the vast majority of the web pages are useless. Of course, it is possible to publish your ideas in any language but the audience is limited if you select to use non-English language. As time goes on we will find that an increasing number of people will be bi-lingual.
4. Always do your best.
Sometimes, your best may not be very good at all. If you are in bad health or confused by intoxication or distracted by gossip and lies you may make bad decisions and take bad actions. Accept this fact as an unchangeable part of history and try again. It is a very efficient way to live. All the time spent punishing yourself for past mistakes is saved and can be put to better use. It may be difficult to even remember what the four agreements are. Try again. Locate a copy of the book and reread it. Copy the words and put them on a card to keep in your wallet. You are trying to
overcome the brainwashing of a lifetime. Every time you use one of the four agreements it becomes easier to do it again. Don Miguel Ruiz says that there is not an infinite space in your mind for storing agreements. If you put a good agreement in the same space as a bad one the bad one dies. He says that the agreements we made without our knowledge have taken a life of their own and live as a paracite in our mind. We become self-domesticating animals. Our elders have brainwashed us so completely that we voluntarily brainwash ourself. We create an internal "Judge" and "Jury" to review our own actions and convict ourselves when we do not live up to impossible standards. Suppose you failed in an endeavor, the Judge and Jusy would punish yourself for failure. A Toltec Warrior
would simply realize that he had done his best, shrug off the defeat and go to battle again tomorrow.
I was first introduced to this book by a friend in Chico. He could not afford the price of purchasing this book. What he did was to go to Wal-Mart and read a chapter and then leave. He went for weeks reading and rereading this book. This is a clear example of doing your best. He could not organize his life well enough to get the extra ten dollars to purchase the book but found a way to get the information for free. I feel that this philosophy is a great way to live life. Each step builds upon the last. Just realizing that we have been domesticated is a great leap forward. If all we can do at this time is understand that we have been brainwashed by our elders and that they did it to accomplish their own goals, that is the best we can do today. Tomorrow we can understand this basic idea and be
impeccable with our word. By doing these two things, we can gradually kill the paracite that lives in our mind. With our new found power, it might be possible to take three steps and then four steps and then five steps. As a child, we had no choice about what agreements to make but we are adults now. We can voluntarily discard agreements that are not in our best interest. We can intentionally select to make Don Miguel's agreements or we can write our own. His agreements seem to make sense but we should be skeptical. Using his own concepts to judge the validity of his book is the best path to follow. I question his motivations before agreeing to accept his agreements. Is his main goal to sell books and make a pile of money? Does he wish to create a cult of brainwashed robot followers to do his bidding? Has his ego been so corrupted by praise that he has forgotten to not take things personally in his own life? In my humble opinion, I feel that he is living an impeccable life and is being
true to the diciplines of a Toltec Warrior. Of course, I may be wrong. I have only read this one book and his recent work may be poor quality. I've never met the man and know nothing about his personal life. However, this one book is of such high quality that if we ignore everything else he has done we will have a valid plan for life. The entire book can be reduced to a bumper sticker slogan.
THINK FOR YOURSELF AND QUESTION REALITY.
What would you do if your doctor told you that you had one week to live? Some people would spend that week bemoaning the fact and crying
"poor, poor, pitiful me". A Totlec Warrior would make the best of the time left. There would not be time enough to have arguments with people and spread gossip. Why bother with hatred? There is only a week to live and important tasks need to be done! Writing that love song for your wife would be very high priority. Calling your Mom and Dad and thanking them for giving birth to you would be important. Well, your doctor called and he has bad news. The only question is that he is not exactly
sure about the time frame. He says that it could be one week or it could be one day or it could be 80 years. He is not exactly sure about when it will happen but he is certain that you are going to die. Mexican celebrate El Dia de los Muertes to remind themselves that the future is uncertain and the end is always near. Putting your priorities in sensible order is essential to living life to the fullest. We all want to be happy. If we live our lives working to accomplish someone else's goals it is unlikely that we will be happy. We should reject their goals and create our own. We have the freedom to choose. We have the freedom to reject the reality taught to us by our parents, schools and church.
We can intentionally create our own reality by voluntarily selecting what agreements to make.
Don Miguel Ruiz selected to make the four agreements explained in this paper but you have the freedom to write your own. Why not live in a wonderful world?
A little historical background: Thousands of years ago, the Toltec were known throuought southern Mexico as "women and men of knowledge".
Anthropologists have spoken of the Toltec as a nation or a race, but, in fact, the Toltec were scientists and artists who formed a society to explore and conserve the spiritual knowledge and practices of the ancient ones. They came together as masters (naguals) and students at Teotihuacan, the ancient city of pyramids outside of Mexico city know as the place where "Man becomes God". In the United States, most people's knowledge of Mexican Indian culture was found in the books by Carlos Castenada. He describes the teachings of Don Juan Matues. Juan used native plants to awaken interest in spirituality in his students. After the student has been forced to acknowledge that there may be something totally outside their normal view of reality, the plants become unneccesary to the teaching. Carlos's first book gained public attention by his vivid descriptions of Psilocibin mushroom intoxication. His next ten books focus on the sober
experiences he had without the mushrooms. The stories aroused controversy because they described events that are clearly impossible (in the belief system of rational western culture). Critics argue about wheateher to put his books in the Anthropology section of the library or the fiction section. They do open the door to questions that lay outside of mainstream American thinking and for that we can only be grateful.
His books also inspired the rock and roll band Fleetwood Mac to write the song "Hypnotised". Part of Bob Welch's lyrics state:
They say there's a place down in Mexico
Where a man can fly over mountains and hills
And he don't need an airplane or some kind of engine And he never will
Now you know it's a meaningless question
To ask if those stories are right
'Cause what matters most if the feeling
You get when you're hypnotized
Seems like a dream
They got me hypnotized
His opinion is that no matter where you place the Carlos Casteneda's books in the library, The important thing is to read them with an open mind and get the feeling. Many of the basic ideas of Don Miguel Ruiz and Don Juan Mateus are similar. They appear to be derived from the same ancient wisdom. I recommend that after you read The Four Agreements you start reading the Casteneda books to help gain background knowledge. They both stress the idea that everything you take for granted about reality might be false. They both recommend that you question your fundamental assumptions and intentionally choose to create your own world. A world that is designed to accomplish your goals, not the goals of others.
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