Spiritual Inspiration

A number of months ago, I read a book that had a profound impact both on me and on everyone I shared it with – it’s called, The Four Agreements
by a man named don Miguel Ruiz’s. Don Miguel is a nagual, or master, in the Toltec tradition. The Toltecs were a group of artists and scientists who formed a society to explore and conserve ancient spiritual knowledge. They came together at the ancient city of pyramids outside of Mexico City known as the place where “Man becomes God.” Don Miguel Ruiz offers us principles from the Toltec tradition that resonate with essential New Thought principles, – or as many people are now saying _- New Thought ANCIENT WISDOM because they are universal principles embraced in many traditions of many cultures and times.

Understanding our thoughts and what runs us from within is the focus of Ruiz’s book The Four Agreements. Ruiz offers a long and very interesting explanation about the beliefs in our life being formed not out of a process of choosing them, but through a process of agreeing with information given us by our parents, our tribe and our culture. Society’s information is passed to us from the “dream of the planet” which contains various interpretations of life, like seeing life as if through smoke or fog. These interpretations do not allow us to see who we are, which is pure love and pure light. Instead these interpretations tell us that it is normal for humans to suffer, to live in fear, to create emotional dramas and so to dream hell into our own life. In the process of agreeing with the interpretations, we store the information; we believe it, and we surrender to the beliefs given us by our agreement with them. We live in a fog, or personal dream of life, which is what we believe of all the concepts, the human race consciousness has about what we are — all the agreements, which have been made with others, with the self, and with God.

Ruiz writes that the whole mind is a fog which the Toltecs called a mitote: a dream where 1000 people talk at the same time and nobody understands each other. With this dream (in India called “maya”) you cannot see what you really are, who you truly are, and cannot see that not free to be, but live trying to satisfy others’ demands, living by other’s points of view because of the fear of not being accepted, not being good enough for someone else.

Out of the thousands of agreements we have made with self, others, with the dream of life, with God, society, parents, mate and children, the most  important agreements are ones made with self. These are agreements by which you tell yourself who your self is, what your self feels, what your self  believes and how the self should behave. These agreements define who and what your self is, what is believed, what can be done what cannot be done, what is possible, what is impossible, what is fantasy and what is reality. One single agreement is not a problem, but we have many agreements that make us suffer, such as agreeing to what is not enough, what is not deserving. Each agreement is a commitment of energy. It is up to us if we commit it to the truth of our being and to the thoughts that give power, or to what  weakens and keeps us trapped in illusion.

It is our job to break those agreements that are fear-based and drain off our energy and claim our personal power, and instead make agreements that come from love.

I’d like to highlight today my own personal beliefs — using Don Miguel Ruiz’s book —  THE FOUR AGREEMENTS as my framework and  I hereby re-commit myself to these agreements PUBLICALLY and invite anyone who hears or sees me breaking them to call me to them…. I’d, of course, like to invite YOU to make these same agreements… Are you game??

According to the Declaration of Independence, we have been given certain unalienable rights by our creator, and we get to choose how we will use these rights.

Barbara Marx Hubbard, futurist, author and dear friend of mine, rewrote a line from the Declaration of Independence where she states, enlarging Thomas Jefferson’s great statement to say, “We hold these truths to be self-evident. All people are born creative, endowed by our Creator with the inalienable right to realize our creativity, for the good
of ourselves and the world.”

That is true freedom. So – Freedom, as a Quality of God is about our ability to make choices and that’s what the Law of Attraction is all about.

When it’s put that way, who doesn’t want freedom? How come we are not living in
total freedom all the time. And yet, most of us reject the gift of FREEDOM because along with it comes RESPONSIBILITY!

Freedom does not mean the right to do whatever one wants. Freedom is not license! Freedom also doesn’t mean free from consequences. That’s what we don’t like about the law. There’s no sin, there are only actions and their consequences. Often rather than accept responsibility for our consequences, we claim actually not to be free. Most of us say, “I didn’t have a choice.” How many times do you hear yourself say that? Isn’t that interesting? Who does? Who chooses your life? Who chooses the things that are happening? Is it someone else out there? It’s so amazing. I remember Stephen Covey at a seminar telling a story about a student coming to him and saying, I’m in this tennis final and I have to miss the last class. And Stephen Covey said, “You HAVE to?” And the student said, ‘Yes, I have no choice. I’m in these finals.” And Covey worked with him until this young boy could say, “I’m choosing to go to these finals instead of coming to class.” And when he said that, Covey said, “Of course, go to the finals.”

Beauty is so much more than physical appearance.

Of all the definitions of Beauty that I found in my research, the one that appeals to me most is by a man named George Bancroft : Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the infinite.

Webster’s Dictionary defines Beauty as “Pleasing to the eye; felicity, especially of appearance; graceful or balanced structure; aesthetic perfection “

There’s a lot of emphasis here on the senses – on appearance – …. Today, I want us to stretch our knowing and recognize that to really understand Beauty, we need to SEE not only the appearances, but BEYOND appearances. (actually, that’s how we get to understand God, or Good as well….it’s all about our ability to see beyond appearances! )

Most of us have heard the cliché – Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder… today I want to encourage us to look with new eyes. Let’s change PLEASING TO THE EYE that we see with –to PLEASING TO THE “I” that we are

Ask yourself – how often is the person’s appearance a reason that you admire them? What do you think are the most important attributes a person can have? What would you like another person to most admire in you?

The prophet, Kahlil Gibran, once said: Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror. If you only see with your senses, you’ll miss so much of the Beauty of life.

In speaking of Poetry, Percy Shelley once said: Poetry lifts the veil from the hidden beauty of the world, and makes familiar objects be as if they were not familiar.

What eyes do you see with? Is your life focused on what the senses tell you – or what you sense beyond the senses?

The classical musician, John Cage, once said: The first question I ask myself when something doesn’t seem to be beautiful is why do I think it’s not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.

And the English painter, John Constable : I never saw an ugly thing in my life: for let the form of an object be what it may – light, shade, and perspective will always make it beautiful.

American author, poet and philosopher, Ralph Waldo Emerson said, Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not.

Children start becoming judgmental of physical beauty at an extremely young age. All the fairy tales tell us that the Princess or heroine is beautiful and the BAD person or the witch is always UGLY.. Kids are always fighting to be included with the people that make up the “in crowd.” Typically these groups of popularity are the beautiful people and they shun anyone who doesn’t match up to whatever standard of beauty that they have set. Anarexia and bulimia have become commonplace among teenagers.

We have a society that caters to the extremely beautiful, The media does not help this situation at all. Television constantly portrays beautiful people in the shows and in almost every commercial between the shows. It is almost exactly the same with magazines. The media is, and probably always will be, unless something drastic changes it, the biggest pusher of beautiful model type people.

If something or someone isn’t seen as beautiful, TV is filled today with reality shows that show you how they can be. Have you seen all the shows about makeovers? – You can have a room made over, a house made over, then there is Queer Eye on the Straight Guy, where 5 gay men help a straight man impress his woman by fixing his apartment, his hair, his clothing, the way he cooks, walks, well, just about everything. Then, there is the popular show, called “Extreme Makeovers”. Have you seen it? The people on the show are men and women who are not happy with their physical appearance and they are set up with all kinds of doctors and make-over artists. These people make complete changes, plastic surgery, liposuction, breast implants, hair, makeup, clothing. It’s a show that reveals how much pain people have when they identify themselves with their form.

The popularity of the show speaks of the resonance in people everywhere for the aspects of the fairytale archetype. The longing to be beautiful.

Little Johnny watched, fascinated, as his mother smoothed cold cream on her face. “Why do you do that, mommy?” he asked.
“To make myself beautiful,” she replied as she began to remove the cream with a tissue. “What’s the matter,” asked little Johnny. “Giving up?”

We don’t need cold creams, extreme makeovers or face lifts – what we need is a FAITH LIFT

Your best is going to change from moment to moment.  Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.

We all need to learn to love ourselves more – to accept what is – and what isn’t …and make it all okay!

I’m not sure where this quote came from but I think it fits here -“We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success.  We often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.”

Don’t just study what others have to say – don’t mimic what others do – YOU have a purpose here – do YOUR best..

I was ordained as a New Thought Minister and The New Thought movement isn’t about learning Ernest Holmes and Charles and Myrtle Fillmore… What they have invited us to do is to experience what they have experienced…

There were times during my first few years in Ministry  that I wasn’t sure I was doing my best… I did all the things I’ve shared not to do – that’s how I knew to tell my students!!

We are NOT The creators of the Universe…The world is in continual evolution – We are responsible to be conscious of the process in our lives… We are co-creators.

When you recognize yourself as a co-creator with God, you have access to unlimited power and an unlimited future There is a beautiful description of co-creation in the words of Henry David Thoreau:

“I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours. He will put some things behind, will pass an invisible boundary; new, universal and more liberal laws will begin to establish themselves around and within him; or the old laws be expanded, and interpreted in his favor in a more liberal sense, and he will live with the license of a higher order of beings.”

Once God puts something in our hearts for us to do, we are to lock in on what it is that has been called for us to do.  Our responsibility is to do what we know to do, We are responsible for the WHAT and we let God fill in the HOW

The most current wisdom I am learning AGAIN – is to Let GO – SURRENDER to the PROCESS of Life… that’s what it means to surrender to God – or to Good..

I’d like to close this passage with a piece sent to me by a friend–it’s the metaphor for our lives –

Rising against gusting breeze, a kite flies. Tethered but by a simple string, wind caressing its face, trailing tail behind, up, up, up it climbs. Flittering side to side.  Dipping, lilting, skirting, ever taunting its line, “Higher, higher, higher, ”

Let the string roll too rapidly from its spindle, and the wind loses its grasp. Hold on too tightly, and the kite can’t possibly rise. Loose and hold at the ‘just right’ moments, the kite soars. Effortlessly, serenely, flirting with the very heavens. You see, when it comes to kite flying, the essence is in tending the line. It’s in sensing the shifting gusts. It’s in being flexible, in knowing when to hold on, and when to let go.

THE TIME IS NOW —  And so it is.

Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness, and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

I am a stand for authentic communication…. For completing our past – and not carrying guilt or challenge from one day to the next.

One of the key messages from every Religion or Spiritual Master is about Living in the moment. If you practice only one spiritual discipline, I’d recommend this be it — DO WHAT YOU ARE DOING… Be where you are… Say what you mean and mean what you say… Don’t make assumptions about what someone else means or even what Life may mean… You MAKE IT ALL UP… IT doesn’t really mean Anything!! It’s better to live in the I don’t know….

An old Hasidic rabbi crosses the village square every morning on his way to the temple to pray. One morning, a large Cossack soldier, who happened to be in a vile mood, accosted him, saying, “Hey Rebby, where are you going?” And the rabbi said, “I don’t know.”

This infuriated the Cossack. “What do you mean, you don’t know? Every morning for twenty five years you have crossed the village square and gone to the temple to pray. Don’t fool me. Who are you, telling me you don’t know?”

He grabbed the old rabbi by the coat and dragged him off to jail. Just as he was about to push him into the cell, the rabbi turned to him, saying: “You see, I didn’t know.”

Make no assumptions – treat every experience as NEW – because it is – and when it comes to people – allow them to be new everyday as well.

I found this tidbit from George Bernard Shaw and thought it most appropriate. He wrote, “The only man who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measure anew each time he sees me, while all the rest go on with their old measurements and expect them to fit me.” It’s Always possible to have a NEW THOUGHT