The Fifth Agreement: A Practical Guide to Self-Mastery (A Toltec Wisdom Book)

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Common sense is wisdom, and wisdom is different from knowledge. You are wise when you no longer act against yourself. You are wise when you live in harmony with yourself, with your own kind, with all of creation. What we share with one another is just our perception; it is just our point of view. And it's completely normal because the only thing we have is our point of view. The Fifth Agreement is to see the world through our own belief systems, and then to look at how our beliefs shape our reality. Why do we accept the symbols around us as reality? And how have we been indoctrinated into accepting a "shared existence?" You have the power to create. Your power is so strong that whatever you believe comes true. You create yourself, whatever you believe you are. You are the way you are because that is what you believe about yourself. Your whole reality, everything you believe, is your creation. You have the same power as any other human in the world. The main difference between you and someone else is how you apply your power, what you create with your power. Toltec Wisdom is not a religion, while it does embrace Spirit. It is described as a way of life with ready accessibility of happiness and love.

then Don Miguel Ruiz released "The four agreements" and it rose to great popularity in its profound power to help people transform their lives. It has served many people to such a transformations. It is a MUST READ in it's own right. Once you realize that hardly anything you know through symbols is true, then be skeptical has a much bigger meaning. Be skeptical is masterful because it uses the power of doubt to discern the truth. Whenever you hear a message from yourself or from another artist, simply ask: Is it truth, or is it not truth? Is it reality or is it a virtual reality? The doubt takes you behind the symbols and makes you responsible for every message you deliver and receive. Why invest your faith in any message that is not true? By being skeptical, you don’t believe every message; you don’t put your faith in symbols, and when your faith is not in symbols, your faith is in yourself. The fourth agreement comes naturally afterward – strive for perfection by performing at your very best. Don Miguel Ruiz was born into a family of healers, and raised in rural Mexico by a curandera (healer) mother and a nagual (shaman) grandfather. The family anticipated that Miguel would embrace their centuries-old legacy of healing and teaching, and carry forward the esoteric Toltec knowledge. Instead, distracted by modern life, Miguel chose to attend medical school and become a surgeon. A near-death experience changed his life. Stunned by this experience, he began an intensive practice of self-inquiry. He devoted himself to the mastery of the ancient ancestral wisdom, studying earnestly with his mother, and completing an apprenticeship with a powerful shaman in the Mexican desert. In the tradition of the Toltecs, a nagual guides an individual to personal freedom. Don Miguel is a nagual from the Eagle Knight lineage, and is dedicated to sharing his knowledge of the teachings of the ancient Toltecs. He is the author of The Four Agreements, The Mastery of Love, The Four Agreements Companion Book, and THE TOLTEC ART OF LIFE AND DEATH (COMING OCTOBER 27TH, 2015, FROM HARPERELIXIR).To have faith is to believe without a doubt, and to doubt is to be skeptical. Don’t believe all the stories that we artists create with our knowledge. You know that most of our knowledge isn’t true, so don’t believe me, don’t believe yourself, and don’t believe anybody else. The truth doesn’t need you to believe it; the truth simply is, and it survives whether you believe it or not. Lies need you to believe them. If you don’t believe lies, they don’t survive your skepticism, and they simply disappear. It is a good book to make you evaluate your life and get rid of needless worry. Basically, it is saying your life can be anything you make it. Just look at things in the light you want to have it. The 5th Agreement is the follow up to The 4th Agreement. All are good points, but I would just skip to this book because he goes over everything from the 1st book in some detail, but adds the 5th agreement which is doubt. I think that for me that is the most meaningful one. It is something that is hard to do, but amazing what can happen once applied. The book promotes a simple way of living, yet filled with happiness, wisdom, and power; power upon our thoughts, our actions, our words.

We perform a kind of mental iconoclasm. This is because we create our worlds using a series of symbols. The words we use, the objects around us – these are symbols, and they help to construct the world. Baudrillard famously discussed symbols in his seminal work, Simulacra and Simulation. The central thesis is that we build a "shared existence" through our perception of reality and symbols. And, each culture is taught to understand this reality and what the symbols represent or signify. Sometimes the symbols become bigger than the thing that they represent. And sometimes, the symbols are copied. Is a fake symbol less real than the original? And what makes something genuine or authentic? These are questions that we need to ask ourselves when we question the truth and the world around us. We are living in a dream that we artists are creating...we can take responsibility for our creation."

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Perhaps your perception of right and wrong comes from a religious belief? If this is the case, what's the reason you belong to a particular religion? Is it because you grew up with this faith? Perhaps you were introduced to religion later on in life? Maybe you gave up your faith? Whatever the case, your religious views are part of the reality that you've created for yourself. And this is where things become complicated. If you talk to most people about their religion, they will all argue that theirs is the "correct" one. Who is right? What is the truth? As the name suggests, the book adds a fifth guiding principle, but it also re-explains the four previous ones: Don’t believe yourself or anybody else unconditionally. Use the power of doubt to question everything you hear: Is it really the truth? Listen to the intent behind the words and you will understand the real message. The second step on the Toltec path to reclaiming your personal freedom is to understand that the words and actions of others are based on their own relative perceptions: They’re not actually about you.

Happiness, like everything else, is culturally, socially, politically, and economically determined. Happiness depends on the company that we keep, our hormones and chemicals, the conflicts we face daily. When we question why we're unhappy, sometimes it's because we have expectations of what it means to be happy. Where do these expectations come from?You know, the way we create our stories is very interesting. We have a tendency to distort everything we perceive to make it agree with what we already believe; we "fix it" to make it agree with our lies. It is amazing how we do this.