The First Agreement

The First Agreement: Be Impeccable With Your Word...

Your word is the power that you have to create. Your word is the gift that comes directly from God....

The word is a force; it is the power you have to express and communicate, to think, and thereby to create the events in your life...

The word is the most powerful tool you have as a human; it is the tool of magic. But like a sword with two edges, your word can create the most beautiful dream, or your word can destroy everything around you. One edge is the misuse of the word, which creates a living hell. The other edge is the impeccability of the word, which will only create beauty, love, and heaven on earth. Depending upon how it is used, the word can set you free, or it can enslave you even more than you know...

The word is so powerful that one word can change a life or destroy the lives of millions of people...

Impeccability means "without sin"...

A sin is anything that you do which goes against yourself. Everything you feel or believe or say that goes against yourself is a sin...

Being impeccable is not going against yourself. When you are impeccable, you take responsibility for your actions, but you do not judge or blame yourself...

Sin begins with rejection of yourself. Self-rejection is the biggest sin that you commit....

If I love myself I will express that love in my interactions with you, and then I am being impeccable with the word, because that action will produce a like reaction...

Being impeccable with your word is the correct use of your energy; it means to use your energy in the direction of truth and love for yourself. If you make an agreement with yourself to be impeccable with your word, just with that intention, the truth will manifest through you and clean all the emotional poison that exists within you. But making this agreement is difficult because we have learned to do precisely the opposite...

The truth is the most important part of being impeccable with your word...

You can measure the impeccability of your word by your level of self-love. How much you love yourself and how you feel about yourself are directly proportionate to the quality and integrity of your word. When you are impeccable with your word, you feel good; you feel happy and at peace...

Taken from The Four Agreements: A Toltec Wisdom Book by Don Miguel Ruiz

Hi folks.....have been gone a while. Kenny thanks for all the notes checking up on me. This reading took on so much new and deeper meaning this past couple of weeks. The quality and integrity of my word has been disgraceful lately. I have learned a valuable lesson the very hardest way possible. As this reading says....my WORD is my gift from God. I have used that word to hurt many people in my life and especially myself. As the Big Book says on p. 62....."Selfishness - self-centeredness! That we think, is the root of our troubles. Driven by a hundred forms of fear, self-delusion, self-seeking, and self-pity, we step on the toes of our fellows and they retaliate. Sometimes they hurt us, seemingly without provocation, but we invariably find that at some time in the past we have made decisions based on self which later placed us in a position to be hurt. So Our troubles, we think, are basically of our own making. They arise out of ourselves, and the alcoholic is an extreme example of Self-will run riot....." This has my name all over it.....I have made decisions of late that were based on self that have left me in a position to be hurt and I have hurt others too. So where do I go from here? All I can do for today is turn this all over to my Higher Power, rely on that strength, take actions to fix what I can, accept those things that can't be fixed, and most importantly take ACTION to be honest and impeccable with my word. The chips will fall were they will and through it all I have a choice......trust in my newly strengthened relationship with a power greater than me and accept that all will be okay so long as I make my actions match this principle or rest on my laurels and hope I don't end up in this hole again. I have come to that place in life where I'm tired of the fight, for it is no different than the one I had with the bottle everyday. I am ready to cross to the other side of the street instead of going down this one and hoping the I can get around the whole. So today I have be honest and impeccable in word and action and I plan to do the same tomorrow but will cross that bridge tomorrow. It also says in the Big Book somewhere that we will not regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it......so I know it's time to quit trying to run from it and make peace with it.

Dream Roles

Do you believe that truth can be but some illusion? They are dreams because they are not true. Their equal lack of truth becomes the basis for the basis for the miracle, which means that you have understood that dreams are dreams; and that escape depends, not on the dream, but only on awaking...

The choice is not between dreams or to awaken from them....

For every dream is but a dream of fear, no matter what the form it seems to take. The fear is seen within, without, or both. Or it can be disguised in pleasant form. But never is it absent from the dream, for fear is the material of dreams, from which they are all made. Their form can change, treacherous indeed if it allowed you still to be afraid because you did not recognize the fear. You would not be willing to awake, for which the miracle prepares the way...

When you are angry, it is not because someone has failed to fill the function you allotted him? And does not this become the "reason" your attack is justified? The dreams you think you like are those in which the functions you have given have been filled; the needs which you ascribe to you are met. It doesn't matter if they be fulfilled or merely wanted. It is the idea that they exist from which the fears arise. Dreams are not wanted more or less. They are not desired or not. Each one represents some function that you have assigned; some goal which an event, or body, or a thing should represent, and should achieve for you. If it succeeds you think you like the dream. If if should fail you think the dream is sad. But whether it succeeds or fails is not it's core, but just the flimsy covering?...

How happy would your dreams become if you were not the one who gave the "proper" role to every figure which the dream contains. No one can fail but your idea of him, and there is no betrayal but this. The core of dreams the Holy Spirit gives is never one of fear...

Perceptions are determined by their purpose, in that they seem to be what they are for...

What is your brother for? You do not know, because your function is obscure to you. Do not ascribe a role to him that you imagine would bring happiness to you. And do not try to hurt him when he fails to take the part that you assigned to him, in what you dream your life was meant to be...

Who can utilize all dreams as means to serve the function given Him. Because He loves the dreamer, not the dream, each dream becomes an offering of love. For at its center is His love for you, which lights whatever form it takes with love...

Taken from ACIM P. 612-613

This lesson really rang true for me and fit right into the book I'm currently reading as well. It reminds me of the story "Acceptance Was The Answer" found in the big book of Alcoholics Anonymous. When emotions arise in me it is about me, some aspect of my past, a fear, an unhealed wound or something like that. The other person, place or thing involved is living their own dream and their emotions and actions are based on their past, fears, and those things. So when they do or don't do something that brings up an emotion in me it is a reminder to me that it is time for me to look within and resolve that issue which is troubling me.

Considering where I am today.....guess it's about time to look within.........I'll let ya know how it turns out.

Dreams and The Book of Law

I'm starting off today with the Tag I was given by Inmatez Wife: Seven songs I'm into followed by seven people I will Tag....

1. Broken by Scott Stapp
2. Changes by 3 Doors Down
3. Making Love by Amos Lee
4. Do Right Woman, Do Right Man by Aretha Franklin
5. One Last Breath by Creed
6. What If I Stumble by DC Talk
7. How To Save A Life by The Fray

Seven bloggers to tag........Anna; Tab; Judith; Shannon; Cantellya; Grace; Kenny.......

Dreaming is the main function of the mind, and the mind dreams twenty-four hours a day. It dreams when the brain is awake, and it also dreams when the brain is asleep. The difference is that when the brain is a awake, there is a material frame that makes us perceive things in a linear way. When we go to sleep we do not have the frame, and the dream has the tendency to change constantly.....

Attention is the ability we have to discriminate and to focus only on that which we want to perceive. We can perceive millions of things simultaneously, but using our attention, we can hold whatever we want to perceive in the foreground of our mind...

By using our attention we learned a whole reality, a whole dream. We learned how to behave in society: What to believe and what not to believe; what is acceptable and what is not acceptable; what is good and what is God; what is beautiful and what is ugly; what is right and what is wrong...

As children, we didn't have the opportunity to choose our beliefs, but we agreed with the information that was passed to us from the dream of the planet via other humans. The only way to store information is by agreement. The outside dream may hook our attention, but if we don't agree, we don't store that information. As soon as we agree, we bekieve it, and this is called faith. To have faith is to believe unconditionally.....

We punish ourselves when we don't follow the rules according to our belief system...

The belief system is like a Book of Law that rules our mind. Without question, whatever is in the Book of Law, is our truth. We base all of our judgments according to the Book of Law, even if these judgements go against our inner nature....

Whatever goes against the book of Law will make you feel a funny sensation in your solar plexus, and it's called FEAR. Breaking the rules in the Book of Law opens your emotional wounds, and your reaction is to create emotional poison...

Even if the Book of Law is wrong, it makes you feel safe...

Taken from The 4 Agreements: A Toltec Wisdom Book by Don Miguel Ruiz p 1-11