This month's self help book was the one that flipped the switch on this idea to go. I've mentioned before that if you ever wanted to figure out my moral code you could read Desiderata, Elf Quest and The Four Agreements and you'd pretty much have me figured out. Yep, a poem, a comic series and a woo woo spiritual book. That's me. (if you Google Elf Quest this review snippet is the first thing you see: ElfQuest is liberal, sex-positive, and identity-affirming)
I've read and reread all of them so many times in my life I could probably recite a lot of them back to you. I used to keep a copy of The Four Agreements in my bedside table and I'd go back to it every few years and read a chapter a night before bed for a week just to lock it all in there again.
Then life got busy and though the book stayed in my bedside table I didn't pick it up for quite a few years. And when I did I wondered what the hell happened. I didn't remember it being so woo woo. I remembered it being really profound and making a huge amount of sense to me. But what was all of this other stuff?
The actual four agreements though? Still gold.
So when I saw that there was a book The Fifth Agreement and it was a revisit of The Four Agreements with an added agreement and it was written with his son I thought that it would be interesting to see what the updated take was.
And I broke one of the four agreements, to be honest, I made an assumption that it would be less woo. It was not less woo. It was a lot of woo.
I am so glad that I read The Four Agreements when I did, because if this had been my first exposure to those ideas I never would have made it far enough into the book to absorb them and have them make a difference.
Things come in to your life at different times and that makes all the difference in how you react to them. When I was in my 20s I was still close enough to letting go of the religion I was raised with that I missed having that spiritual aspect in my life. I was searching for something to replace it. And the woo woo Toltec wisdom that don Miguel Ruiz was talking about was not that far removed from burning bushes and people coming back from the dead. It's all woo woo. Just depends on the woo you were raised with on how off it sounds. I was still half in and half out of a world with that supernatural thing being front and center.
The farther I get from that the less interested I am in anyone else's woo. By the end of The Fifth Agreement I will admit that I was skimming whole sections. Which don Miguel would say means I am not ready to give up the dream of this life and am not using the Word properly. I say it's because I don't believe the words he's saying, which ironically enough leads us to the fifth agreement itself.
Again, the agreement is gold. Even though my interpretation of it might not be exactly what he meant.
Be skeptical but learn to listen.
Oh that's good.
Just because someone says something doesn't mean it's the truth. BUT it is their truth, or at least there is a reason they are saying it. Learn to listen to people to see why they think what they do, why they believe what they believe, but don't be sucked in to it if it doesn't make sense. If it's not true. If it's dangerous or damaging or harmful to others. Listen when people talk, don't just wait for them to stop so you can get your point in but that doesn't mean you have to agree.
Be skeptical, but learn to listen.
It slots in with what I already believe so of course it resonated. But it's still good.
Looking at all five of the agreements and reading them at the same time as Desiderata I can see that they actually mirror each other a lot. It's no wonder they resonate with me. They just reinforced each other.
Three self help books down, nine more to go. Let's see what I stumble on for next month!
No comments:
Post a Comment