Eckhart Tolle’s book The Power of Now exploded into the global consciousness in large part due to the fact that most people were not living in the present moment, and were finding the results untenable. The actuality for many people is a life being lived for them where their actions are really more on the line of reactions. And that is no way to live…
Most of us have heard the Socrates quotation “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Well we have learned the hard way that neither is the Over-Examined life too hot either. Living a balanced life however, is the best way of all. Going about seeking balance has it’s own challenges that can only be overcome with Clarity of Mind. In my experience, the best way to attain this is be associating with individuals and groups of people that have this in spades. It isn’t even necessary for them to be people in the same fields of study and/or endeavor. Neither do they need to be in agreement when their fields overlap, or even to agree with your own beliefs and perspectives.
If you take a look at the bottom of the sidebar of this page you will find the RSS feed to the TED YouTube channel. TED is a group of 1,000 people that are invited each year to a summit where they speak on their own arenas of interest. The best minds of the world from Tony Robbins to Stephen Hawking and from Rick Warren to Dan Dennett each speaker is an able speaker with an amazing mind.
If you want to stretch your mind and achieve clarity, you can do no better than to listen to these speakers. Each segment is about 20 minutes long, and whether you agree or strongly oppose what is being said, I guarantee you will be benefited by the time you spend listening to these well thought out presentations.
I just read “The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz and immediately read it a second time. It’s just that good. And frankly that short. Having immersed myself in Tolle, Troward and a host of “New Thought” authors recently this was refreshingly accessible in a much more immediate sense.
The book is said to be taken from ancient Toltec teachings, and does indeed have some interesting archival information on Toltec legend and how it leads into the main body of the work, which is made up of the Four Agreements themselves.
This part of the book is simple, straightforward and accessible without being tedious. This may be why it is such a small volume, but don’t be fooled it is packed with useful and usable insights and teachings. The Four Agreements are:
1. Be Impeccable With Your Word. This may not sound like ground breaking stuff, until you consider what is meant by this. Ruiz stresses the vital import of being impeccable with your word to yourself. It is made quite clear however that this is not just self serving but beneficial to society as a whole. Seeking to do no harm by your words or actions so that your own path is not hindered is a vital aspect of the first agreement.
2. Do Not Take Anything Personally. A very difficult agreement for many to keep if you consider the animosity between people as a matter of course, but quite simple in application. Once you understand that people are reacting to their own internal dialog (or dream as Ruiz teaches us) it becomes much easier to separate the words and actions of others from ourselves. This agreement brought to mind the NLP thought: Everyone is doing the best they can with the resources available to them.
3. Do Not Make Assumptions. Closely related in some ways to the second agreement, this deals with our tendency to not take into account that there is almost always more to any situation than we are aware of. Acknowledging that we are not omniscient removes so much emotional detritus from our lives that this agreement alone will relieve a huge amount of stress from our lives.
4. Always Do Your Best. The part of this that makes it such a vital agreement is understanding that your best will be a dynamic thing. Your best will be better at some times than it will at others, and you must accept this! If you always to the best you can in that moment then you can be at peace with the results, knowing that your effort held all you could do with the knowledge and resources at your disposal. Notice the synergy with the previous two agreements?
An important aspect here is that these four agreements are ones that you are making with yourself. As such they require the cooperation of no other individuals, and are therefore adoptable by any one that chooses to do so. They are meant to replace agreements you have already made with yourself: agreements that are destructive to yourself on almost every level.
Integrate these four positive and constructive agreements with a life lived in the ever unfolding present moment and it will add joy to your life, and even more importantly remove pain and stress from your life nearly effortlessly.
Here is the entire text of this self help and actualization classic “Your Word Is Your Wand” by Florence Scovel Shinn. She is another one of those authors whose works keep getting passed around by hand and by word of mouth so that the people that are searching for such enlightenment always seem to find it via her works.
You will find more by Florence Scovel Shinn below the book viewer…
There is no lack of reading material on the subject of the Law of Attraction these days, but this guy popped up on my radar as one of the sources of material for The Secret. I found that interesting as his focus is a lot more like Dr. Wayne Dyer’s than that found in the movie. Of course it is all a personal journey, and each of us will take away something a bit different from what we see, hear and read.
Judge Thomas Troward wrote The Hidden Power in the early 1900s. He published several works on spiritual growth themes and was evidently active in what was known as the Higher Thought movement of his day. Most of this may seem familiar but I encourage you to delve into this work as I personally was able to bring many things into a lot clearer focus.
You can read the entire text of The Hidden Power by Judge Thomas Troward below at no cost, thanks to the good folks at ForgottenBooks.org and the Google Book Search. I am only posting books here in this manner that I have read in their entirety, so I encourage one and all to discuss the texts here for what will no doubt become lively discussions of Law of Attraction and Higher Thought topics.
There is no lack of reading material on the subject of the Law of Attraction these days, but this guy popped up on my radar as one of the sources of material for The Secret. I found that interesting as his focus is a lot more like Dr. Wayne Dyer’s than that found in the movie. Of course it is all a personal journey, and each of us will take away something a bit different from what we see, hear and read.
