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The Four Agreements
1. Be impeccable with your word.
2. Don’t take anything personally.
3. Don’t make assumptions.
4. Always do your best.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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Whatever happens around you, don't take it personally... Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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1. Be Impeccable With Your Word
Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.
2. Don't Take Anything Personally
Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.
3. Don't Make Assumptions
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.
4. Always Do Your Best
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.
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Miguel Ruiz
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Every human is an artist. The dream of your life is to make beautiful art.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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If someone is not treating you with love and respect, it is a gift if they walk away from you. If that person doesn't walk away, you will surely endure many years of suffering with him or her. Walking away may hurt for a while, but your heart will eventually heal. Then you can choose what you really want. You will find that you don't need to trust others as much as you need to trust yourself to make the right choices.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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There is a huge amount of freedom that comes to you when you take nothing personally.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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But it is not what I am saying that is hurting you; it is that you have wounds that I touch by what I have said. You are hurting yourself. There is no way I can take this personally.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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You can have many great ideas in your head, but what makes the difference is the action. Without action upon an idea, there will be no manifestation, no results, and no reward
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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If others tell us something we make assumptions, and if they don't tell us something we make assumptions to fulfill our need to know and to replace the need to communicate. Even if we hear something and we don't understand we make assumptions about what it means and then believe the assumptions. We make all sorts of assumptions because we don't have the courage to ask questions.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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You don't need to justify your love, you don't need to explain your love, you just need to practice your love. Practice creates the master.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Mastery of Love: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship)
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Be impeccable with your word. Don't take anything personally. Don't make assumptions. Always do your best.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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Also, go inside and listen to your body, because your body will never lie to you. Your mind will play tricks, but the way you feel in your heart, in your guts, is the truth.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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It is when we lose control that we repress the emotions, not when we are in control.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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If you live in a past dream, you don't enjoy what is happening right now because you will always wish it to be different than it is. There is no time to miss anyone or anything because you are alive. Not enjoying what is happening right now is living in the past and being only half alive. This leads to self pity, suffering and tears.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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True justice is paying only once for each mistake. True injustice is paying more than once for each mistake.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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God is life. God is life in action. The best way to say, "I love you, God," is to live your life doing your best. The best way to say, "Thank you, God," is by letting go of the past and living in the present moment, right here and now. Whatever life takes away from you, let it go. When you surrender and let go of the past, you allow yourself to be fully alive in the moment. Letting go of the past means you can enjoy the dream that is happening right now.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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Whatever life takes away from you, let it go.
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Miguel Ruiz
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You don't need to change the world; you need to change yourself.
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Miguel Ruiz
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The big diffrence between a warrior and a victim is that the victim represses and the warrior refrains.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourslef or to gossip about others. Use your power of your word in the direction of truth and love.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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Wherever you go you will find people lying to you, and as your awareness grows, you will notice that you also lie to yourself. Do not expect people to tell you the truth because they also lie to themselves. You have to trust yourself and choose to believe or not to believe what someone says to you.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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What you will see is love coming out of the trees, love coming out of the sky, love coming out of the light. You will perceive love from everything around you. This is the state of bliss.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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I no longer agree to treat myself with disrespect. Every time a self-critical thought comes to mind, I will forgive the Judge and follow this comment with words of praise, self-acceptance, and love.
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Miguel Ruiz
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...Nothing that your partner does is personal. Your partner is dealing with her own garbage. If you don't take it personally, it will be so easy for you to have a wonderful relationship with your partner
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Miguel Ruiz (The Mastery of Love: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship: A Toltec Wisdom Book)
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Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive - the risk to be alive and express what we really are.
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Miguel Ruiz
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You express your own divinity by being alive and by loving yourself and others.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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Maybe we cannot escape from the destiny of the human, but we have a choice: to suffer our destiny or to enjoy our destiny.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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If you can see yourself as an artist, and you can see that your life is your own creation, then why not create the most beautiful story for yourself?
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Miguel Ruiz
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Don't take anything Personally Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering
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Miguel Ruiz
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Prayer for Love
Thank You, Creator of the Universe for the gift of Life you have given me,
Thank You for giving me everything that I have ever needed,
Thank You for the opportunity to experience this beautiful body and this wonderful mind,
Thank You for living inside me with all Your Love and Your pure and boundless Spirit,
with Your warm and radiating Light.
Thank You for using my words, for using my eyes, for using my heart to share your love wherever I go.
I love You just the way you are and because I am your creation, I love myself just the way I am.
Help me to keep the Love and the Peace in my Heart and to make that Love a new way of life, that I may live in Love the rest of my life.
Amen.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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You will find that you don’t need to trust others as much as you need to trust yourself to make the right choices.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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People are starving for love, not knowing their heart is a magical kitchen. Open your heart. Open your magical kitchen and refuse to walk around the world begging for love. In your heart is all the love you need. Your heart can create any amount of love, not just for yourself, but for the whole world.
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Miguel Ruiz
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YOU ARE AN ARTIST OF THE SPIRIT
Find yourself and express yourself in your own particular way. Express your love openly. Life is nothing but a dream, and if you create your life with love, your dream becomes a masterpiece of art.
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Miguel Ruiz
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humans are born in truth, but we grow up believing in lies. one of the biggest lies in the story of humanity is the lie of our imperfection.
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Miguel Ruiz
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PRELUDE TO A NEW DREAM
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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We are so well trained that we are our own domesticator. We are an autodomesticated animal. We can now domesticate ourselves according to the same belief system we were given, and using the same system of punishment and reward. We punish ourselves when we don't follow the rules according to our belief system; we reward ourselves when we are the "good boy" or "good girl".
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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Imagine living your life without judging others. You can easily forgive others and let go of any judgments that you have. You don’t have the need to be right, and you don’t need to make anyone else wrong. You respect yourself and everyone else, and they respect you in return.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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In any kind of relationship we can make the assumption that others know what we think, and we don’t have to say what we want. They are going to do what we want because they know us so well. If they don’t do what we want, what we assume they should do, we feel hurt and think, “How could you do that? You should know.” Again, we make the assumption that the other person knows what we want. A whole drama is created because we make this assumption and then put more assumptions on
top of it.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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Don't take anything Personally Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering"
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Miguel Ruiz
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Whatever happens around you, don't take it personally... Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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i am perfect because i am inseparable from the infinite, the force of life that creates the stars and the entire universe of light. i am God's creation. i don't need to be what i am not.
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Miguel Ruiz
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We must forgive those we feel have wronged us, not because they deserve to be forgiven but because we love ourselves so much we don't want to keep paying for the injustice...when someone can touch a wound and it no longer hurts you then you know you have truly forgiven.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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Be Impeccable With Your Word. Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.
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Miguel Ruiz
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Humans are storytellers. It is our nature to make up stories, to interpret everything we perceive. Without awareness, we give our personal power to the story and the story writes itself. With awareness, we recover the control of our story. We see we are the authors and if we don't like our story, we change it.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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I respect you when I don’t try to tell you how to live your life, how to dress, how to walk, how to talk, how to do whatever you do in your kingdom.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Fifth Agreement: A Practical Guide to Self-Mastery (A Toltec Wisdom Book))
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We don’t see the truth because we are blind. What blinds us are all those false beliefs we have in our mind. We have the need to be right and to make others wrong. We trust what we believe, and our beliefs set us up for suffering.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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You are immortal; you’ve existed for billions of years in different manifestations, because you are Life, and Life cannot die. You are in the trees, the butterflies, the fish, the air, the moon, the sun. Wherever you go, you are there, waiting for yourself.
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Miguel Ruiz
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We are the same, you and I. We are images of light.
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Miguel Ruiz
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If others feel they have to change you, that means they really don't love you
just the way you are. So why be with someone if you're not the way he or she wants you to be?
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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People who love us do black magic on us, but they don’t know what they do. That is why we must forgive them; they don’t know what they do.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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Just do your best — in any circumstance in your life. It doesn’t matter if you are sick or tired, if you always do your best there is no way you can judge yourself. And if you don’t judge yourself there is no way you are going to suffer from guilt, blame, and self-punishment. By always doing your best, you will break a big spell that you have been under.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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You are here just to be, for no reason. You have no mission except to enjoy life, to be happy. The only thing you need is just to be the real you. Be authentic. Be the presence. Be happiness. Be love. Be joy. Be yourself; that’s the main point. That’s wisdom.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Fifth Agreement: A Practical Guide to Self-Mastery (A Toltec Wisdom Book))
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We have to be what we are, so we don’t have to present a false image. If you love me the way I am, “Okay, take me.” If you don’t love me the way I am, “Okay, bye-bye. Find someone else.” It may sound harsh, but this kind of communication means the personal agreements we make with others are clear and impeccable.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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Real love is accepting other people the way they are without trying to change them. If we try to change them, this means we don’t really like them.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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Perhaps you're not finished with your story, and who knows if you'll ever finish it or not. Honestly, it's not that important.
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Miguel Ruiz
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You must forgive those who hurt you, even if whatever they did to you is unforgivable in your mind. You will forgive them not because they deserve to be forgiven, but because you don’t want to suffer and hurt yourself every time you
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Miguel Ruiz (The Mastery of Love: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship)
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there is no need to justify what we are. there is no need to work hard to become what we are not. we just need to return to our intergrity, to the way we were before we learned to speak. perfect. as little children, we are authentic. only the present time is real for us; wo don't care about the past, and we aren't worried about the future. we enjoy life; we want to explore and have fun. nobody teaches us to be that way; we are born that way.
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Miguel Ruiz
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You are alive, and you don’t need to justify your existence. You can be the biggest mystery in your own story.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Voice of Knowledge: A Practical Guide to Inner Peace (A Toltec Wisdom Book))
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Don’t take anything personally because by taking things personally you set yourself up to suffer for nothing.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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If you live in a past dream, you don’t enjoy what is happening right now because you will always wish it to be different than it is.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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You don't have to try to be good; you just need to stop pretending to be what you are not.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Voice of Knowledge)
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It is very interesting how the human mind works. We have the need to justify everything, to explain and understand everything, in order to feel safe. We have millions of questions that need answers because there are so many things that the reasoning mind cannot explain. It is not important if the answer is correct; just the answer itself makes us feel safe. This is why we make assumptions…We make all sorts of assumptions because we don’t have the courage to ask questions…We have agreed that it is not safe to ask questions; we have agreed that if people love us, they should know what we want or how we feel. When we believe something, we assume we are right about it to the point that we will destroy relationships in order to defend our position.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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You are no longer responsible for anyone's opinion. You have no need to control anyone, and no one controls you either... You don't need to be right and you don't need to make anyone else wrong...you are no longer afraid of being rejected, and you don't have the need to be accepted...you can walk into the world with your heart completely open, and not be afraid to be hurt.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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We have a dysfunctional dream of the planet, and humans are mentally sick with a disease called fear. The symptoms of the disease are all the emotions that make humans suffer: anger, hate, sadness, envy, and betrayal. When the fear is too great, the reasoning mind begins to fail, and we call this mental illness.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements)
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You were born with the right to be happy. You were born with the right to love, to enjoy and to share your love. You are alive, so take your life and enjoy it. Don’t resist life passing through you, because that is God passing through you. Just your existence proves the existence of God. Your existence proves the existence of life and energy.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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You don’t need to blame your parents for teaching you to be like them. What else could they teach you but what they know? They did the best they could, and if they abused you, it was due to their own domestication, their own fears, their own beliefs. They had no control over the programming they received, so they couldn’t have behaved any differently.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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Love is based on respect. Fear doesn’t respect anything, including itself. If I feel sorry for you, it means I don’t respect you. You cannot make your own choices.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Mastery of Love: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship)
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If others say one thing, but do another, you are lying to yourself if you don’t listen to their actions. But if you are truthful with yourself, you will save yourself a lot of emotional pain. Telling yourself the truth about it may hurt, but you don’t need to be attached to the pain. Healing is on the way, and it’s just a matter of time before things will be better for you.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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The real you is still a little child who never grew up. Sometimes that little child comes out when you are having fun or playing, when you feel happy, when you are painting, or writing poetry, or playing the piano, or expressing yourself in some way. These are the happiest moments of your life - when the real you comes out, when you don't care about the past and you don't worry about the future. You are childlike.
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Miguel Ruiz
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How can you ask for something you don't think you deserve?
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Miguel Ruiz (The Voice of Knowledge)
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In order to protect our emotional wounds, and because of our fear of being hurt, humans create something very sophisticated in the mind: a big denial system. In that denial system we become the perfect liars. We lie so perfectly that we lie to ourselves and we even believe our own lies. We don’t notice we are lying, and sometimes even when we know we are lying, we justify the lie and excuse the lie to protect ourselves from the pain of our wounds. The denial system is like a wall of fog in front of our eyes that blinds us from seeing the truth. We wear a social mask because it’s too painful to see ourselves or to let others see us as we really are. And the denial system lets us pretend that everyone believes what we want them to believe about us. We put up these barriers for protection, to keep other people away,
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Miguel Ruiz (The Mastery of Love: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship)
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You don’t need to worship idols of the Virgin Mary, the Christ, or the Buddha. You can if you want to; if it feels good, do it. Your own body is a manifestation of God,
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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The inner Judge uses what is in our Book of Law to judge everything we do and don’t do, everything we think and don’t think, and everything we feel and don’t feel. Everything lives under the tyranny of this Judge.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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The human mind is like a fertile ground were seed are continually being planted. The seeds are opinions, ideas, and concepts. You plant a seed, a thought grows, and it grows. The word is like a seed and the human mind is so fertile!
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Miguel Ruiz
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The human is the only animal on earth that pays a thousand times for the same mistake. The rest of the animals pay only once for every mistake they make. But not us. We have a powerful memory. We make a mistake, we judge ourselves, we find ourselves guilty, and we punish ourselves.
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Miguel Ruiz
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Whatever people do, feel, think, or say, don’t take it personally. If they tell you how wonderful you are, they are not saying that because of you. You know you are wonderful. It is not necessary to believe other people who tell you that you are wonderful. Don’t take anything personally.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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The cells in your body are completely loyal to you; they work for you in harmony. We can even say they pray to you. You are their God. That is absolutely the truth. Now what are you going to do with this knowledge?
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Miguel Ruiz
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How many times do we pay for one mistake? The answer is thousands of times. The human is the only animal on earth that pays a thousand times for the same mistake. The rest of the animals pay once for every mistake they make. But not us. We have a powerful memory. We make a mistake, we judge ourselves, we find ourselves guilty, and we punish ourselves. If justice exists, then that was enough; we don’t need to do it again. But every time we remember, we judge ourselves again, we are guilty again, and we punish ourselves again, and again, and again. If we have a wife or husband he or she also reminds us of the mistake, so we can judge ourselves again, punish ourselves again, and find ourselves guilty again. Is this fair?
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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Humans hunt for love. We feel that we need that love because we believe we don’t have love, because we don’t love ourselves. We hunt for love in other humans just like us, expecting to get love from them when these humans are in the same condition as we are. They don’t love themselves either, so how much love can we get from them? We merely create a bigger need that isn’t real; we keep hunting and hunting, but in the wrong place, because other humans don’t have the love we need.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Mastery of Love: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship)
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Making assumptions in our relationships is really asking for problems. Often we make the assumption that our partners know what we think and that we don’t have to say what we want. We assume they are going to do what we want, because they know us so well. If they don’t do what we assume they should do, we feel so hurt and say, “You should have known.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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It is not important to me what you think about me, and I don't take what you think personally. I don't take it personally when people say, "Miguel, you are the best," and I don't take it personally when they say, "Miguel, you are the worst." I know that when you are happy you will tell me, "Miguel, you are such an angel!" But, when you are mad at me you will say, "Oh, Miguel, you are such a devil! You are so disgusting. How can you say those things?" Either way, it does not affect me because I know what I am. I don't have the need to be accepted. I don't have the need to have someone tell me, "Miguel, you are doing so good!" or "How dare you do that!
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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All of humanity is searching for truth, justice, and beauty. We are on an eternal search for the truth because we only believe in the lies we have stored in our mind. We are searching for justice because in the belief system we have, there is no justice. We search for beauty because it doesn’t matter how beautiful a person is, we don’t believe that person has beauty. We keep searching and searching, when everything is already within us. There is no truth to find.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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Making assumptions and then taking them personally is the beginning of hell in this world. Almost all of our conflicts are based on this, and it’s easy to understand why. Assumptions are nothing more than lies that we are telling ourselves. This creates a big drama for nothing, because we don’t really know if something is true or not. Making assumptions is just looking for drama when there’s no drama happening. And if drama is happening in someone else’s story, so what? It’s not your story; it’s someone else’s story.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Fifth Agreement: A Practical Guide to Self-Mastery (A Toltec Wisdom Book))
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If you decide to be with a person, don’t try to change anything about her. Just like your dog or your cat, let her be who she is. She has the right to be who she is; she has a right to be free. When you inhibit your partner’s freedom, you inhibit your own because you have to be there to see what your partner is doing or not doing. And if you love yourself so much, you are never going to give up your personal freedom. Can
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Miguel Ruiz (The Mastery of Love: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship)
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We only see what we want to see, and hear what we want to hear. We don’t perceive things the way they are. We have the habit of dreaming with no basis in reality. We literally dream things up in our imaginations. Because we don’t understand something, we make an assumption about the meaning, and when the truth comes out, the bubble of our dream pops and we find out it was not what we thought it was at all.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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We are told, “You’re a good boy,” or “You’re a good girl,” when we do what Mom and Dad want us to do. When we don’t, we are “a bad girl” or “a bad boy.” When we went against the rules we were punished; when we went along with the rules we got a reward. We were punished many times a day, and we were also rewarded many times a day. Soon we became afraid of being punished and also afraid of not receiving the reward.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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If you tell someone you love him, and that person says 'Well, I don't love you," is that a reason for you to suffer? Just because someone rejects you doesn't mean you have to reject yourself. If one person doesn't love you, someone else will love you. There is always someone else. And it's better to be with someone who wants to be with you than to be with someone who has to be with you.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Mastery of Love: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship: A Toltec Wisdom Book by Don Miguel Ruiz)
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If someone is not treating you with love and respect, it is a gift if they walk away from you. If that person doesn’t walk away, you will surely endure many years of suffering with him or her. Walking away may hurt for a while, but your heart will eventually heal. Then you can choose what you really want. You will find that you don’t need to trust others as much as you need to trust yourself to make the right choices.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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To give to one another and receive from one another is the purpose of a relationship. We don’t need a lot of words. When we share time with someone, what is important is to communicate with feelings, not with words. But if we want to share words, we don’t need anything complicated. It’s just three words: “I love you.” That’s it. What makes you happy is not the love that other people feel for you, but the love you feel for other people.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Voice of Knowledge: A Practical Guide to Inner Peace (A Toltec Wisdom Book))
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We have the need to be accepted and to be loved by others, but we cannot accept and love ourselves. The more self-love we have, the less we will experience self-abuse. Self-abuse comes from self-rejection, and self-rejection comes from having an image of what it means to be perfect and never measuring up to that ideal. Our image of perfection is the reason we reject ourselves; it is why we don’t accept ourselves the way we are, and why we don’t accept others the way they are.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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Say no when you want to say no, and yes when you want to say yes. You have the right to be you. You can only be you when you do your best. When you don’t do your best you are denying yourself the right to be you. That’s a seed that you should really nurture in your mind. You don’t need knowledge or great philosophical concepts. You don’t need the acceptance of others. You express your own divinity by being alive and by loving yourself and others. It is an expression of God to say, “Hey, I love you.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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The real you is still a little child who never grew up. Sometimes that little child comes out when you are having fun or playing, when you feel happy, when you are painting, or writing poetry, or playing the piano, or expressing yourself in some way. These are the happiest moments of your life — when the real you comes out, when you don’t care about the past and you don’t worry about the future. You are childlike.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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You are Life passing through your body, passing through your mind, passing through your soul. Once you find that out, not with logic, not with the intellect, but because you can feel that Life - you find out that you are the force that makes the flowers open and close, that makes the hummingbird fly from flower to flower. You find out that you are in every tree, and you are in every animal, vegetable, and rock. You are that force that moves the wind and breathes through your body. The whole universe is a living being that is moved by that force, and that is what you are. You are Life.
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Miguel Ruiz
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Don’t make assumptions. 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. —MIGUEL ANGEL RUIZ It’s better to take the time to ask questions and to find the words to say what you really feel. Often we leave so much room for interpretation either because we are rushing or because we are afraid to speak the whole truth, but this is where miscommunications start.
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Demi Lovato (Staying Strong: 365 Days a Year)
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Don’t make assumptions. 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. —MIGUEL ANGEL RUIZ It’s better to take the time to ask questions and to find the words to say what you really feel. Often we leave so much room for interpretation either because we are rushing or because we are afraid to speak the whole truth, but this is where miscommunications start. So even if you aren’t sure about what someone means or how they feel, just ask them. Goal: When was the last time you assumed something and were wrong? Make a point to know the truth and not assume it.
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Demi Lovato (Staying Strong: 365 Days a Year)
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Love is ruthless; it doesn’t feel sorry for anyone, but it does have compassion. Fear is full of pity; it feels sorry for everyone. You feel sorry for me when you don’t respect me, when you don’t think I am strong enough to make it. On the other hand, love respects. I love you; I know you can make it. I know you are strong enough, intelligent enough, good enough that you can make your own choices. I don’t have to make your choices for you. You can make it. If you fall, I can give you my hand, I can help you to stand up. I can say, “You can do it, go ahead.” That is compassion, but it is not the same as feeling sorry. Compassion comes from respect and from love; feeling sorry comes from a lack of respect and from fear.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Mastery of Love: A Practical Guide to the Art of Relationship)
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If you do your best in the search for personal freedom, in the search for self-love, you will discover that it’s just a matter of time before you find what you are looking for. It’s not about daydreaming or sitting for hours dreaming in meditation. You have to stand up and be a human. You have to honor the man or woman that you are. Respect your body, enjoy your body, love your body, feed, clean, and heal your body. Exercise and do what makes your body feel good. This is a puja to your body, and that is a communion between you and God. You don’t need to worship idols of the Virgin Mary, the Christ, or the Buddha. You can if you want to; if it feels good, do it. Your own body is a manifestation of God, and if you honor your body everything will change for you. When you practice giving love to every part of your body, you plant seeds of love in your mind, and when they grow, you will love, honor, and respect your body immensely. Every action then becomes a ritual in which you are honoring God. After that, the next step is honoring God with every thought, every emotion, every belief, even what is “right” or “wrong.” Every thought becomes a communion with God, and you will live a dream without judgments, victimization, and free of the need to gossip and abuse yourself.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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Personal importance, or taking things personally, is the maximum expression of selfishness because we make the assumption that everything is about “me.” During the period of our education, or our domestication, we learn to take everything personally. We think we are responsible for everything. Me, me, me, always me! Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. All people live in their own dream, in their own mind; they are in a completely different world from the one we live in. When we take something personally, we make the assumption that they know what is in our world, and we try to impose our world on their world. Even when a situation seems so personal, even if others insult you directly, it has nothing to do with you. What they say, what they do, and the opinions they give are according to the agreements they have in their own minds. Their point of view comes from all the programming they received during domestication. If someone gives you an opinion and says, “Hey, you look so fat,” don’t take it personally, because the truth is that this person is dealing with his or her own feelings, beliefs, and opinions. That person tried to send poison to you and if you take it personally, then you take that poison and it becomes yours. Taking things personally makes you easy prey for these predators, the black magicians. They can hook you easily with one
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)
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Is it really true that you’re not perfect just the way you are? Can you see all the judgments that you have about yourself? Every judgment is just an opinion — it’s just a point of view — and that point of view wasn’t there when you were born. Everything you think about yourself, everything you believe about yourself, is because you learned it. You learned the opinions from Mom, Dad, siblings, and society. They sent all those images of how a body should look; they expressed all those opinions about the way you are, the way you are not, the way you should be. They delivered a message, and you agreed with that message. And now you think so many things about what you are, but are they the truth? You see, the problem is not really knowledge; the problem is believing in a distortion of knowledge — and that is what we call a lie. What is the truth, and what is the lie? What is real, and what is virtual? Can you see the difference, or do you believe that voice in your head every time it speaks and distorts the truth while assuring you that what you believe is the way things really are? Is it really true that you’re not a good human, and that you’ll never be good enough? Is it really true that you don’t deserve to be happy? Is it really true that you’re not worthy of love?
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Miguel Ruiz (The Fifth Agreement: A Practical Guide to Self-Mastery (A Toltec Wisdom Book))
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Don’t take anything personally because by taking things personally you set yourself up to suffer for nothing. Humans are addicted to suffering at different levels and to different degrees, and we support each other in maintaining these addictions. Humans agree to help each other suffer. If you have the need to be abused, you will find it easy to be abused by others. Likewise, if you are with people who need to suffer, something in you makes you abuse them. It is as if they have a note on their back that says, “Please kick me.” They are asking for justification for their suffering. Their addiction to suffering is nothing but an agreement that is reinforced every day. Wherever you go you will find people lying to you, and as your awareness grows, you will notice that you also lie to yourself. Do not expect people to tell you the truth because they also lie to themselves. You have to trust yourself and choose to believe or not to believe what someone says to you. When we really see other people as they are without taking it personally, we can never be hurt by what they say or do. Even if others lie to you, it is okay. They are lying to you because they are afraid. They are afraid you will discover that they are not perfect. It is painful to take that social mask off. If others say one thing, but do another, you are lying to yourself if you don’t listen to their actions. But if you are truthful with yourself, you will save yourself a lot of emotional pain. Telling yourself the truth about it may hurt, but you don’t need to be attached to the pain. Healing is on the way, and it’s just a matter of time before things will be better for you. If someone is not treating you with love and respect, it is a gift if they walk away from you. If that person doesn’t walk away, you will surely endure many years of suffering with him or her. Walking away may hurt for a while, but your heart will eventually heal. Then you can choose what you really want. You will find that you don’t need to trust others as much as you need to trust yourself to make the right choices.
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Miguel Ruiz (The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom)