The Four Agreements
A couple of months ago, I visited Bodhigram. It is a quiet place at the foothills of the Himalayas and ideal for people looking for some peace of mind and wanting to spend time close to nature, away from the city. One of the founders of that place suggested a book called “The Four Agreements” by Miguel Ruiz.
It is a 140-page book yet I took almost a month to finish it. Not because I am a slow reader or it was a complicated book to read, but because the book is so nicely and rightly written that it makes you think. I am not sure if the things written in this book would have made less sense if I had not been questioning some patriarchal aspects of the Indian family structure.
The book says that you should make four agreements with yourself. If you do that, your life changes for the better. The agreements are: 1. Be impeccable with your word; 2. Don’t take anything personally; 3. Don’t make assumptions; and 4. Do your best, but it is the intro chapter that made the most difference.
I read the introduction chapter on the domestication of humans and took 15 days to come back to the book again because of the impact the book created on my mind. I was seeing everything around me through this lens of the domestication of humans. The book is nicely written, and I have taken abstracts from the book itself. If you like these paragraphs, I highly recommend that you read the complete book.
Domestication of Humans
Children are domesticated the same way that we domesticate a dog, a cat, or any other animal. As children, we didn’t have the opportunity to choose our beliefs, but we agreed with the information that was passed on to us from the dream of the planet via other humans.
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. The reward is the attention that we get from our parents or from other people like siblings, teachers, and friends. We soon develop a need to hook other people’s attention in order to get rewards.
With the fear of being punished and that fear of not getting the reward, we start pretending to be what we are not, just to please others and to be good enough for someone else. We try to please Mom and Dad; we try to please the teachers at school; we try to please the church; and we start acting.
We become a copy of Mamma’s beliefs, Daddy’s beliefs, society’s beliefs, and religion’s beliefs.
Domestication is so strong that, at a certain point in our lives, we no longer need anyone to domesticate us. We are so well trained that we are our domesticators. We are an autodomesticated animal. We can now domesticate ourselves according to the same belief system we were given, using the same system of punishment and reward.
These beliefs are so strong that even years later, when we are exposed to new concepts and try to make our own decisions, we find that beliefs still control our lives.
Breaking the rules in the book of law opens your emotional wounds, and your reaction is to create emotional poison. But even if the book of law is wrong, it makes you feel safe.
That is why we need a great deal of courage to challenge our own beliefs. Because even if we know we didn’t choose all these beliefs, it is also true that we agreed to all of them. The agreement is so strong that even if we understand the concept of it not being true, we feel the blame, the guilt, and the shame that occur if we go against the rules.
We feel guilt or shame while going away from the norms because we have this fear of rejection — even from ourselves.
Recently, I was studying the fundamental rights of Indian citizens given in the Constitution of India. Article 20(2) of the Indian Constitution says that no one should be punished more than once for the same crime. However, emotionally, we do a lot of injustice to ourselves and to the people around us.
We have a powerful memory. We make a mistake, we judge ourselves guilty, and we punish ourselves. If justice exists, then that is 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.
How many times do we make our spouse, our children, or our parents pay for the same mistake? Every time we remember the mistake, we blame them again and send them all the emotional poison we feel at the injustice, and then we make them pay again for the same mistake. Is that justice?
Right now, I am challenging the belief that to write something meaningful, it should come directly from me, and I should not just write abstracts from the book. But if it is well written and I want to send a message, why do I need to rephrase it?
If you like this book, do read it. It’s a must-read book.
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