What I love about Don Miguel and this book is that it is so simple in how he phrases these agreements and yet when you really sit and think of doing this in your life it is much deeper than you think. Here he is giving us a blueprint or map to really leading a much happier and fulfilling life. In this Second agreement he tells us, Don’t take things personally. He remind us that we take things personally because we agree with whatever was said . He uses the metaphor of this being like a poison that goes through us. This description was really powerful because I think if you can see it as this then it allows us to have much more control on what we accept as truth and what we don’t . Who wants poison running through their body. He also refers to the individual making the comment or judgments as black magicians. Again these are powerful images that he uses that allow us to really stop and think and know that in that instant we have a choice.
He reminds us that nothing that people do is because of you . It is because of themselves. They live in their own world different than the one we live in. When we take things personally we get defensive and our reactions are to defend our beliefs and create conflicts . He gives the example of a mother coming home tired and with a headache to her little girl just be who she is happy and signing and joyful and then screams at her and tells her to shut up and that she has an ugly voice. The little girl believed this and stopped signing from then on. What would have happened if that little girl had been taught from an early age about these agreements. How would the outcome have been different
He also speaks of not taking ourselves personally . Sometimes we are listening to voices in our minds . He says these voices may come from other realities where there are living beings very similar to the human mind , the Toltecs call these beings Allies. Our minds live in more than one dimension and sometimes we are perceiving things , but we still have a choice to believe it or not. The only way to get past this is to do an inventory of all of our agreements in order to get out of the chaos or the ” mitoe” as the Toltecs call it. Again he used the metaphor of the “mitoe” being like a busy market place where there is a lot of noise, a lot of conversations . Our minds are the same in that when we have allot of agreements , sometimes one may not agree with another and causes allot of confusion in our minds so that we don’t know what we really want. So then we see that self awareness of these agreements is really key to being happy in life. Therefore it becomes critical to do the work and become aware of what agreements you have made. Make that choice for yourself. Make that choice to be happy and have the life you want.
Maria Jacques