The Fifth Agreement: A Practical Guide to Self-Mastery (A Toltec Wisdom Book)

Product Information

The authors present a five-step process to escape the mirage of “the real world” by reframing your perspective to adjust your reactions to the messages you receive. By practicing the five steps in your own life, the naguals say, you begin to reconnect with your needs and desires and reclaim the freedom to be satisfied with yourself as you are. You embrace the seed of doubt and embark on the path to the freedom of control. In other words, what follows is the Toltec road to enlightenment. When we use words impeccably, we only allow them to improve our lives, not be destructive. This starts with the words you choose and ends with the degree of relative truth you assign to words from others. The goal here is to, like the toddler you once were, not judge or reject yourself for who you are. At the same time, when others insult you, see their words as just symbols, their truth, not yours, and you’ll better be able to let it wash away. We are living in a dream that we artists are creating...we can take responsibility for our creation." Relationship is an art. To keep the two of you happy, you have to keep your half perfect. You are responsible for your half, and your half has a certain amount of garbage. Your garbage is your garbage. The one who has to deal with that garbage is you, not your partner.

Each subjective reality is a stage in the Toltec road to total personal freedom, culminating in the ability to choose what we believe and thereby determine our own satisfaction and happiness. Essentially, that final stage is a form of enlightenment—so we’ll compare each stage along the way to other enlightenment philosophies, like Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism. This book is not just a review of the four agreements plus the fifth. It IS a re-statement of the first four agreements, but in much more detail and in more common language. I first became aware of the Toltec wisdom through Carlos Castaneda's series "the teachings of Don juan..." and they were impressive yet they seemed a distant unreachable wisdom in some far off world/ time shrouded in mystery etc. Then Merylin Tenneshende's book "Don Juan and the art of sexual energy" took the next step toward making the wisdom more tangible for the masses.

PDF Summary Part 1.2: Adjust Your Focus

You have the power to create. Your power is so strong that whatever you believe comes true. You create yourself, whatever you believe you are. You are the way you are because that is what you believe about yourself. Your whole reality, everything you believe, is your creation. You have the same power as any other human in the world. The main difference between you and someone else is how you apply your power, what you create with your power.

Test and question your beliefs, don’t follow them blindly. Whatever gives you the edge trust it, if something brings you sorrow neglect it. During the second stage, the naguals explain, we become aware of the ways our beliefs harm us and begin to disconnect from the mirage. We begin to doubt that the mirage is truly “the real world,” and awaken to the many small ways in which the beliefs we grew up with manifest as harm. We make adjustments to the way we respond to, think about, and see ourselves, others, and the world. We start to see what’s actually here, instead of what’s not here. Shortform Commentary: What Does Acceptance Mean?

PDF Summary Shortform Introduction

Most of us, the naguals say, aren’t critical of what we perceive and learn. We trust what our culture, society, and teachers tell us, innocently and without reservation. We believe that what we’re seeing is all there is—we think we live in “the real world” and never realize that it’s only a mirage. This is the most common way to live, the naguals say. We’re handed a flawed belief system, and we accept it as-is.