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Being true to yourself is not easy. In magazines, we’re shown images of flawless airbrushed bodies. Luxury and celebrity lifestyles are worshipped. In our culture we’re judged for what we own and what we do. Not who we are.

It’s hard to remain true to yourself when our culture encourages competition. I don’t think competition is a bad thing necessarily. Our economy’s livelihood depends on it. The problem is we define everyone as winners or losers. He’s a janitor, he must be a loser. She’s a fortune 500 executive, she must be a winner.

We judge people based on their outward appearances, the cars they drive and the restaurants they frequent. Have you ever been nervous to approach a person because they have a more important title than you? Have you ever avoided someone because they looked homeless?

Judging others based on their appearances and job titles is kind of inevitable though, as backwards as it may be. After all, it’s the first thing we see, and the first thing we hear. But I think we abuse this system.

In a perfect world, we would judge people based on the contents of their character (or not judging at all, for that matter). I think the more we practice doing this, the more comfortable we become with ourselves. The more we accept ourselves, the more we accept others as well.

Because the truth is, the level of your happiness is exactly proportional to the amount you’ve sold yourself out. The amount of contentment you experience is directly related to how authentically you’re living.

The main source of this problem is:

The Domestication of Humans

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Our agreements with ourselves determine how we behave, what we believe is possible and impossible. We have many agreements with ourselves, the only problem is many of these agreements go against us. Self-limiting beliefs rob us of our freedom. We can blame the state of our lives on others, society, or our environment, but we will never be free unless we take responsibility for own freedom.

The agreements you’ve made with yourself can either be an elevator or a cage. Our doubts and fears are not true in themselves. Our deepest beliefs about ourselves and the nature of our world are not true in themselves, but our thinking makes them true in our experience. We can change our thinking and change even our deepest core beliefs.

In the book The Four Agreements, Don Miguel Ruiz offers four simple suggestions to change the agreements we have with ourselves, and recover our personal freedom.

1. Be impeccable with your word.

What does impeccable mean? It means to be without sin (no I don’t mean not committing adultery or coveting your neighbor’s bmw). If you look up the root of sin, you’ll find that it means “to go against.” Being impeccable with our word means we don’t use our word against ourselves. If we don’t like what someone else has to say, we can walk away. But if we don’t like what we have to say to ourselves, we can’t walk away. Doesn’t it make more sense to use our word to go with ourselves, instead of against us? Just with this first agreement alone, we can transform our relationship with ourselves.

2. Don’t take anything personally.

We all have a feeling of “personal importance.” We think that when others do something, it has to do with us. In reality, others actions are based on their own internal world. When we realize that nothing others do has anything to do with us, we become immune to their words and actions. Even if someone shot you in the head, it was nothing personal. It had nothing to do with you, it was because of their own beliefs and fears.

3. Don’t make assumptions.

How many times we do we get upset at our loved ones or friends when they do something that offends us. We think “they should have known.” The truth is, no one knows the contents of our minds. When we make assumptions, we create a whole lot of unnecessary drama. Instead we can ask questions, and have the courage to tell others how we feel. If you’re not sure of how another person feels, ask them. If we have the courage to ask others questions and be open with our feelings, we can save a lot ourselves a lot of pain and suffering.

4. Always do your best.

Realize that your best will be different depending on different circumstances. When you’re healthy your best will be better than when you’re sick. Whatever your situation, always do your best. The first three agreements are about changing your agreements with yourself. The fourth agreement is about putting them into action. If you always do your best, you can free yourself from the judge and the victim in your mind. Even if you fail, you’ll know at least you did your best.

Learning From Great Teachers

Whether they knew it or not, many great thinkers and teachers followed these agreements to some degree. Thomas Edison proclaimed “Hell, there are no rules here– we’re trying to accomplish something.” He knew that if there were too many rules, their creativity would be limited.

Gandhi was a master of not taking things personally. He knew that if he responded with violence, he would only promote more violence. He was able to see that their oppression was the result of their own beliefs, their own agreements.

When I think of someone who didn’t make assumptions, Jesus Christ immediately comes to mind. He didn’t judge others for their actions, he had the courage to ask questions and clarify his beliefs.

Albert Einstein knew that if he failed, there was simply another incorrect possibility eliminated. He could have easily become frustrated and given up. But he used the power of his word to go with himself.

Returning to Uncommon Sense

Most of these agreements might seem like common sense at first glance. But they are entirely the opposite. They are uncommon sense. When I first read this book, I thought “My god, how could I have not realized this before?” It’s so deceptively simple.

Implementing these agreements into your life, on the other hand takes hard work. Make the agreement to practice them just today. The more we practice these agreements, the more we’ll regain our personal freedom. We’ll unclutter our inner world save ourselves a lot of drama. Not only with ourselves, but with others as well.

By practicing these agreements, we can chip away at all the self-defeating beliefs we’ve created within us. We can recover our personal freedom.

Have you been practicing these agreements without knowing it? What are some of the agreements or beliefs you’ve changed that have helped you recover your personal freedom? Share with us in the comments. =)

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note: This is a summary of much of what can be found in Don Miguel Ruiz’s book The Voice of Knowledge. If you would like to read more about it, I highly recommend checking out his book (any of them for that matter).

We’re born completely authentic. But something happens as we grow up; our authenticity is broken. Growing up we naturally want to please our parents. When we do something “good” we are told we are a “good boy” or a “good girl.” But when we do something “bad” we are told we are a “bad boy” or a “bad girl.” Our parents love us and are just trying to do what’s best for us. But behind their praise and chastising we hear a hidden message: it’s not okay to be who I am.

We are told this in school as well “You had better work hard and get good grades if you want to make something of your life.” Our teachers have the best intentions, but we still hear the hidden message: who I am right now is not good enough.

Our parents, siblings, friends and teachers all have an opinion of us. They think we would be best if we were this way or that way. We should be a certain way, but we are not. This is the beginning of our image of perfection.

The Image of Perfection

Before long we don’t need our teachers and parents to give us this image of perfection, we now have our own judge and our own victim inside our minds. We judge ourselves according to this image. We’re not good enough, we’re not smart enough, we don’t do enough, accomplish enough. We see what we should be, but we are not. In this the drama begins to unfold and the judge and the victim inside our head begin to rule our life.

This voice in our heads (otherwise known as the Voice of Knowledge) is constantly judging us and judging everyone else. But it is based on an image of perfection that we will never achieve! We are born perfect, nothing we do can ever make us perfect. We’re searching for a false image.

Imagine you’re building a house and you need a certain amount of wood to put up the frame. You know you need a certain amount of two by fours, four by fours and plywood. If you run out of wood for a certain part of the frame, you don’t blame the two by fours for being too short. You also don’t blame the plywood for being too flat.

We don’t judge the different pieces of wood for not being anything other then they are. But we do this with ourselves all the time.

A Beautiful Mind

Let’s look at the example of the movie “A Beautiful Mind.” The main character in this movie is a schizophrenic, but he’s also a genius. The problem is he sees people who don’t exist. The people he sees are controlling his life because he listens to them and does whatever they want him to do. After his wife discovers his condition, she puts him in an insane asylum. It’s not until he is given medication that he is able to see his hallucinations aren’t real.

The drug, however, gives him side effects so he stops taking the medication. Now he is faced with a choice, he can either go back to the hospital, lose his wife and accept his mental illness, or he can face the visions and overcome them.

He makes the choice to stay off the medication and battle his hallucinations. He decides “Whenever I see these people, I won’t listen to them. I won’t believe what they tell me.” The more he persists, the less power the visions have over him and he regains his personal freedom.

The beauty of this story is that it shows that if you don’t believe the voice in your head, it loses the power it has over you. So how can we conque the voice in our own head? How can we conquer the tyrant that is ruling our life?

Taming the Voice; Two Rules

Don Miguel Ruiz offers two simple rules for conquering the voice in your head:

1. Don’t believe yourself. But listen to the voice of knowledge because sometimes it might have a brilliant idea. Don’t believe yourself mainly when you are using the voice against yourself. How many times have you said “yes” when you really wanted to say “no”? In the same way, how many times have you said “no” when you really wanted to say “yes”? You didn’t listen to your integrity because the voice in your head wouldn’t let you. The voice in your head is the ability to judge. Because of that, it will always say two different, conflicting things. Listen to the voice, but don’t believe it.

2. Don’t believe anybody else. Just because someone else is telling your their opinion, doesn’t make it true. Realize that they are speaking from the perspective of their own story. When people are talking to you, don’t judge what they have to say, don’t believe what they say. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t listen to them. Listen to their story and follow your own integrity. When someone is speaking from their integrity, our own integrity will be able to recognize it.

As I’ve said earlier, knowledge is the ability to judge. The voice in our head is the voice of knowledge. But that voice is like a wild horse, taking us wherever it wants to go. Once you tame the horse, you can ride the horse. With it, you can take yourself whever you want to go.

Using these two rules has helped me find inner peace. Searching for answers, I knew my image of perfection was unrealistic. I knew that striving for that would never bring me freedom. Knowledge is a valuable tool, but like all great tools, they have their disadvantages. And the principle disadvantage of knowledge is that we confuse it with reality. In reality, everything is perfect. Judgment is a part of reality, but reality itself is beyond judgment.

Points to ponder:

• The truth survives our skepticism, but we can’t say the same about lies. Lies only exist if we believe in them. The truth is the truth whether we believe in it or not. That’s the beauty of the truth.

• The voice of knowledge is a tyrant and it is ruling your life. If you refuse to believe what it says, it will become quieter and quieter. You can now use the voice of knowledge as a tool and reclaim your authenticitiy.

• Everything in creation is perfect, but we don’t see that because our attention is focused on the lies. With awareness, we can recover our authenticity and live in truth.

In the next series on Truth I’ll be talking about the Four Agreements and how you can use them to recover your personal freedom.

What are your thoughts on the Voice of Knowledge? Has the voice inside your head been ruining your life?

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We’ve all had the experience of being our own worst critic. One part of our mind is encouraging, the other is doubtful. One side of our mind says “follow your dreams!” and the other side says “you’ll never make it.”

Is it possible that the story of Adam and Eve can explain this conflict, this battle for our mind?

Adam and Eve lived in the Garden of Eden, they lived in communion with God, they were one with Him.

But when Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge, they experienced separation from God. For the first time they started searching for what they already had within them.

Adam and Eve; A Different Point of View

In The Voice of Knowledge, Don Miguel Ruiz offers the familiar story of Adam and Eve from a different light. Here is the summary:

“The story of Adam and Eve is one of the greatest teachings ever, but one that I believe is greatly misunderstood. Now I will tell you this story from a different point of view, perhaps the same point of view of the one who created it.

The story of Adam and Eve is about you and me, man and woman. We are the original humans, because we are all one.

The story begins when we were innocent, before we fell from heaven and closed our spiritual eyes. We used to live in the Garden of Eden, which is heaven on earth. That is before we closed our spiritual eyes. Heaven only exists when our spiritual eyes are open. It is a place of joy, freedom and eternal love. When we lived in Heaven, everything was effortless. We saw everything through the eyes of Truth.

Well, the legend said in the middle of Paradise stood two trees. One was the Tree of Life, which gave life to everything in existence and the other was the Tree of Death, better known as the Tree of Knowledge. God told us “Don’t go near the Tree of Knowledge. If you eat the fruit, you may die.”

The Prince of Lies.

But by nature we love to explore and naturally we went to pay a visit to the tree. And guess who lived in that tree? A big snake, also known as the Prince of Lies. According to the story, the Prince of Lies was living in that tree and the fruit of all that tree, which was knowledge, was contaminated with lies. Upon visiting the tree we had a conversation with the Prince. Because we were innocent and we trusted everyone, we also trusted the liar. The liar told us we could become powerful if we ate the fruit of the tree and because we were innocent, we believed him.

When we bit into the apple, we ate the lies that came with knowledge. The mind is a fertile ground for concepts and ideas, concepts and opinions. If we believe a lie, it takes root in our mind. We put our faith in it. The more faith we have in it, the more the seed grows and can become a big strong tree. One little lie can be very contagious, spreading the seeds from person to person when we share it with others. Because we ate the fruit from that tree, now the liar, or the voice of knowledge lives inside our mind.

The Beginning of Knowledge

The legend says that whoever eats the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge will have the knowledge of good and evil, they will know the difference between right and wrong, and what is beautiful and what is ugly. They will gather that knowledge and begin to judge.

Each of us has our own personal Tree of Knowledge that contains every opinion, idea and concept we have. It is the foundation of our belief system. Every concept, every opinion we have, forms a little branch on that tree that makes up our whole Tree of Knowledge. As soon as that tree is alive in our mind, we hear the fallen angel talking very loudly. The same fallen angel that lived in the Tree of Knowledge, now lives inside our mind. Now the parasite is living our life and it survives inside our head because we feed it with our faith.

The story of Adam and Eve explains how we fell from heaven and into the dream of hell. The moment we ate the fruit from that tree, our spiritual eyes closed. We no longer saw from the eyes of truth and love, we saw from the eyes of knowledge. We begin to judge ourselves and others. With judgment comes separation and polarity. And that voice never stops judging. It judges everything we do and everything we don’t do, whatever we feel and whatever we don’t feel and whatever everybody else does. And what comes out of that voice? Mostly lies.

Clouds in our mind.

The lies consume our attention so greatly that all we can see are lies. That’s why we don’t see the reality that heaven exists in this same place,

in the same time. Heaven belongs to use because we are the children of heaven. But the voice doesn’t belong to us. When we are born, we are authentic and we don’t have the Voice of Knowledge. The voice in our head comes through learning- first language, then different points of view, then all the judgments and lies.

In the moment we are separated from God, we begin to search for God. For the first time, we are searching for something that already exists within us. We started to search for the love we believed we didn’t have.

It is true what God told us: if you eat from the Tree of Knowledge, you may die. Well we ate it and we are dead. We are dead because we are no longer authentic. The Voice of Knowledge now runs our life. You can call it thinking, I call it the voice of knowledge.”

Moral of the Story

Because we are viewing life through the lens of knowledge, we no longer see through the eyes of truth. Some people say the path to truth is through knowledge, but I believe this isn’t so. Truth is the truth regardless of whether we believe in it or not. That’s the beauty of truth. Truth is self evident.

The Tree of Knowledge is a powerful symbol. It explains our “fall from heaven” into the dream of hell through the awakening of knowledge. The reason knowledge puts us in hell is because with knowledge, comes judgment. But in reality there is no judgment, there just is. Right and wrong, beauty and ugliness, only exist within our mind. When we suspend judgment, everything becomes beautiful.

Knowledge: A Double Edged Sword

With knowledge we can use our word to sculpt our reality. We can change our internal dialogue; through knowledge we have response-ability. We can take a given situation and choose the best possible response. Or if we have a negative mindset, we can choose a self-defeating response.

The power of knowledge is the power of judgment. Its power is also its weakness.

With judgment we create a false image of perfection. We judge our actions and our thoughts, some we label as good, others as bad. We obviously want to be on the good side though, so we punish ourselves when we do something that doesn’t live up to our expectations. What we fail to realize is that good and bad, are two parts of them same whole.

I think that’s what they meant by Original Sin. If you look up the root of sin, it means to go against. Original Sin, was the first time we went against ourself.

The Jeckyl and Hyde Within Our Minds

It’s not a far cry from Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde. Like the famed story by Robert Louis Stevenson, we too have a Jeckyl and Hyde within us. One side of our mind says yes, the other says no. One side plays the judge, the other the victim. How many times have you punished or judged yourself for making a mistake? The same voice that is ridiculing and punishing us, is the same voice that caused us to make that choice in the first place!

So the question is…

How do we tame the beast of knowledge?

The answer will be in my next article in the Truth series called “The Lie of Our Imperfection.”

Subscribe now to make sure you win the battle for your mind.

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