“An insincere & evil friend is more to be feared than a wild beast. A wild beast may wound your body, but an evil friend will wound your mind.” — The Buddha
In the world we live there is much injustice. People are suffering, and out of ignorance or evil the same people are causing others to suffer as well. The cycle of fearful E-motions (energy in motion) spread around the globe in seconds through social media. Which in turn causes social dis-ease. This dis-ease leads to mind sets of depression, greed, hate, rage, and paranoia. Finally, these mind sets lead to acts of violence (homicide/suicide) and selfishness that usually start within family or friendship circles, before spilling over into the larger society.
Today i would like to share some insights with you through a book that i have studied called “A Toltec: The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz. i believe these insights will bring a CURE to such social dis-ease that we are currently experiencing due to all the MASS injustice happening today. But that cure lies in each of us becoming the last line of defense by applying the Four Agreements to ourselves.
Before we get there, you should consider the following analogies about how energy affects our everyday lives.
E-MOTION
Everyday we awake with a certain amount of mental, emotional, and physical energy that we can spend throughout the day. If we ALLOW our emotions to deplete our energy, we have no energy to change our lives or to give to others.
The way you see the world will depend upon the emotions you are feeling. When you are angry everything around you is wrong, nothing is right. You blame everything, including the weather; whether it’s raining or the sun is shining, nothing pleases you. When you are sad, everything around you looks sad. Perhaps you feel vulnerable and have a need to protect yourself because you don’t know in what moment someone will attack you?
You do not trust anything or anyone around you (this is like being in prison). This is because you see the world with the eyes of fear.
The same is truth of the emotions of love, gratitude, and happiness. When you are loving, everything around you is LOVE. When you are thankful, everything around you is blessings. When you are happy, you see the good in everything. These good emotions does not deplete your energy, rather they increase the energy of yourself and those around you.
Sometimes emotions are not a choice initially. Things can happen that we PERCEIVE as good or bad and we react emotionally. However, we have more CHOICE in how we control the reaction to overwhelming emotions we feel.
TOUCHY SUBJECT
Imagine that the human mind is the same as your skin. You can touch healthy skin and it feels wonderful. Your skin is made for perception and the sensation of touch is good. Now imagine you have an injury and the skin gets cut and infected. If you touch the infected skin, it’s going to hurt, so you try to cover and protect the skin. You will not like being touched because it hurts.
NOW IMAGINE that all humans have this skin disease. Nobody can touch each other because it is going to hurt. Everyone has wounds on their skin; so the infection is seen as normal; we believe we are supposed to be that way.
Can you imagine how we would behave with each other if all the humans in the world had this skin disease? Of course we would hardly ever hug each other because it would be too painful. So we would need to create a lot of SOCIAL DISTANCE between us. Sounds familiar?
The human mind is exactly like this analogy or description of infected skin. Every human has an EMOTIONAL BODY completely covered with infected wounds. Each wound is infected with emotional poison — the poison of all the emotions that make us suffer, such as hate, anger, envy, and saddness.
An action of injustice opens a wound in the mind and we react with emotional poison because of the CONCEPTS and BELIEFS we have about injustice and what is fair. The mind is so wounded and full of poison by the process of DOMESTICATION, that everyone describes the wounded minds as normal.
Yes, i said domesticated. Ruiz explained that domestication is the process taming in which that we all have been trained since children by society to not dream beyond the moment or given narrative, but to accept the dysfunctional, dis-eased mind of fear as normal. The symptoms of the dis-ease are all the negative emotions that make people suffer. When the fear is too great, the reasoning mind begins to fail, and we call this mental illness. Psychotic behavior occurs (wars, mass shootings, insurrections, hate crimes, etc.,.) when the mind is so frightened and the wounds so painful, that it seems better to not only break contact with the outside world, but those closest to us. Hurt people hurt people.
THE SCALPEL: TRUTH’S CURE
When we begin to see this fear state of mind as a dis-ease, it is no longer normal and acceptable, and we can find that there is a cure. We don’t have to suffer any longer. First, we all need the TRUTH to reopen the emotional wounds, take out the poison, and heal the wounds completely.
How do we do this? Accepting truth. Truth is like a scalpel, because it cuts open the wounds which have been covered by the scab of lies so that we can be healed. The initial cuts by truth are painful, but will rid our minds of fear. Like the pain of forgiving those we feel have wronged us. Not because they deserve to be forgiven, but because we love ourselves so much that we don’t want to keep paying for injustice repeatedly.
True justice is paying only once for a mistake, while injustice is paying repeadly for the same mistake.
Humans are the only beings on earth that pays a thousand times for the same mistake. Crazy huh? I am guilty of not allowing myself forgive people that hurt me, by hurting them. This solves nothing, but create more hurt than healing.
Shame and revenge are the two main stains from fear that causes us to experience injustice by repeatedly paying for the same wrongs. This is retribution, not justice. The U.S. justice system is based on this model. When redemption only comes from structured acts of forgiving ourselves and others. This is the basis of a RESTORATIVE JUSTICE approach; something that is needed in today’s U.S. society as a whole.
Now that we know that the cure for the social dis-ease of fear lies within each one of us by taking on the personal responsibility to embrace truth. Here are additional tools of the FOUR AGREEMENTS to increase the wellness in ourselves and the community:
- Be Impeccable With Your Speech. Always speak with integrity. Say what you mean with sincerity and consideration of others. Avoid using words to put down yourself or others. Use the power of your words to speak truth and love. Remember: the power of life & death lies in the tongue.
- Don’t Take Anything Personal. Nothing others say or do is because of you; whether they are family or not, it is a projection of their own reality. Never be the victim of needless suffering by others’ hate, opinions, or actions. Remember: only ¼ of all our suffering comes from outside forces.
- Don’t Make Assumptions. Research as much as you can, but if you don’t know have the courage to ask questions. Express what you really mean without assumptions to avoid misunderstandings with yourself and others. Remember: don’t be an ass assuming.
- Always Do Your Best. Your best changes from moment to moment; it’s different when your healthy or sick. Regardless of the conditions simply do your best to avoid self-judgement and regret. Remember: all sincere efforts are rewarded.
Use these scalpels of truth, despite its short term pains, to prevent and remove the scabs of hurt from our own hearts; in order not to be another “hurt person” spreading the dis-eases of hurt to others.
For A Better World,
LB