Another past myspace blog "New Age Reading"

April 4, 2008 - Friday

I’m reading a New-Age book by a man named Miguel Ruiz. It is called, "The Four Agreements". He basically says that a lot of what we believe is based on behavioral principles. We are taught certain things and we go with it. When we accept a rule into our lives, we are basically making an agreement to follow the rule. He then proposes that many of the "rules" we live with are false. In order to change the falsehoods, we have to make 4 agreements with ourselves. One is always speak impeccably about ourselves and others (or speak kindly, without sin), the next is "never take anything personally". That’s as far as I’ve gotten into the book and I can’t remember the other two. But that was a bit of a tangent to what I actually wanted to say. In the first chapter, he talks a lot about the agreements we’ve made in our lives. He talks about how many of us hate ourselves and participate in some type of self-abuse, whether it be drugs, alcohol, excessive shopping, overeating, not taking care of our own needs, etc. Then came the sentence that hit me and has stuck with me . . .I don’t remember the exact quote, but the basic concept is this: Another person will never abuse you more than you abuse yourself. That is because we will accept abuse from another person exactly up to the point where we abuse ourselves. If they go beyond how we treat ourselves, we will step away. But as long as they don’t treat us worse than we treat ourselves, we will put up with it.

Woah! I had never thought of it that way before. And I agree with the statement. And so, I made a commitment to treat myself better. . . I need to treat myself the way I want others to treat me. . . .