The Four Agreements and the follow up book, The Fifth Agreement by Don Miguel Ruiz and Don Jose Ruiz is probably one of the most familiar contemporary New Thought books read today. Many of the ‘agreements’ are frequently quoted in articles and talks when describing attributes for a fulfilling life.
But, have you ever heard that the five Toltec agreements parallel the five principles of Unity? Rev. Temple Hayes explains the similarities in the following excerpts from the May/June 2018 Unity Magazine.
Give Me Five: How the Five Principles of Unity Parallel the Five Toltec Agreements
~ Rev. Temple Hayes
NOTE: Part one of a five-part series of select excerpts from the
May/June 2018 Unity Magazine article.
I’ve always felt that the powerful self-mastery teachings of don Miguel Ruiz, a shaman from the Colombian Toltec lineage and author of The Four Agreements and The Fifth Agreement)… walks hand in hand with Unity principles….
First Principle
/ Fifth Agreement
The first Unity principle:
God is the source and creator of all. There is no other enduring power. God is good and present everywhere.
… ties in with the fifth agreement:
Be skeptical while listening.
No condition, no place or thing, ever exceeds the presence and power of goodness. Yet so many of us were brought up to ‘watch out’ because someone or something ‘out there’ was going to do things to us or not do things for us. These concepts develop early in our lives, and we soon start looking for this someone or something that is against us to show up. As a result, we often aim low instead of high. We find enduring powers happening in our lives like debt, relationship challenges, addiction, or an inability to find love. We’re the ones who have made those enduring powers so — God doesn’t have anything to do with it. God is an energy. It’s an electrifying presence. It’s a principle that is for us, and there simply is no one ‘out there’ who is not an integral part of that principle. That’s why we have free will and free choice.
The Toltec fifth agreement says we can choose what we want to believe. If we do that, we won’t need to tell others they are wrong because we understand that we aren’t responsible for what they create — only for what we create. If we believe there is only one power, we must claim it all the time, not just when things are going well. We are fully responsible for creating both our joy and our suffering.
