When we respect everybody around us, we are in peace with everybody around us.
— Don Miguel Ruiz
I don't know what I am. And it's not important.
Life is very, very simple and easy to understand, but we complicate it with the beliefs and ideas that we create.
Everything you think about yourself, everything you believe about yourself, is because you learned it.
For thousands of years, there have been lies about being gay or not being gay. If you know they're lies, you're free.
Whatever you perceive, you always make a story with yourself as the main character, and that dictates your life. Then when you read 'The Four Agreements', you hear another voice beneath the story, the voice that comes from your integrity, your spirit.
Before we were born, a whole society of storytellers was already here. The storytellers who were here before us taught us how to be human.
We only see what we want to see; we only hear what we want to hear. Our belief system is just like a mirror that only shows us what we believe.
Always do your best.
Be impeccable with your word.
Always Do Your Best. Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.
Be Impeccable With Your Word. Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.
Every human is an artist. The dream of your life is to make beautiful art.
I am here and I'm alive. That's enough.
The same way that you are the main character of your story, you are only a secondary character in everybody else's story.
I love and respect all religions and philosophies. I see how they get formed, how they grow up, and how powerful they are. But for me to believe in a specific god - no. Because what I believe is that the infinite, the absolute, is a living being and the only one living being that really exists.
When you look at yourself in a mirror, do you like what you see, or do you judge your body and use the word to tell yourself lies? If you believe that you are not attractive enough, then you believe a lie, and you are using the word against yourself, against the truth.
People like to say that the conflict is between good and evil. The real conflict is between truth and lies.
Listen to other people tell their story, but don't believe them. You know that it's just a story that is only true for them, but listen because the communication can be wonderful.
When we believe in lies, we cannot see the truth, so we make thousands of assumptions and we take them as truth. One of the biggest assumptions we make is that the lies we believe are the truth!
Humans believe so many lies because we aren't aware. We ignore the truth or we just don't see the truth. When we are educated, we accumulate a lot of knowledge, and all that knowledge is just like a wall of fog that doesn't allow us to perceive the truth, what really is.
Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse and regret.
Be Skeptical, but learn to listen.
Don't Make Assumptions. Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.
Life is like dancing. If we have a big floor, many people will dance. Some will get angry when the rhythm changes. But life is changing all the time.
I can say, 'Well, I'm a male. I'm a male human. I'm a medical doctor. I'm an author...' If I go to a religious point of view, I will say, 'I am a soul. I am a spirit.' If I go into science, I will say, 'I am energy. I am light.' But the truth is I have no idea what I am.
Every human is an artist. And this is the main art that we have: the creation of our story.
We never stop to consider that our beliefs are only a relative truth that's always going to be distorted by all the knowledge we have stored in our memory.
The word is a force you cannot see, but you can see the manifestation of that force, the expression of the word, which is your own life.
Love is unknown. To open the heart in trust is unknown. They say love hurts. It doesn't have to.
You know that if you lie to yourself, surely other people lie to themselves. And if they lie to themselves, they will lie to you also.
Just imagine becoming the way you used to be as a very young child, before you understood the meaning of any word, before opinions took over your mind. The real you is loving, joyful, and free. The real you is just like a flower, just like the wind, just like the ocean, just like the sun.
In our development, as we grow throughout our lives, the structure of our beliefs becomes very complicated, and we make it even more complicated because we make the assumption that what we believe is the absolute truth.
Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick.
Respect is one of the greatest expressions of love.
Don't Take Anything Personally. Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own reality, their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.
Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive - the risk to be alive and express what we really are.
