[nectar_dropcap]I[/nectar_dropcap] first read the book, “The Four Agreements” well over 10 years ago. Even at that time, I was struck by how such a small book could pack such a big punch and it had a strong impact on me. I was a few years into my own healing and self discovery journey and this realization that there was this collective dream in which we were living was a fairly new one for me and one that I was having a hard time wrapping my head around in any real way. It is, after all, a pretty deep concept – this one of “real”.
I tried to implement each of the four agreements with varying success. It was difficult to overlay these new agreements on top of my old ones and I ultimately forgot about them. Many years later, I returned to “The Four Agreements”. Because my yoga practice had deepened significantly, I read the book with new eyes and therefore was able to understand so much more about it. My yoga practice taught me that I had to release what no longer served me so that I would have room for new things. That definitely applied to my experience with “The Four Agreements”. I better understood that the reason it didn’t fully stick the first time around was that I was trying to overlay these new agreements on top of my old ones and that wasn’t going to work. There was no space available so even though I tried, I wasn’t able to be truly successful. Once I was able to let go of some of my old agreements and do the work necessary to allow that letting go to happen fully, then I had the space to make some new agreements. Not only that, but I found that in closely examining my old agreements, I was able to see where they were in direct conflict with “The Four Agreements” and it made even more sense to me why I wasn’t able to successfully integrate them the first time. Once I did the background work, not only was there space in my life for the new agreements, I found that my Being lined up around “The Four Agreements” in a way that it didn’t before.
As I have read through “The Four Agreements” and “The Fifth Agreement” most recently, alongside the “The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali” and “The Bhagavad Gita”, I can see how closely related they all are and how the Yoga Sutras and the Gita provide the depth and the framework for awareness, letting go, and creating lasting change that are so necessary if you want to truly integrate “The Four Agreements” and “The Fifth Agreement” into your life. Join me for this 12 week series as we explore the depths of our being, identifying the roots of our old agreements, pinpointing what no longer serves us, and creating an environment and the energy needed to let go of those things so that your are open and free to integrate these new, positive and life-sustaining agreements into your life. Doing this work will make the difference between reading a great book with some good ideas, and taking in these teachings and integrating them into your life creating lasting transformation and change.
