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The Soulmate Secret

By Reverend Keith on February 7, 2010

The Soulmate Secret by Arielle Ford. As I am coming up on my 28th wedding anniversary, I wasn’t particularly in the market for a book on attracting a soulmate. But I saw this book in the “New” section of the library and thought it would be worth reviewing for the benefit of the many people who ARE focused on finding a soulmate. I’m glad I did, because the ideas and techniques are an excellent roundup of ways to manifest anything at all. They are tailored for finding a partner, but they are also good basic manifestational practices.

The author has been closely involved with many people in the “manifestational” movement, including working on “The Secret”, so its hardly surprising that the book reads like a workbook for “Secret” readers. But the additional detail and examples make it well worth reading.

Arielle deals with techniques like a treasure-map (or vision board), The “List”,  Feng Shui, mandalas, and exercises, activities and visualizations for preparing yourself, releashing old attachments, “feathering your nest”, forgiving yourself, releasing your desires to the universe, and enjoying the waiting time. She illustrates all these points with wonderful stories and quotations along the way. Some of the stories are quite remarkable, such as the man who, in the course of trying to attract his soulmate, woke up from a dream with a phone number running through his head. He sent a text message to that number, and the back and forth conversations with the woman on the other end led to a meeting and falling in love. And lest we think she’s only an armchair expert, she shares the story of how she used her own methods to attract her soulmate and husband Brian.

If finding a soulmate is a big need in your life, I’d highly recommend this book. Anyone who wants to manifest anything at all would also find it a good summary of manifestational methods.

Below is an interview with Arielle about her book.

This video was embedded using the YouTuber plugin by Roy Tanck. Adobe Flash Player is required to view the video.

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A Critique of David R. Hawkins and Kinesiology

By Reverend Keith on February 5, 2010

DavidHawkins200 Hopefully it’s not a bad sign that this is the second somewhat negative piece I’m doing this week. I generally like to focus on positive reviews. I’d rather ignore a bad book or teacher and focus on a good one. But I’ve quoted David Hawkins before. I was in the process of reading I – Reality and Subjectivity, and was hoping to give it a good review on these pages. Then I got part-way through the book and hit a brick wall.

Let me give a brief overview on David Hawkins for those unfamiliar with him. Hawkins is a spiritual teacher who went through a profound enlightenment experience and has written eloquently about it. I quoted him in Four Easy Steps to Enlightenment. His spiritual insight is full of profound depth. I first heard about him from Wayne Dyer, who has quoted from and used his work. He also endorses, as part of his teaching, a practice called “applied kinesiology”. This is basically a muscle testing exercise. Some alternative health practitioners are familiar with it. For example, to test a person’s reaction to a particular food, they hold the food in one hand and hold the other arm straight out. Muscletest1 A tester then tries to push their arm down. The theory is that if the food is bad for you, its vibration will weaken your energy and your arm can be easily pushed down. If the food is good for you, your arm will remain strong and hard to push down. Interesting theory.

Hawkins takes this a step further. He teaches that any true/false statement can be tested with kinesiology just like a food. There is a universal consciousness which knows the answer to all questions. Your own consciousness is directly connected to this universal consciousness. When you hear (or think of) a TRUE statement, you connect with universal consciousness and your arm stays strong. When you hear or think of a FALSE statement, there is a moment of disconnection or dissonance from universal consciousness and your hand can be pushed down. In this way, you can reliably test the truth of any statement.

Using this method, Hawkins has developed a scale of consciousness, and assigns ranks on this scale to everything from books to teachers to historical figures to works of art. I’ve reproduced the scale elsewhere on my site and I still believe it is a very useful system for showing the relative position of various emotions, philosophies and views on a scale.

Now we come to the problem. I’m reading through David’s book I – Reality and Subjectivity. After some really excellent chapters on developing non-dual consciousness and transcending judgments and opposites, he starts to talk about politics and society. And here things start to get weird. In discussing World War II, he says that Hitler “calibrates” (can be placed on the scale using kinesiology) at 125 churchill(“desire”) Neville Chamberlain slightly higher at 185 (somewhere between “pride” and “courage”), and Winston Churchill at an astonishing 510 (between “love” and “joy”).

No doubt that Churchill had many excellent leadership qualities, and that Chamberlain’s attempt to appease Germany was unfortunate. But Churchill could also be an overbearing bigot. He once said “I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion.” According to some, his racial views were little better than Hitler’s. Chamberlain on the other hand was a high-minded progressive reformer, working to reduce child labor, give workers holidays and make peace with Ireland. His fault was in failing to recognize the extent of HItler’s ambitions.

Hawkins goes on to assign high values to several socially conservative ideas and very low ones to “politically correct” ideas. Good –God, patriotism, tobacco.  Bad – welfare, reparations, pacifism, privacy laws, criticizing the president, Then things get more peculiar. Let me quote a section:

The Constitution of the United States calibrates as the highest of any nation and stands at 705…If the word “God” were removed from the Constitution, its calibrated level would drop from 705 (Truth) to 485 (Intelligence and Reason)

Uh… hold on a minute. Surely I’m not the only one who knows that the word “God” doesn’t appear in the Constitution at all. And yet Hawkins claims to have “calibrated” it with and without the word “God” in it?? And as clever as the checks and balances of the Constitution are, does a document that is basically a set of administrative rules really calibrate at the level of Divine Truth? And has he really checked the constitutions of every other country? In the same section, he announces that “The hatred of the United States by others stems solely from envy”, apparently discounting any perceived grievance any country of group may have against the United States as nothing but concealed envy.

All this is so outrageous that I would be tempted to think its some sort of bizarre “test”. If you can get past this chapter without judgment, then you can read the rest of the book. But I’m forced to conclude with Ken Wilber that being highly developed along the lines of spirituality and consciousness doesn’t necessarily mean you are highly developed in all other lines at the same time. For all Hawkins enlightenment, I think he is displaying some massive blind spots, and his “calibration” of the Constitution of the United States destroys ALL credibility in his calibration process.

Hawkins says several times that if people arrive at calibrations different than his, it invariably turns out that either they phrased the question incorrectly, OR that they themselves calibrate at too low a level. At this point, that sounds like a very convenient way of making your theories and methods un-testable and non-falsifiable.

Conclusion? I’m afraid I can’t recommend Hawkins. Whatever use kinesiology may or may not have, it’s obviously that it is useless for testing and calibrating historical figures, political documents, and I suspect anything else.

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In Defense of Reiki Healing

By Reverend Keith on February 5, 2010

reiki I don’t do a lot of debating on alternative therapies. I got tired of the “my study is better than your study” sort of discussion. But when I recently discussed my problem with homeopathy, one of the responses challenged me to apply the same logic to Reiki. I’m an Usui Reiki master, although I’m not professionally active. I do treatments and attunements for free when asked.

I believe Reiki to be a valuable and effective method of “energy healing”. It’s certainly finding widespread acceptance in hospitals and clinics around the country and around the world for that matter.  A number of studies suggest that Reiki is helpful and effective with a number of conditions, for self-healing, one-on-one treatment, and distance healing. Certainly there are flaws in some of the studies. But there have been effects significant enough to merit larger and better studies.

More important, I believe, is the subjective experience of the patients and healers. People find Reiki healing to be a positive and helpful experience. As a healer who has tried several different methods of energy healing, I can say that Reiki is my favorite. In Reiki healing, the healer is instructed to simply let energy flow naturally to the patient. The Reiki energy directs itself to wherever it is needed. The energy knows best, and the healer simply lets it gently flow through. This is in contrast to some other methods I have used, where I am consciously directing, almost “forcing” energy to go where I want it to. With such methods, I can end a healing session feeling drained. With Reiki, I always feel as rejuvenated as the patient.

But isn’t my subjective experience lacking in any scientifically recognized mechanism? Isn’t the “energy” I am channeling undetectable, and for all intents and purposes, non-existent?

No, I’m not willing to concede that ground. In addition to promising studies on Reiki, there are other studies on prayer, spiritual healing and the effect of intention that are quite interesting. In particular Dean Radin’s research on the effects of intention on physical systems seems to be excellent science – and I do have a reasonably good scientific education. I suspect that in the future, the power of intention will become better understood, and virtually undeniable.

But let’s suppose I’m wrong about all that. Let’s suppose that there is no direct physical effect of intention. No subtle energy. No physical mechanism that corresponds remotely to what Reiki healers THINK they are doing. Let’s look at Reiki purely from a non-metaphysical viewpoint.

What is it like to receive Reiki treatment? What is the subjective experience like?  Ideally, you are made very comfortable in a relaxed setting. There may be calm music or pleasant aromas. You are made to relax and direct your quiet meditation to your own healing and well being. While this is going on, you are aware of the presence of someone who is intending to help you and heal you. You are aware of kind support and encouragement. You are reassured that things will be better. You experience a calm, positive mood regarding your health and well being.

How can this fail to have a beneficial effect? If nothing else, it is an ideal situation for maximizing the placebo effect. All the things that researchers try to studiously avoid doing to minimize the placebo effect – detaching themselves from the outcome and avoiding giving the patients “cues” – all these are the things the Reiki healer deliberately DOES. Psychological elements such as relaxation, optimism, and the emotional support of others have all been shown to assist healing in a multitude of ways. You’d be hard pressed to design a better method of providing ideal emotional support to someone in need of healing.

But continuing down the path of skepticism – assume that both Reiki and Homeopathy have no intrinsic, non-metaphysical basis to them. Is Reiki really any better than homeopathy? Isn’t one placebo the same as another? I was going to suggest, yesterday, that I would still prefer Reiki. But after a few discussions I find I needed to edit this post a bit.

There are apparently quite a few homeopaths who focus a lot on the metaphysical energies involved, the “vibrations”, energy signatures or whatever term you prefer, of various preparations and medicines. My impression (perhaps mistaken) was that  many MORE seem to believe that it is the intrinsic physical properties of the medicine that matters. These physical properties based on concentrations so dilute that often not a single molecule of the original substance actually remains. Such people believe they are taking a medicine very much like a traditional pharmaceutical preparation in mechanism and effect, when in fact the ONLY source of homeopathic effectiveness  comes from metaphysical or para-natural mechanisms, or from psychological sources.

I simply think it’s more satisfactory either with Reiki or Homeopathy,  to be right up front and say “this is SPIRITUAL healing”. With Reiki, of course, there’s little danger of confusion. With Homeopathy, I think that if you are making the energetic essence the basis of the healing, there’s an additional educational task if you want people to understand that.

P.S. For convenience I’ve referred to Reiki practitioners as “healers”, those on whom they practice as “patients”, and Reiki itself as “treatment” and “healing”. Otherwise the language gets awkward. Since the one possibly negative effect Reiki might have would be to make a person hesitate to receive some critically needed medical treatment thinking they are already “cured” let me remind readers of my disclaimers. I believe Reiki is best as a complementary therapy, used as support. I’m not a doctor, and when I do Reiki I am not giving medical treatment for a disease as understood by the medical community. However, while you’d be foolish not to at least consult a health professional for a health problem, the ultimate responsibility for your health rests with you.

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Nutureshock

By Reverend Keith on February 4, 2010

Nutureshock: New Thinking about Children, by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman. I’ve been listening to this one on CD for the last week, and it’s been eye-opening. I already shared a little from the book in my post titled Never Tell Kids They’re Smart.

Basically the book re-examines what we THOUGHT we knew about parenting from the perspective of the latest research. Not surprisingly, a lot of what we thought we knew was wrong. For example: praising children isn’t always a good idea. Lying can be a sign of maturity. Children are naturally racist. Expressing gratitude can be bad for teenagers. Empathy in children isn’t always a good thing.

I’m teasing you a bit here. The authors are all in favor of praise, honesty, inclusion, gratitude and empathy. But there are some tricks and twists to teaching these and other virtues to children that aren’t quite what you expect.

There are two main errors that have blinded researchers in the past, say the authors. First of all, researchers can unconsciously assume that what is good for adults is equally good in the same way for children. The second is to assume that POSITIVE traits insulate and protect children from NEGATIVE traits.

As an example of the first error, take gratitude. Studies demonstrated that when college students kept a gratitude journal, it improved their mental well being. But when teens were assigned to keep a gratitude journal, some of them actually felt WORSE. Why? Because a critical part of mental health for a teen is to develop autonomy and independence. By being forced to remember, day after day, how much they relied on parents, teachers and others  - the teens felt powerless and less independent.

As an example of the second, take empathy. Parents want their children to learn to be gracious, kind and empathetic in dealing with other children. They want their children to develop positive social skills because they assume that will protect them from being cruel or manipulative.  But researchers found that often kindness and cruelty were developed equally well at the same time by the most socially successful students. These kids would alternate between kindness and cruelty to get what they wanted, and were very good at it. So parents of popular children need to be on guard against the more negative aspects of popularity.

Anyone raising a child today would be wise to check out this book. Bronson and Merryman are very obviously concerned parents themselves, and the point of their analysis of the research is to be of practical help to parents.  Wise parents would do well to listen to them.

Below is a brief video introducing the book.

This video was embedded using the YouTuber plugin by Roy Tanck. Adobe Flash Player is required to view the video.

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My Problem with Homeopathy

By Reverend Keith on February 3, 2010

I’m very much into alternative and holistic health and healing. I’m a Reiki master and practice other healing modalities as well. I’m also very much an advocate of nutritional and herbal medicine. However, in spite of having a lot of friends who either practice homeopathy or use homeopathic medicine, I can’t really get on board. Here’s my issue…

Homeopathy is based on extremely dilute preparations of various active ingredients. In fact, according to some theories, the MORE dilute, the more effective. These are SO dilute that most orthodox doctors, chemists and physicists say there is simply no possibility of their actually having any effect. While I have a decent scientific education, I’m perfectly willing to accept that these scientists may be wrong about homeopathy. Perhaps, as some studies suggest, these minute doses really are effective.

Here’s the problem. We are constantly exposed to very dilute amounts of nearly EVERYTHING. Our food, our water, our air, the buildings we live in – all of these expose us to minuscule amounts of virtually every compound known to man (and probably a lot that aren’t known). This must mean that, homeopathically, we are receiving doses of thousands of potentially active ingredients. What is one dose of a homeopathic compound compared to the thousands of doses of other compounds we are exposed to?

Take, for example the homeopathic compound known as Natrum Muriaticum. For all the fancy Latin, this is simply Sodium Chloride – table salt.  In any daily diet – even without added salt – even if it’s all natural, we are exposed to more Sodium Chloride than we are likely to get in a single homeopathic dosage. So how can a homeopathic dosage have any effect whatsoever, that isn’t completely drowned out by the minute doses of hundreds of salts of various kinds that we are exposed to every day?

One possibility I can see is that the homeopathic preparations are actually a vehicle for some other effect – be it a spiritual/psychic one or an alchemical one. I can see even a drop of water as being a vehicle for the transference of directed energy. I wonder if, when results are obtained with homeopathy, the real cause of the healing is the intention of the healer. But if this is the case, homeopathy seems like an unnecessarily complicated vehicle. About the best one can say about it in this case is that it does no harm. Or perhaps the homeopathic substances are prepared in such a way as to make them contain a different form of energy than would be present simply in an ordinary, diluted substance.

I’d love to chat with some dedicated homeopaths and hear their take on this idea, because as open minded as I like to be, I’m still not seeing the picture here.

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One Year to an Organized Work Life

By Reverend Keith on February 2, 2010

One Year to an Organized Work Life by Regina Leeds. I had previously reviewed two other books by Regina Leeds (the “Zen” Organizer) . Those were One Year to an Organized Life and One Year to an Organized Financial Life. Since both were excellent, I was really looking forward to the middle book in the series, dedicated to organizing your work life. After all, I spend a lot of time at work, and the consequences of being disorganize at work can be even more serious than falling to pieces at home.

I was not disappointed. This is a wonderful book on workplace organization – but even more, on integrating your work life and your personal life seamlessly. As with her other “one-year” books, Regina takes what could be a daunting subject and makes it manageable by breaking it down into easy weekly goals for a one-year gradual makeover. Follow the program and you end up with a complete organizational makeover for your work life. You can pick up the book and start the program at any time, as most of the assignments are not prerequisites of each other.

Each month also includes a work “habit of the month” and a HOME “habit of the month”. What’s really amazing is the range of topics covered in this book. It’s not just another book on time management and paperwork. Sure, there are excellent chapters on those topics, but there are also a lot of topics that you don’t often see discussed. How to pack for a business trip. How to prepare your office to run smoothly while you’re on vacation. How to integrate your holiday plans with your work responsibilities. How to organize your computer, laptop and other virtual environments.

As usual, Regina devotes considerable time not simply to the mechanics of organizing, but to your mental attitudes. How to set goals, understand and overcome procrastination, and how to balance your family and work responsibilities.  Even how to plan your vacation. She never forgets that the purpose of organization is not simply for it’s own sake, but to make our lives better. She also keeps an eye out for the particular needs of the working woman, which is a topic where some other books fall short.

You can get excellent specialized books in any of the several areas Regina covers in this book – from goal setting to filing and paperwork. But for a well-constructed plan to overhaul every aspect of your work organization, it’s hard to beat this book. Give Regina a year and she’ll make your work life sparkle.

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Four Easy Steps to Enlightenment

By Reverend Keith on February 1, 2010

How does one reach the state of consciousness that is commonly called “enlightenment?” You don’t often see a really good answer to that question. Either it is very vague, giving you little guidance, or it is steeped in layers of tradition, and requires navigating your way through a very complex path. So I was pleased to read in David Hawkins’ book, I – Reality and Subjectivity – a relatively simple and straightforward approach to enlightenment, as he describes his own journey. The steps are:

1. An intense desire to reach this state of consciousness.

2. Develop constant universal compassion – cultivating acceptance, forgiveness and gentleness to absolutely everything and everyone without exception.

3. Surrender the personal will to God (the Self). Each thought, feeling, desire or deed is surrendered completely to the Divine will, the mind grows increasingly silent. At first, individual  thoughts and feelings vanish, then entire concepts and ideas. Finally, one is able to surrender the very energy of thinking before thoughts arise.

4. Focus intently on each present moment, not allowing extraneous thoughts of the past or future to enter. Make intense focus on the present task in the present moment a constant meditation. At first this is quite difficult and requires a lot of energy. Gradually it becomes habitual.

At that point, interesting things start to happen. As Hawkins describes it:

Suddenly, without warning, a shift in awareness occurred and the Presence totally prevailed, unmistakable and all encompassing. There were a few moments of intense apprehension as the self died, and then the absoluteness of the Presence inspired a flash of awe. This breakthrough was spectacular and more intense than anything before. It had no counterpart in ordinary experience. The profound shock was cushioned by the love that is the Presence. Without the support and protection of that love, it seems that one would be annihilated.

There followed a moment of terror as the ego clung to its existence, fearing it would become nothingness. Instead as it died, it was replaced by the Self as Everythingness, the All in which everything was known and obvious in its perfect expression of its own essence.

Hawkins book goes own to elaborate on this process and how to achieve it. I’ll work on a review of the book when I’ve finished it. Hawkins claims that simply reading the book raises one’s level of consciousness, and I tend to believe him, based on my experience with reading it so far.

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The Prodigal God

By Reverend Keith on January 31, 2010

The Prodigal God by Timothy Keller. This book, by a unique Presbyterian minister, is a deep look at the parable of the prodigal son from a traditional Christian perspective. It’s a short work, but brings wonderful and deep insights into understanding this parable.

For example, while much is always made of the tremendous grace and love of the father in the parable forgiving his wayward son. But less is usually made of the “good” son who remains faithful. I Keller’s mind, this son is actually the primary focus of the parable. Self-righteousness and moral strictness are actually a GREATER danger to our spirituality than laxity and rebellion. The sinful and rebellious son realizes his mistake and is welcomed back into his father’s presence. But does the self-righteous son ever get over his anger and return to the party? Jesus leaves us not knowing. And his words are directed at the pharisees listening, and the the pharisees of our own day.

The self-righteous son never really loved his father. He keeps to society’s conventions and rules only for self interest. He hopes to inherit his fathers wealth, and the return of his brother is not at all welcome.

Before this parable, Jesus has told to others, the lost sheep and the lost coin, in which someone goes out to search for the missing. And who should have been searching for the prodigal son? By right, and by love, that should have been his older brother. But the brother stayed safely at home, comfortable in his own righteousness, like so many religious people before and since.  Keller’s insights on this problem are keen.

Jesus’ teaching consistently attracted the irreligious while offending the Bible-believing, religious people of his day. However, in the main, our churches today to not have this effect. The kind of outsiders Jesus attracted are not attracted to contemporary churches, even our most avant-garde ones.  We tend to draw conservative, buttoned-down, moralistic people. The licentious and liberated or broken and marginal avoid church. That can  only mean one thing. If the preaching of our ministers and the practice of our parishioners do not have the same effect on people that Jesus had, then we must not be declaring the same message that Jesus did. If our churches aren’t appealing to younger brothers, then they must be more full of elder brothers than we’d like to think.

Although Keller puts his conclusions in more traditional Christian terminology, the fact is that both the rebellion of the younger brother and the self-righteousness of the older brother can be traps and manifestations of the ego. In integral terms, the younger brother is pre-conventional and the older brother is conventional. Neither is post-conventional. Neither has overcome their own small selves to reach divine grace.

The book is an excellent examination of the traps of religiosity, from a Christian perspective.

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Stay in Bed

By Reverend Keith on January 30, 2010

Sleep that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.

- William Shakespeare, Macbeth

Another insight from the new book Nurtureshock is that one of the biggest issues with children and teens today is that almost universally, the world over, cheldren are getting an hour less sleep every day than they did thirty years ago. This is the source of innumerable problems. For example, researchers were trying to correlate behavior such as TV watching with teen obesity. They couldn’t do it. Thin kids watch just as much TV as fat kids. But they DID find a correlation with overweight – and lack of sleep. Yes, lack of sleep can make you fat. The hormones that are required to properly burn fat are manufactured by the body during sleep. What’s more, lack of sleep produces the stress hormone cortisol, which causes fat to be stored. This stress hormone can also cause high blood pressure and heart disease.

For children, one of the primary problems with lack of sleep is that memory is processed during sleep. Our body uses that time to process and categorize memories. For children who are learning huge amounts of new information every day, lack of sleep can seriously interfere with learning and development. Some high schools that have experimented with starting school later in the morning resulted in a dramatic increase in student test scores.

Lack of sleep also compromises the immune system making us more susceptible to disease. Even cancer is associated with sleep loss.

Sleep deprivation also causes mood disturbances, depression, moodiness and the inability to concentrate. All of which are now cronic complaints of modern teens.  In fact, if we look at all the typical complaints of teenagers, they are a list of the symptoms of sleep deprivation.

For kids, lack of sleep is physically and emotionally devistating. But it doesn’t do the rest of us any good either. Our bodies are intended by nature to begin sleep soon after the sun goes down and awaken about when it comes back up. If we have so many commitments and activities that we can’t get good sleep time, we need to re-evaluate our priorities.

Sleep can also be a time for serious spiritual development. Take look at our articles on lucid dreaming, for example.

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The Four Agreements

By Reverend Keith on January 30, 2010

The Four Agreements by Don Miguel Ruiz. Like many books, I first ran into this one in audio form. Since I had always been intrigued by the Carlos Castaneda books, I was interested in a self-development book which claimed to be based on Toltec principles. The book turned out to be both simple and profound at the same time. The four agreements it mentions are very basic, but understanding them makes them very powerful.

The basic theme of The Four Agreements is that each of us is conditioned from birth to be slaves to a system of thought and behavior – a series of unspoken agreements that taken together are almost like a supernatural being. The Toltecs refer to this spiritual and emotional energy as a parasite – something that attaches itself to us and drains our will and energy. This concept is not unlike the concept of the “pain-body” taught by Eckhart Tolle.

Don Miguel goes on to outline four new agreements – commitments we make with ourselves – that can free us from this unconscious slavery and bring us freedom to grow and act independently. The four agreements are:

1. Be Impeccable With Your Word
Ruiz is very emphatic about the power of words to capture attention and influence us and those around us. Words are magic – either white magic or black magic, whether we know it or not. To be impeccable with our word is to speak only the truth, only what we mean, and only what builds, helps and uplifts.

2. Don’t Take Anything Personally
This is a reminder that people often act unconsciously. They are immersed in their own world-dream. Their actions, the ones that might hurt or offend you – are not directed at you, but at their own projections and fears.

3. Don’t Make Assumptions
Ask questions. Communicate clearly. Ask for what you want and make sure you are understood. Do not jump to conclusions.

4. Always Do Your Best
This one was a little harder to understand. Don Miguel spends some time explaining that our “best” varies from moment to moment and situation to situation. If we are tired or upset, our best may be different than on our better days. To make the effort to do our best also carries the qualification that we must be kind to ourselves in acknowledging that our best is a moving target. Always do your best, giving the circumstances and your personal resources.

Ruiz believes that with these four agreements you can completely break free of the “world dream” that holds you in slavery. For someone who has an affinity for a shamanistic path or native American spirituality, this book is an excellent approach to self-development.

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