The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

Ruiz writes that words are a powerful force that can be used to create or destroy. He uses the term “black magic” to reference the misuse of words to tear down and destroy, and the term “white magic” to reference using words properly to create and give life. As an example of the power of words, he highlights how Hitler motivated an entire nation of intelligent people to destroy using only words. Ruiz notes that words can be used to cast a spell and control people or to break a spell and set people free.

After establishing the power of words, Ruiz defines the word impeccability as “without sin” (31). He defines sin as anything one feels or does that goes against oneself. Sin begins with self-rejection and leads to death, while impeccability leads to life. Therefore, to be impeccable with one’s word is to never use words to go against oneself. This includes taking responsibility for one’s actions—not by blaming or judging oneself but by learning from mistakes.

Impeccability extends to how one treats others. For example, those who call a friend stupid appear to be using the word against their friend but are actually using it against themselves, having already rejected themselves. Conversely, when people are impeccable with their word and love themselves, that love flows into their interactions with friends.

Agreeing to be impeccable with one’s word clears one’s mind of all the emotional poison within. However, this is a difficult agreement to make because human domestication teaches people to do the opposite their entire lives. From a young age, children hear an opinion and immediately believe it. For instance, a mother tells her daughter that she has an ugly voice. Her voice is beautiful, but her mother has a headache and can’t stand the sound of singing. The daughter internalizes her mother’s opinion and, agreeing with it, never sings again. These spells are difficult to break. The only way to break them is by making a new agreement based on truth.

After establishing the role of impeccability and the word, Ruiz discusses the worst form of black magic: gossip. To gossip is to use words to cast spells on others. Ruiz likens gossip to a computer virus. Gossip and misinformation that one hears and believes clouds one’s thinking. One then spreads the gossip to others. Everyone processes information through circuits clogged with gossip, which causes and increases mitote—confusion—in people’s minds. When people process information through gossip, they more easily justify cruelty. The misuse of words drives the dream of the planet deeper into the hell of pain and suffering. This is how domestication teaches everyone to communicate, and it influences how people think and talk about themselves and those around them. People invest in being “right” and use gossip to sway others to their thinking.

However, people can receive negativity only if the mind is fertile for negativity—and impeccability causes the mind to be fertile only for positivity and love. By choosing to be impeccable with their word, people can purge the emotional poison that gossip put in their mind—and become immune to negative spells that others try to place on them. Through impeccability, people become happier and more at peace. Ruiz advises that to be free and happy, to transcend hell and live in heaven, one must be impeccable with one’s word. He adds that although making this agreement may be difficult, he knows it’s possible because he did it himself.