The Four Agreements: A Practical Guide to Personal Freedom

Humans focus on the information they want to retain by paying attention to it, allowing less important information to fade into the background. This is how humans learn. Adults are constantly trying to capture children’s attention to domesticate them.

This is what Ruiz calls people’s internalized belief systems. After being domesticated, humans continue to domesticate themselves and judge themselves and others according to this belief system they hold within.

Also called the dream of first attention, the domestication of humans is Ruiz’s name for how humans are taught to believe, live, and dream. In the process of domestication, humans are taught how to judge what’s right, wrong, good, bad, acceptable, unacceptable, etc. Humans are domesticated just like animals, through positive reinforcement for good behaviors, and punishment for bad behaviors.

This is the collection of billions of smaller dreams that constitute family, religion, community, and cities and make up society. Throughout the book, this term refers to the reality that humanity lives in, which is filled with suffering. The goal of the book is to help people escape the dream of the planet and create a new dream for themselves.

The act of using one’s word to spread emotional poison is what Ruiz considers the worst form of black magic. Ruiz compares gossip to a computer virus that ruins the original code in a computer and causes it to stop producing good results. During domestication, humans learn to gossip as a normal means of communication—but it’s not normal.

Literally translated, impeccable means “without sin,” from the Latin pecatus meaning “sin,” and im, which means “without.” Impeccability with one’s word is the first agreement and means never using one’s word against oneself or anyone else.

The inner Judge is the voice inside one’s head that judges everyone and everything, using the Book of Law to punish oneself and others. Throughout the book, Ruiz provides practical steps to silence the inner Judge, which wants everyone to feel guilty and ashamed.

This is the Toltec word for the fog that exists in the human mind and influences one’s understanding of oneself—the personality’s concept of “I am.” This includes everything one believes about oneself and the world. In India, this translates to “Illusion.” Throughout the text, mitote refers to the confusion within that keeps one from seeing oneself clearly.

To be aware of who one really is, including all the possibilities of who one can be, is the Mastery of Awareness. This awareness helps overcome one’s internalized belief system and create a new dream. This is the first of three Masteries on the path to becoming Toltec.

The third mastery in becoming Toltec, the Mastery of Intent—or Mastery of Love—means being in tune with “God,” or the part of life that enables energy transformation.

To change and free oneself from human domestication is the second mastery in becoming Toltec, the Mastery of Transformation.

Ruiz uses this term to refer to the reality that one can create by instituting the Four Agreements. Throughout the book, Ruiz refers to it as “heaven on earth” and one’s personal dream of freedom and happiness. Establishing the new dream is the book’s ultimate goal.

Taking things personally is what Ruiz considers the ultimate expression of selfishness because it leads people to assume that everything going on around them is about them. The second agreement challenges personal importance and encourages people not to take anything personally.