THE SECOND AGREEMENT: DON'T TAKE ANYTHING PERSONALLY
THE NEXT THREE AGREEMENTS ARE REALLY BORN from the first
agreement. The second agreement is don’t take anything personally.
Whatever happens around you, don’t take it personally. Using an earlier
example, if I see you on the street and I say, “Hey, you are so stupid,” without
knowing you, it’s not about you; it’s about me. If you take it personally, then
perhaps you believe you are stupid. Maybe you think to yourself, “How does he
know? Is he clairvoyant, or can everybody see how stupid I am?”
You take it personally because you agree with whatever was said. As soon
as you agree, the poison goes through you, and you are trapped in the dream of
hell. What causes you to be trapped is what we call personal importance.
Personal importance, or taking things personally, is the maximum expression of
selfishness because we make the assumption that everything is about “me.”
During the period of our education, or our domestication, we learn to take
everything personally. We think we are responsible for everything. Me, me, me,
always me!
Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves. All
people live in their own dream, in their own mind; they are in a completely
different world from the one we live in. When we take something personally,
we make the assumption that they know what is in our world, and we try to
impose our world on their world.
Even when a situation seems so personal, even if others insult you directly, it
has nothing to do with you. What they say, what they do, and the opinions they
give are according to the agreements they have in their own minds. Their point
of view comes from all the programming they received during domestication.
If someone gives you an opinion and says, “Hey, you look so fat,” don’t take
it personally, because the truth is that this person is dealing with his or her own
feelings, beliefs, and opinions. That person tried to send poison to you and if
you take it personally, then you take that poison and it becomes yours. Taking
things personally makes you easy prey for these predators, the black magicians.
They can hook you easily with one little opinion and feed you whatever poison
they want, and because you take it personally, you eat it up.
You eat all their emotional garbage, and now it becomes your garbage. But if
you do not take it personally, you are immune in the middle of hell. Immunity to
poison in the middle of hell is the gift of this agreement.
When you take things personally, then you feel offended, and your reaction is
to defend your beliefs and create conflicts. You make something big out of
something so little, because you have the need to be right and make everybody
else wrong. You also try hard to be right by giving them your own opinions. In
the same way, whatever you feel and do is just a projection of your own
personal dream, a reflection of your own agreements. What you say, what you
do, and the opinions you have are according to the agreements you have made
— and these opinions have nothing to do with me.
It is not important to me what you think about me, and I don’t take what you
think personally. I don’t take it personally when people say, “Miguel, you are
the best,” and I also don’t take it personally when they say, “Miguel, you are the
worst.” I know that when you are happy you will tell me, “Miguel, you are such
an angel!” But, when you are mad at me you will say, “Oh, Miguel, you are
such a devil! You are so disgusting. How can you say those things?” Either
way, it does not affect me because I know what I am. I don’t have the need to be
accepted. I don’t have the need to have someone tell me, “Miguel, you are
doing so good!” or “How dare you do that!”
No, I don’t take it personally. Whatever you think, whatever you feel, I know
is your problem and not my problem. It is the way you see the world. It is
nothing personal, because you are dealing with yourself, not with me. Others
are going to have their own opinion according to their belief system, so nothing
they think about me is really about me, but it is about them.
You may even tell me, “Miguel, what you are saying is hurting me.” But it is
not what I am saying that is hurting you; it is that you have wounds that I touch
by what I have said. You are hurting yourself. There is no way that I can take
this personally. Not because I don’t believe in you or don’t trust you, but
because I know that you see the world with different eyes, with your eyes. You
create an entire picture or movie in your mind, and in that picture you are the
director, you are the producer, you are the main actor or actress. Everyone else
is a secondary actor or actress. It is your movie.
The way you see that movie is according to the agreements you have made
with life. Your point of view is something personal to you. It is no one’s truth
but yours. Then, if you get mad at me, I know you are dealing with yourself. I
am the excuse for you to get mad. And you get mad because you are afraid,
because you are dealing with fear. If you are not afraid, there is no way you
will get mad at me. If you are not afraid, there is no way you will hate me. If
you are not afraid, there is no way you will be jealous or sad.
If you live without fear, if you love, there is no place for any of those
emotions. If you don’t feel any of those emotions, it is logical that you will feel
good. When you feel good, everything around you is good. When everything
around you is great, everything makes you happy. You are loving everything that
is around you, because you are loving yourself. Because you like the way you
are. Because you are content with you. Because you are happy with your life.
You are happy with the movie that you are producing, happy with your
agreements with life. You are at peace, and you are happy. You live in that state
of bliss where everything is so wonderful, and everything is so beautiful. In that
state of bliss you are making love all the time with everything that you perceive.
Whatever people do, feel, think, or say, don’t take it personally. If they tell
you how wonderful you are, they are not saying that because of you. You know
you are wonderful. It is not necessary to believe other people who tell you that
you are wonderful. Don’t take anything personally. Even if someone got a gun
and shot you in the head, it was nothing personal. Even at that extreme.
Even the opinions you have about yourself are not necessarily true; therefore,
you don’t need to take whatever you hear in your own mind personally. The
mind has the ability to talk to itself, but it also has the ability to hear
information that is available from other realms. Sometimes you hear a voice in
your mind, and you may wonder where it came from. This voice may have
come from another reality in which there are living beings very similar to the
human mind. The Toltecs called these beings Allies. In Europe, Africa, and
India they called them the Gods.
Our mind also exists in the level of the Gods. Our mind also lives in that
reality and can perceive that reality. The mind sees with the eyes and perceives
this waking reality. But the mind also sees and perceives without the eyes,
although the reason is hardly aware of this perception. The mind lives in more
than one dimension. There may be times when you have ideas that don’t
originate in your mind, but you are perceiving them with your mind. You have
the right to believe or not believe these voices and the right not to take what
they say personally. We have a choice whether or not to believe the voices we
hear within our own minds, just as we have a choice of what to believe and
agree with in the dream of the planet.
The mind can also talk and listen to itself. The mind is divided as your body
is divided. Just as you can say, “I have one hand, and I can shake my other hand
and feel the other hand,” the mind can talk to itself. Part of the mind is speaking,
and the other part is listening. It is a big problem when a thousand parts of your
mind are all speaking at the same time. This is called a mitote, remember?
The mitote can be compared to a huge marketplace where thousands of
people are talking and bartering at the same time. Each one has different
thoughts and feelings; each one has a different point of view. The programming
in the mind — all of those agreements we have made — are not necessarily
compatible with each other. Every agreement is like a separate living being; it
has its own personality and its own voice. There are conflicting agreements that
go against other agreements and on and on until it becomes a big war in the
mind. The mitote is the reason humans hardly know what they want, how they
want it, or when they want it. They don’t agree with themselves because there
are parts of the mind that want one thing, and other parts that want exactly the
opposite.
Some part of the mind has objections to certain thoughts and actions, and
another part supports the actions of the opposing thoughts. All these little living
beings create inner conflict because they are alive and they each have a voice.
Only by making an inventory of our agreements will we uncover all of the
conflicts in the mind and eventually make order out of the chaos of the mitote.
Don’t take anything personally because by taking things personally you set
yourself up to suffer for nothing. Humans are addicted to suffering at different
levels and to different degrees, and we support each other in maintaining these
addictions. Humans agree to help each other suffer. If you have the need to be
abused, you will find it easy to be abused by others. Likewise, if you are with
people who need to suffer, something in you makes you abuse them. It is as if
they have a note on their back that says, “Please kick me.” They are asking for
justification for their suffering. Their addiction to suffering is nothing but an
agreement that is reinforced every day.
Wherever you go you will find....
