How to Be Impeccable with Your Word
By Jean Rothman

In don Miguel Ruiz's best-selling book The Four Agreements, the modern-day Toltec spiritual leader describes four agreements that we can make with ourselves to bring more joy and happiness into our lives. By upholding these principles, we create our lives in every moment, living as artists of the Spirit and eventually mastering the art of life.

Living by the Four Agreements is a big step toward breaking the continuous stream of fear in which so many humans live – fear of being hurt, fear of being wrong, and the fears of being unworthy and unlovable. But what do these agreements really mean? Although they are written in a very straightforward manner, they have many underlying meanings. By exploring each agreement more deeply, we discover how these seemingly simple instructions can have a profound impact on our inner and outer worlds. (Please refer to the article titled “Doing Our Best: A Toltec Approach to Staying on the Path” in our July-August 2006 issue to learn more about the fourth agreement. In this article, we will learn about the first agreement; future issues will explore the remaining two.)

The First Agreement:
Be Impeccable with Your Word
To explore this agreement, we have to start with a question: What is our “word?” Words are not only that which we speak. We also think, express and communicate with words. Don Miguel says that the word is the power to create, noting that everything we manifest is through our words. As a human, the word is our single most powerful tool.

And what does being “impeccable” mean? The word “impeccable” comes from a Latin phrase meaning “missing the mark.” How do we “miss the mark” in our daily lives when using our word? According to don Miguel, we miss the mark when we use our words to go against ourselves.

Using the Word Against Ourselves
One way we go against ourselves with our word is in our thoughts. Have you ever listened to how you talk to yourself? For many people, the voices in their heads are an unending barrage of negative commentary: “I can't believe I did that,” “He won't like me,” “I'm so stupid,” “I won't ever succeed at this job,” and on and on. It is so important on a spiritual path to become aware of what we are telling ourselves and where our thoughts take us, how they overcome us and essentially run our lives, often without us even realizing it. To not pay attention to our self-talk is surely using the word against ourselves.

Moreover, words with negative connotations lead to emotions that also go against us. Toltec master teacher Ed Fox explains that we can liken thoughts and emotions to the strings on a sitar. The sitar is an instrument that makes music using two sets of strings that never actually touch each other.

A thought can be seen as one of the primary strings on the sitar. Using the word (of the thought) is like plucking a primary string. The primary string causes the secondary strings – the emotions – to vibrate, even though we have not plucked them. These secondary strings are our emotions, our wounds, the hurts which we perceived ourselves as suffering during our early years on Earth. The wounds may go so deep that we are not consciously aware of them, but the emotions well up anyway. Sadness, worry, guilt, inadequacy and all kinds of other emotions are created just by a thought.

Who's talking, the victim or the judge?
In Toltec mythology, much of our thought and emotion revolves around the inner voices of the Victim and the Judge, two of the innumerable voices in our heads that make up the chaotic “mitote” (marketplace) where people yell and shout and never listen to one another, thereby creating a harsh, inharmonious cacophony. We know if our inner voices are judging us we are going against ourselves. And if our inner voices sound like victims – “Oh, poor me! Why did she do that to me?” – we also are going against ourselves by believing that we are weak and powerless.

“The challenge,” Fox says, “is to use our thoughts and emotions to love ourselves and nurture ourselves rather than to go against ourselves. The way we use our word creates our lives. It is up to us how we use that creative power.”

The Gift Behind Being Unimpeccable
There is a little-understood subtlety in working with this agreement (or any of the others, for that matter). “The point of trying to keep this agreement is to see where we are not impeccable,” Fox explains. “We do this not to judge ourselves or beat ourselves up,” he cautions, “but to start to get a sense of how we are creating our lives. Then we can begin to see whether we are enjoying the direction we are moving in. If not, we can make a choice and make a change.”

If you decide to adopt this first agreement, and then catch yourself being less than impeccable, what can you do? With this new awareness, you can decide whether you want to believe what you are saying about yourself or someone else and therefore are creating with your word. “Just because you feel stupid, does that mean you are stupid?” Fox asks. “Not necessarily. By shining the light of awareness on that thought, it begins to disappear just as darkness leaves when you light a candle.”

A Toltec Recipe
There is said to be a Toltec recipe for curing the wounds in the human mind. The first step in this recipe is to open the wound with the scalpel of truth. How true is your thought? You can find out by examining for yourself:
1. What am I telling myself? (e.g. “I'm stupid.”)
2. What projections are in this statement? (“I project my inner feeling of stupidity
    onto other people, then blame them for my feeling stupid and unsuccessful.”)
3. What assumptions have I made? (e.g. “Those other people are right.”)
4. How much of what I think has been conditioned by my upbringing and is not
    necessarily true? (This requires some research what – the Toltecs call “recapitulation,”
    and is often quite a lot.)

The next step in this recipe is to take out the emotional poison from the wound and clean up the infection. We do this by forgiving ourselves. It is the human experience to grow up following rules, regulations, beliefs and agreements set forth by others. This does not mean we have done anything wrong or bad by listening to our parents, friends, teachers, or religious leaders up until now. We accept what has happened and forgive ourselves for going along with the “stories” we learned as children. We recognize them for what they are: stories created by other human beings (with the power of their word). And we forgive ourselves.

The third part of the recipe is to apply medicine to the cleaned-out wound. That medicine is self love, which keeps the wound clean and prevents reinfection. Love yourself in any way that makes sense to you, and let go of the hurt and fear that came with the wounding. Change your old beliefs such as, “I'm stupid” to a belief that serves you such as, “I don't know how to do this right now, but I can learn.” Refuse to let the Judge or the Victim get hold of you.

By practicing this First Agreement, “Be impeccable with your word,” you will break old beliefs and heal old wounds that are holding you back. And you will be able to live your life with increasing awareness and happiness.

Toltec teacher Ed Fox visits Cleveland every other month when he holds public lectures and meets with small groups. His next visit is January when he will be speaking at Inner Harmony in Strongsville on Thursday, Jan. 11 and at A Touch of Serenity in Willoughby on Friday, Jan. 12. For more information on Toltec activities and Four Agreements meetings in the area, call Jean Rothman at (216) 321-2616.