New Agreements for Living: Interview with Don Miguel Ruiz Jr
Level 4: Internalization – I use knowledge to give me the rules of my own self acceptance and the acceptance of others. Meaning that based on my identity, I can use my identity to give me the rules of how I can live my life. This is the level where domestication comes in. My dad talks about that in The Four Agreements. Domestication is the system of reward and punishment to live up to something. If we live up to a certain identity, then we get that reward, which is our conditional love, our acceptance. If we don’t live up to that identity we will punish and self-judge ourself. We basically reject ourself. We model our behaviour to live up to that expectation, so we use knowledge in that way.
Level 5: Fanaticism – My knowledge has now complete control over my intent. This an extreme form of domestication where acceptance is still the same conditional love but the punishment is dramatic; anger, hate, prejudice. All those things are just instruments of that conditional love, which gives us strength. I become so attached to what I know that I don’t want it to change, so I will reject anything that will contradict it. It is like Don Quixote who wants to see giants, when in reality there are windmills. His attachment to what he wants will distort his knowledge, thus distorts how he sees the world.
You can say that awareness is like a flower. At level 1, the flower is completely open. At level 2 we engage, so it closes a bit, because since we know that we have awareness of who we are and once the moment passes we let go (and it opens again). Attachment (closing), detachment (opening) and so on. At level 3 it closes more since it is really difficult to detach because now the attachment is to my idea of who I am. So I become to lose awareness of who I am. At level 4 and 5 the flower closes completely. I am only able to see that little portion [Miguel closes his fingers all together] to the point where everything becomes a filter and doesn’t let me see beyond the tip of my nose. Letting go in life is like this [he opens and closes his fingers] because we’re continuously interacting with life. Life happens, you might get a tax bill, an injury or something else and the flower suddenly closes and it totally depends where we put our attention.
