New Agreements for Living: Interview with Don Miguel Ruiz Sr

So now you have the awareness whether you are domesticated or not. With this awareness you take away the power of knowledge and you no longer will judge yourself, punish yourself and you don’t even reward yourself, because it is not important. The moment you are dying and you remember everything you did in your life you will see how irrelevant everything you did is. But you don’t have to die to realize this. Try not to believe in all this anymore, be skeptical and listen. And by-the-way, this is The Fifth Agreement.

SS: From The Four Agreements we quote: “95% of the beliefs of we have stored in our minds are nothing but lies and we suffer because we believe all these lies.” What do you think is the function of the human mind, since it seems that it only causes us trouble and with the knowledge that nature is perfection, isn’t this paradoxical?

DMR: Well, if you can see the way that you are thinking right now, in your mind, your own knowledge tries to justify, tries to understand this in order to feel safe, because at a certain point you start feeling that something is shaking. You already have an idea of what perfection should be and it is not even yours. You hear from so many people about perfection. How many times do you hear people say when they make a mistake: “nobody’s perfect”? Well, it is not true. We are perfect just the way we are. Only the imperfection (which is not true of course) which exists in the human mind is nothing but an agreement. We don’t understand our own perfection, but we are perfect.