In this teaching, don Miguel speaks about awareness and the power of the word. In the Toltec teachings everything starts with awareness.When we look at how we communicate with awareness we begin to see some very interesting things.We see that we use the knowledge we have memorized in the form of words to build opinions. We then use all the creative power of our spoken word to express our opinions to other people. This happens without the awareness of the power we are investing in our opinions or the affect this power has when the opinion is received by other people.If you were aware of the power you invested into your opinions would you handle your opinions with more care?
“Your word is very powerful; the power of an opinion is incredible.An opinion is like a seed, and if that seed is planted in fertile ground, it will grow so strong and powerful.The human mind is very fertile for opinions, and one opinion can affect us so much.This is the power of opinions, and we share our opinions wherever we go without knowing how our opinions really affect other people.”
-don Miguel Ruiz
Recommended Activity : Recovering Personal Power
In order to evolve the dream of our life we need personal power.Most of our personal power is trapped by the structure of the agreements we made during our domestication while we were growing up.Every time we break an old agreement we recover that personal power and can then direct it to live life the way we choose.But if our personal power is trapped in our agreements and we need personal power to break these agreements where do we get the personal power in the first place?We can recover the personal power from the power we lose when reacting to other peoples opinions and the power we give away without awareness in our own opinions.We do this by practicing the first two agreements Be impeccable with your word and Don’t take anything personally.
A very effective way to recover personal power invested in the word is to practice refraining from expressing your opinions.If you begin to practice this you will find out something very interesting,you will begin to see that the great majority of your opinions are not necessary.Practice refraining from the little opinions we throw out about everything, the weather, your weekend, other people, politics.As you start to gain more power from conserving your word you may become aware that more and more of your points of view that you use to believe in so strongly are only just an opinion that you no longer need to invest your personal power in.
We also have the belief once we construct an opinion that most of our opinions are right and other peoples differing opinions are wrong.We then have the need to defend our opinion, which is just a construct of words, from other people who have a different opinion or word construct.Why do we have to do this?Because we have our personal power invested in the opinion and want to protect it.Now we have a conflict and we invest more personal power in the conflict. All this from the expression of opinions which are not necessarily true in the first place.
We can see a simple example of this conflict of opinions in relationships with our beloved.A couple plans a romantic weekend away at a beautiful location they have always wanted to visit together.They are going to drive and enjoy the scenery.
Along the way to their destination one of the couple expresses the opinion that it would be better to take a different route to their destination, the other partner disagrees and has the opinion that they should stick to the route they are on now.The first partner starts to justify why their opinion is correct and why the other person is wrong and they should go the other way.Now there is a conflict and each person is defending their opinion and both people are feeling tension and hurt from the disagreement.Either route will get the couple to their destination but the need to be right and defend their opinion is stronger than their desire to enjoy their romantic weekend together.
To recover your personal power practice the following exercises.
·Don’t take other peoples opinions personally.
·Recognize that everyone including yourself is constantly expressing their opinion.
·Notice how we give opinions about other peoples opinions.
·Practice refrain from needing to express your own opinion.
·When you find your opinion is in conflict with someone else practice letting the other person be right.As soon as you recognize you are having to defend an opinion tell the other person they are right.
·If you are a couple agree to take alternate days about being right about your opinions.
