The Fifth Agreement – Miguel Ruiz and Jose Ruiz

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don Miguel Ruiz

Don Miguel Ruiz is the international bestselling author of The Four Agreements (a New York Times bestseller for over seven years), The Mastery of Love, and The Voice of Knowledge. His books have sold over seven million copies in the United States, and have been translated into dozens of languages worldwide. For nearly three decades, don Miguel has shared his unique blend of ancient wisdom and modern-day awareness through lectures, workshops, and journeys to sacred sites around the world.

Don Jose Ruiz grew up in a world where anything was possible. From the moment he could speak, he became an apprentice of his nagual (shaman) father, don Miguel Ruiz, and his curandera (healer) grandmother, Mother Sarita. As a teenager, he traveled to India to study with friends of his father, and at the age of twenty-three, he became the successor to the family lineage. In the tradition of his ancestors, don Jose has dedicated his life to sharing the teachings of the ancient Toltec. For the past seven years, he has been lecturing and leading classes across the United States, and at sacred sites around the world.

The Fifth Agreement is the essential and proverbial icing on don Miguel Ruiz’s cake, also known as the bestselling The Four Agreements. Co-authored with son, don Jose Ruiz, The Fifth Agreement presents new insights that bring home the lessons of The Four. The Fifth’s readability is as appropriate for those versed in the work of Ruiz the elder, as for the complete novice.

Ruiz and Ruiz give us a refreshing spin on spiritual growth, self-help, and New Age literature, making The Fifth Agreement a rare breed in its genre. Throughout the book, they affirm that personal development and empowerment lie in choice — that everything in life is choice.

Not exactly confirming popular New Age assertions that we create our reality (circumstances, even illnesses, which sometimes engender a blaming effect), Ruiz and Ruiz scale it to a more fundamental, straightforward level. The premise is that our reality — our “dream” in Ruiz-speak —  is based on our perspective. In other words, what we believe to be true may not actually be the truth. A belief is not necessarily a truth, and our beliefs, therefore, stand to be tested. The Fifth Agreement then, is the litmus that tests our beliefs.

Don Miguel Ruiz’s Four Agreements dispel the myth of what he calls “domestication.” The Fifth Agreement now further urges us to drop our stories and unlearn our domestication. Through this subtle paradigm shift, we become the observer and listener rather than storyteller. By shifting, we wake up to our programming and its accompanying distortions of reality. Waking, as though from a sleepwalk through life, our true nature is re-instilled.

Expanding on this premise, Ruiz and Ruiz describe how we are constantly choosing to eat, metaphorically, either from the Tree of Life or the Tree of Knowledge, and the consequences of each. More simply put, The Fifth Agreement teaches us to discern between transient knowledge and universal truths. Moreover, it shows us how struggling against truth is the root of human suffering. 

Regardless of background, race, creed, or station in life, we’re shown that it is possible to advance from victim of circumstance to warrior, and ultimately to master. For The Fifth Agreement reveals that we truly are master of our own universe.

Mischa Geracoulis is an essayist and reviewer in Los Angeles. All rights reserved.
Reprintable by permission only. Contact Mischa Geracoulis at – mgeracoulis @ gmail.com

don Miguel Ruiz,

Unity of Vancouver

5840 Oak Street, Vancouver, BC

Date: November 19, 2011

Cost: $49.00 – $99.00