Don Miguel Ruiz' Five Levels of Attachment and Four Agreements

Don Miguel Ruiz' The Five Levels of Attachment poses a key question: "Are you using knowledge, or is knowledge using you?" His grandmother asked him this when he struggled to translate her words and it took him a while to grasp the full import of her message: he was imposing his own meanings and preconceptions on what she said. Ruiz writes, "This is a simple example of how we narrate life--explaining it, but, more importantly, justifying and judging it. Instead of taking an experience for what it is, we create a story to make it fit our beliefs. During Madre Sarita's talks, I had to completely shut down my thoughts, because if my mind's commentary got in the way, I would miss out on her message. With this simple process, my grandmother showed me that if we only see the world through the filters of our preconceptions, we are going to miss out on actually living. After much practice, I eventually learned to close my eyes, shut out the world that existed outside my head, and translate every single word she said accurately."

Frank Herbert's Whipping Star contains an interesting quote: "If you say 'I understand,' what have you done? You made a value judgment." Assuming that you understand what another person is saying involves an act of interpretation that may not be correct. As Yoda said to Luke Skywalker, "You must unlearn what you have learned"; sometimes knowledge can be a prison if that knowledge is used to form preconceptions that prevent us from looking at the big picture.

After reading The Five Levels of Attachment, I researched some of Ruiz' earlier work and I came across his 1997 book The Four Agreements. Those agreements are:

Be Impeccable with Your Word

"Speak with integrity. Say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. Use the power of your word in the direction of truth and love.

Impeccable means 'without sin' and a sin is something you do or believe that goes against yourself. It means not speaking against yourself, to yourself or to others. It means not rejecting yourself. To be impeccable means to take responsibility for yourself, to not participate in 'the blame game.'

Regarding the word, the rules of  'action-reaction' apply. What you put out energetically will return to you. Proper use of the word creates proper use of energy, putting out love and gratitude perpetuates the same in the universe. The converse is also true.

Impeccability starts at home. Be impeccable with yourself and that will reflect in your life and your relationships with others. This agreement can help change thousands of other agreements, especially ones that create fear instead of love."

Don't Take Anything Personally

"Nothing others do is because of you. What others say and do is a projection of their own dream. When you are immune to the opinions and actions of others, you won't be the victim of needless suffering.

We take things personally when we agree with what others have said. If we didn't agree, the things that others say would not affect us emotionally. If we did not care about what others think about us, their words or behavior could not affect us.

Even if someone yells at you, gossips about you, harms you or yours, it still is not about you! Their actions and words are based on what they believe in their personal dream.

Our personal 'Book of Law' and belief system makes us feel safe. When people have beliefs that are different from our own, we get scared, defend ourselves, and impose our point of view on others. If someone gets angry with us it is because our belief system is challenging their belief system and they get scared. They need to defend their point of view. Why become angry, create conflict, and expend energy arguing when you are aware of this?"

Don't Make Assumptions

"Find the courage to ask questions and to express what you really want. Communicate with others as clearly as you can to avoid misunderstandings, sadness and drama. With just this one agreement, you can completely transform your life.

When we make assumptions it is because we believe we know what others are thinking and feeling. We believe we know their point of view, their dream. We forget that our beliefs are just our point of view based on our belief system and personal experiences and have nothing to do with what others think and feel.

We make the assumption that everybody judges us, abuses us, victimizes us, and blames us the way we do ourselves. As a result we reject ourselves before others have the chance to reject us. When we think this way, it becomes difficult to be ourselves in the world.

Take action and be clear to others about what you want or do not want; do not gossip and make assumptions about things others tell you. Respect other points of view and avoid arguing just to be right. Respect yourself and be honest with yourself. Stop expecting the people around you to know what is in your head."

Always Do Your Best

"Your best is going to change from moment to moment; it will be different when you are healthy as opposed to sick. Under any circumstance, simply do your best, and you will avoid self-judgment, self-abuse, and regret.

Doing your best means enjoying the action without expecting a reward. The pleasure comes from doing what you like in life and having fun, not from how much you get paid. Enjoy the path traveled and the destination will take care of itself.

Living in the moment and releasing the past helps us to do the best we can in the moment. It allows us to be fully alive right now, enjoying what is present, not worrying about the past or the future.

Have patience with yourself. Take action. Practice forgiveness. If you do your best always, transformation will happen as a matter of course."

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Many elements of Ruiz' Agreements are similar to the Jedi philosophy; Yoda counsels Luke Skywalker to avoid attachments and to simply feel the Force, to become one with the way that the Force binds all life forms together. The three epigraphs in my article about Garret Kramer's Stillpower also express this outlook:

Luke Skywalker: "But how am I to know the good side from the bad?"
Yoda: "You will know...when you are calm, at peace, passive."--Dialogue from "The Empire Strikes Back"

"In war, as in life, there is a wrong way and a right way to compete. Avoid danger and greed. Embrace concentration and awareness. And when it becomes inevitable--let go."--Kwai Chang Caine, "Kung Fu: The Legend Continues"

"Colors blind; Sound deafens; Beauty beguiles; the enemy of stillness is desire. Eliminate desire, and the truth will become clear."--Kwai Chang Caine, "Kung Fu: The Legend Continues"

Before Luke Skywalker made his fateful walk into the "domain of evil" cave on Dagobah, he asked Yoda what was in the cave and Yoda responded, "Only what you take with you." The world sometimes seems like a "domain of evil" but ultimately we each find what we take with us: if we take with us anger, fear and weapons then we will find strife, despair and conflict. A Jedi uses the Force for knowledge and defense, never attack, and that is how each of us should use our own powers and gifts; fight for what is important--be willing to die for it if necessary--but do not fight for the sake of fighting or turn every situation into a struggle when it is possible to take a less confrontational approach.

Perspective

I celebrated my birthday last month by treating myself to a trip to the Second Annual Michigan Chess Festival, held at the MET hotel in Troy, Michigan. I lost rating points and did not win any prize money but I will always have fond memories of my first visit to Michigan because it represented one more milestone in my evolution from a mindset based on willpower to a mindset based on what Garret Kramer calls Stillpower. Kramer emphasizes the importance of distinguishing between "life" and "life situations." Kramer explains, "Your life is a constant. While most of us think that external circumstances actually happen to us, in truth they don't. They're just happening. All life situations are just happening. Granted, we play a role in the outcome of whatever it is we face, but regardless of our role or whether we're happy or disappointed, the nature of all circumstances or results in life is unbiased. This basic understanding is essential to your quest for success." I went to Michigan with the mindset that my life is good regardless of how I perform in the tournament and that I would savor every moment of my trip regardless of what happened on or off the chess board.

Until very recently it would have been difficult for me to enjoy myself at a tournament if I did not play well--and I set a very high bar to define playing well, which can turn life into a joyless all or nothing proposition. This time I did not allow my performance to affect my mood during the weekend; although I did not play as well as I wanted to play, I learned from my two losses versus Grandmaster Ben Finegold and National Master Seth Homa, I enjoyed GM Finegold's Saturday lecture about GM Hikaru Nakamura and I had an interesting conversation about chess, poker, backgammon and other subjects with Senior Master Fred Lindsay, a bookseller who I have known since my chess career began in the 1980s (I also bought some cool items from Lindsay, including an English translation of GM Miguel Najdorf's Zurich 1953 book).

Both before and after the tournament I spent some quality time with my friend Erika Klotz, a Troy native who showed me around town. My pre-tournament mindset often involves isolating myself so that I can visualize playing well without being bothered by any distractions but in Michigan I took a different approach; I enjoyed a nice Friday dinner with Erika at Noodles & Company--I'd never been there before; the chicken soup is very good--and after the short drive back to the MET we found a quiet corner in an unoccupied ballroom so that I could teach Erika some chess basics. I have been teaching chess since 1999 but I rarely teach complete beginners so I do not have much experience showing someone how the pieces move; it is fascinating to see the game through "beginner's eyes" and this is also a good way to look at life: to perceive each moment as something new, exciting and wonderful.

Erika learned very quickly and thus was able to follow algebraic chess notation well enough to play through one of the most famous miniatures in chess history, Paul Morphy's 1858 "Opera Game" versus Count Isouard and the Duke of Brunswick:

1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 Bg4 4.dxe5 Bxf3 5.Qxf3 dxe5 6.Bc4 Nf6 7.Qb3 Qe7 8.Nc3 c6 9.Bg5 b5 10.Nxb5 cxb5 11.Bxb5+ Nbd7 12.0–0–0 Rd8 13.Rxd7 Rxd7 14.Rd1 Qe6 15.Bxd7+ Nxd7 16.Qb8+ Nxb8 17.Rd8# 1–0

The final position is a picturesque model of artistic harmony combined with brutal efficiency; Morphy sacrificed virtually his entire army in order to deliver checkmate:

Siegbert Tarrasch once said, "Chess, like love, like music, has the power to make men happy." One of the great joys of life is to savor the creations of a genius' mind and you don't have to be a genius to appreciate Mozart's music or Morphy's moves because the touchstone of genius is simplicity: think Richard Feynman and his demonstration about the O rings after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Morphy's Opera Game has that touchstone of genius, so it is a pleasure to share a glimpse of that kind of genius with someone who previously did not know anything about it.

Perhaps inspired by the experience of sharing Morphy with Erika, I secured victory in my fifth round game with a nice tactical shot: in the position shown below I played ...Bh3+! If White takes the B then Black forces mate with ...Nf4+ followed by ...Qh5+ and Qf5++; White instead lost the Exchange after Kg1 and he resigned seven moves later.

Instead of lamenting the blunders that transformed my fourth round game from a win to a draw to a loss, I focused on being grateful for the opportunity to play in this fun tournament and I enjoyed finishing the event on a positive note with a crisp win.

Before I drove home on Monday, Erika showed me around Troy. We first visited the Somerset Collection in order to see the Sorvikivi Floating Stone Fountains (one of them is pictured below, courtesy of a public domain photo on Wikipedia:



The next stop on the tour of "The City of Tomorrow, Today" was the Troy Community Center, home of the Ayrton's Head sculpture that used to be located in front of Kmart's world headquarters: