Chap­ter 2: THE FIRST AGREEMENT

Be Impec­ca­ble with Your Word

THE FIRST AGREEMENT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT ONE and also the most dif­fi­cult one to hon­or. It is so impor­tant that with just this first agree­ment you will be able to tran­scend to the lev­el of exis­tence I call heav­en on earth.
The first agree­ment is to be impec­ca­ble with your word. It sounds very sim­ple, but it is very, very pow­er­ful.
Why your word? Your word is the pow­er that you have to cre­ate. Your word is the gift that comes direct­ly from God. The Gospel of John in the Bible, speak­ing of the cre­ation of the uni­verse, says, “In the begin­ning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word is God.” Through the word you express your cre­ative pow­er. It is through the word that you man­i­fest every­thing. Regard­less of what lan­guage you speak, your intent man­i­fests through the word. What you dream, what you feel, and what you real­ly are, will all be man­i­fest­ed through the word.
The word is not just a sound or a writ­ten sym­bol. The word is a force; it is the pow­er you have to express and com­mu­ni­cate, to think, and there­by to cre­ate the events in your life. You can speak. What oth­er ani­mal on the plan­et can speak? The word is the most pow­er­ful tool you have as a human; it is the tool of mag­ic. But like a sword with two edges, your word can cre­ate the most beau­ti­ful dream, or your word can destroy every­thing around you. One edge is the mis­use of the word, which cre­ates a liv­ing hell. The oth­er edge is the impec­ca­bil­i­ty of the word, which will only cre­ate beau­ty, love, and heav­en on earth. Depend­ing upon how it is used, the word can set you free, or it can enslave you even more than you know. All the mag­ic you pos­sess is based on your word. Your word is pure mag­ic, and mis­use of your word is black mag­ic.
The word is so pow­er­ful that one word can change a life or destroy the lives of mil­lions of peo­ple. Some years ago one man in Ger­many, by the use of the word, manip­u­lat­ed a whole coun­try of the most intel­li­gent peo­ple. He led them into a world war with just the pow­er of his word. He con­vinced oth­ers to com­mit the most atro­cious acts of vio­lence. He acti­vat­ed people’s fear with the word, and like a big explo­sion, there was killing and war all around the world. All over the world humans destroyed oth­er humans because they were afraid of each oth­er. Hitler’s word, based on fear-gen­er­at­ed beliefs and agree­ments, will be remem­bered for cen­turies.
The human mind is like a fer­tile ground where seeds are con­tin­u­al­ly being plant­ed. The seeds are opin­ions, ideas, and con­cepts. You plant a seed, a thought, and it grows. The word is like a seed, and the human mind is so fer­tile! The only prob­lem is that too often it is fer­tile for the seeds of fear. Every human mind is fer­tile, but only for those kinds of seeds it is pre­pared for. What is impor­tant is to see which kind of seeds our mind is fer­tile for, and to pre­pare it to receive the seeds of love.
Take the exam­ple of Hitler: He sent out all those seeds of fear, and they grew very strong and beau­ti­ful­ly achieved mas­sive destruc­tion. See­ing the awe­some pow­er of the word, we must under­stand what pow­er comes out of our mouths. One fear or doubt plant­ed in our mind can cre­ate an end­less dra­ma of events. One word is like a spell, and humans use the word like black magi­cians, thought­less­ly putting spells on each oth­er.
Every human is a magi­cian, and we can either put a spell on some­one with our word or we can release some­one from a spell. We cast spells all the time with our opin­ions. An exam­ple: I see a friend and give him an opin­ion that just popped into my mind. I say, “Hmmm! I see that kind of col­or in your face in peo­ple who are going to get can­cer.” If he lis­tens to the word, and if he agrees, he will have can­cer in less than one year. That is the pow­er of the word.
Dur­ing our domes­ti­ca­tion, our par­ents and sib­lings gave their opin­ions about us with­out even think­ing. We believed these opin­ions and we lived in fear over these opin­ions, like not being good at swim­ming, or sports, or writ­ing. Some­one gives an opin­ion and says, “Look, this girl is ugly!” The girl lis­tens, believes she is ugly, and grows up with the idea that she is ugly. It doesn’t mat­ter how beau­ti­ful she is; as long as she has that agree­ment, she will believe that she is ugly. That is the spell she is under.
By hook­ing our atten­tion, the word can enter our mind and change a whole belief for bet­ter or for worse. Anoth­er exam­ple: You may believe you are stu­pid, and you may have believed this for as long as you can remem­ber. This agree­ment can be very tricky, caus­ing you to do a lot of things just to ensure that you are stu­pid. You may do some­thing and think to your­self, “I wish I were smart, but I must be stu­pid or I wouldn’t have done that.” The mind goes in hun­dreds of dif­fer­ent direc­tions, and we could spend days get­ting hooked by just that one belief in our own stu­pid­i­ty.
Then one day some­one hooks your atten­tion and using the word, lets you know that you are not stu­pid. You believe what the per­son says and make a new agree­ment. As a result, you no longer feel or act stu­pid. A whole spell is bro­ken, just by the pow­er of the word. Con­verse­ly, if you believe you are stu­pid, and some­one hooks your atten­tion and says, “Yes, you are real­ly the most stu­pid per­son I have ever met,” the agree­ment will be rein­forced and become even stronger.

Now let us see what the word impec­ca­bil­i­ty means. Impec­ca­bil­i­ty means “with­out sin.” Impec­ca­ble comes from the Latin peca­tus, which means “sin.” The im in impec­ca­ble means “with­out,” so impec­ca­ble means “with­out sin.” Reli­gions talk about sin and sin­ners, but let’s under­stand what it real­ly means to sin. A sin is any­thing that you do which goes against your­self. Every­thing you feel or believe or say that goes against your­self is a sin. You go against your­self when you judge or blame your­self for any­thing.
Being with­out sin is exact­ly the oppo­site. Being impec­ca­ble is not going against your­self. When you are impec­ca­ble, you take respon­si­bil­i­ty for your actions, but you do not judge or blame your­self.
From this point of view, the whole con­cept of sin changes from some­thing moral or reli­gious to some­thing com­mon­sense. Sin begins with rejec­tion of your­self. Self-rejec­tion is the biggest sin that you com­mit. In reli­gious terms self-rejec­tion is a “mor­tal sin,” which leads to death. Impec­ca­bil­i­ty, on the oth­er hand, leads to life.
Being impec­ca­ble with your word is not using the word against your­self. If I see you in the street and I call you stu­pid, it appears that I’m using the word against you. But real­ly I’m using my word against myself, because you’re going to hate me for this, and your hat­ing me is not good for me. There­fore, if I get angry and with my word send all that emo­tion­al poi­son to you, I’m using the word against myself.
If I love myself I will express that love in my inter­ac­tions with you, and then I am being impec­ca­ble with the word, because that action will pro­duce a like reac­tion. If I love you, then you will love me. If I insult you, you will insult me. If I have grat­i­tude for you, you will have grat­i­tude for me. If I’m self­ish with you, you will be self­ish with me. If I use the word to put a spell on you, you are going to put a spell on me.
Being impec­ca­ble with your word is the cor­rect use of your ener­gy; it means to use your ener­gy in the direc­tion of truth and love for your­self. If you make an agree­ment with your­self to be impec­ca­ble with your word, just with that inten­tion, the truth will man­i­fest through you and clean all the emo­tion­al poi­son that exists with­in you. But mak­ing this agree­ment is dif­fi­cult because we have learned to do pre­cise­ly the oppo­site. We have learned to lie as a habit of our com­mu­ni­ca­tion with oth­ers and more impor­tant­ly with our­selves. We are not impec­ca­ble with the word.
The pow­er of the word is com­plete­ly mis­used in hell. We use the word to curse, to blame, to find guilt, to destroy. Of course, we also use it in the right way, but not too often. Most­ly we use the word to spread our per­son­al poi­son — to express anger, jeal­ousy, envy, and hate. The word is pure mag­ic — the most pow­er­ful gift we have as humans — and we use it against our­selves. We plan revenge. We cre­ate chaos with the word. We use the word to cre­ate hate between dif­fer­ent races, between dif­fer­ent peo­ple, between fam­i­lies, between nations. We mis­use the word so often, and this mis­use is how we cre­ate and per­pet­u­ate the dream of hell. Mis­use of the word is how we pull each oth­er down and keep each oth­er in a state of fear and doubt. Because the word is the mag­ic that humans pos­sess and mis­use of the word is black mag­ic, we are using black mag­ic all the time with­out know­ing that our word is mag­ic at all.
There was a woman, for exam­ple, who was intel­li­gent and had a very good heart. She had a daugh­ter whom she adored and loved very much. One night she came home from a very bad day at work, tired, full of emo­tion­al ten­sion, and with a ter­ri­ble headache. She want­ed peace and qui­et, but her daugh­ter was singing and jump­ing hap­pi­ly. The daugh­ter was unaware of how her moth­er was feel­ing; she was in her own world, in her own dream. She felt so won­der­ful, and she was jump­ing and singing loud­er and loud­er, express­ing her joy and her love. She was singing so loud that it made her mother’s headache even worse, and at a cer­tain moment, the moth­er lost con­trol. Angri­ly she looked at her beau­ti­ful lit­tle girl and said, “Shut up! You have an ugly voice. Can you just shut up!”
The truth is that the mother’s tol­er­ance for any noise was nonex­is­tent; it was not that the lit­tle girl’s voice was ugly. But the daugh­ter believed what her moth­er said, and in that moment she made an agree­ment with her­self. After that she no longer sang, because she believed her voice was ugly and would both­er any­one who heard it. She became shy at school, and if she was asked to sing, she refused. Even speak­ing to oth­ers became dif­fi­cult for her. Every­thing changed in the lit­tle girl because of this new agree­ment: She believed she must repress her emo­tions in order to be accept­ed and loved.
When­ev­er we hear an opin­ion and believe it, we make an agree­ment, and it becomes part of our belief sys­tem. This lit­tle girl grew up, and even though she had a beau­ti­ful voice, she nev­er sang again. She devel­oped a whole com­plex from one spell. This spell was cast upon her by the one who loved her the most: her own moth­er. Her moth­er didn’t notice what she did with her word. She didn’t notice that she used black mag­ic and put a spell on her daugh­ter. She didn’t know the pow­er of her word, and there­fore she isn’t to blame. She did what her own moth­er, father, and oth­ers had done to her in many ways. They mis­used the word.
How many times do we do this with our own chil­dren? We give them these types of opin­ions and our chil­dren car­ry that black mag­ic for years and years. Peo­ple who love us do black mag­ic on us, but they don’t know what they do. That is why we must for­give them; they don’t know what they do.
Anoth­er exam­ple: You awake in the morn­ing feel­ing very hap­py. You feel so won­der­ful, you stay one or two hours in front of the mir­ror, mak­ing your­self beau­ti­ful. Well, one of your best friends says, “What has hap­pened to you? You look so ugly. Look at the dress you are wear­ing; you look ridicu­lous.” That’s it; that is enough to put you all the way down in hell. Maybe this girl­friend just told you this to hurt you. And, she did. She gave you an opin­ion with all the pow­er of her word behind it. If you accept the opin­ion, it becomes an agree­ment now, and you put all your pow­er into that opin­ion. That opin­ion becomes black mag­ic.
These types of spells are dif­fi­cult to break. The only thing that can break a spell is to make a new agree­ment based on truth. The truth is the most impor­tant part of being impec­ca­ble with your word. On one side of the sword are the lies which cre­ate black mag­ic, and on the oth­er side of the sword is the truth which has the pow­er to break the spell of black mag­ic. Only the truth will set us free.

Look­ing at every­day human inter­ac­tions, imag­ine how many times we cast spells on each oth­er with our word. Over time this inter­ac­tion has become the worst form of black mag­ic, and we call it gos­sip. Gos­sip is black mag­ic at its very worst because it is pure poi­son. We learned how to gos­sip by agree­ment. When we were chil­dren, we heard the adults around us gos­sip­ing all the time, open­ly giv­ing their opin­ions about oth­er peo­ple. They even had opin­ions about peo­ple they didn’t know. Emo­tion­al poi­son was trans­ferred along with the opin­ions, and we learned this as the nor­mal way to com­mu­ni­cate.
Gos­sip­ing has become the main form of com­mu­ni­ca­tion in human soci­ety. It has become the way we feel close to each oth­er, because it makes us feel bet­ter to see some­one else feel as bad­ly as we do. There is an old expres­sion that says, “Mis­ery likes com­pa­ny,” and peo­ple who are suf­fer­ing in hell don’t want to be all alone. Fear and suf­fer­ing are an impor­tant part of the dream of the plan­et; they are how the dream of the plan­et keeps us down.
Using the anal­o­gy of the human mind as a com­put­er, gos­sip can be com­pared to a com­put­er virus. A com­put­er virus is a piece of com­put­er lan­guage writ­ten in the same lan­guage all the oth­er codes are writ­ten in, but with a harm­ful intent. This code is insert­ed into the pro­gram of your com­put­er when you least expect it and most of the time with­out your aware­ness. After this code has been intro­duced, your com­put­er doesn’t work quite right, or it doesn’t func­tion at all because the codes get so mixed up with so many con­flict­ing mes­sages that it stops pro­duc­ing good results.
Human gos­sip works exact­ly the same way. For exam­ple, you are begin­ning a new class with a new teacher and you have looked for­ward to it for a long time. On the first day of class, you run into some­one who took the class before, who tells you, “Oh that instruc­tor was such a pompous jerk! He didn’t know what he was talk­ing about, and he was a per­vert too, so watch out!”
You are imme­di­ate­ly imprint­ed with the word and the emo­tion­al code the per­son had when say­ing this, but what you are not aware of is his or her moti­va­tion in telling you. This per­son could be angry for fail­ing the class or sim­ply mak­ing an assump­tion based on fears and prej­u­dices, but because you have learned to ingest infor­ma­tion like a child, some part of you believes the gos­sip, and you go on to the class. As the teacher speaks, you feel the poi­son come up inside you and you don’t real­ize you see the teacher through the eyes of the per­son who gave you that gos­sip. Then you start talk­ing to oth­er peo­ple in the class about this, and they start to see the teacher in the same way: as a jerk and a per­vert. You real­ly hate the class, and soon you decide to drop out. You blame the teacher, but it is gos­sip that is to blame.
All of this mess can be caused by one lit­tle com­put­er virus. One lit­tle piece of mis­in­for­ma­tion can break down com­mu­ni­ca­tion between peo­ple, caus­ing every per­son it touch­es to become infect­ed and con­ta­gious to oth­ers. Imag­ine that every sin­gle time oth­ers gos­sip to you, they insert a com­put­er virus into your mind, caus­ing you to think a lit­tle less clear­ly every time. Then imag­ine that in an effort to clean up your own con­fu­sion and get some relief from the poi­son, you gos­sip and spread these virus­es to some­one else.
Now imag­ine this pat­tern going on in a nev­er-end­ing chain between all the humans on earth. The result is a world full of humans who can only read infor­ma­tion through cir­cuits that are clogged with a poi­so­nous, con­ta­gious virus. Once again, this poi­so­nous virus is what the Toltecs called the mitote, the chaos of a thou­sand dif­fer­ent voic­es all try­ing to talk at once in the mind.
Even worse are the black magi­cians or “com­put­er hack­ers” who inten­tion­al­ly spread the virus. Think back to a time when you or some­one you know was angry with some­one else and desired revenge. In order to seek revenge you said some­thing to or about that per­son with the inten­tion of spread­ing poi­son and mak­ing that per­son feel bad about him- or her­self. As chil­dren we do this quite thought­less­ly, but as we grow old­er we become much more cal­cu­lat­ed in our efforts to bring oth­er peo­ple down. Then we lie to our­selves and say that per­son received a just pun­ish­ment for their wrong­do­ing.
When we see the world through a com­put­er virus, it is easy to jus­ti­fy the cru­elest behav­ior. What we don’t see is that mis­use of our word is putting us deep­er into hell.

For years we have received the gos­sip and spells from the words of oth­ers, but also from the way we use our word with our­selves. We talk to our­selves con­stant­ly and most of the time we say things like, “Oh, I look fat, I look ugly. I’m get­ting old, I’m los­ing my hair. I’m stu­pid, I nev­er under­stand any­thing. I will nev­er be good enough, and I’m nev­er going to be per­fect.” Do you see how we use the word against our­selves? We must begin to under­stand what the word is and what the word does. If you under­stand the first agree­ment, be impec­ca­ble with your word, you begin to see all the changes that can hap­pen in your life. Changes first in the way you deal with your­self, and lat­er in the way you deal with oth­er peo­ple, espe­cial­ly those you love the most.
Con­sid­er how many times you have gos­siped about the per­son you love the most to gain the sup­port of oth­ers for your point of view. How many times have you hooked oth­er people’s atten­tion, and spread poi­son about your loved one in order to make your opin­ion right? Your opin­ion is noth­ing but your point of view. It is not nec­es­sar­i­ly true. Your opin­ion comes from your beliefs, your own ego, and your own dream. We cre­ate all this poi­son and spread it to oth­ers just so we can feel right about our own point of view.
If we adopt the first agree­ment, and become impec­ca­ble with our word, any emo­tion­al poi­son will even­tu­al­ly be cleaned from our mind and from our com­mu­ni­ca­tion in our per­son­al rela­tion­ships, includ­ing with our pet dog or cat.
Impec­ca­bil­i­ty of the word will also give you immu­ni­ty from any­one putting a neg­a­tive spell on you. You will only receive a neg­a­tive idea if your mind is fer­tile ground for that idea. When you become impec­ca­ble with your word, your mind is no longer fer­tile ground for words that come from black mag­ic. Instead, it is fer­tile for the words that come from love. You can mea­sure the impec­ca­bil­i­ty of your word by your lev­el of self-love. How much you love your­self and how you feel about your­self are direct­ly pro­por­tion­ate to the qual­i­ty and integri­ty of your word. When you are impec­ca­ble with your word, you feel good; you feel hap­py and at peace.
You can tran­scend the dream of hell just by mak­ing the agree­ment to be impec­ca­ble with your word. Right now I am plant­i­ng that seed in your mind. Whether or not the seed grows depends upon how fer­tile your mind is for the seeds of love. It is up to you to make this agree­ment with your­self: I am impec­ca­ble with my word. Nur­ture this seed, and as it grows in your mind, it will gen­er­ate more seeds of love to replace the seeds of fear. This first agree­ment will change the kind of seeds your mind is fer­tile for.
Be impec­ca­ble with your word. This is the first agree­ment that you should make if you want to be free, if you want to be hap­py, if you want to tran­scend the lev­el of exis­tence that is hell. It is very pow­er­ful. Use the word in the cor­rect way. Use the word to share your love. Use white mag­ic, begin­ning with your­self. Tell your­self how won­der­ful you are, how great you are. Tell your­self how much you love your­self. Use the word to break all those tee­ny, tiny agree­ments that make you suf­fer.
It is pos­si­ble. It is pos­si­ble because I did it, and I am no bet­ter than you. No, we are exact­ly the same. We have the same kind of brain, the same kind of bod­ies; we are humans. If I was able to break those agree­ments and cre­ate new agree­ments, then you can do the same. If I can be impec­ca­ble with my word, why not you? Just this one…