And That's The Truth!

As mentioned in Get In My Belly (Part II), there were a few books that were particularly enlightening to me. 

I would like to do a review on some of them. This blog entry will specifically address how The Four Agreements and The Voice of Knowledge both authored by Don Miguel Ruiz affected me. I may cover a few other books at a later date.

First of all, you should know that I don't know this man, but he has changed my thinking a great deal. So it is fair to say that a stranger changed my life for the better. 

I read The Four Agreements (TFA) for the first time in 2007. It literally became a lifeline to help me get through the next few years of my life. In this book I learned the following:

1. I was negatively influencing my own reality by being dishonest with myself.
2. I didn't like who I was and couldn't stand to be in my own skin, all because I hadn't found a way to love and accept myself. 
3. Somewhere along the way in this life I told myself that I was: insignificant, dismissible, unimportant, forgettable, replaceable, unintelligent and an unworthy of investment and I believed it.
4. I was living in fear that everyone else around me would find out that the aforementioned conclusions might actually be true. I assumed that these things were true and therefore I assumed everyone else would see and believe these things about me as well. 

After reading TFA I took several months to take a comprehensive inventory. I went through an internal deconstruction. 

I discovered that none of those points that I mentioned above were actually true. The only one who believed those things about me was me. 

The only true statement above was the first one. I saw that I needed to redefine my self-perception. I needed to view my reality without all the lies. 

I needed to embrace honesty and learn to love me for who I am.

I later read The Voice of Knowledge (TVK), which is a follow-up and companion volume to TFA. These books combined sort of became my friends during my deconstruction and reconstruction phases. 

I had later come to realize the outline of me, through the help of TVK. With an outline, I was then able to enter the reconstruction phase. 

I was beginning to take shape and realized that this Diana is the one that had always existed, I just didn't believe it - I didn't know her.

The only real difference between Pre-Diana & Post-Diana was the hazy wall that surrounded her like a cocoon. It simply distorted and hid the reality. 

Until I could be honest with myself that cocoon would always remain. I later found that I was ready to accept the truth of me. 

I could handle seeing and try to believe it now. This is actually quite difficult to do. Until this point I couldn't even meet my own eyes in the mirror, let alone think nice things about myself. 

It's like living in a dark cave without light and then all of the sudden standing on a mountain top in full view of the sun. The contrast was that drastic. It was an "Aha! Moment". In fact, I blogged a little bit about that experience earlier in My Road Back.

We are worth the effort of constantly struggling to see the value of you, me... we... This is a good life, filled with amazing things and opportunities. 

Why do we fall in to the trap of constantly limiting ourselves, simply because we doubt our worth and potential? We have a purpose. 

Why do we lie and try to fool ourselves, eventually letting the weaker part of us be in the driver seat? We owe it to ourselves to be honest. 

There is freedom in the heart and mind when you lay down each night knowing that you have done your best to be truthful.