The Saga of Domestication
We came into this world without words, only senses and intense needs. From these, we formed mild to strong opinions, which were expressed with facial expressions and body language. We smiled or howled, reached out or withdrew.
Our vulnerable being was entrusted to the care of grown people who had varying levels of skill at being adults who guided children. Every interaction between our self and others was another thread on the loom, weaving the fabric of society.
When Society’s needs differed from our unique needs or wants, the large group exerted pressure on our individual self to have us conform to it. This is domestication. Our families, schools, churches, communities, religions, and nations are the main domesticators of our existence. Even our time with friends worked to condition our behavior to conform with our group goals. Any group or club we joined did the same.
Our entire existence has been a response to carrots and sticks. Along the way we even began to do this to ourselves. Inherently, this profound process is neither a blessing nor a curse. It is the way of mammals. We are wired with a desire to belong and have the benefits of large-group living.
When wise, benevolent beings are guiding the process, we become our best selves. But sometimes Society asked us to deny our truths, subjugate our needs, hide our desires, bury our talents, or ignore our callings to advance its agenda.
From our earliest childhood, we’ve been bribed, threatened, shamed, flattered, shunned… on and on and on, so Society could have our labor, talents, and proxy. In every relationship these manipulations are intertwined with our will to guide us toward agendas that lie outside of us.
It is rare in this world to be repeatedly told to think for yourself, choose for yourself, to satisfy yourself first. Unsurprisingly, most of us are not very good at it. What we are good at, is the tug of war most of us take part in that we call the “give and take” of life.
The Second Agreement is the liberating element of the Four Agreements. When we learn to “take nothing personally”, we begin to rightly understand the words coming out of a member of Society’s mouth often have nothing to do with our own self.
It shines a light into the relationship between our self and everything else and whispers to us to not take the criticisms or the compliments personally. Stepping away from the power of either of these can be disorienting. What does the trained animal within us do when the master departs? We must untether ourselves, take the bit from our mouth and the bridle from off our head. The reins of our life do not belong in someone else’s hands.
I picture a divine pair of scissors appearing, that allow us to cut the strings attached to our joints that have had us dancing like puppets on someone else’s strings. And voila! Pinocchio becomes a real boy!
Just like that fairy tale puppet-turned-boy, we must then find our way forward and rightly choose our actions independently. When we have our big realization that we have been controlled incessantly for our entire life, we do not have to ricochet into an adolescent response and become rebellious.
We can simply ask ourselves when a choice arises:
- Is this true for me?
- Is this wise for me?
- Am I willing to accept the consequences this might lead to?
- Does this action reflect the character I want to embody?
As this more liberated self, we can choose to cooperate with Society without consenting to its manipulations. This is the height of maturity and individuation. To transcend dependency, and even independence, to become Interdependent.
However, cutting the strings that controlled us is not usually as easy as scissors snipping through a puppet’s strings. The process can become extremely tiring, like trying to cut through massive nautical ropes with a nail file. Our lifetime of conditioning requires a reasonable amount of time to undo. Be bravely patient and let yourself learn these new ways of being that will create a great peace in your life.
Measure your progress by how aware you are at detecting flattery and bribes when someone is trying to use them on you. Many of us have a degree of codependency in our lives or we have a lifetime membership in the People-Pleaser’s Club. It may feel very unsettling to start doing good deeds because you are always doing your best rather that to seek the approval of others.
When I first read Don Miguel Ruiz’s take on the second of The Four Agreements, I wondered why I’d even get out of bed in the morning if it wasn’t for the purpose of gathering up respect or praise from others. Now many years later, I have lived into the understanding of the satisfaction of doing things because you know they are good to do. No one has to enforce or acknowledge these good choices for me to do them and be blessed by their good energy flowing through my life.
Conversely, it is also evidence of progress when you can hear needed truths within criticism without absorbing the judgment that is meant to control you. If a supervisor intends to give you a tongue lashing on the job, take note of what is accurate in the assessment, but sidestep the portions that use shame or blame with the intent of making you insecure so you will work harder. You want to be internally motivated to always do your best, and will feel relaxed when you have your own high standards in place and feel your increased self-respect feeding your own soul.
This agreement also inoculates you from the verbal illness that would be spewed on you by those who have not yet mastered being impeccable with their word. Long ago when I first embraced these agreements, I was the owner of an intentionally-small school I had designed for atypical learners. In the second year of its existence my school was nearly at capacity with students with whom we had not yet formed a deeply-bonded relationship.
We had a disproportionate number of students who had been expelled from other schools before enrolling in ours. Nearly all our students were skilled in creating verbal turmoil as a time-tested way of getting out of work they didn’t want to tackle. While I presented all four of the agreements and spent time coaching the students and my staff on avoiding verbal fouls in order to be impeccable with their words, I realized we would not survive the year if we didn’t find relief for the verbal poison my students were spewing toward one another each day.
This is when we began imagining the Second Agreement as a shield. I described their hateful and manipulative words as being like vomit. It came from a sick place inside a person and could make others ill if it got inside them. These toxins entered not through our mouth but through our ears, so our protection would be ear shields.
This was when iPods were first popular and headphones had just become miniature, so my students could relate to how inserting something in the ears could be protective. I especially like the iPod analogy since it can play something you prefer to hear. At the thought level, we can pipe in our own wisdom as an alternative to flattery, shame, or blame.
So, our mythical vomit guards were introduced and embraced with varying degrees of enthusiasm, and we began to eliminate some of the battles. Bit by bit, students and staff had their moments of success with not succumbing to being poisoned by the flattering or intimidating manipulation of others- and felt the relief and power surge that followed.
Many years later I fine-tuned my own approach to what sometimes spews out of the mouths of unwell people. In advance of anyone saying anything, I have a standing agreement with myself that I am forfeiting my right to be offended. To be clear, I still get offended all the time. But I don’t file my grievances as loudly or readily. I have a big pause button I can push inside myself that allows me to wait until the best time to respond, if ever. In a very real way, I let go and let God. This tiny adjustment has saved me much needless turmoil trying to control what can’t be controlled.
That is the purpose of the Four Agreements, to end the optional pain in this universe that only has the power we give it. Living the Second Agreement liberates and inoculates, reserving your emotional energy for creating the life you actually want to live.
This material was recently presented in the FREE weekly Well Being 101 Meetup Group, https://www.meetup.com/Well-Being-101/ via Zoom. You are welcome to join us Tuesday at noon as we explore the basic tools of Being 101 in the coming weeks to build our well being.
