Saturday, August 10, 2013

Agreeing to disagree

The Four Agreements comes to a close you'd expect. After going over the the book's titular subject, and then tying it all up with a glimpse at how it can be applied, the penultimate chapter of the book deals with the possible effects of actively practicing what's come before.

Reading things like Evelyn Underhill's "The Dark Night of the Soul" and the anonymous The Cloud of Unknowing (two books different in subject matter from The Four Agreements, but similar in purpose) has set the bar high for any sort of mystical philosophy that I come across. As such, The Four Agreements, because of its light tone and rhetorical flourishes, doesn't really measure up.

Ruiz touches on some important points, but this book is more of a gateway into thinking in a different way rather than one to challenge and rankle one who already does so to any significant degree. Ruiz's writing about what a person's best is is still excellent, but it's the only high point within. The rest is too thin, and leans too heavily on the anecdotes that Ruiz provides. This gives the book the tone of a motivational speech, and that's not really what I look for in my philosophy. Though finding motivation in heavier fare is always welcome.

If you've not done much reading into mysticism or ancient knowledge systems, then The Four Agreements is a fine place to start. Otherwise, it makes for a quick read and a [] refresher.

No comments:

Post a Comment