The First Agreement

I am going to start of our series of discussions on Preserving Wholeness with a story to help us become rooted in the wider context of Life. This story points to “the world behind the world” and the “long-view” — two insights that can help re-integrate us when things begin to feel out of balance.

The First Agreement

There is a mythological story that exists in many cultures throughout the world that speaks to a certain dimension of human life: the drive to become fully ourselves. The African version of it goes something like this:

Before we are born, each of us sits high above the earth with our divine twin.  And together we sit looking down upon the worldly situation until we finally spot it:  “There……….there is the place that I am going.  That is the exact time in history, the exact location and culture I will be born into, and with those parents because that is where my gifts are needed, and will be best cultivated.”  And turning back to our twin we ask sincerely, “Please brother (please sister), do not let me forget who I am and what I went there to do.”  And our divine twin says, “You have my word.  I will not let you forget.”

And then we say goodbye and head down to earth to be born.  And just before we are born we touch the tree of forgetfulness and then are born into this world screaming, feeling alone and having totally forgotten who we really are and where we came from.

Then for the next 20, 30, or 40 years we spend our lives learning about the world, and learning about the people in it, and the various rules and roles they have decided work best for the culture at large.  And we go to school and learn the things our people find important, and we learn how to be self-sufficient and get a job, and a car, and a house, and maybe the prescribed 2 ½ kids and a white picket fence until one day…………when we have done all that we are supposed to do according to the culture — until one day…………when we have satisfied all the basic needs that we thought that if we satisfied we would be finally happy — until one day………………….when our outer activity and our minds have finally settled down enough, we may in fact finally hear a quiet, but insistent voice, just barely audible at first, but steadily more clear —
“Remember who you are, and what you came here to do.”

And we may feel the truth of this voice.  We may feel it like the love of a long lost brother (or sister), from a home known in an earlier time; a home that we have always been longing for since the first day we came to be born on this earth —  to simply be ourselves, and let the heart love what it loves.

And because we can feel the truth in this authenticity, we may begin doing the arduous work of renegotiating all of the agreements we have made with the culture, and with our loved ones — the agreements that no longer work for us and that no longer serve our newly rekindled love towards aligning with the truth of who and what we are.  All of the agreements made with our parents and with the culture at large are second agreements, and all are renegotiable.  The agreement we made in the other world with our divine twin is the first agreement and it is non-negotiable:  either we become fully ourselves and give our gifts to the world, or we don’t and the world will not have them.

And so here we are, parents: big children on a journey towards becoming fully ourselves. This journey requires that we recover our wholeness. We must begin to let go of second agreements that don’t serve us any longer. We deserve it. Our families deserve it. Make parenthood the invitation for becoming “happy and free.”

What will our children do in the morning if they do not see us fly?
Rumi

I learned the above story through Michael Meade, story teller and mythologist.
Essential Parenting’s statement of purpose.