All cultures have theories — or myths — which attempt to cross the barrier between mind and spirit. The ancient shamanic tradition of the Toltecs in Mexico is an interesting example.

We each have a personal myth, a story which builds gradually from our parent’s stories, our cultural myth, and many other factors. In this story, we are the main character, other people are secondary characters. They, however, have their own stories, which are usually radically different from ours.

Society is built on resolving the clash of these personal myths. Civilizations are constructed to preserve collective and national myths. When powerful people’s inner stories meet in dissent, whole continents can dissolve into war.

Such is the power of our personal story. Most people are not in command of their story because it’s formed from a ragbag of inherited ideas, and pressures from all manner of influences. This leads us to devalue ourselves and splits us from our essential authenticity. Instead of living in a heavenly realm at peace with ourselves and the world, we create our own hell on earth.

That is the thesis of Don Miguel Ruiz, a Mexican medical doctor and surgeon, who grew up in the ancient shamanic tradition of the Toltecs. A near-death experience in a car accident led him back to his ancestral roots to try to explain what happened. The result is a quite wonderful synthesis of 21st-century psychology and perennial wisdom.

In his book, The Voice of Knowledge, Don Miguel, distils the entire tradition of his people into four principles, or agreements, as he prefers to call them. At first sight, they could be taken for a boy scout’s creed : tell the truth, don’t take things personally, don’t jump to conclusions, and do your best. But this would be to miss the point. Used as talismans of action, the Four Agreements become a powerfully transformative path to happiness.

1. Be impeccable with your word.
2. Don’t take anything personally.
3. Don’t make assumptions.
4. Always do your best.

The crux of this philosophy is that everybody’s story is a tissue of lies which undermines our authentic heart. It distorts our lives into grotesque defence mechanisms against perceived enemies “out there”. There is no need for this. By using the four agreements to connect with our authenticity, we become the creators of our lives. We transform ourselves into artists of our very existence.

Don Miguel Ruiz has produced a classic of transformative literature.

The Voice of Knowledge — A Practical Guide to Inner Peace, by Don Miguel Ruiz.

Knowledge is gained in pieces, but these individual pieces are not all we know. In order to understand the big picture, we put together these bits of knowledge, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. If we learn that A is greater than B, and that B is greater than C, we know a third fact by deduction: that A is greater than C.

Our brains demonstrate their capacity for inference by this kind of linking bits of knowledge. The ability to make logical big picture inferences from disparate pieces of information is called relational memory.

A study led by researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Brigham & Women’s Hospital in Boston, MA found that this ability to link bits of directly-learned information and to make leaps of inference to construct the big picture is enhanced when we sleep.

The study involved student participants divided into three groups who learned facts about pairs of shapes they were shown. Each group was tested to see how well they were able to infer the relationship between the facts they learned about individual pairs. Group one was tested after 20 minutes, Group Two was tested after 12 hours and Group Three was tested after a full 24-hour period.

Group One, which was tested only 20 minutes after the learning period, scored the worst on understanding the interrelationship between the pairs. Approximately half of the students in Group Two slept during the 12-hour period, while the other half remained awake. All of the students in Group Three had a full night’s sleep.

Groups Two and Three showed a clear understanding of the interrelationships between the pairs of shapes.

According to senior author Matthew Walker, PhD, Director of the Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory at BIDMC and Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harvard Medical School (HMS), “These findings point to an important benefit [of sleep] that we had not previously considered. Sleep not only strengthens a person’s individual memories, it appears to actually knit them together and helps realize how they are associated with one another. And this may, in fact, turn out to be the primary goal of sleep: You go to bed with pieces of the memory puzzle, and awaken with the jigsaw completed.”

To Understand The Big Picture, Give It Time - And Sleep