Humans carry our past, our history, around with us, and it’s just like we’re carrying a heavy corpse. For some it’s not that heavy, but for the majority of people that corpse is very heavy. And it’s not just heavy; it smells very bad. What many of us do is keep our corpse to share with the ones we love.

With the powerful memory we have, we bring it to life in the present moment and relive our experiences again, and again, and again. Every time we remember, we punish ourselves again, and again, and again.

Humans are the only animals on earth who punish themselves a thousand times or more for the same mistake, and who punish everybody else a thousand times or more for the same mistake.

How can we talk about injustice in the rest of the world when there is no justice in the world inside our own head? The entire universe is ruled by justice, but by true justice, not by the distortion of justice that we artists have created. True justice is facing what I call action-reaction. We live in a world of consequences; for every action there’s a reaction. True justice is to pay one time for every mistake we make. And how many times do we pay for every mistake? Obviously, this is not justice.

Let’s say that you’re living with guilt and shame for a mistake that you made ten years ago. The excuse for your suffering is “I made a terrible mistake,” and you think that you’re suffering for something that happened ten years ago, but the truth is that you’re suffering from something that happened ten seconds ago. You judged yourself again for the same mistake, and of course the big judge says, “You need to be punished.” It’s simple action-reaction. The action is self-judgment; the reaction is self-punishment in the form of guilt and shame. All your life you repeat the same action, hoping to have a different reaction, and it never happens. The only way to change your life is to change the action, and then the reaction will change.

Can you see how you, knowledge, is hurting you, the human? You’re thinking and judging with all those symbols that you learned. You’re creating a story that’s abusing the human. Whenever the human is abused, the normal reaction is anger, hate, jealousy, or any of the emotions that make us suffer.

Our nervous system is a factory of emotions, and the emotions we experience depend on what we perceive. Well, we perceive our own judgments, our own belief system, our own voice of knowledge.

And with the judge, the victim, and the belief system ruling our virtual world, the emotions we generate are fear, anger, jealousy, envy. What else can we expect to create? Love? Of course not, though sometimes we do.

The word is a force that you cannot see, but you can see the manifestation of the force, the expression of the word, which is your own life. The way to measure the impeccability of your word is by your emotional reaction. Are you happy or are you suffering? If you’re enjoying your dream or suffering your dream, it’s because you’re creating it that way. Yes, your parents, your religion, the schools, the government, the entire society helped you to create your dream, and it’s true that you never had a choice.

But now you have a choice.

You can create heaven, or you can create hell. Both are states of mind that exist within you. Do you like to be happy? Then be happy and enjoy your happiness. Do you like to suffer? Great; then why not enjoy your suffering? If you choose to create hell, good for you. Cry, have pain, make a masterpiece of art with your pain. But if you have awareness, there is no way you are going to choose hell; you are going to choose heaven. And the way to choose heaven is by being impeccable with your word.

If you are impeccable with your word, how can you judge yourself? How can you blame yourself? How can you carry any guilt or shame? When you’re not creating all those emotions, you feel wonderful! Now you smile again, and it’s completely authentic. You don’t have to pretend to be a certain way. You don’t try to be what you are not. Whatever you are is what you will be in that moment. In that moment, you accept yourself just the way you are. You like yourself; you enjoy being with yourself.

Instead of doubting yourself, have faith in yourself; instead of doubting the truth, doubt the lies. Be skeptical, but learn to listen. The fifth agreement opens the door to heaven, and the rest is up to you. It’s about being in heaven and heaven being in you. It’s about letting go of your attachment to symbols, even doubt, because even a little doubt can end the experience.