Lenses for Seeing Agreements

1st of 5 posts on “Lenses for Seeing Agreements”

With the five primary relationships and three levels of perceived reality, we now need some lenses to see the path to the experience of a higher level of harmonic vibrancy.  I will suggest some lenses that frame the big questions that influence the agreements among people, which will enable you to see how to shift the agreements that you make every day.  First, I need to unpack this idea of agreements, so that I can then dig into what can be done with them.

As you enter relationships, you make agreements.[1]  Whether you are aware of this process or not, it happens.  For example, when you are in a market place negotiating the price of the fruit, you are clear you are agreeing with the other person on the rules of the game.  Likewise, when deciding who will do what chores with your parents or children, whichever the case may be for you, you are conscious that you are deciding on how the game will be played – what the agreements are.  It is clear to you, often, that there are many ways to play that game, with some always ending poorly – someone always feels unappreciated – and there are ways that everyone feels appreciated, and the chores get done.

There are also many times when people tend not to be conscious of the agreements.  You drive on a specific side of the road, because it is an agreement to do so.  You also agree that you can be arrested for not complying with this agreement.  This might make it seem like a law: that’s just the way it is.  Except, that the law does not always apply.  In the countryside or on a farm, you might simply see that you are driving on the road.  There is not really a left or right lane.  In other words, it depends.  It depends on the situation whether the “law” applies, thus it is an agreement.  It is an agreement with strong consequences if not followed in certain circumstances, like in the middle of Manhattan or Rome, but an agreement nonetheless.  The same is true when you pay interest on a loan, take out a mortgage, send your kids to the local public school, pay your taxes, refrain from punching someone being mean to you, and decide to go back to school.  They are all agreements.  Agreements about how you are in relationship; relationship with your own self, with another person, with a group, with nature, and with spirit.

The reason this is important here is to realize that if these are all agreements, then you can change them.  In fact, these agreements have been changed thousands of times in the past.  The agreements that guide your interactions today are quite different than they were just a few years ago.  This means that you can change them if the agreements you have now do not work for you.  It is not about telling people what experience they should have, rather how to see and change the agreements to achieve what they actually want to have.  Ecosynomics is the science of how to change these agreements, so that you can achieve the outcomes you actually want, while moving towards higher harmonic vibrancy in all five relationships.

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[1] Agreement comes from the old French agrément for pleasing, defined as an arrangement between two or more persons as to a course of action; a mutual understanding; a covenant; concord; harmony.