Success: The Ultimate How To
The pursuit of failure is the surest path to success.
There are a lot of conflicting messages going around about success, not only material but social and spiritual.
There are the formula sellers who offer insider knowledge of recipes that if followed will lead to the sought-after success; and then there are the take no risks suffer no shame champions who promote success through adherence to belief systems, traditions and permanence.
The formula venders are making their fortunes selling success, while the shamers are doing so by keeping everyone in line and milking old systems dry.
Either way, a few are using fear to control the many. Without fear, there would be no market for formulas and no means of keeping people locked in tribal ceremony.
We are not just entering but are smack in the middle of a major shift globally. Nothing that worked before seems to be working anymore.
Our shoes don’t fit, and our rituals leave us empty.
So, what does it mean to be caught in either system? It means increasing disorientation and desperation as nothing seems to gel.
What to do?
The solution is both free and freeing; step out of the systems, walk into and through our fears, so that no one can use them to control us again.
Embark on our own journeys and make no apologies.
But that is pretty scary. It means that we need to be willing to fail and to fail on a grand scale.
There are many myths and legends that have prepared us for this, such as Parzival’s quest for the Holy Grail, Rama’s quest for Sita in the Ramayana and Jason’s quest for the Golden Fleece.
In all these stories the seekers had to travel beyond their known realities, face monsters and magic, loss and betrayal, and tests of mental, physical and emotional fortitude to succeed. The tales also warned of the importance of preparedness and the perils of flinching – of letting our fears take back the controls.
The thing of it is, before we embark on a quest, we cannot know that we will fail; neither can we know that we will succeed – at least in as much as we thought that what we were seeking was in fact what we were seeking.
But we can be assured that a journey, so undertaken, will lead to a new consciousness; and only by going on the journey will we be prepared to embody that consciousness.
The consciousness we are discussing is the source of all peace. It is the consciousness of love.
Becoming one with that is the ultimate and only real success. Maybe it is time for us to be willing to fail?
Because, after all, love is all that matters.
Image:
Salvator Rosa
Jason Charming The Dragon
c. 1665-1670
Oil on Canvas
The Montreal Museum Of Fine Arts