snip
Success can be a funny thing. Most of the time this is because we determine, collectively, that success is all about material accomplishments. Closer scrutiny shows that material success is often accompanied by a host of material problems; all of them, new material problems, unlike the problems one might have had previously, many of which were probably generated by the pursuit of success and the conditions one was forced to deal with due to the lack of material success. There are also spiritual problems that come with success, though these are of lesser concern to many.
It is an enduring truth that most people do not come here for spiritual concerns. It is usually all about a handful of interests and necessities. The interests are often combined with the necessities, by example let us say one is driven to inhabit battlefields and one must be there anyway to complete the necessities of their Karma. Keeping this in mind one might say there is a possibility that one's interests and necessities of appearance are ALL Karma. One might further speculate that one's spiritual drive or lack of it are also the result of Karma but there has to be more to it all, though there are various masters who say “fugeddaboutit. It's all Karma.” You don't hear as much from these teachers as you do from the new age salesbots who want you to believe that you are completely independent of all restraints; a god in the making in the Presto Shake 'n Bake mold and free to do as you please at any time you wish because you are only being held back by your programmed mind, which they will be glad to help you deprogram for a nominal fee.
It seems to me that there are alternatives to the 24/7 all Karma, all the time construct, if we come into an awareness of something more. Our awareness of it makes it a reality already within our minds. All that is left then is for it to precipitate into the manifest and this IT WILL do if one's attention is placed upon it in a positive aspect. This is no different than what the ineffable does when the ineffable shines upon the plant kingdom through his visible medium, The Sun ...and inspires the appropriate representatives of The Devic Realm to bring the rain down upon the nourishing Earth. We've seen this at work, even when all too few of us recognize and celebrate the beauty of its perpetual occurrence. It happens anyway. It is what it is, even when we are not what we are but we are here to come to an understanding of that. This is the purpose of our transitory presence here. This is the essential motivation of all our suffering that comes about through misplaced desire, manifested upon misidentified objective. Suffering is meant to teach us that our choices are wrong. Eventually we come into an awareness of this.
Everything is awareness and this determines how we label things and the value we place upon them. The temporary nature of everything is temporary for a reason and so the loss experienced from their departure; be it a house, or a pet or a person, is designed to inform us of the transitory nature of the phenomenal world. This is meant to provoke us to look deeper into life for the more permanent truths. It's a system. It's a mystery to most but it is there forever as... for whatever the reason, it takes near forever for some to become conscious of it. It also goes on forever that people are endlessly inspired to come here for whatever their pedestrian, or even wonderful, reasons may be, so that they can pursue and engage in all the fabulous enterprises we see around us, as well as endure all those unfortunate conditions and circumstances that we hear about every day. Some of these are not unfortunate but no matter what they are, they are temporary.
Success, given the nature of what has been stated so far, is quite possibly something other than what is generally understood about it and Life... arranges itself in such a way to prove this to everyone who thinks they have achieved success because most success is also temporary and fraught with all manner of peril and difficulty, depending on how it is exercised.
For myself, success covers a few areas ...but most importantly, success as a human being always looms uppermost in my mind. This is not to say I have been very good at it because I have had a few spectacular fails but those were either engineered (and not by me) or they were reactions to untenable conditions and I wasn't wise enough to figure a way out of it without going nova. You don't succeed without making mistakes and if you are afraid to make mistakes you will learn zip. So far as I know, 'zip' doesn't look good on a person's curriculum vitae.
True success has to do with accommodating one's ungovernable will to the single will that manifests and maintains everything; creates it, composes it and is in separation among its parts and yet remains apart... always in the greater portion of itself. As Swedenborg noted, “the spiritual sun never hits its zenith” because then it would descend and set and that does not happen, except when it chooses to dissolve into the time of its contemplation and rests in The Night of Brahma... apparently on The Sea of Milk but Vishnu could probably articulate that far better than I (grin).
It's all arranged and it always has been. Defy the almighty at your peril. Every one of us when we were young thought we had come up with some original idea. No such thing exists. Every seemingly new and useful thing comes out of the mind of the one who inspires it. Anyone who is any good at anything is only so empowered by the one who powers everything. One either gets this or one doesn't. I get it and that is success to me because no matter how many times I may fail at the grand objective, I know I am guided and I know I am loved and the latter is all the reward I could ever ask for. This makes all the the trials and tribulations a walk in the park. Of course, it is not walk in the park when the heat is on you but you manage, somehow.
There are portions in the Bible that I love, they have to do with sweet honey from a rock and one being fed in the wilderness. On these things I truly believe because I have experienced them and that... more than once. I have been freed from prisons by seemingly magical agency; more importantly I have been protected while in them. God is real. Make no mistake about that. Certainly that indefinable being is oft veiled and entirely hidden from the eyes of those whose minds are captured by the interplay of dancing dust. Sometimes it might seem as if there is no God but that is directly relative to the level of investment you have made in what is not you. Of course your own duplicity is a perfect concealment.
For me, logic and reason are amazing things to be in the possession of. I can prove to myself what I can't even see. It is a sort of canny algebra that shoots around corners and visualizes what can't be imagined by simply pinging off of what can be imagined. As has been often stated here, “I don't have to convince anyone of anything. I only have to convince myself.”
When I read a book like The Kybalion or The Way of Life, or any of the remarkable texts that have been left as good footprints by those who have passed on, I often weep at the discovery, cause I know they left that there for me. They left it for anyone who cares enough to look. These days the dust of the world obscures the mirror of our better self and it does it so quickly that if you do not polish that mirror on a daily basis you will very shortly no longer be able to see your own reflection and this becomes problematic when you then cannot see the light in others; when you can no longer see yourself in everyone else.
I never had a problem loving god. It has been the great romance and obsession of my life. I have had a real problem loving myself. It took me a long time to come around to getting this. My advice to you is not to wait so long, nor be intimidated by what broken people told you when you were too young to defend yourself against it. You are the crown of creation. I advise that you act like it, with all the attendant humility that implies. However well one might come to shine, it is no match for the sun. Anyone who gets anywhere on this path understands that. Until you can generate so much light that entire solar systems respond and life manifests along with atmospheres to contain it, I don't want to hear about your imagined majesty and magnificence. It should come as no surprise that pharaohs and warlords all must bend the knee to death. Death is final determinate of your power and legacy. Humility is a passport to the world's beyond. It should come as no surprise that in order to live in the celestial realms, you need to know your place and there will be a place for you.
“the power of the pack is in the wolf and the power of the wolf is in the pack.” The law of the jungle is an ancient thing. Kipling picked up on that.
http://www.visibleorigami.com/2016/04/when-youre-cool-sun-is-always-shining.html
