Tuesday, March 8, 2022

On Achieving Success

 Your life is not determined by what you achieve or do not achieve.  Your life is determined by your state of consciousness in the present moment.

Eckhart Tolle

I have been feeling down.  I mean I wake up at night and feel a heaviness over me, this weight of uncertainty and sadness.  I just become consumed with the knowledge of all those around me who are suffering. My whole body feels heavy when I get up to the washroom or go get a glass of water.  My "reaction" to life circumstance has become physical. 

Heavy 

Heavy. Of course, I feel heavy mostly from the energy of suffering all around me and I am trying to understand it: Is it Karma? Is it random coincidence?  What am I and others meant to learn from it? I am trying to accept it so I can transmute it.  I am trying to embrace it and look deeply into it.  I am trying to go deeper because of it so I will know what to "do" with it...but man it just feels so heavy sometimes that I   think it will squash me under its weight before I understand it. 

Skeptical Doubt

I also feel down because lately  I don't feel I am getting anywhere with my writing. I, because of the heaviness, am experiencing a lot of skeptical doubt about choosing this medium of expression as my life's work, as a means of service. My life's work, a means of service?  Really...even saying that out loud sounds quite grandiose and  ridiculous to me. Still,  I feel this "karmic cloud ", if that is what it is, interfering with my life's purpose. When I say that out loud, it sounds even more ridiculous lol.  I just feel this heaviness as a veil  moving in to all aspects of my life...into the area I have been focusing on for redemption purposes, interfering with the flow of Grace and Ease,  preventing me from "manifesting" that which I wish to manifest. ( for lack of a better word, I use "manifest") . I was hoping my writing would redeem me, save me. I am definitely dealing with the fifth hindrance , skeptical doubt. 

Not Manifesting? 

Why? Why am I doubting?  Because I have yet to receive any true notoriety for my writing and monetary reward?  In society's terms ...I am not achieving success. I thought, with everything else so challenging around me, if I could "gain something" from my writing...just make enough, maybe,  so I can stop the worrying about getting by or be validated so I know I am on the right path... This, I believed,  would  balance out circumstances so they were less heavy. 

Now I know I write for the sheer joy of writing...that is success in its truest form.  I know  what I write about, as "kooky" and "woo-woo" as it may seem to others, is what I am  meant to  write about.  It is a message I am supposed to share and I couldn't stop doing it if I wanted to.  Whether I make a dime from my writing or reach any reader out there...I am going to keep doing what I am doing.

Eckhart Tolle, in Conscious Manifesting 2022,  reminds us to be fully engaged in the doing.  If you enjoy what you are doing in the present moment, that is success. 

I want this message out there, I do and not for egoic reasons.  I want to serve.  I want my actions, my thoughts and my words to be of benefit to the world.  Yet my stats are showing that this portion of my writing work...is not being well received. It is not getting out there.  Realizing that  increases this heaviness in me. Sure ego gets bumped and bruised up by that realization (ego wants to identify itself as a successful writer/teacher)  but it goes deeper than that.  I have to question if what I am doing here is of any benefit to anyone, really?  And I wonder if the Universe has other plans for me that I am for some reason blind to. Am I too attached to this means of service when I should be doing something else? So much of my energy is going into this blog when at the present time it is serving such a small population.  I mean it is enough...it is always enough if I reach one person, even if that person is me...but is there some other means I am supposed to be using? I do write articles .  
I do write books.  I do write poetry and fiction.  And I do submit...a bit.  Maybe I need to focus more on those genres and getting that stuff out there?  Regardless this blog is my practice and I am pulled here every day regardless of outcome.  Hmm! Then I wonder if the service I am provide has nothing to do with writing? 

Our Actions Are Changing the World 

This is what I have been wondering about, adding to the heaviness I wake up with at night , and then serendipitously I come across this video this morning.  Tolle also reminds us in the same video,

They will change the world, even if you don't see how. 

My thoughts, my words and my actions will have an effect on the world even if I never discover how in this life time.  Why?  Because they come from a higher place than ego.. I am putting that energy out there I may never know that I have achieved "success" in this life time, that doesn't mean I am not successful in my service to the world. 

Success, in worldly terms, will never bring who I truly am what it wants and needs and it will only satisfy the ego for so long.  If I become attached to this idea of success...continue to seek to redeem myself with an identity of "successful writer" I may fall back into ego motivation when what I really really want is much deeper than that. I want to awaken to the truth...to get beyond my need for worldly success. 

At the same time I know there is nothing wrong with this type of success...if we see it as something we can play with.  So I submit my stuff, I write here and elsewhere. I am committed to my practice putting many, many hours into it. According to the "10000 hour rule", it takes 10,000 hours of committed effort to gain mastery of a skill. I think I am beyond my 10,000 hour apprenticeship...so maybe I am ready for the success to come so I can  reap the harvest of the fruit  of my actions, so I can play with "success" in a detached way? Or maybe I am not? 

So let's look at what we need to do to manifest success in our chosen "life's work"

  • We can set our intention briefly and then let it go
  • look into our core beliefs that tell us we are not worthy to achieve and deal with those
  • Need to put in the effort and the hours of practice, committed to what we are doing as a process
  • Need to enjoy what we are doing, doing it for the love of it
  • Gently push ego out of the picture and be aware when ego steps back in
  • Need to be detached from the outcome...knowing that true success is simply in the enjoyment of what we do and not to get lost in the idea of "worldly success" 
  • There has to be an element of service to what we do 
  • Need to be ready for such power: conscious and aware enough, established and grounded in a deeper motivation and stability so we can handle success, without falling back into ego motivations
  • We need to trust that the Universe will provide when we are ready to receive

Hmmm! Inspired again.  So here I am. 

All is well! 

tech community world/Eckhart Tolle (Feb 22, 2022) Conscious Manifesting 2022 Part 2https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcKFnjShvj4

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