Beyond Success or Failure

From the human perspective, the way to a good and happy life is to maximize our successes and minimize our failures in life. Whatever situation we face we hope we'll come out on top; prevail with our preferences and be met with favor and acceptance. We want our ideas to matter, our plans found cogent, and our actions effective. Conversely, we wince at the thought of failure; plans that go south, being rejected, people who neither understand us nor stand with us. We readily embrace favorable results, with measurable profits and the good opinion of others and shun the disastrous outcome, with nothing to show for our efforts when even our friends won't hang with us.

Holy week that begins with Palm Sunday and ends with Easter provides the stark contrast of apparent success and failure experienced by Jesus. At the beginning of this week Jesus seems to be experiencing extraordinary success, with adoring crowds worshiping him as he entered Jerusalem. From the human perspective, Jesus is winning the popular vote hands down, and garnering a hero's welcome such as a victorious king might receive returning from a triumphant battle. But in just a few days the bloom comes off the rose, the table is turned over, and Jesus becomes an embattled messenger. He is vilified, betrayed and abandoned by his closest friends to face alone the worst fate imaginable. From our mortal mind's eye this scenario is the epitome of a miserable failure.

Beyond appearances this week of highs and lows, carries a much deeper message that can serve as powerful metaphor for the days, weeks, or moments of ups and downs that arise in our own journey. From the spiritual perspective, articulated and demonstrated by the one who maintained that his kingdom was not of this world, the outer events were not the real measurables from his journey. Jesus would likely agree with the assessment that notions of success and failure are two sides of the same coin. That coin is judgment born of limited human perception.

Jesus was not caught up in the adulation that sought to externalize his value, nor the condemnation that sought to destroy him. Jesus knew who he was and knew his mission was to speak and live the message of Truth regardless of whether that message brought him praise or blame. The truth that he said would set us free, liberated Jesus from identification with external image or public stature regardless of the latest poll results.

Jesus invited us to follow in his way - a way of transformation where the outer voices do not define us nor limit us. Jesus listened to the inner voice of Spirit, perhaps the very earliest advice on how to avoid identity theft.

No matter what may arise on the road of life, we do not have to lose ourselves in it. By staying true to our spiritual purpose, and remaining online with the Divine, we can succeed in the true mission that we share with Jesus - to bear witness to the eternal Spirit in which we live and move and have our very being.

Are You Receptive?

"Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are."

-Malcolm S. Forbes

For the last 4 weeks we have been looking at success and abundance from the perspective of the engaging story in the book, The Go Giver. Each of the themes and laws outlined in the preceding lessons invited us to become a giver to life - a message that contradicts the logic of the surface mind that tells us that is through getting we receive.

Now in week five, we take a final look at the paradox to understand the important role of being a receiver in this flow of abundance and success. This is trickier than it appears. Like an advanced yoga posture, holding a posture of receptivity is easier said than done.

While we may readily notice where we are blocked in our giving, it may take a deeper look to see how we are blocked in receiving. At first thought, we may think we are more than willing to receive; that our arms are wide open to graciously accept any windfall of good and plenty the universe sees fit to bestow upon us. But is that really true?

There are plenty of messages (many from religious teachings) that exalt the giver, and devalue the receiver. We've heard it said that it is better to give than receive. We've heard the proverbs and adages that denigrate the rich, equate wealth with immorality, and the like. We've been told we are sinners and not worthy of good, that only by the grace of God we are saved from our deservedly lowly condition. Though many of us no longer hold that view philosophically, there are likely shreds of unworthiness that linger in our consciousness and deflect the good that might come to us.

The Real You Will Stand Up

"Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, 'This is the real me,' and when you have found that attitude, follow it." - William James

It would seem to be the most natural and simplest of tasks to know ourselves and to be ourselves. After all who knows you better than you, and who is better equipped to show your true face to the world than you are? The virtue of being true to ourselves has been extolled by every great philosopher, sage and enlightened master. Jesus referenced our tendency to keep our essence hidden and invited us to let our light shine for all the world to see. Buddha in his parting words to his disciples counseled, "Be lamps unto yourselves; be your own confidence. Hold to the truth within yourselves as the only truth." Perhaps most famous of all is the line from Shakespeare, to thine own self be true.

So if being ourselves is so natural, and ancient wisdom confirms its virtue and value, why is it so difficult to carry out? It seems to me that we all suffer from varying degrees of identity crisis, or perhaps more aptly identity amnesia.

I think most of us learned to be inauthentic as an adaptive response to life. Like auditions for the role of our life, we discovered how we acted determined whether we were accepted on the world stage. It may not have seemed entirely up to us whether we could just be ourselves. The rewards of authentic expression may have been overshadowed by the risks of being real in the presence of others. So we chose the safer role back then, at the cost of our true self expression. But that was then, and we no longer need to believe what is no longer true for us. If we are still hiding our light, and betraying our true self expression, we are denying our own freedom, and missing out on the greatest joy in life.

Sometimes life has a way of breaking us open to authenticity, sometimes through breaking us down, and we discover as Anaïs Nin observed, "the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." My spiritual life has been an unlayering process, in that my joy in living has been directly proportional to my ability to shed the masks and old skins of who I thought I should be in the world. Our existence is validated and appreciated best by showing up as we truly are, not by our ability to conform. It is your and my uniqueness that is our special gift that brings value to the world and joy to us in its expression.

Each of us has a song to sing, a dance to dance and nobody can do it quite like we do. Let's give ourselves permission to get back on the stage of life and play the part of our true self, without masks, disguises, or make up. It's the role of a lifetime that you've been waiting for...and it has success written all over it.

The Truth Beneath the Contradiction

"How wonderful that we've met with a paradox. Now we have some hope of making some progress." - Niels Bohr, quantum physicist

The spiritually centered life is rife with paradox. To uncover the greatest of truths we must be able to sit in the disquieting milieu of uncertainty and contradictions. We must question our basic assumptions about the way it is, until we discover a context in which the contradictory makes sense. As Carl Jung put it, "Only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life."

Jesus was a master of life, and a master of paradoxical teachings. Perhaps he used paradox to disrupt the ordinary thinking mind of his students; to upset the equilibrium of the world's logic, so a new way of seeing life might break through the crack of confusion. When we hear a declaration such as the last will be first or those who save their lives will lose it, while those who lose their lives will save it, our common sense of truth rejects the seeming contradiction, and we're left to seek a deeper reality where these assertions could be true. This gets us moving in the right direction. In order for us to uncover our true nature we must look beyond the surface of our bodies, circumstances and thoughts into the deeper realm of our being.

I personally love the paradoxical truth teachings because they act like a splash of cold water against my tendency toward drowsiness that allows me to nap on the surface of life. Though I am a believer in the wisdom of Jesus' teachings I am apt to fall asleep and return to believing only in my senses to appraise life. This slumber transports me down a rabbit hole of fear into a world of scarcity with its myriad iterations of not enough.

When I contemplate the paradox in a truth teaching I cannot stay on the surface for long. In order to find the truth in the seeming contradiction I must allow my mind and heart to rise into a realm of spiritual understanding, where the contradiction dissolves, and the deeper truth is laid bare and made plain.

We are in our third week of the Go Giver series, which essentially says that it is in giving that we receive. In this paradoxical, seeming contradictory assertion, lies the power to move us out of scarcity into abundance and true success. We must be willing to dwell upon and act upon this principle until its deeper truth is made real for us. That is the inner and outer practice. Ask yourself, how is it true that when I give, I receive? The answers will become the guidance you truly seek to live the uncommon life where generosity and abundance happily coexist.