Last Updated on August 5, 2015
This is an article that was originally written as a blog entry on my old blog site. I’ve updated it a little and turned it into an article for your enjoyment. It’s also a topic I cover in my book Peace, Power, and Presence.
We are going to take a look at what illusions the ego maintains with regards to the concepts we call success and failure. I know there are many people in the society in which I live who are quite literally striving for success. There are also many people caught up with investing their energy into the belief that they are somehow failures. Then there are those that think they have a fear of success, and that this is what causes them to fail (in their opinion). I know I that for some years I subscribed to this idea of fearing success.
More than just thinking I had a “fear of success”, I am aware that there was also a more elaborate story the ego would tell around this madness: I actually felt like this “fear of success” was something I was somehow a victim to as a result of some unfair thing that had happened to me at some point in my existence; that there was somehow something more noble or “Okay” about having a “fear of success” as opposed to simply “being a failure”; and that the fact I had a “fear of success” made it okay to continue “failing”, whilst I figured out, worked on, and healed the cause of my fear of success. All of this seemed very real and valid at the time. Now it makes me laugh. This morning I spent some time exploring the nature of success and failure. What I realized during that exercise is what I am going to share with you now.
- Success is not something I make happen. Rather it is something I re-cognise, allow to be, open to, and express / experience in that state of allowance.
- Success is simply when my perceived reality is in alignment or accordance with Intention—the Intentionality that is driving my life into being
- Success is to allow Intent to flow and express unhindered.
Universal Intent (God’s Will, as some put it), or the Intent of Infinity (as others might put it) = success. “God’s will be done”, so to speak. Success is in fact unavoidable. It already IS. The necessary conditions for success are already here and now. In reality success is not only inevitable, but it is right now, and is therefore quite unavoidable. So let us take a quick look at failure:
- Failure is an impossibility
- Failure is to block the alignment of perceived reality and God’s Will (or Universal Intent).
- This is, of course, impossible and is therefore nothing more than an ego-trip.
- This means that there is no such thing as failure
- Therefore failure requires the ego’s cunning illusion of Time. Only in time can I dream up the illusion that I have failed or that I am a failure.
What I see is that so-called failure actually requires energy. I have to invest my power into this state or condition I call failure. Success, on the other hand, already is and on that basis it requires no energy at all. All I have to invest into success is my attention. I simply have to give me attention to what is, here and now, and success is unavoidable. To have a “fear of success” is really just another cunning way the ego tricks me into continuing to remain caught up in—and investing my energy/power into—the illusion of failure. Fear is perhaps the only form of failure. Fear is also an illusion although it feels real enough in the time in which I experience it. It is only here within time (past, present, and future) that I can experience fear. I once saw it put that F.E.A.R. is an acronym for “False Evidence Appearing Real” or “False Expectations Appearing Real”. What this implies is that fear requires an expectation or evidence. Of course both of these are derived from the past.
An expectation is something I pre-establish in the past and bring to what I consider to be now. Evidence is something I gather up in the past and bring to this moment in order to prove or disprove something. If the past was dropped then evidence and expectation would verily vanish forever. FEAR is also an acronym for Forever Expanding Awareness in Restriction. It is time—the apparent illusion of time—that brings about all forms of apparent restriction. If I drop time and reside in the Eternal Now then what was previously experienced as restriction is instantaneously replaced with Liberation. Thus we end up with Forever Expanding Awareness in Liberation—this website’s namesake. Again we come back to the reality to in order to engage ones attention with NOW I simply have to be willing to Feal. To feal, is to heal, which is to be real. The key points to remember in regards to success and failure are this:
- Failure is energy inefficient — it is an illusion that requires life-force to maintain. It requires fighting against what is.
- Failure is, therefore, a fight against your own true nature or Self.
- Success already is. It is an innate quality or factor built into all that you are.
- All the conditions necessary for success are here right now.
We shall also take a look at this topic from an etymological perspective—which simply means we will look at the word itself and see what its roots are in order to get to the real meaning behind it. The word success is derived from the Latin word successus, which is the past participle of succedere, which is the Latin word from which we derive success. This Latin word means “to come after”, or “to follow after”. Originally success simply meant “A result or an outcome”. This was later replaced by the notion that success is when the desired or intended outcome is what results. In the 1400’s we started using the phrase “to succeed well”—“May you succeed well”, for instance. This was the equivalent of wishing someone success in today’s use of English language. We still use the word succeed to indicate the succession of one thing after another. For example, “The Prince succeeded his father to the throne”, or “The reaction succeeds the addition of the reagent”. If I make a choice—which is an act of intent—then it is a given that a consequence will succeed that choice.
Put simply, my choice will be followed (succeeded) by an outcome or a consequence. If the outcome or consequence accurately reflects my Divinity (the Truth of That which I Am; my true nature) then it could be said that my choice has succeeded well, or that I have succeeded in accordance with What Is (Love / The Will of God / Universal Intent). If the result of my choice does not accurately reflect my true nature then it could be said that I succeeded badly. The indicator of this is pain of any kind (pain being anything other than deep Inner Peace). Either way I am, in this moment, a success—what I am right now here in this world is what followed-on from the choices I have made. A consequence has followed on from my choice (my act of intent).
At the level of the ordinary ego-mind (ordinary human identity), I am the success of all my past choices. If I am not happy with the outcome (what I am now) then I must simply look at the choices I have been making and start making different ones. For those that didn’t find this word exploration too complicated to follow it will have become apparent that the original meaning (or intention) behinds the word success also indicates that success is inevitable. It is unavoidable, and it will therefore require an investment of personal power to maintain any illusion to the contrary—such as the illusion of failure. It should also be apparent that if you don’t enjoy what you are succeeding at (the consequences which succeed your choices) then the power to change that is in your hands, and always has been. For you are always a success—to fail is simply to make a succession of choices that result in you experiencing something less that what is True about you here and now.
On that note, I wish you the greatest of success in re-cognising the magnificence of all that you are
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