Understanding Success

Success means being a winner, an achiever. When we are successful, we feel good. This means that we have achieved a goal that we have set, or that we have experienced some good fortune. Too often, however, our successes run through our fingers like water, regardless of how tight we cling to them, and soon we find ourselves unsuccessful once more.

If we count on things outside of our control for our success, our successes are tinged with anxiety. But if we are in total control, then we can claim ultimate success. What, however, can we be in ultimate control of? Our wealth? This is tenuous to say the least. Our health? This depends on many things – lifestyle, genes, accidents, and as the body ages, the odds of illness increase exponentially. Actually, if we consider carefully, nothing in life insures our continuing success. If something could, people would have discovered it long ago and worry would be outdated.

The chief problem with continuing success is that everything in life changes constantly. We can think of nothing that doesn’t change every moment. This is true, and because everything changes, we can never be certain what will happen in the next moment. We can go for many happy, successful years before things turn south, but south they will turn, and then what happens to our success? It’s a matter of time. And as we become older, time passes as swiftly as a flash of lightening.

Because there is nothing in life that we can count on for our continuing success, an underlying angst develops. Although we might not be conscious of things changing and shifting about, where the whole world and universe is in a constant state of flux, subconsciously we feel an uncertainty, a little, disturbing niggle deep inside that reminds us that no matter how good things are going, it might not last. If this feeling is submerged in our subconscious, then we are really blindsided by disasters. “How can a loving God let this happen,” is our typical reaction.

So not only do things change without our approval, but the fact that things change limits our success and injects uncertainty into our lives, and this uncertainty is a form of angst or discontent. Therefore, we not only have change, but discontent as well, as we look for our success. If we don’t understand that what we strive for is tenuous, then we will be blindsided when unexpected things happen. Being blindsided is always a result of not keeping up with the reality of things, and this leaves us vulnerable. Therefore, understanding these things is always to our advantage, regardless of whether that understanding ruins our ignorant bliss that keeps us asleep in our world of illusions.

One more fact becomes obvious when we look deeply into success and try to understand it. This fact is that the one who experiences success is changing as well. As a matter of fact, the one that experiences success is not a stable entity. We seem stable, but we are constantly in flux ourselves. There is really no self as we imagine one to exist. And this is a most difficult thing to understand, because we are so attached to ourselves.

We can understand that everything changes, and that constant changes put us in a state of angst at times, but to understand that we fundamentally don’t exist beyond a temporary physical body and psychological functions takes way all of our illusions and leaves us standing bare on the sidewalk.

But we must somehow get over ourselves, because it is a fact that we only go as far as existence. The one who worries about success doesn’t exist beyond that as we believe he or she exists. Nothing stands behind what is obvious. So the question is; what truly is success, and who or what is successful.

True success can only be framed within the boundaries (or non-boundaries) of Reality. Our experience of existence does not fall within these non –boundaries, Our experience of existence is caught within time, and is therefore fleeting and uncertain, Only Reality, that beyond existence, beyond experience, beyond time, beyond our small selves, is constant.

And true success is touching this Reality, this constancy.

This Reality is hinted at in all religions. The Buddha called it the unborn, the undying, the uncreated. St John of the Cross said, “and the fourth degree of evil that comes from joy of worldly things is: And he departed from God, his salvation. This man has made money and things of the world his God, and David said, 'Be thou not afraid when a man shall be made rich, for when he dieth, he shall carry nothing away, neither riches, nor joy, nor glory.”

Ultimate success therefore involves finding that which does not change, that which we can count on. When we touch this Reality, it changes our lives. Living within this Reality changes our destinies.

And this is true success.

Copyright © E. Raymond Rock 2007. All rights reserved

Article Source: http://www.content.onlypunjab.com

E. Raymond Rock of Fort Myers, Florida is cofounder and principal teacher at the Southwest Florida Insight Center (southwestfloridainsightcenter.com/). His twenty-eight years of meditation experience has taken him across four continents, including two stopovers in Thailand where he practiced in the remote northeast forests as an ordained Theravada Buddhist monk. His book, A Year to Enlightenment (Career Press/New Page Books) is now available at major bookstores and online retailers (ayeartoenlightenment.com/).

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