True Success

Golden Thread

True success grows from the seed of an intention planted and nurtured in the eternal garden of now.

Intention

          We all know that hard work and perseverance are key ingredients for success in any field of endeavor.  We’ve learned from an early age that we must put our nose to the grindstone and “go for it,” if we hope to achieve excellence in business, academics, or the arts.  Nearly all of us were raised by the Judeo-Christian work ethic that touts the familiar adage “persistence breeds success.”  We were told that with a lot of hard work, a little ingenuity, and a bit of luck we could accomplish anything we set our minds to achieve.
          What we didn’t learn as much about was the importance of creating a right intention, so when our hard work finally did pay off, we would feel that we were truly successful human beings.  We know little or nothing about the universal Laws of Creation, so we’re always pursuing one desire after another in search of the elusive “win.”  Our work as spiritual aspirants is to observe life as it is happening now, so we can begin to uncover the true nature of success and what we must do to achieve it.
          True success in life grows from the seeds of intention.  Sages and prophets throughout history have revealed what quantum physics has only recently discovered: that real results come about not so much from what we do, but more from what we think.  In other words, what we want is not as important as why we want it.
          Let’s take a practical example.  A woman lives in a small apartment and dreams of one day living in a mansion.  She doesn’t understand why the conditions in her life have produced her modest lifestyle and feels she deserves more than she has.  Her brother and his family live in a ten room house and enjoy many luxuries she has never known.  So, this woman scrimps and saves and works two jobs, so she can buy the big house she envisions and have all the things her heart desires.  Just as she begins to get ahead, her car breaks down or there’s a medical emergency, and all of her savings are spent on necessities.  Why can’t she realize her ideal?
          The answer is lack of proper intention.  If asked to go deeply into her desire for a big house and prosperous lifestyle, the woman would discover that what she really wants is to escape the negative aspects of her current life.  She’s motivated by what she doesn’t want: the cramped living space, fear of poverty, and lack of social status as compared to her brother.  With this negative intention, she can only draw more of these same conditions into her life.  What we resist always persists.
          What is necessary to turn a situation like this around is to set a right intention based on positive desires.  When the woman—or any of us—begins to visualize a goal, we must honestly ask ourselves, “What do I hope to gain from the realization of this desire?”  Our answers might surprise us!  If we truly see the goal we envision making a positive contribution to our well-being and the well-being of those around us, rather than merely fulfilling a wish to escape our present circumstances, we will be moving in the right direction.

Thinking is Creating

          The key to understanding how to draw more success into our lives is to realize that:  to think is to create.  Whatever thoughts I hold and nurture in my mind and, especially, those which are spoken either silently or aloud, punctuated by emotion, will eventually become manifest in my life.  All of creation is the product of thought.  We wouldn’t be here, if a higher energy hadn’t conceived us into being, and likewise the conditions of our lives would not be what they are if we had not conceived them with our divided, sleeping minds. 
          Consider this thought deeply and examine the patterns of your life to test its veracity.  We are not victims of chance or any force outside of us.  We are actual creative expressions of the one Creator.  If we don’t like what we see, we must take responsibility for our lives and change our thinking.

Radical Trust

          We were created to have everything we need to fulfill our unique purpose in life.  The problem is we don’t know or don’t trust this Truth.  In the Sermon on the Mount, which I believe to be the cornerstone of Christ’s teachings, Jesus tells his followers: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear.  Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?  Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.  Are you not of more value than they?”  [Matthew 6:25-26]

          When you look back over your life, can you see how you have always had exactly what you needed to take you where you needed to go to learn the particular lessons you needed to learn to bring you to your current level of understanding?  Our problem is we don’t trust the process and always think we know better than Life.  We don’t like what Life has brought us, because it doesn’t measure up against our ideas of success and happiness.  So, we make a plan for a better time to come.  The problem with this scenario is that the mind that’s stuck can’t conceive of anything better than what it already has.  It can only compare itself to what it thinks is better.  We must work hard to see the truth of this.

True Success

          If we want to live truly successful lives, we must drop all of our ideas about what a successful life looks like.  We must allow Life to perfect us by revealing all that is false within us and giving us an opportunity to surrender.  Life will never push Its Self on us.  We always have a choice.
          At the end of the fifth chapter of Matthew, Christ gives us a roadmap to true success, when he says, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” [Matthew 5:48]  What he’s telling us is this:  “Let go of what you think is perfection/success/happiness/peace and simply be the Self you were created to be.  If you will do this, all good things will come to you, so you may fulfill the intention I have for you.  Your intention and My intention will be perfectly aligned.  We will be one, and you will have at your disposal all the riches within My Kingdom.”

The Work

         The real work, then, becomes to set a right intention to become one with perfection, where all good gifts—greater than anything that can be imagined—will be given to us.  With this proper intention, motivated by a strong desire to know the truth of ourselves, we must tend our garden every moment of every day by keeping our attention focused on Life as it is unfolding before us in the here and now. 
          If we are truly present and properly aligned with this intention, our thinking will take care of itself and right action will naturally ensue.  Right action will bring right results and all good things will come to us for whom the Good comes first.  This is the key to a truly successful life.

Exercise: Deconstruct Desire

Over the next week, notice every thought associated with a desire for some imagined future outcome.  At the end of each day, write down these desires on a piece of paper and think deeply about their origin.  Ask yourself, “What do I hope to gain by obtaining the fulfillment of this idea?”  This exercise should provide excellent fodder for self study.  Remember, we can only release what we are willing to see.