Spirituality and the Drive to Success
“Success is a journey, not a destination.” Ben Sweetland
Phew it’s been a while … :) I quit the job at my own company now and looked to start something new and make sense of how the personal and spiritual growth fits together.
One nagging issue I had was the seemingly conflict between the drive to success and spiritual being – I posted about it several times, not only on this blog … and I want to give some insights about this topic that I realized over the last view weeks:
A New View on Success
It is much easier for me now to have fun creating again and strive for and enjoy success. It’s not a bad thing at all – as one might think if one first experiences spiritual states directly. Here it seemed somehow in conflict and almost wrong to strive for worldly success, recognition and satisfaction :)
The important difference is that such things as success become enjoyable things, for instance creation of a new website and connecting with people on it is something that is fun – it has almost a playing character. But it is not something to find myself in it and to be fulfilled or to be more fully myself. That is impossible, but you have to realize it first that you are already and completely fully yourself. There is nothing to be added and you know it by spiritual realization.
But, as I said, success and drive to create is not wrong in any way :) On the contrary, and I enjoy creating it more than ever right now. It is simply an expressions, into the world of form if you will. There is no conflict anymore, you can have both totally – as long as you don’t lose yourself in the drive again and think you create a bigger me or a better me (than others or than my current me ;)).
What’s remarkable though is that success gets infused by the spiritual state, it gets more inspired (in-spirit). And everybody who sees what you are doing can sense this. Everybody wants to be inspired right? It’s a great feeling to receive and especially to give.
And this expression is something very enjoyable – the expression from your inner world into the outer world. I have the feeling that the more you can inspire your expressions, your creations, the more remarkable they are. If the expressions and actions are motivated by negative emotions like anger or greed this gets expressed in the creations, and you can see it first hand – it’s not very inspiring at all.
The Best Creations come from Spirit
Yesterday I heard the interview with Eckhart Tolle called “Even the Sun Will Die“, where he talks about his greatest achievement (”I don’t have to think anymore” :)) and how any real creative achievement comes out of the field of no-thought. In fact it seems to me the more you move into the spiritual realm and into the realm of no thought, the more powerful to create and to be successful you become. You have to take that impulse and create – take action – but if you are inspired and enthusiastic that is really easy to do.
So the difference is that creating success loses a bit of it’s ultimate importance and becomes more like a playing ground to create.
The Fight for Survival and Spirituality
Although there is the other side of the drive towards success and that is mostly before you have achieved a certain level of success. It is very much connected with the basic need for survival and a certain level of wealth, in order to live a life without worries for instance about money or providing for your family.
I have the feeling that this is almost something that happens not only on an individual level but also on a social level. In order to move more easily to a higher development of consciousness you have to ensure the basic need of survival. If survival is threatened you may even drop back to very uninspired behavior. At least this seems to be the general case. Some people like for instance Eckhard Tolle are able to skip this, I mean he lived on a park bench for years without a fixed income and a socially defined identity. But for the general public that doesn’t seem to work. We have to make step one in order to make step two.
In the end, for me spirituality and drive to success work hand in hand, or in even better words: spirituality and the drive success work best if they work hand in hand :)
PS: I opened a Newsletter for AwakeBlogger, you can get it top right on this site :)
