Tyler durden@RSD samlade artiklar.

[TobiasK]

This “fictional universe” could involve how other people didn’t give us the support we needed, or how we’ve been persecuted and punished for upholding a higher moral standard. It doesn’t matter, as long as it allows our existing self-image, behaviors, and beliefs to remain undisturbed.

(Leo DiCaprio’s recent movie “Shutter Island” explores this topic—the decision between waking up and admitting we’ve failed, so we can move forward; or “shutting our eyes” and maintaining our pleasant illusions, even if it destroys us.)

Conversely, our fictional universe might be based on some far-fetched “grand plans” that could supposedly solve all our problems in a single bold move.

This is often even more seductive, as it seems more “befitting” to our inflated self-image than the REALITY of success, which often requires tedious and repetitive day-to-day tasks, as well as ongoing risk taking and openness to new thinking, in order to gradually produce the results that we want.

“Why should the wise old man have to hustle like all those gophers that haven’t “made it” yet?? Pfffft!! With this GRAND PLAN I can keep chill-axing without all the crazy drama.”

Grand plans, like blaming easy-to-identify outside forces blocking us, are the beloved distraction of the mind to avoid facing the larger complexity of what’s needed to succeed.

They allow us to dodge, deflect, and procrastinate handling what needs to get handled—as there is no reasoning with someone who believes the small tasks are a “waste of time” and “unworthy” of their amazing potential, just as there is no reasoning with someone who believes they are being unfairly “blocked from succeeding” regardless.

But then why bother dealing with all this?? Why not just live in our own happy little reality, even if we’re not technically as well off in our external lives??

Happiness is subjective, and it’s now common knowledge that the people who’ve achieved the most success are not necessarily the most happy.

I think we can say it’s pretty obvious at this point: when we place our entire focus on winning at one area, we often lose out in the rest of our lives.

Nonetheless, I feel this is also an epiphany that is often extended too far. I’ve seen it stretched, exaggerated, and ultimately distorted from a life-affirming truth into a self-deceiving lie.

It’s pretty rare that I’m exasperated, but it’s often felt like an annoying pet-peeve, as words that have personal meaning and significance to me are taken out-of-context, and used as an excuse for stagnation.

(If there is one consistent pattern I’ve drawn from thirty years of life, it is that underachievers whose lives are NOT balanced, whose results are NOT worth emulating, are compelled to talk about “balance”—just as those who live out of integrity are compelled to judge the integrity of others, deflecting the task of examining their own thoughts and behavior.)

Happiness is not achieved by avoiding what’s meaningful to us, in exchange for an easier, safer, more predictable life. That is particularly the case for a man in his twenties, thirties, and forties, but it is also the case for ANY man who wants to enjoy his life to the fullest.

And while I believe that happiness is in fact our “default state”, and that it is our “inner purpose” to get out of our conceptual worlds and into REALITY long enough to realize it, I ALSO believe that by ignoring our “outer purpose” and creating layers of lies in order to deal with it, we in fact drive ourselves FURTHER INTO OUR HEADS, and away from the reality that could bring us happiness by default.

I remember returning to Hawaii from a three month stint in Brazil and Argentina, and as I returned home from the airport, I spoke to the taxi cab driver about how Hawaii had changed.

At first he spoke about it with enthusiasm, recalling the island when it was more natural and less commercially developed. He’d point out places where he and his wife and friends used to spend time together, and how much fun they’d had “back in the day”.

Initially I admired him for leading an ideal and serene existence—living a happy life with a woman he loved, among friends on a beautiful island paradise.

But as we spoke further, the end result of his existence became apparent.

The taxi driver now lived mostly in the past, and he was noticeably confused. He spoke of how he was miserable and purposeless for the past fifteen years since his wife had died, and how he never wanted to re-marry so he wouldn’t have to go through the pain of loss all over again.

He didn’t understand why people had come and commercialized his island, and why everything had to change when it was perfect the way it was.

While he’d lived decades in a womb of predictable tranquility, he hadn’t become the type of person who could cope with change and find a deeper meaning in loss. He felt only internal resistance and vexation, and lived life in the past in order to avoid the significance of his present circumstances.

Fifteen years of his life, fading away in a haze of bewilderment about what went wrong. Who would have looked at his old life and expected this type of “happy ending”??

Of course, the taxi driver could have had other factors influencing his train of thought in my brief encounter with him—maybe he was in a bad mood. But I take his story as a common sense analogy more than anything else.

From my meeting with him, I walked away with the realization that any fantasies I had about building the perfect life where I was never disturbed was a fool’s paradise.

I realized that the closest I’d ever get to any “paradise” was to engage with the reality that was directly in front of me, with its subtle textures and endless variety, and that the price of admission was to WAKE UP from one’s self-imposed slumber as often as possible, until it became engrained.

And this brings us back to the idea of “true success”. What is it?? How can you explain it??

In my personal view, it can be boiled down to two factors.

The first is the willingness to keep going.

Not “making an identity” from external success and then sheltering your self-image from being challenged, but pursuing the “next level” for the thrill of seeing your highest vision become real.

And the second is the realization that beyond a base level of personal security and amusement, stepping up isn’t about “getting the stuff that you want”, but the decision to become the person you want to be.

Not pursuing challenge to reach a “final destination” and then maintain it, but using it as a means to continually call forth your attention from the confines of the mind, and wake yourself up to higher degrees of awareness and appreciation for your experience.

THESE TWO are what bring you the deeper, more profound levels of contentment in my opinion—as the world is such a rich and astounding environment, and your ability to see it through the lens of one who has achieved the “bigger picture” offers more reward than any material or self-image gratification have with them to provide.

Ultimately, you may require a more complex level of stimulation to be happy in life, or you might find the simpler pleasures to be what turn your crank—it depends on your personality and tendencies, and neither is better or worse.

What’s important however, is your willingness to keep that “candle of awareness” burning bright, because the decision to stop travelling your journey is usually a slow “fading away”.

Not because you accumulate “less stuff” or live a less “glamorous” life…

But because you become less grounded in the world of experience, and increasingly dependent on a fictional realm of ideas, principles, rules, and values as your mode of orientation—and this realm up in your head gradually becomes too disconnected from how the world works, where you stand in it, and what it takes to get things done.

“Well yeah, but, things SHOULD work this way…I think that that’s only reasonable!!”

The “substitute reality” intended to preserve mental energy and make the world simple then becomes a dependency, atrophies your mind and suffocates your spirits, until they flicker out like a candle with plenty of remaining wax, but insufficient oxygen to stay aflame.

You’ve seen this happen to countless people—most OLD folks tend to look like this. But conversely, you’ve also seen older people who exemplify what someone of their experience could potentially accomplish over their years of life.

These are the people to whom the average person would seem gifted with extraordinary talent, but in reality, are mostly just mature adults who KEPT WALKING along their chosen paths.

And so to wrap up, the reason I wanted to speak with you today…………..

It’s my firm belief that life does not have to be hard.

Frantically clasping at outcomes and being addicted to struggle are GREAT for creating an initial momentum, but they are hardly the “be all, end all” of being alive.

There is a natural “zone” that human beings have the capacity to slide into, where the abiding presence of contentment, non-judgmental gratitude for your situation, and seemingly effortless “non-doing” to reach your goals becomes simple and easy.

Focus is in high definition—you process information rapidly and make decisions in a fluid manner, not paralyzed in the analytical part of what you need to do. You’re FAST, because if you’re afraid to fail then you’ll fail, so FUCK IT, you enjoy failure as the sign that the next paradigm needs to be achieved.

You cut through obstacles like a buzz saw: you are hungry and yet complete.

And all this comes from “flow” and “momentum”—the opposite of most people’s concept of success.

The NON successful person is often even dissuaded from taking action when they see this—as their paradigm of happiness is based on “doing the least amount of work for the most possible gain” and their “journey being done”.

The elusive obvious, however, is that the collective wet dreams of winning the lottery, or receiving passive income, or having people who want to be nice to you, or even girls who want to sleep with you, are WORTHLESS GARBAGE if they are not associated with WAKING UP, but falling DEEPER ASLEEP.

The trouble is falling in and out of the realization—because when the lessons you’ve acquired have been hard-earned and allowed you to achieve an initial level of success, the tendency is to IDENTIFY with them and clasp too tight.

OF COURSE IT’S TRUE we have to respect what’s worked for us over the course of our lives, and preserve the essential core of what’s gotten us to where we’re at.

We will enjoy our lives to the fullest, however, by keeping in mind that our TRUE selves are not the lessons that we’ve learned, but the “self” that is not overly self-monitoring or aware of personal myths, and simply creates and perceives.

THAT is the “self” that has the ability to continually evolve, and is coaxed to the surface as you walk along your path………………

Which makes you happy, and is in my current opinion, the essence of your success.

You can sum it up by saying that flow is the essence of life, stagnation is the essence of death, and the journey is the compos that keeps you moving, flowing, and in alignment with a happy, friendly universe that tends to “provide”.

Does this make sense?? I hope it does.

Even if it’s possibly the most ultra-preachy nonsense I’ve ever spewed out of my brain—it’s been brewing in my mind for a few years, and the synthesis of a lot of nonsense and bullshit I’ve come across, as well as positive situations I’ve been fortunate to perceive.

I hope you’ve connected with it and had an entertaining read. I aaaaaam oooooouuuuut of here….HAVE FUN!!

Tyler