EMBRACING MY FAILURE (or how I learned to stop worrying and love being a failure).
I am a failure. Even as a child when I wanted to please my parents all the time I failed. I looked up to my older brother and wanted to be like him. I failed. When I went to school, I wanted to be top of the class. I failed. I went to University and was going to be the world’s best research scientist. I failed. Eventually I became a doctor and was going to be the best doctor ever. I failed. I’ve only ever been average if that. Perhaps just scraping a B- grade. Finally, I just wanted everyone to like me and guess what I failed at that as well.
Several years ago, I went on a mindfulness course and I knew that I was going to be the world’s best meditator. The sense of calmness and peace that I discovered during that first course was a revelation. So, I tried and I tried at my meditation practice and things did indeed change for a while. I think that I was so neurotic by then it would have been hard not to change to some extent but after a while nothing seemed to be happening. Eventually after struggling with my practice for months I talked to someone much wiser than me.
“Stop trying” he said. “When you meditate stop trying to change things. In fact, when you sit down to meditate give up all hope of ever achieving anything.” So, I gave up and just sat with things as they were. Thoughts came and went, feelings and emotions came and went, mind states came and went and suddenly everything began to change. Success and failure didn’t seem to matter anymore. In fact, they weren’t even relevant anymore.
I had discovered the truth that when we rest in a state of being everything changes all by itself and everything that we seek arises without any effort on our part. The joke is that when we rest in a state of being, we discover that we don’t in fact need anything.
STOP TRYING, STOP SEARCHING AND REST WITH WHAT IS!
