This Week’s Quotation:
Are you prepared to face what seems like failure? Are you prepared to accept it simply as what happened and to let it be the starting point for whatever is next? Are you prepared to let what seems like failure be a learning experience? An opportunity to test your plan?
Becoming a Sun p. 100
Facing What Seems Like Failure
Author, Becoming a Sun
Here is what I’ve learned. There is no achievement without effort. And there is no effort without what might look like failure. The question becomes this: Can you face the apparent failure, learn and move on?
A good friend says this: You’ve got to take your burn. The burn is facing your own ignorance, error, or lack of effort. Or facing what is simply the reality that what you hoped would manifest will not.
The only option to taking your burn is to opt out of life. Hey! If you don’t try, you can’t fail!
Some people might be able to settle for sleepwalking through life. I just don’t happen to be one of them. How about you?
I embrace meditation, prayer, journaling, chant, and collective worship as elements of my spiritual practice. But I find they are not enough for me to know wholeness. I embrace the powerful life force within me when I address the sometimes brutal realities of the world immediately around me.
From this perspective, I embrace my learning. And with whatever setbacks there have been, I ask the eternal question of Creation: What is possible now? And what must I do now to realize it?
This is the optimism of Reality. It feels good to be real.
What does it mean to become a sun?
Every human being is already a sun on the inside—a being of intense love and light. The difference is that some people have the vision and courage to become a sun on the outside. This difference is our human destiny.
4 Responses
I am reminded of a phrase of Uranda’s teaching from a while back where he said “what’s right with you is my starting point, what’s wrong with you is beside the point”. Remembering this in all circumstances puts me back on track to continue with with life’s creative process. Letting love radiate without concern for results with a clear heart. Thankfulness and Glory to God fills my soul. I have always been inspired by figure skaters; no matter how many times they may have ‘slipped’, they got up and continued their program. Life is that way. We are alive and breathing therefore we have not failed. These are musings in my heart and mind. With and in Love, Nadeja
I feel that I have a lot of experience with what could be called failure, or setbacks, but so often it shows up later in a useful way. What I learned, what happened because of it, etc. Sometimes years later. And I certainly have learned that success depends on moving on.
Thanks, David! An old story I heard was that Edison was asked what it felt like when he had 99 failures before he found out how to make a lightbulb, He said “I learned 99 ways how NOT to make one”. Don’t know if it is a true story but I love the message. Another thought is that a failure indicates that you at least tried.
Thank you David – the thing I love about journaling is that it helps show me where I have been (and on a really good day – where I might be going). But the best part is that journaling seems to make it much easier to let information come through my heart – and it gives me strength to notice (and stop) – the thoughts and memories that just come through my head – my head can be a scary place sometimes – journaling helps me focus on the grander picture of life.