"The Success Solution: Your Life and Life Situation..."

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Your mind thinks you are separate from "that person over there" and this thing called "my life and everybody elses life."

You are Caucasian, he is African, and she is Asian; you are not them, right? There is a poor person standing on the corner of the road, holding a sign that says, "Out of work, eny money will help", and here you are, thinking he should get a job and you are appreciating how much better your life is.

You have a job, a family, a favorite football team, a special coffee house, an ipad, and a favorite alcohol because thats who you are and what you like, right?

If you could not define yourself by your job, social status, where you live, the size of your house, type of car you drive, and your family heritage...who would you be? What would you say to people? Would life be worth living?

"I am John Doe. I have three children and a loving wife. I'm half Italian and half French. I am CEO of xyz company. I belong to abc country club and I also live in a 3,000 sqft. Victorian." Is that who you are? What if you had nothing...does a thought creep in saying, "You will be all alone"? How would you feel if you had nothing? Does fear, anxiety, and worry arise, and you have to go do something about it?

The normal human condition is all about "doing" in hopes for a better future, trying to fix the world, and keeping alive their past so human beings know who they are. Their primary concern is "what happened to me in the past" and "I must work towards a better future." You think you are living life, and it is all about what is next, achieving goals, and being more successful climbing your culture's success ladder.

However, who you are and what you have on the outside is such a small part of life. It is only scratching the surface to what life has to offer. Yet, humanity will spend a lifetime pursuing the illusion of success- money, sex, big homes, fame, and a prosperous career. Have you ever stopped and thought, "Why do I want success in the first place?" Is it because you want to inflate your egoic self image? Or, do you want success for the enjoyment of being and manifestation.

One out of those two questions equals suffering, destruction, and unconsciousness. The other question is in alignment with universal purpose, joy, freedom, and peace. Be honest with yourself, where do you fall between those two questions?

Earl Nightengale said, "Success is a progressive realization to a worthy ideal." If you ponder that statement, you should conclude that in reality success is one big illusion. It is a mental concept created by your ego to define who you are.

The illusion of success can be compared to the horizon casted out upon the ocean. No matter how far you travel, what direction you take, and how close you think you get, the horizon will always be out of your reach. Arriving at the horizon is illusion. The only thing you can do is imagine in your mind getting there.

Success is the same concept. No matter how many goals you achieve, amount of money you make, and things you have, you will never stop seeking, wanting, and desiring more. There will always be something else to get or achieve. Life becomes a constant desire of "arriving" and making every person and everything a means to an end. But what end are you working towards? Well, there is one end that's for certain: "...to dust shall we return."

This could be a life changing realization for you because you can now stop trying so hard to "make it" one day and awaken to who you really are. You can appreciate and enjoy the journey of life, rather than living in some imagined mental concept. You can stop feeding your ego a false sense of "self" and connect with Life, rather than your life situation.

Does this mean that the pursuit of success is pointless and that you should quit growing, taking on endeavors, and living your passions? absolutely not! You set those intentions, you create a vision, and you achieve goals! Just do it from a place of being and life. Let consciousness or life manifest through you. Become the "quality" that you want to see in this world, rather than harboring the poison of resentment, destruction, and striving.

Are you confused yet? Success is an illusion, but it is okay and noble to pursue it? I know...it is a paradox. But freedom and truths to life are found in paradoxes. Keep reading and you will discover the truth for yourself.

Your Life Situation

Your life situation are the circumstances, people, experiences, and everything that you have manifested for yourself internally and externally.

For example, my name is Nick Pfennigwerth. I graduated from the University of Pittsburgh; I was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire; grew up in Pittsburgh, Pa; I am a Pittsburgh Steelers fan; I have a beautiful and loving girlfriend; I have a loving family who would do anything for me; I own a truck; I pay my rent on time; I love swing dancing and want a pair of Aris Allen swing shoes for Christmas; I use to be a real estate developer; and now I write articles.

That's my life situation. It defines "Nick Pfennigwerth". My life situation is constantly changing and morphing into new realities as the years go by. I use to be a real estate developer, then I taught personal growth and success, and now I help awaken people to who they really are. I had one hundred dollars in my pocket yesterday, today I have fifty dollars. I was full from my meal an hour ago, now I am hungry.

The point is...your life situation and my life situation are constantly changing into different forms. One form arises and another form passes away. Therefore, we can conclude that everything in your life situation is impermanent and subject to suffering.

Your life situation has a birth and a death. You will die one day, so will your family, your life partner, and your dog; your house will deteriorate, your car will rust, and who knows what will happen to money and the government.

I say this not to depress you or be negative, but to help awaken you to the impermanence of your life situation and the physical universe. Since it is impermanent and subject to death, you will suffer depending upon your level of "thought attachment" you have with your life situation.

I heard a mentor of mine on a conference call and he was talking about how our extreme attachment to the physical world, who we think we are, and what "should happen" creates tremendous amounts of suffering. He was coaching a woman to help her overcome depression on the passing of her Mother. The depressed woman was at point fed up with her resentment, anger, and suffering to the way things should be.

She didn't value life and ruined a lot of friend and family relationships because she honored the dead more than she honored the present life. All of this was dysfunctional because she has been going through the grieving process for five years now not being able to let go of her Mother.

My mentor said to the woman that she had to let go of the attachment and past concept of her Mother. Not to forget her, but to make friends with the present moment and "what is." When she could be with what is, she will always find her Mother there. After a few hours of working with my mentor, she realized that there are not any problems in this moment, only made up mental ones.

She could feel the very life that breathed her Mother in the physical world. Her Mother wasn't missing. She was in every "now moment" and the woman had to open herself up to the present moment for complete understanding. Her resistance and resentment dissolved, and this woman found peace in life.

You can became free, as the woman did above, when you let go of time. That is to say letting go of attachment for creating an identity out of your past and imagined future.

Picture your life situation like a horizontal line. It has a past to the left and a future to the right. Being trapped in your life situation is defining who you are today from your past experiences and hoping for a better you working towards an imagined future in your mind.

For example, "I am Nick Pfennigwerth and I went completely broke twice. Therefore, I must not be worth it. However, I have a goal to be a millionaire entrepreneur."

That is an example of being trapped in time. I am defining myself as "not being worth it" because of my past and I am creating attachment by hoping for a better future. As I do this, I suffer because I cannot let go of the past and I suffer because my better future is not here, yet. Does life suck, then you die, true? Only if you are trapped in time.

There is nothing wrong wanting a goal or being inspired to create a better future self. You will read about that in a few minutes. The problem is when you do not honor the most precious moment that you have right now...the present moment.

One of my favorite quotes about how to live life comes from the movie "Kung Fu Panda". Master Oogway (the turtle) says, "Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the "present."

Your Life...Joy, Enthusiasm, and Acceptance

Your Life is primary. It is not what is happening or what happened, life is the space in which it unfolds and manifests. Life is the vertical dimension of Now. It is the passing away of thoughts, mental projections, and concepts. Life is pure consciousness and your true nature.

You do not have a life, you are life. And the quality of your life is reflected in your life situation. So, what kind of relationship do you have with life? Since life is the present moment, what kind of relationship do you have with the present moment? Are you resistant to what is? Or, do you find acceptance, joy, and enthusiasm in this moment?

Are you trapped in your thoughts, your feelings, and your life situation? Or, can you see and feel without criticism, judgement, and thinking?

Most people I come across think that if they are not thinking and not imagining the life they intend, life will be dull, boring, and pointless. However, that's the ego or some other state of mind talking. To make sense of the world, the human mind has to chop up life in compartments. Unfortunately, this chopping up process creates the illusion of separation and all of us must of missed that fine print when we were born.

The more we identify with this separation (which starts the second we are born), the stronger the ego gets and the less aware of life we become. Almost all of your fears are of the mind and ego identifying with something that use to be or something that hasn't happened yet. This means that your anger, fear, anxiety and even love, happiness, and joy are reactive and not primordial with life. Your feelings arise out of identifying with thinking, not from the consciousness of Life.

You do not have thoughts, you are being thought. Just like you are not the one breathing, rather you are being breathed. You do not create life or live life...life manifest and "does" through you.

The reality of it all is that who you really are is that without thought. You are the space or awareness gap between thoughts. How you are one with all things and life is that everything shares the same space and stillness with you, and manifest itself out of this space. However, no amount of thinking and analyzing can help you realize this truth. You have to "not think" and then you will get it.

When you drop the illusion of your self and life situation, you become alive, alert, peaceful, and all of your doings extend way beyond what you can imagine. This state of consciousness positively effects everyone and everything that you come in contact with because of the peace emnating from you.

Being life and dropping the identification with the mind does not mean you will lose the aliveness and joy with your family, friends, and loved ones. Far from it! You will actually deepen your relationship with them and all things. Your relationships will move from surface level to deep connectedness, compassion, and true love. You will stop trying to get something out of the relationship and just enjoy being in the relationship.

Then, what you will find is that everything in this universe is a relationship. Your money, job, family, friends, house, and everything! It is a relationship reflected from the quality of your consciousness.

Success is not the problem. Neither is the ego. When you own the ego, which is to say when you acknowledge and become aware of its presence (normally reflected through thinking), the ego serves you in a very functional way helping you survive and increasing life for all.

The problem is your attachment to who you think you are. The more attached you are to the concept of you, the more dysfunctional and unconscious the ego and you become.

Most people become free because they suffer so much that the immature and unhealthy ego self destructs and becomes mature. When you have a mature ego, you can see, with awareness, the concepts you are identifying with. Since you can see the ego, you are not "it" anymore. You can function to full capacity without suffering.

However, you do not have to suffer and lose everything to become an awakened individual. You can awaken to your life's true purpose right here and right now with whatever you got. But...you have to be willing to. You have to be willing to drop your ideas of how it "should be", "what if", and "trying."

Unfortunately, for me, I had to suffer A LOT until I believed and started to wake up that there is more to life than what I can see, hear, and externally feel. Sometimes that's what it takes. In most cases, it doesn't have to be that way.

Where does success fit into this picture? This is called, "The Success Solution", right?

Well, the old concept of success is completely external in getting things and money. The Success Solution is about transcending the surface level of the ego, suffering, and your life situation to becoming an awakened individual and discover your life's true purpose.

Success is realizing the inward movement of the unmanifested and being the outward creative movement of manifestation. Success is being free, joy, peaceful and happy, and it is having your cake and eating it too.

You are already successful. Your mind just thinks you are not. Ironically, when you drop the concept of success and stop striving to improve your life situation, and become life itself, the quality of that conscious state will be reflected in your internal and external life situation--The Success Solution will show you exactly how to do this.

In the next article of this series, you will learn about how consciousness and life manifest in and through you. Then, you will learn how to become a quality conduit to realize your life's true purpose and become one with life.

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This page is part 1 of The Success Solution: Your life and life situation

Go to Part 2: Finding your purpose in life.

Go to Part 3: How to meditate for living your life purpose.

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