Episode 216

Always Successful

Facing some moral challenge in life, we have the choice of how we see it. Perhaps we see ourselves as a victim, asking why the universe confronts us with such bizarre and unique difficulties. Or perhaps we say, this is an opportunity, these struggles are what makes life interesting.

A performing artist preparing his songs practices again and again, wondering if he’ll ever break the backs of these pieces, perhaps making a mistake at exactly the same parts. The novice and the expert might throw their hands up in desperation in almost the same way. However, the expert knows that his exasperation is a signal that he is close to a breakthrough.

Many remember the famous phrase from painter Bob Ross: “We don’t make mistakes; we make happy little accidents.” Of course we know he’s not just talking about painting. Interesting things happen, and we move forward boldly, deciding to turn those things to our advantage, understanding that they are part of the whole picture.

We are always expressing ourselves, always showing outside what is contained within. That is enough to always be a success.

Transcript

Welcome beautiful thinkers.

Let’s talk about the idea of being all successful.

I mentioned about the other day I was confronting some moral struggle and in the end I decided I can be grateful for this. I can be grateful for this unique circumstance I have myself in trying to confront or wrestle with some practical philosophical problems that have consequence in my life. They can inspire gratitude in me and I can enjoy the struggle.

Not exactly like Sisyphus but some of you might think of it that way.

I was thinking about many years ago it was in 2016 and Jeff Berwick asked me to perform at Anarchapulco and I was trying to get my songs. It was actually probably in 2017 I had asked to perform at Anarchapulco and I was trying to put together a set about half an hour long. Put the songs together, practice them to get them right and make sure I don’t mess up.

If I did mess up make sure that I could get back into the rhythm or the next bar and I would try to practice my speech and figure it out so I knew the right things to say, hit the right notes and feel the right things at the right moments.

I was trying to practice this and a few weeks into practicing I was like Ok I have 2 weeks left and I would try to rap the right words and it wouldn’t come out.

I felt so frustrated and I thought how am I ever going to do this?

Luckily enough being in this situation enough times I realized that the perspective of experience and I thought I know what that means when I experience that frustration, when I ask that question it actually means I’m on the verge of a breakthrough.

As long as one persists to know that almost immediately after we ask that question and get to the point of giving up that’s when things start to come around.

And someone in that situation might think how am I ever going to get through this, I must be a failure. That would be a problem

I do think there are no failures, we cannot fail. Everything we do is expression of the divine, everything we do is an expression of ourselves and that’s all it ever has to be. The only failure is to think that we are somehow failures or that our acts are failures.

Even that will come around eventually because finally in one form or another it’s all part of that grand picture. We can step back and see. Just as Bob Ross said we don’t make mistakes, we make happy accidents.

People know Ross wasn’t just talking about painting, he was talking about life. That’s how things work. He actually developed that style of painting specifically so he could paint on television and he could incoporate those mistakes and keep going with the flow, rolling with the punches.

Continue with that momentum, continue with that expression. All successful because one is expressing themself. There is no failure here. Move forward, give and explore new parts of ourselves.

Watching some of the Jeff Berwick videos lately and he asked “what did you want, did you want to come to earth and be in this great video game, have things go exactly the way you expect? That’s not a challenge, not a story. That’s not challenging and it won’t develop your growth.

That won’t show the finest part of yourself.

These challenges though we wrestle with them and struggle and question if we can even do it that is where we discover what we really are. Always successful, always expressive, always giving ourselves.

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