Northern Coast of California source
Three Questions:
What is your definition of success?
When I acheive something I intended to do, that is success. If I acheive something I wanted, but I didn't do it by way of intentional action, then it was a lucky accident!
What do you need in your life to make you feel more successful?
I need some challenging goals.
What would it take to accept that everything you need, want, and desire is already within you?
My happiness is within me.
My joy is within me.
My satisfaction is within me. So is my dissatisfaction!
My ability to love, to serve, to connect is within me.
My creativity is within me.
But is everything I need, want and desire already within me?
I believe this is true--to a point. How I respond to someone's behaviour is within my control, of course, and by changing my response to another I can change how she or he will treat me. But not always. Other people are just not "within me." I'm not sure there is anything that could convince me that the above is absolutely true.
I keep seeing a little house on a sandy/rocky beach in what I imagine to be Northern California--like the picture I found via google above. I know it is entriely possible for me to go and live there someday. If it is what I want above all else, I can make it happen. All I need to do is get on a bus and go. The trick is to have that cottage and my kids graduate high school, my husband and his job which keeps us in food and clothing (not to mention, shelter!). I cannot have all I want simultaneously--I cannot have everything I want all at the same time. Hate to be a downer, but again, I don't believe there's anything that would make me believe that the satisfaction of every need, want and desire is within me--in so far as it is a true need, want or desire. That is, if I give up the dream of the cottage on the coast which is certainly within my power, then I have dissolved that desire--not satisfied it! At least, I think that's the intended meaning of the above statement. If I am merely to accept the fact that my needs, wants and desires are within me, and no where else, then, no problem, I accept that already!
The prologue to the meditation challenged me to find the "seeds of success" in the things which aren't working for me right now. That would include 1) the daily writing I've paid to do in my writing course, 2) my morning routine which keeps the house decent and 3) working on my plans for Christmas and many other things, once I sit down and think about them. As for those three things, I really don't think it's more complicated than to just do them. Start the work. Do it. Dunno. No magic solutions are occurring to me!
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