Nathan Vanderford wrote about “The Failure Myth” which for him is that PHD students are failures if they don’t receive a faculty position with tenure. Many end up working at low pay for years instead of getting a job with stature, a future, accomplishments and other rewards.

There are myriad failure myths. Off the top of my head:

• One must have money to be successful
• One must have stuff (car/iphone/house, etc) to be successful
• Anything grade less than an A isn’t good enough
• One’s not successful unless one’s parents approve, or are proud
• No bonus means no success
• You’re not successful unless your spouse is happy
• You’re not successful unless you’re getting sex
• You’re not successful unless you have a job
• If you have a job, you’re not successful unless you have a good job
• If you have a good job, you need to be a manager to be successful.
• If you’re a manager, you need to be a director or VP to be successful.
• If you are one, you need to be a CEO to be successful
• Or you need to start a company to be successful
• Your kids or spouse must win awards or make money for you to be successful
• In music or theatre, one must win awards or make money at it to be successful
• For those who didn’t graduate high school, success requires a diploma
• For high school grads, a college degree is required
• For those with an AA or AS degree, you need a 4-year degree to be successful
• For those with a bachelors degree, you have to have a masters to be successful
• For those with a masters, you have to have a PHD to be successful
• Like Nathan noted, for PHDs, you have to have tenure
• and on and on and on…

Perhaps we all worry about being a loser. Either we think we are one, or we deny we are one, or we’re worried we might really be one, or we worry life could take a wrong turn and we become one. When we achieve something – it’s great! And pretty soon the worries return and we feel the same as we did before the achievement.

Then comes the epiphany, “I must need a better achievement!” Or we see someone else with more and we think “that’s the answer,” not realizing they’re in the same rat race we are, just at a different place on the track.

Luckily, our minds don’t fixate on this crap all the time. But probably, you and I have latched on to all sorts of cultural bull like this.

The only freedom I’ve seen is to dig it all up and see all the myths we’re attached to, and distinguish them as the inadvertent indoctrinations that they are, just ideas rattling around our noggins pretending to be true. You can discover a lot of this in meditation. Or for a wild, myth-busting ride with breakthroughs, take Landmark Education’s Success seminar. (Prerequisites: The Landmark Forum and one other seminar.)

Life is a creation. You can either create a life by stumbling into it, or by realizing that you stumbled into every friggin’ facet, every idea, every truth, and bought into it hook, line and sinker. Perhaps only by exploring the extent of our chains, our mind-trips, our “truths”, is any freedom possible.

This is, to me, true enlightenment. Nothing is serious, or important, or sacred, or good or bad, except that we believe so. Pain in life is often inescapable. But you don’t have to suffer. Suffering is optional. Joy is optional.  (I am soooo glad I learned this.)

I absolutely love being enlightened, being truly free to love, be loved, experience joy and wonder, be fully self-expressed, totally fulfilled.  Judgement is pure creation.  We can live in a world that’s wrong, or paradise. Of course, like most, I also fall prey at times to the addictions of our culture- that there’s scarcity, appropriateness, approval is needed.  And, that I need the food I crave. But I have many reminders each week that none of this is real.  Suffering is optional.

The failure myth is the tip of the iceberg…