The architecture of failure pt. 2 (long-version)

You have no idea what’s going on. It happened again. In the exact same way as it always has happened. You blame everything around you that got in the way.

That was me, too. When I failed, in the same way I always did. In friendship, in a job, with a loved one, with a goal that was never reached, with the image of my true myself that was never able to be released into the world.

It was always the same set up, the same trap, and you too. admit it, you also got the same outcomes, and the timelines were the same! Coincidence?

Gosh. You may even have taken pleasure in it like I did.

In sabotaging yourself, all over again, just like you always have done. And maybe you knew right from the start? That it would not work? But you went in anyway? I get it. And after you did all that, you remembered, deep down, fuck. It’s all wrong again. That you would need to stop that some day. But how…

Unfortunately you have a pattern too, just like me.

Your signature.

And it’s in the way you fail. The very answer is in the way you fail.

You refuse to see your nature as it is.

You refuse to see past the old stories you’ve been telling yourself about yourself.

But realise today that most of those stories are illusions. Illusions that keep you together in one piece, yes they serve a function, a good function, it’s to keep you (your ego) moving “forward”. The reality is that the ego prefers it if you stay unconscious If you stay unconscious, the ego can continue to operate you on automatic. It’s efficient, but it’s level 1 of existence only.

You cannot see yourself objectively, as others might, the ego cannot allow you to do that. And as your read these words I really hope for your sake that you have a sense of what I’m talking about right now, that this is not some sort of surprise–that you suspect it, deep down, that your world is a construction of stories, and ideas, and habits that are all learned, that are all reactive, that are mostly not yours.

And it’s not entirely your fault.

It’s not because! You’re doing your best to be good. Not to make waves. To make yourself as small as you should be in order to fit in, to be be accepted by other people who are just as unconscious as you are, and who are attempting to do the same exact thing you are doing; conform, obey, etc.

Your childhood’s map is expired

I get why you do that, why you make yourself smaller than you are. It’s a way to generate safety and predicability in a world that is big and dnagerous and out of your reach. But now I have to say that this very thing you keep you doing, to remain inoffensive, is now your fault and one of many reasons for your failures.

You are using the same old map you used as a child to solve adult problems in a fast paced adult world. But deep down, you know exactly what the problems are in your life, and yet you do nothing. What you do, whatever it is you dabble in this year to feel like you’re growing, is just for “funsies”. It’s your same script flowing as easily as a rehearsal–it’s always the same start, the middle is familiar, and the end is predictable, in everything that you take up.

Maybe next time I’ll learn.

I’ll do things differently.

But you always apply the same moves.

It’s because you don’t quite know how to update the manual.

It’s because you remain unconscious, hiding yourself away to remain small, to remain inoffensive, safe, protected, shielded.

Good versus Obedient

So now we’re here. Together. It’s just us, in an honest moment. But you still operate under the impression that you’re a “good” person. And you are good, most likely, but that’s not my point at all. My point is that being “good” is a general problem hiding in plain sight. Being “good” is the same thing as being an obedient child.

You have no agency as a child– stop behaving like one.

If only you obeyed something that made sense! Something moral, Godly, eternal, transcendent, or all powerful, then I would shut up, I’d say, move forth with that! Keep pushing! But this is not what’s going on is it? You obey things like social media, like hearsay, like gossip, like people magazines and fancy vehicles, the consumptive quality of your behaviour is the way by which you express yourself, and it ends there. It’s all about you. And you’re stuck with yourself because your loop is closed.

A “good” person is the one who blindly obeys the usurper of his agency.

And this obedience is a bug in the software of your mind. It keeps you predictable for your parents, your teachers, and now yourself, and the whole of society, too. And this obedience is deeply encoded in the way you speak the languages you speak. It is coded in you in what you think is permissable in life, and in what you think is not.

What, and who gives permissions? And how about the punishments that are dealt afterwards? It’s beyond you. You’re just a player in this vague game of life, it’s easier to give up. And you don’t take it too personally either when you give up because you assume everyone else thinks just like you do. That’s how we all copy each other into obedience and slavery.

But now you are sick and tired.

Maybe you’ve been beat down enough times. Have failed in simple things enough times. And you know you can do better, and are better. You are God damn it, let me tell you how much you are better than that! You are greatness, but you are also, in a way, far too obedient, and not to yourself as King, not even to God, so to what are you obedient to? A parent? The voice of a parent still in your head? An ideology perhaps? Maybe you do not know– a brand, a car brand. How beneath you are all those things my friend.

Or maybe you’ve finally met this tyrant in you. And you’ve realised that something needs to change. A much older voice in you has said “Enough”. Maybe you’ve begun to stand up for yourself, to listen to where this voice leads you to. Do more. More listening.

Maybe you turn to God. Or perhaps to Yoga, or to any activity outside of yourself that will serve as the healing to your slavery. And it works, in the beginning. It works so well in fact that you could do it from years, and you do. But that’s just another distraction. To act (as in action)? That is right on! But to act in a way that substitutes one belief for another? It’s all coping.

Read on–

It’s all just coping.

You’re doing new things in life, great! But also, you still feel restless to start your life. Now all your activities is you coping with the lie you’ve woken up to see about yourself.

You remain obedient, you continue to seek validation from all those around you. Those who ask you what it is you did this past weekend to tell you what they did. All of a sudden, you find yourself right back to justifying yourself to others. To explaining yourself, reporting, and submitting to the referees of your life like a good student hoping to get a passing grade.

But you don’t even realise it. That you’re supposed to be in another school. That you’re suppose to be preparing to take a completely different exam. You are meant for greatness. You owe yourself an apology, but give yourself the damn apology by rising up! Not by seeking validation from those who are still in coping, who are still in a loop of obedience and validation seeking habits.

The structure of failure looks like this:

1) You took a proper step forward i.e. you took action.

2) You then think you’ve changed (=that’s the feeling of novelty)

3) But you forget to use that momentum to become your own ruler.

4) So you fail again in the same old ways.

To summarise what self-actualisation is, (what stopping this failure structure means) is just becoming better at self-mastery (Nope, not discipline. Reinstating your own nobility, your own flags to your old kingdom). And sorry but that means fighting back. Fighting for your Kingdom. Stand up for yourself! You will to kill the usurpers that have invaded your castle, that have eaten your food and that have taken your bloodline hostage. Raise your army. Lead it in the field of battle, into a siege against the usurpers.

Take definitive action in returning yourself to the throne.

But instead of doing that, you will loop back to what you think is “good”. You continue seeking validation from people who are also seeking validation from authorities that are running wild. It now has become an endless loop of blind men leading other blind men (or women) into unconsciousness, a spiralling down.

It’s just a race to the bottom.

How to exit the race to the bottom.

How do I flip the dynamic?

How do I break the repetitious habits?

You won’t like the answer.

Just stop reading.

Go back to your life.

It’s too hard for you.

Or…?

I promise you that you will come to hate me. That you will come to resent what I say because inside of you you the truth is something that is kept underground. The truth is too bright, better bury it and keep your eyes the way they are. The truth is too much. It is a slap to everything you’ve given yourself to. And because your time is limited, and because you value something in yourself, you will be filled with rage.

The first solution to exiting the race downwards is to act truthfully and honestly.

No more lying! This is surprisingly the first gateway to connecting your inner world (your needs), and the external world (where they are met). In one simple sentence; Have the courage to be honest about what it is you need, and those needs will be met. A single individual does not need a million dollars that’s why it doesn’t work to focus on becoming a millionaire.

Wanting a million and needing a million, are two different things. You want it, but you don’t need it. And you’ll chase it like you’ve chased validation your whole life, but the world will never reward your wanting, because wants are not essential, they are in the world of ideas only, while needs are in the physical world, and the world can understand that dimension far more easily when it tries to meet you in the middle (see next section for more on that).

What you have forgotten, is that you have needs of volition (=that cognitive process of making conscious choices or decisions). You need more of that, you need self-empowerment. Not the illusion of it in buying more things. The real embodied expression of your unique Love, of your unique caring instinct, of your purity as a human being.

That’s what you give the world. Give it all those things in exchange for more of the same. That brings happiness, that brings fulfilment. You only get love back by giving love because giving is the language of the world, it’s beyond words I should rather say.

Stop asking the world for your desires to be met. Start giving it what it is you need. Do not pray to God with queries of what He can do for you, but begin asking Him what it is you can do for Him. There will be reciprocity if it’s true, because that has an exchange rate, a value; gifts are tangible. The world sees what you give, but it does not see what you want.

The act of giving is the best prayer you’ll ever make to God.

Because wanting is free while gifting yourself has value. But when was the last time you really gifted yourself? Do you have no value? I doubt it. I know you have value. So much.

Unlock your value by giving yourself.

Why the world meets us in the middle.

As you continue to lie about your needs to the world, it will continue to reflect lies back to you. The world is your friend in this way; that you can always expect to get what it is you give. You get out of it, what it is you put in.

Your desires are holding you back from meeting your real needs.

Pleasures (those wants that are fulfilled) confuses your mind in a blur about who it is you really are. Suddenly, the world reinforces our illusions, illusions of self, of a self that is transacted, that takes pleasures, and gives very little in time and attention back.

But take care of your needs first by putting them out there instead of your wants and something crazy happens.

You realise that most people have more or less the same kinds of needs; affection, being fed, being seen, being creative, feelings of safety, receiving basic respect. The other things we have been taught to excel in– competing, performing, consuming, status signaling, selling, etc, all those are just ploys to get you to experience more pleasures and tempotarily fulfill more of those wantings that are not native to you.

Pleasure will come at the cost of what you actually need. So then you’re unhappy even though you have a lot of your wants met. That’s why some successful people are unhappy–it’s because they used these ploys to get what they wanted. Plenty of successful people are also happy, but often times, I will argue, it is because they have have known to focus on getting what they needed from the world, from outside of their own illusions, instead of focusing on their own wantings.

Successful entrepreneurs often tell us to chase the feeling, not the money, for good reason it’s the “Love your labor and you won’t labor another day” idea. The core idea is therefore this:

How do you align your needs with the world? By being honest about your needs (identify them first!), and then by taking truthful actions of gifting them and yourself to the world.

That’s what it means to create your own luck.

That’s the formula.

It breaks the obedience loop, it switches out validation seeking with a healthy reciprocal value creation process.

Begin to solve problems for others. Become a gift to those in need, it takes courage, it takes strength, but that has value and as begin to heal the world, you will heal yourself.