Driven: To Achieve Success We Must.... ?

Success is something that is awfully hard to measure in a purely 'objective' way. That old saying that one person's trash is another's treasure exists for a reason. What someone considers 'valuable' another person may consider 'worthless.' The same applies to success. Just look at how women are having to redefine their notion of success in an age following the gains won by the feminist movement. Success in the workplace--or seeming success, I should say--has left more than one lady with a crisis at home, on the level of personal relationships. Problems with children. Problems with having children! Marital difficulties. Shoot... even difficulty with entering any relationship because success in the workiung-world has become a paramount achievement (I guess someone should have told the ladies that success at work is highly overrated! evidence: anyone else notice the increase in heart disease amongst women post 'equal rights?').

So does success in one area equal failure in another? I mean, we are supposed to be these integral mavens and mavericks, right? Aren't we supposed to work it all?! Aren't we supposed to be 'on top of our game' in all of the different quadrants, lines, levels, states, and stages---not to mention any other category that Ken Wilber has just included in version Wilber 5.1). Gosh, I get tired just contemplating the overwhelming task of considering the possibility of being a rousing success all across the spectrum!

I also wonder about the hubris inherent in the notion that one can be a success in multiple areas and fields given the spatial and temporal limitation that are innate to the human predicament. There are still only 24 hours in a day the last time I checked, 7 days in a week, and 365 days in a year. Perhaps this is why there is some fascination with longevity ala Ray Kurzweil and the like amongst certain sectors of the 'Integralians' to borrow a term coined by one Paul Salamone. Those folks are going to need an extra 20, 25, or 30 years to work on their pet body-mind projects!

I can imagine some 90 year-old male still trying to achieve that beloved 'six pack.' And all those ladies that will one day be the age of current nursing home residents will be getting 'boob jobs' and 'ass lifts' to celebrate their 100th birthday!

'What did you spend your social security check on this month Alice?'

'Oooohhh... nothing yet doll, I am still saving up for that pair of double D's.'


GETTING THERE

Success. What is it? is it 'getting what we want' in accordance with the shallower dictates of the ego and persona? Is it the 'boob job?' Is it 'scoring with the hot chick?' Is it becoming a rousing success in media terms? Is it fame? Is it fortune? Is it thin or fat? Is success being wealthy enough to rival Donald Trump's spending habits or Mohatma Ghandi's? How are we to define success? And as we define success are we aware and astute enough to consider the correlations of that success?

What do we sacrifice in order to be successful in any particular area of our lives? And is it worth it? For instance, how many men have been known for wishing to scale the 'greatest of mountains'--an Everest or Kilimanjaro, a McKinley or K-5--only to have a brush with death and wish for nothing more than to be at home with their family, close to the one's they love? How come so many men have to fail in their dreams and their presumed passions in order to discover where their 'Heart truly resides?'

Is there something within us that makes us pursue chimeras of our own imagination as if these were the pinnacles of human achievement, only to regret that we didn't spend enough hours under the Oak Trees playing with our children when they were young? Have we learrnt nothing from preceding generations if it is not that 'realizing our dreams' and 'achieving our goals' is often the worst thing that can ever happen to us? There is even that little saying about 'being careful what you wish for.'

You just might get it. You just might become successful and achieve your dreams. You just might become the next 'Apprentice' or win the Mega-Millions lottery. And on your deathbed you just might wish you never prayed for what you ended up receiving.

Why? Why would we regret having achieved our goals? Perhaps because our success in realizing our goals is tied in with a whole lot of ego and small-mindedness. Goal-oriented striving is like living life with blinders on. Like a race-horse we can only see what is in front of us. And that is good if you are in a race. That is all fine and dandy if you are ... uhm.... race horse! But if you are an actual living, breathing human-being then living life with blinders on can be more than just problematic. Take it from one who knows--living life with blinders on can literally render one ignorant of so many blessings and pleasant surprises surrounding one, seeking to engage us. It is as if the Hand of God is reaching out to us in the form of the 'ten-thousand things'... but we cannot see that Hand--nor the Divine Nature of what is among us (the Kingdome of Heaven anyone, the Pure Land, Heaven here and now, Buddha-Nature in trees and frogs) because our eyes (or uhm, I's) are where? On the goal? On the prize? On the 'one thing?'


Integralism As Diversity: The Democratization Of Being

Do you think it is possible that the strict adherence to a 'goal-oriented' existence is really an offshoot of 'monotheism?' You see, I have this theory that any strongly goal-oriented person is a disciple of Yahweh! The singular nature of goals seems to me to dictate a sort of archetypal overshadowing of diverse consciousness by a oneness that can become totalizing--which is to say, rigid, fixed, mechanical, hyper-masculine, and driven to the extremes that the fundamentally monotheistic are prone to--be they a Bush or a Bin Laden.

What I excites me about an 'Integral Methodology' for life and living (provided that this methodology does not become itself the 'one thing') is that it represents what I would term a 'democratization of being' that can result in the full flowering of unique human potentials within us, about us, and among us. The inherent core of the 'Integral' is that there is no 'one thing' that overshadows all other things. Every 'thing' exists in true mutuality and interdependency (which is why you cannot just work your mind without it affecting your body, and vicer versa).

The Integral Method in-forms us as to the inherent multi-dimensionality of our existence. We don't become slaves to Heaven or to Earth. Nor do we become slaves to success in any single dimension. The Integral Method can give us a deep and pervasive sense of 'lightness in life'--for we have not put all our eggs in one basket. We are democratized. We are diverse. We are a multitude--a polyphonic consciousness whose chorusing is all the sort precisely because there is no monotonous monotheism related to the striving after our 'precious one thing.'


Integral Golems

In the Lord Of The Rings trilogy the character Golem represents what can happen to us when the 'one thing' overrides all other things. We literally become sub-human. Golem represents the devolution of a human-being who has become trance-fixed on a singularity. Read that again... a singularity. A mother. A wife. A husband. A writer. A meditator. A scholar. A guru. Any apparent singularity can become an object of worship. Further, any object of worship is, by rule, a monotheism.

Singular devotion. To science. To religion. To sex. To drugs. To money. Monotheism. The secret behind monotheism to me is not that it is religious but that 'IT IS NOT!' There are closet monotheists in political office (can you say, Tom Delay?). There are closet monotheists who are avowed atheists. The equation of monotheism with religions like Judaism, Christianity and Islam is blinding; it is blinding humanity to the deeper current of monotheistic tendencies that become active and expressed anytime that we make an idol out of our 'precious one thing.'


Monotheistic Murder

The blood-soaked anals of our history have been tied to the presence of the monotheistic religions. And while this is true, the larger story gets lost in only proclaiming overt religions capable of monotheistic tendencies. What I am suggesting is that a vein of monotheism runs far deeper in the human psyche than just the overtly religious impulse towards Judaism, Islam, or Christianity. I am suggesting that there is a vein of monotheism that runs through the collective consciousness of humanity, thereby predisposing one and all to monotheistic tendencies.

Anytime that we label or categorize a 'single thing' as if it were separate and distinct from the ten-thousand, thousand things' we are acting on those monotheistic tendencies. A country. A religion. An ideology--be it conservative, liberal, or anarchist. A role. A gender. A sexual orientation. Anytime we set apart a single thing from out of the Matrix of Indra's Net we are acting and behaving in a monotheistic fashion and manner. That is why an avowed pro-feminist atheist can be a monotheist.

It is such 'singularizing' of various phenomena that arise within the Totality of Infinity that makes us capable of murder. We kill for the 'one thing.' We kill in the name of the 'one thing.' We also die and become martyrs in the name of the 'one thing.'