At the highest level, which I’ll call the Soul level, it doesn’t matter at all what you do with your human life. Your Soul simply wanted to experience human life, period. That’s it. Whatever you do as a human, it is enough. Just living your life in any way you want is enough. You are enough.
Of course at the human level, at the level of the ego, we all have goals and dreams, or at least desires and wishes. And that’s normal and it’s good. But your Soul does not actually care if you achieve/fulfill them. Only you care, dear human. And pursue them and work towards them you should!
If you want.
Your human ideas of success and failure, good and bad, they don’t apply to your eternal self, which is simply concerned with experiencing human life and expanding its consciousness, expanding its level of understanding in all ways. Many of these ways your human self will judge as bad, or even awful. But your Soul, who you really are, doesn’t care even a little bit. It is elated to be experiencing human life first-hand, period!
Simply being alive is enough.
But if as your human self you want your life to be a certain way, then I believe it works like this:
You have your conscious human mind that is in a sense the captain of the ship (which is your life), giving directions in the form of thoughts and feelings to your creative subconscious mind that in turn literally creates your entire reality moment to moment according to the directions received. The subconscious mind is impersonal and non-selective, to use Neville Goddard’s words. It does not judge good or bad. If your conscious mind is constantly feeding it states of worry and fear, then the subconscious mind simply accepts those directions without judging them as bad or sub-optimal and creates your entire reality according to those instructions. It will never stop and say, “Wait up my human, I know you don’t want to experience that kind of life, but you’re feeding me the thoughts and emotions that are telling me to create that kind of life, so I’m just going to go ahead and reject those instructions.” It simply says, “Ok, got it. That will be a hell of an experience for us.”
In a similar sense, your Soul is impersonal and non-selective. It does not view the things in your life you consider tragedies, for example, as bad. It simply accepts the experiences and files them away in its ever-expanding file cabinet of experience, which is it’s only goal. To expand and expand and expand.
Knowing this has relieved a lot of stress in my life, and has allowed me to pursue my goals with a certain sense of detachment. This is an extremely helpful and empowering way to think when I’m going through difficult times. I can kind of separate myself from them and not care all that much. On the other hand, it can also diminish the emotional highs of my successes.
For example, last summer I very, very surprisingly won a golf tournament, the first individual golf tournament I had won in many years. I hadn’t been playing much and had not been practicing at all so I had zero expectations going into it. Even when I finished playing a very solid round, the thought of winning it had never entered my mind until my friend and playing partner told me I was leader in the clubhouse. Someone else still on the course was 3 under par (I finished 2 under) with a few holes to play, so obviously I put a mental curse on him and he double bogeyed the 17th hole resulting in my winning by a shot. Kidding about the curse, but he did double 17, and I did win by a shot.
I distinctly remember the drive home, feeling pretty good, still mostly surprised, but also reflecting on the fact that I cared so little about having won the tournament. When I would win tournaments in my youth the feeling was incredible. On top of the world for days, weeks. But on that drive home, I was maybe just a little happier than my default state. A little more grateful than usual. I remember appreciating the fact that as I’ve grown in age and wisdom, a certain detachment was overall probably a good thing, an evolution in my human consciousness. At the same time, I was a bit sad that I wasn’t enjoying my success as much as I could.
So I decided to dive into the good feelings, to really immerse myself and experience them fully. A smile came to my face, I yelled, “Fuck yeah!” and really felt the elation on that drive, as well as for many days after. I allowed myself to immerse fully versus the times I judge as bad during which I detach more than usual.
Do you think my Soul cares at all about that golf tournament? Do you think your Soul cares about any of your successes or failures?
I don’t think so. Souls are just content to continue accumulating experiences, with absolutely no judgment of good or bad.
Knowing this is freeing. You don’t have to achieve. You don’t have to do anything that anyone thinks you should do. You can pursue anything you want, and you can immerse as much or little as you want. Whatever you want is okay.
All you really have to do is breathe.
That is enough.