Essays From The Master

In martial arts, magick, religion, the government all things fall short at times, they do not work because of what people do or what they do not do or because someone else does or does not do something better. Mistakes happen, ill-informed actions with good intent bring about horrors and loss, it is however equally true that every moment after one fails one can do better and one can always avoid failing by planning for things that are in one’s control. Even though there are things that fail daily or nightly, even hourly or from moment to moment, one always can do better so long as one exists. If one still exists after a fail then one is not a failure nor is what one is trying to do. Where there is breath and will there is life and with life there is always the chance for more, for better or for balancing all one can. Because there is always a chance for better or to improve what is ideas like fate, destiny and failure are a phantasm, an inner lie based on fear and ego masked as self-pity. Failure, as an absolute, is like perfection, it is an abstraction that reality always falls short of because it is a concept and concepts only work exactly in the mind. One pursues the ideal in order to achieve the real, the real is concept made to comprehend with what actually exists including the perceptions of others. If one accepts the reality that all things can fail one must also accept the reality that the same things can also succeed. Life is energy and energy cannot be destroyed which shows that death like failure is a phantasm and so where there is life in the memory of the one living one does not loose others to death.

Often it is thought that always having a chance to do better is the same as always having a chance for happiness. More often the chance to do better is also the chance to be content in the moment until the circumstances change and thus actually get better. One builds on the chance of things being better with time by doing what builds one’s self and making the most of the moment one is in. The past influences but in truth has a large aspect that is subjective, the past is what may have been. The future does not exist while it is the future because when it becomes the present it is only one of an infinite number of outcomes that have equally infinite variations. One acts and fails which leads to an outcome, so long as one still exists and is capable one can try again one has the chance to plan better, use different tools or different resources. One also has the chance to adjust one’s goals or aims to what one has at the moment which can latter lead to one’s greater aims and goals. It is held by some that happens in a person’s life is already written but he must choose to be there; if one must choose then one chooses what is written. If one chooses what is written as to one’s life then it is not a failure unless one chooses to define it as such. Making things better or even livable after some mistakes can seem a punishment at the time but doing so will work. A proof of this is how all things can always be worse than they are at the moment, if they can be worse that means they can also be better.

Fail or succeed and life will go on, live or cease and life will go on with or without one. It is up to the individual to make their life count to them. Only the person living that life in the moment can value that life as it is lived. The value others may place on a life from outside of it or in retrospect is subjective and so too with the idea of things failing. One may feel a failure but feeling does not make it a reality and even as one feels a failure one could seem a success to others, one could in fact have a life that others aspire to, even as one feels a failure. One has only so much control over the influence one has on others and circumstances but one has total control over how one reacts to them and one has great control over how one feels. In the same way that dream can become reality so can the phantasm of failure but like a nightmare the phantasm can be banished making failing a step rather than a result, a step toward a better outcome.