April 20th 2010 by Rose Diamond
There are millions of books and thousands of internet gurus showing us the way to success: buy this and success will be yours, do that and you will have all the things you long for. Much of it appears to be about adding something or getting something from outside ourselves so that we can feel good; the old style American Dream. The bigger your gas guzzling SUV the more substantial you feel, right? Feeling hollow inside? Try a bit of ostentatious consumerism. Feeling down or insecure? How about a some retail therapy? Even amongst conscious people I still see many flitting here and there trying to “get” something. And as long as we feel incomplete inside we will try to “get” something or to add something to fill us up. The only trouble is the satisfaction doesn’t last, and this is the essence of consumerism or addiction, there’s a high followed by the return of emptiness and the need for another high.
I hear many people expressing a desire to be authentic these days. Authenticity is a way to step out of this cycle of consumerism and addiction because it means trusting what is on the inside of us and knowing that expressing who we truly are, and discovering more of who we truly are, is the only real and reliable ground of satisfaction. Authenticity is the foundation for a sustainable life, a life that doesn’t depend on “things” or approval.
I was never sold on the idea of success on the world’s terms, my father’s vision for me as I approached womanhood was that I should find a rich man to marry and live in one of the big houses close by in the stockbroker belt of London. I didn’t know much about the world, nor about myself yet I knew this vision was a gilded cage and not right for me. I remember saying to him, “I want to be happy” and his reply was “You’ll never be happy, so you might as well be rich.” Hm. Maybe that was the beginning of me splitting love and money; if I couldn’t have both, then I chose love.
A moment of startling clarity came for me in 1986. I was self employed and I had just landed a very good contract as a consultant. In the world’s terms I was pretty successful. Within two years I had created a sustainable business without having to do a single piece of advertising; everything came to me; employers sought me out. I had already completed a satisfying and enlightening piece of research into the needs of unemployed women for a community organization (which later led to the creation of a training centre for unemployed women in Edinburgh) and this second contract with a big and shiny employment project appeared to be the next step and was very well paid. Yet I stood on the platform waiting for my train after the interview with tears rolling down my face and I understood in that moment that I was trying to be a “success” to win my father’s love and approval, and no shiny contract or bags of money would ever give me that. In fact, as it turned out I was right to be feeling somewhat empty because I discovered a few months later that my high paid position was a token gesture in the political cynicism of Thatcher’s Britain, and there was no real intention to do anything for unemployed women in this area of urban deprivation. I had been bought by the Patriarchy.
I quit that job but it took another seven years before my realization of the futility of my efforts was translated into a bid for escape. (Or rather, I made my first escape two years later but wasn’t ready and came back to have another go.) Then in 1993, I left. I simply didn’t want to be a part of the corrupt and cynical world, driven by money, materialism and competition. Nor did I want to be part of my father’s world in which happiness doesn’t exist.
So I made a decision to do what had most meaning for me, and I set off to the North West Highlands of Scotland to write my first book on women and the creative process.
Now that was success of a totally different sort. I was so ready. I later wrote about this experience in my book, “Migration to the Heartland”
“ I immediately sank into the peace as into a down mattress. I slept long and deep and awoke to gulp long draughts of the cool, tangy air. On my first day I sat at the table in front of the window looking towards the mountains and started work. I wrote effortlessly and with excitement until the chapter was finished five weeks later. Working twelve hours a day I was in a long mediation from morning till night. ..
Totally absorbed, confident, focused, I was sure I was going in the right direction; this was the work I had to do and nothing else mattered. I was carried by an energy that came through me from the mountains, sea and sky. Something much bigger and more powerful than me was in charge now. I was a pipe through which the goddess played her tune. “
In many ways that was not an easy year yet it shines in my memory. The thrill of taking all that freedom to do what I most wanted to do, to live my dream of writing and living in the elemental environment of the Highlands, my spiritual home, was brilliant. Or maybe I should say that this particular set of conditions enabled me to experience my own brilliancy.
One of my favorite authors and a teacher of the soul , A.H.Almaas, has written about the connection between the expression of brilliancy and our relationship with the father. He says, in his book “Brilliancy”
“The soul desires the presence of Brilliancy because the soul needs it in order to feel safe to come out and meet the world, to learn to have a life of her own.”
I’m sure our desire for success has its origin in this need to express our brilliancy as a way to let the soul out into the world. The history of Patriarchy has been one of suppression of soul, and brilliancy separated from soul, or Yang separated from Yin, has too often been used for destructive, self serving and egoic ends. Most people I know, whether women or men, haven’t received the kind of support they would have liked from their fathers. If our father’s haven’t been able to encourage and appreciate the expression of our brilliancy, what then? Our own creative process and our attempts to shine become distorted in some way. Perhaps we become resigned and hide our lights. Or we overcompensate and become pushy and driven, always chasing something we never quite catch.
As the old world melts and we begin to co-create the new, what models do we have for healthy and sustainable success? What does it mean to you to express your brilliancy into the world? What is your experience of brilliancy? And what does it mean for the soul to be led out to have her own life?
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