Who likes to fail? Have you ever thought, "Wow, I totally bombed that. How awesome!"
Probably not. Most of us don't relate very positively to failure. It makes us feel bad. Even our biology is diminished by setbacks: we make ourselves physically smaller by hunching over, the feeling of embarrassment clouds our perspective and judgment, and we tend to shy away from whatever it is that caused us that pain.
But what I'm seeing more clearly now than ever before is that if we want to accomplish anything big, then we must change the way we see failure. Our view has to change to see that failure is not lack of success, failure is lack of trying.
What have you failed at lately?
That's a sign of progress. It's a sign that you care about something more than you care about how you look doing it. It means you're willing to go for something that you're not sure you can ever master... you may find yourself embarrassed more than once as you attempt to fulfill the calling that set you on the path you're on.
Personally, I've been part of the spiritual community founded by Andrew Cohen, EnlightenNext, whose purpose was for people to come together and live an inspired life of evolution. It's how Erin and I met, and many other positive things emerged from that experiment in collective awakening. However, for reasons we won't go into here, it failed. And I've had mixed emotions about that failure but am feeling better about it now than ever before.
I'm heartened because the purpose of all of us who were part of EnlightenNext and the path of Evolutionary Enlightenment over the past 25+ years was to increase consciousness in the world. And we really gave our all. There must have been thousands of us over the years, to varying degrees of engagement, all passionately seeking to make the world a more conscious, more inspired, more beautiful place.
With this new view on failure, I can see that what actually happened was progress. Taking a larger perspective on it changes everything.
The process of life itself waking up—which is the bigger view on what is happening when people follow the spiritual path—is not one that will be accomplished in one generation. Things will fall apart, but what's more important is that life will keep trying to emerge in higher forms of complexity and harmony. That's how evolution works... it just keeps trying.
And so do you and I.
So next time you totally blow it, after the humiliation wears off, celebrate the fact that you care enough about something that matters to try. And keep moving forward, knowing that, if it's a big enough purpose, its importance extends way beyond this moment, and maybe even beyond your lifetime.
