091. 'Full effort is Full Success,' Gandhi said. This too is my personal measure, the Toughest of measures. I must NEVER ask more of another, or of me


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNZgJ6WJwCY

Full effort is full success, huh, what silliness right?  As Gandhi emphasized.  How unrealistic, right?   I mean successes is when you achieve something, right?  Only if we insist upon being delusional and complying with the delusions of this the sickest of all cultures and societies.  In fact if you were speaking to someone right now you couldn't control whether you finished the sentence, because maybe your heart would stop.   By probably any measure of achievement, due to my over privilege in so many ways, no credit to me,  I'm certainly in the top 1%, probably in the top 1/100 of a percent of global achievement, and what all that has taught me, as the Creator is my witness is, that I control nothing except my attempt.  Attempts, influence things,  they change probabilities of other things happening, but the only thing I or you ever control is the  attempt. 

Therefore, Gandhi was correct.  Full effort is full success.  A person can do no better than that, and few of us ever try to do that.  Yes, in this sickest of all cultures, ‘full effort is full success’ is a copout, right?   What a whimp!  No, you have to hold yourself to the standard of the outcome!... 

The heart in charge is unable to NOT hold itself to the standard of the outcome, if the outcome is important to human beings.  That's what it does, that's what lives for.  It knows nothing else, except truth.  So it's able to hold in mind two things -  1. if I don't succeed people are going to suffer, die or both;  and 2. I can control nothing except my attempt. 

The excuse that many use for cowardly activism, fake activism, faux activism, 'oh I burned out,' 'oh I'll burn out.'  Uh, okay, if you climb mount Everest and you don't do it properly, you'll die, so therefore, necessarily, is the answer to stay off of mount Everest, or to fake, to lie about climbing it?  No, get good enough, work at it, be ready, able, know how to do it, then climb. 

The most understandable, mistaken, but most understandable reason for burnout is the lack of understanding of what was just spoken here – ‘full effort is full success.’  If in any pursuit, but certainly in the true, potent activism, if one holds one's self to the standard of 'achievement,' they will burnout.  It's impossible to take the risks, to pioneer the new ground, to be the new change in the world, all of which constitute huge risks, while at the same time holding oneself ultimately accountable for successful outcome, as opposed to full effort.  It's guaranteed burnout.  It's guaranteed reckless self-destruction.

But just holding oneself to one's full effort is too nebulous right?  It will not generate the internal energy needed, right?  Incorrect.
 
Holding oneself to outcomes is the thing of the part of our nervous system we can best understand as head, an infinitely weaker set of circuitry, particularly in terms of motivation, than the heart.  The mother is on a country road with her child, the car flips, the child is under the car, there's no one to help.  The mother's going to try and get that car off her child;  because she held herself to the standard of achievement?  Because she held herself to the standard of the heart, full effort.  The head would've said - you can't do it.  Don't even bother.  Survive for your other kids.   The heart says, 'try and I'll try and give you some extra strength.' 

Among my favorite quotes is a Buddhist quote - 'Live as though the entire universe depends upon what you do, and realize that what you do probably will make no difference at all.'  A version from the so-called Christian church says, no actually, I understand more recently it is a quote from Teresa of Calcutta, one of our sheroes,  'We are called to be faithful, we are not called to be successful.'  

If you don't hold yourself in front of at least an imagined creator of us all, for the ultimate compass to conscience and heart that that provides, you probably will never be a particularly useful activist. 'Oh,' you may say, 'I don't believe that such a being as the Creator exists.'  Well, I don't believe that math exists in nature, but I use both the Creator, and Math as though they did, as though they were total reality, to the benefit of everything I attempt, most importantly, I imagine and live as though there were Creator of us all, for the power and direction of moral imagination that unleshes. 

There's no way that equates to that, to focusing our moral imagination, and all our other higher powers, to find where we should serve how, than the proper notion of The Creator, Our Father, the Almighty Power. It's the ultimate compass for harnessing the heart.   Teresa of Calcutta said, 'we are called to be faithful, we are not called to be successful.' Now, she lived as though her results mattered, as few people ever have.  The heart is ultimately, profoundly committed to the results, but it holds itself to the standard of – ‘full effort,’ knowing that all else is a snare and a delusion. 

The toughest, most relentless, live in taskmaster, available to the human being, the heart and ‘full effort is full success.’ Nothing less that I know of can tap into one's own heart, or the all-important hearts of others so well. 



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