Personal development is a fine art. It is a system of meditation or rather thinking, that once the individual adopts certain mind-sets, certain attitudes, one can achieve results along the line of a secular ambition. And, to my own thinking, NOT teaching individuals not just how to think, but what to think in respect of a process of personal development is a tragedy.

Most people tend to go through life merely reacting to circumstance, situation and condition, where the experience has or obtains dominance over the individual, and the individual must live in fits and starts with minimum returns on the effort. Since we must think and act towards the betterment of our own survival, certain strategies uncovered in the self-development group are beneficial both to the individual and society at large. People engaged in and acquiring the aim of their pursuits, make for a much happier place.

However, where I part from all of this, is that much of the time, most people who buy into self improvement, are doing so to further an addiction of ego. The need to be admired, acquire prestige, appear attractive to others, and have more and more of what is deemed pleasurable in a place where impermanence is the Law.

Imagine if you will a crack addict, who is able to acquire hundreds of thousands of dollars so that he can have more of such a lifestyle.

Now, am I saying that an individual can't pursue their own direction in life that somehow it has to meet my criterion before it is valid? Of course not, I am saying however, that proof of the existence of Laws, is proof of standards of engagement and standards of what is acceptable. Right or wrong philosophically, Laws are often a standard, or set of standards established for the benefit of all. That at least is the ideal.

But rather than use the crack addict analogy, let's consider that for most, all they are doing is buying their next dream of a better life. Most self-development groups understand that for an individual to improve their life, and their life experience, the individual doesn't need to change the circumstance or the world; they need to change themselves in their approaches to change itself. This is great on the face of it, yet not one of the self-development gurus is realized enough, or awake enough to do anything more than achieve their success by being hucksters of positive thinking.

Are there steps to take to achieve success?

Absolutely, the self-development gurus are proof, but if an individual really wants and desires success enough to know what to do.....they need to do exactly what the guru does...find something to sell, learn to sell it and develop a market to sell through. The high sounding platitudes of these particular groups rests on the hype that you too can be rich, you too can achieve success, and first of all puts the listener in the position of NOT having it, or in comparison, what they have isn't as good as it should be. It subsumes and sublimates the individuals position into not having any power over their own engagement of life. That one.

Two, aside from revealing sound business approaches, which are fairly common, the whole of it is salted with a re-work of having a positive mental attitude. Important yes, to have a positive attitude, but much of the positive visualization groups like the Secret or Law of Attraction, it tends towards a zero sum game because you have not told the individual that they need to find something to sell, and learn how to sell it. Period.

It tends to be little more than a cultural phenomenon much like rap music.

Rich people are just as miserable as the rest of us until they are talking about themselves, (and likely getting paid to do it), and then who isn't positive about how and what they do when an audience is eating it up? I'll risk all of this sounding dreadfully cynical, but as a Living Teacher, I have had to come to the aid of people, who in the middle of real life and it's real situations, rich or broke, who because of a death of a child or parent, could not cope without me breaking them in their pain, of their sad soulless existence, and awakening them to the real.

People such as these are my most ardent supporters, and no, the rich don't go out and give up their wealth, nor do the broke suddenly become wealthy in terms of money, but now both are living at the source point of life, from which all riches are obtained.

What the self-improvement gurus often forget also, is that success is not just about what they have been conditioned to see it as, and more importantly, you can motivate people to buy, but you cannot train people how to want it bad enough to do it. Not that merely wanting is enough to produce, but if the real drive to succeed in life doesn't come from somewhere deep inside the individual...they can never, WILL never achieve it, what ever it is to their individual consideration.

Once an individual becomes Awake, the perception is cleared of a craving for anything in success that isn't their own. And oftentimes, those who are awake, come to find levels of success in little things going on in their lives that they had been all but blind to. Once they taste of this "real" success, it often build on itself to further success undreamt in common hours.

Blessings,

Garwin