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Adam Bryce Stern wrote: ↑February 17th, 2024, 2:21 am
Hi Scott, I came across one of your posts about how "happiness leads to external success". I'd love to hear your opinion on things you consider internal success as well. I do believe money, fame and the rest of it classifies as external. And self fulfilment seems like the only internal success, I can think of.
Hi,
Adam Bryce Stern,
Thank you for your question!
As I use the terms, internal success (or "true success") is unavoidable. It's a nearly tautological truth, one that would probably seem meaningless and fully tautological to a reasonable philosophical zombie (i.e. a human lacking true consciousness, a.k.a. a human without a spirit). In other words, failure is an illusion, and by extension spiritual slavery is always a type of or symptom of some kind of illusion or dishonesty especially in the sense of dishonest self-delusion. Granted, as my book explains in detail, illusions can be self-fulfilling and thus be granted a sort of indirect relative reality. Imaginary roadblocks are just as effective as real ones, and fictional nightmares torment you just the same despite their fictionality and the fact that you actually control them.
As I typically use the terms, the phrase "external success" is a phrase I use mainly to refer to superficial things that are commonly associated with success, or commonly seen as symptoms of success, or things that your present self would tend to think your future self (or kids or great grandkids) would see as a welcomed gift. Those are things like money, wealth, good reputation, good looks, a nice house with a working toilet, and a comfortable bed. Incidentally, most humans throughout most of history did not have a working toilet, so if such things and creature comforts were actually what defined true success (they aren't) then the line between successful people and unsuccesful people would be most correlated with a point in the timeline of human history, such as the invention of the toilet and indoor plumbing.
Another probably much clearer way to look at it is in terms of what
my book calls "The Two Yous".
"Internal Success" is about what
my book calls
the real you, and roughly speaking about what the real you 'wants', or really the lack of wanting by it, and more importantly (as
my book explains in detail) about how that transcends desire and temptation and entails an infinite source of infinite unwavering spiritual fulfillment and free-spirited inner peace (a.k.a. true happiness), all achievable without any effort at all, costing zero dollars to achieve and takings zero seconds to achieve. It's so infinitely easy to achieve, that even calling it an achievement or calling it easy is a bit of misnomer. Calling it easy is like saying a bald man's hair is short.
In contrast, "external success" is about the body and ego, and what the body and ego want, such as bodily comfort, sensual pleasure, and things like money, drugs, social attention, sex, and beer, or whatever any given body craves. There is nothing wrong with those things, but they won't give you true happiness. Happiness leads to you having more of those things, not vice versa. That's for many reasons but a big one is that, when you are spiritually fulfilled and truly happy, you don't chase those kinds of things away with desperate miserable clinginess and a miserable impoverishing scarcity mindset, but rather attract them with your happiness, confidence, gracefulness, and happily appreciative abundance mindset.
Here are two key quotes from
my book:
when-it-comes-to-your-choices-there-is-no-try.jpg (63.28 KiB) Viewed 81273 times
Failure is an illusion. Internal Success (a.k.a. true success) is unavoidable. Everyone and everything is a success. You are always successful, because, when it comes to your choices, you always successfully get exactly what you choose. you-always-get-exactly-what-you-want.png (1.02 MiB) Viewed 81273 times
With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott
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In addition to having authored his book, In It Together, Eckhart Aurelius Hughes (a.k.a. Scott) runs a mentoring program, with a free option, that guarantees success. Success is guaranteed for anyone who follows the program.
My entire political philosophy summed up in one tweet.
"The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master."
I believe spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline) manifests as bravery, confidence, grace, honesty, love, and inner peace.
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