Failure

The feeling of failure could arise because of comparison with others; competitiveness; or because of ones high aim missing its mark. Failure is the alternative to success. So the failure might be ‘because’. See: falling; or the Because Factor described in processing dreams.

 Example: ‘I was in a race riding a horse but couldn’t get to the starting gate in time. The others were way ahead of me jumping the fences. I couldn’t catch up, and one fence I came to grew to a huge height and was like a steel barrier. I couldn’t get over it and felt a failure.’ Ron S.

Ron had not done well at school; had not taken any particular training; no steady relationship or children. In his late twenties Ron looked at his friends with steady job, married with family, and felt a failure. From the dream he realised he was viewing life as a competitive race to succeed. This was stopping him from following his real interest, psychotherapy, which his family viewed as playing games. He could ride his horse into the fields and explore. He did, by going to America, training, raising a family.

Example: Dreamt I was driving to work in my car. Just as I was opposite our house a lorry – bread – hurtled out past a parked car, didn’t seem to see me, and smashed straight over me. I was left standing by the roadside, the car smashed away from me to about the size of a bike. My right leg was slightly encased in the smashed car. I thought I had lost my leg, but it was not smashed off, only bloody and perhaps broken.  I remained standing by the road and shouted for my wife to call the ambulance. I thought I would have to be in hospital for some time and quite liked the idea, and decided to meditate while there. I seemed to have an inner realisation about the crash. I knew that my karma had led me to death at that moment, but because of the work I had done at ashram over the past eight months, this had been escaped.  Now I asked my wife to phone my emplore and tell him I would not be going to work that day.

The man who dreamt this explore it and came to this view of  his dream. Going to work is the steady, persevering work on myself – the daily facing of difficulties and patiently pressing on.

The car is, because it keeps going wrong, my sense of failure (when I dreamt this the car was in the garage for repair). It is all the past things that have driven me, or carried me along out of a sense of failure.

The bread van was a connection with work. It was the great power which had been released by the persistent facing of myself, and which now smashed away the failure drives. This left me standing on my own feet, but outwardly insecure. The injured leg was the causes of the failure drives being revealed – my psychological inability to stand strongly on my own feet – my lack of confidence.

Going to hospital meant that in the healing of these causes or root problems, much more inner peace, or chance to enter deeply into self would arise. I would have died as a person, not being able to progress beyond this point, this problem, if it hadn’t been for the many things learned in giving myself to others and teaching LifeStream. If I had not followed the inner drive to start activities at Ashram, during which I learned to open up the whole inner mess of my life. I might not in this life have gained, developed or being given the necessary qualities  and tools to melt and pass beyond the problem. Not going to work is not having to work any longer in that way. It was now my choice.

Example: As I looked at my present situation, as I was wondering how to come to terms with being a second-class sort of person in a second-class life situation. I started thinking about all the potential and mental possibilities I have touched in the past. How could it be that I had come through so many things, grown beyond myself in so many ways, and yet at the moment I am locked in this apparent decay and decline? Has all the past been an illusion? Have I declined so much that all the power and wonder of my previous life is now lost to me?

I realised I had got into a negative feedback loop. I tried to find the way out of the loop. The only way out I could find was the realisation that the loop has no end. There is only one thing to do – stop it playing. Grab it and stop the crazy record. To help with this, to help grab the thing and kill it, I obviously would have to realise it as untrue. If I still believe the loop to be playing a truth, then I only strengthen the action. So for its cessation I need to realise that my sense of self is a constantly moving fragile thing that has no stable reality. I am not ANY ONE THING – so how can I be a failure, or a success, or great, or of no account, or any thought or feeling? No one thought or feeling can represent my reality. No feeling, or sense of myself, is anything more than a sense, a feeling, it is not ME. So how could this feeling represent some sort of permanent personal reality?

Useful questions and hints:

What do I feel I have failed at – compared with whom?

Who has told me in the past that I have not performed well enough?

In what way is failure shown in the dream, and can I recognise that in feelings?

See Associations Working With – Exploring Dreams Techniques to use – Life’s Little Secrets – Martial Art of the Mind