Success and Education

Could it be that the more "successful" you are, the crazier you are? Could it be that the children of the driven and well-off parents are unhappier than the children of the poorer, yet more relaxed parents? Could it be true what the Bible says, that "the last ones will be first and the first will be last?"

Su Zhen grew up in an Asian school system, determined to crank out driven students. Students were bombarded with daily tests. Learning was fact based, so if you wanted to succeed in this system, you had to give up pretty much all extracurricular activities and devoted all your energy to your study and tests instead. Schools didn’t encourage personal exploration, no "life skill" learning and no personal relationship or emotional management were ever taught. So you learn how to succeed in such a system, you become one- dimensional in your approach and start neglecting your true passions. At the time of her college entry exam she found herself totally crippled, mentally and physically. All the energy was spent and the fire and zest for life was gone at that stage of her life.

China, like other developing countries, is poorer than the West, so people and students are driven to move out of poverty by getting a good education. In the US, the intellectual race may be a little bit more subtle, but it is pretty much the same. The "successful" people have figured out that if their children can become successful as they are, they have to become multi-dimensional, they have to stimulate the right brain as well as the left brain, they have to be artist as much as scientist. In short, they have to be all-around talents just as Harvard University wants them to be. So all week parents hover over their children and scurry them from math to music, from soccer to theater class. And when they are in their teens, they better get started on writing a book, or launching some cultural classes because that is what the leaders at Harvard expect these days.

All pressure, whether it is desperately cramming information into your head or by practicing all day and night how to become a well-groomed all-around talent who has a shot at making it into the Ivy-League implies that you are at risk of deviating from your true potential. You are a Daughter of God, all you have to do is to know that you are. Life makes you the master you are born to be. You can relax, everything you will ever need to discover who you truly are you already have in hand. That is, it is true if you believe that it is.Tell your Tiger mom that the Tao already takes good care of you and as long as she truly loves you, life is perfect already. Let's leave the pressure cooker for lentils, the children of God need none.

Su Zhen went back to visit her family the other day and was reminded that all her siblings had mastered life without an Ivy-league education. It was life, the demands of making a living, that taught them the necessary skills how to succeed in real life. It took them a while to get there, but each and everyone has now mastered their professions. Life takes good care of you if you let it, life cooperates if you always put your best foot forward. The Tao will make you the person you were born to be.

So where does this leave us? All parents want the best for their children. All educators want to make their students succeed. Harvard will always have a vision for success and people will always scheme to get their children - out of millions of other applicants - admitted. The art of life is to understand that there is only one thing your child truly needs and that is your love and your attention. Success is doing everything with enthusiasm, success is about igniting that fire inside, success is to find out for yourself that there is only one true emotion inside of you and that is love. The Tao will teach you how to be successful. Open up to life moment by moment and you will be a master at whatever it is that your heart desires. Yes, you will be first like all your other soul siblings. Before God everyone is special.

By Christian and Su Zhen

Love Trumps Ego

We all have areas in our lives that are ego driven and we have all protected islands of love. Often it is hard for us to separate the two. We have certain feelings for people and circumstances, have to do things out of necessity like earning money or raising our kids. The mom who loves her children and wants their best when she encourages them to excel at school, the spiritual aspirant who not only aspires to find God, but also wants to be a spiritual bestseller. Or the already attractive girl who aspires to make it in show business and who uses plastic surgery to boost her chances of success.

For most of us the question, so what exactly is ego and what is love, never really arises; we just do what we do because it feels right. It is hard work to bring all the stuff to the surface and you have to be incredibly honest with yourself and persistent if you like to succeed. Why should you, I would ask as well. So what, you want to be a hot shot at work or in society, want to have the hottest body in town, or want to extend your own ego by sending your kid to Harvard. God bless you if you know what you really want; just go after it with everything you got. Even if you are a spiritual aspirant, living out your true desires can be better for your soul development than repressing them in the name of spirituality.

The point is you do not need to worry, life stands ready to show you who you truly are independent of what you do. Life heals and love trumps the ego over the long run all the time. You may have heard of the story of the tiger mom who pushed her children to the limit to make them the best they can academically be only to find one day that she had to ease up because her children were revolting. Yup, that is the wake-up call you receive, go any further with your 'good intentions' and your child will take psychological harm. The child has signed up for this job on a soul level to teach her mother a lesson to choose love over Harvard. Or take the spiritual traveler who wants to make a career out of his calling. He may one day find that the publishing business is as cut-throat as any other and may have a choice at hand between his honest thirst to discover God and his drive to make a name for himself in the spiritual community. Every person he will meet along his journey will make this choice obvious to him. In the case of the girl who wants to be a famous singer, a model or a movie star to express herself, it may well be that her body revolts, abused by the latest plastic surgery, which makes her realize that there is a choice between her success and the love of her own body.

The constraints that you will encounter in your endeavors to find a place for yourself in business, society and relationship will define you. There is no right or wrong. For every Tiger Woods there is a Nelson Mandela. Both are special in their own way. Do you want to have fame or a purposeful job? Only you can know what is right for you. The good thing though, you cannot make a mistake whenever soul development is your ultimate goal. No matter what you do, no matter what direction you take, there will always be a soul sibling showing up just in the nick of time, encouraging you to choose love over ego. You can miss love once, perhaps even twice, but eventually everyone gets it that there is no alternative to love. Life heals, all you have to do is to embrace it and choose love wherever you go and you will be Home before you know it.