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Fame and material richness are really shadows of true richness, the unlimited “inner” treasure that is discovered when one sheds their destructive ambitions and superficial desires. To desire fame is to be empty inside, it is to measure your worth by the level of praise and approval that you receive/don't receive from other people, who are themselves empty and obsessed with what other people think of them. It is like any other addiction, it fills the empty void inside oneself with a quick burning combustible fuel, which turns into a destructive fire that grows at an increasing rate, and requires more and more fuel to burn in order to keep filling the void with a false inner warmth. If one depends on fame and material richness to feel satisfied with their life, then they become slaves of falsehood. Without their fame and material richness, they are empty dead shells masquerading as human beings. Fame and material richness are not destructive only when they are not sought out or used as a measuring stick for self-worth, but it is an extremely rare person that is not warped by the seductiveness of the apparent power that these things bring.
What is success? The current human civilization defines success as the acquisition of power, money, fame, and material riches. If one does not have these things, then they are considered a failure. We are taught that ambition is healthy, and that we must compete with everyone and everything in our environment in order to be “successful”. This attitude breeds conflict, because everyone is competing for the same thing, and therefore there must be “winners” and “losers” in an all encompassing power struggle, which breeds anger, greed, envy, hate, and destruction. If we think of ourselves as separate beings living in a mechanistic construct of a universe, in which we use our bodies as vehicles to explore a world of separate people and objects, then the inevitable result is conflict. If “you” are a mind trapped in bag of skin, flesh, and bones, and view the “outside world” of people and objects as “not you”, then life is a game of survival of the fittest, and you must succeed at any cost. On the other hand, if “you” are the entire universe experiencing itself through a centralized point that is interconnected with a unified organic field of existence/non-existence, then you view yourself as one with the entire universe, you are the universe. This attitude breeds understanding, compassion, cooperation, and love.
Success and failure are not dynamic opposites, they are poles of the same creative force: Learning. If one understands the truth of this, then they can learn from anything, a tree dancing in the wind, the smile of bus driver, a dead mouse, the cruelty of selfish people, the smell of the ocean, anything. To truly learn, one has to love without borders or limits. I don't mean sentimental or possessive love, but the love for all that is, the kind of love that we can know only if we do not give importance to the “individual” self, the kind of love that we discover when we see ourselves as our whole environment, the whole world, the whole universe. It is a love free of judgment and the desire to control. Success is perpetual learning, and doing whatever it is you do because you love to do it, not because it gives you money, power, or fame. The entire universe is our teacher, and the only real failure is the failure to understand this. When we understand this, then the distinction between success and failure disappears. The true meaning of integrity is wholeness, thus integrity is the most important of all.
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