“Success,” according to Merriam-Webster’s dictionary, is “the fact of getting or achieving wealth, respect, or fame.” This description is not far off from society’s overall accepted definition today, where unfortunately, unless you are obtaining and accumulating a fair amount of material wealth and possessions, you are considered unsuccessful in society’s eyes.

Where does this definition come from? Is it corporate driven? After all, it’s what we see on our television screen all day long. Clever marketing defines success, influencing our thoughts, wants, needs, and actions, encouraging mass consumption and the accumulation of material possessions and wealth.

Does it really matter what we do for a living? What type of ‘things’ we have or where we live? Or is a homeless person with no material possessions with a giant, loving, caring heart more ‘successful’ than someone who has all of that other stuff? What do you see as successful?

Or is success determined by the individual rather than the collective? Could it be, perhaps, that those who give their power over to this definition of success are the only ones affected by it? What about those who neither care nor pay attention to this version of success? What about those who have freed themselves from the mental prisons of societal definitions?

By Frank M. Wanderer Ph.D.
Guest Writer for Wake Up World

We live in the age of Awakening. More and more people are concerned about this: Who or what am I? Am I just the sum of my personal life story, memories, experiences, thoughts and sufferings? Or is there in me a hidden dimension of a mysterious consciousness, which is superimposed by the noise of my personal life stories?

The spiritual awakening refers to a person’s ability “to clearly see that what I perceive, experience, think or feel, is after all not the same as what I am.” As soon as a person recognizes who he or she is not, immediately comes the recognition of who he or she actually is: “The light of consciousness, in which perceptions, experiences, thoughts and emotions come and go. This consciousness in the background, is the deeper, real self.”

The Presence thus created (conscious alertness) brings about the sense of tranquility and internal peace. The sustained conscious attention launches the spiritual process of transubstantiation that leads the individual to conscious alertness, new perspective and new ways of observing. This process, by transforming the consciousness of the person, changes the entire personality of the individual.

While I have never had a true near death or out of body experience, one memory that I have preserved was of a time I fainted while visiting Copenhagen in college.  One moment I was awake and watching a movie in a smoke filled hall, and the next thing I “knew” I was looking up at a friend administering smelling salts and asking me if I was ok.

The amazing thing that I remember was in the interim – I was somewhere and many places, some seemed to be ethereal and others were other worlds – and then somewhere inside me a voice remembered my parents and said it was time to go back.

But how to get there?  This is where it got interesting – I distinctly remember that my mind realized that it needed to connect to a set of “facts” – like the memory of my parents, where I lived, where I was going to college, and several other known details, and when they were all back in my memory bank, like tumblers of a lock, it all clicked and I “remembered who I was” and woke up – my eyes opened.  I was “Tom.”

And I was “back.”  I decided that I would never forget that experience because while I was “there,” these other worlds weren’t just dreams, they were “real.”

Since then I have spent a lot of time reflecting upon “who” I am.  In my 66 years I have played numerous roles, many of them job-related and others of course as a son, mate, friend, and so on.