We have been raised in a world where everything about our education is measured by the ideas of success and failure. It is true that in this world we must learn what it means to achieve. We must learn what it means to be good householders, to be able to provide for ourselves the simple, necessary things in life.

Real, lasting, higher achievement is all about revelation. Presently we want to achieve because we want to control, thinking that the more we can achieve, the more control we will have. But the very fact that we seek power and control through things outside of ourselves means that we are out of control and powerless. Revelation is the highest achievement because through it we realize that there is no longer any need to seek achievement for the purpose of discovering who we are.

As we presently experience it, our worldly achievements are separated into the thing that we achieve and the self that achieves. Whereas within this higher order of achievement, the revelation is us; that is what we are. Gradually we can begin to see that far better than the anxious pursuit of this or that is the understanding of the part of ourselves that believes that it can somehow be defined by something in time. Who we really are cannot be qualified by anything that we can acquire in time.

The real reason that we do spiritual exercises is not to achieve something. We have spiritual practices so that we can take part in this process of revelation. That in itself is success and achievement of the highest order. Revelation is unceasing because there is never a moment in which we are not being touched by an impression. There is always something higher that is being revealed to us in each and every moment, and the one in whom this revelation is taking place is not apart from the revelation. They are one thing.