Competition Conundrum!
Right off the bat, when we look at competition we can see that it is a game of scarcity. There can only be one winner. Any time you see scarcity operating in the world you know that it derives from the mental energy field. The mental energy field is the part of us that is very earth-bound. It’s focused on strategizing and keeping us safe, and keeping us alive, and it views the world as being very limited in resources. If I want resources I probably am going to have to compete with somebody else to get them. I have to prove that I’m better than them to get the resources I want.
You can see, inside the mental energy field competition is just a way of life. The problem with this mindset is that, not only does it leave a lot of people without the resources they needs; but even people who are good competitors don’t derive peace of mind or security from this system. We can see this in operation, for example, with college students who are in prestigious universities. They are good competitors. But you hear stories of these same college students taking drugs in order to study harder. If you ask them about it, they’ll often say, “I have to to compete. Everyone else is doing it.”
Getting good grades and performing well is so important that it is more important than their physical, mental, or emotional well-being. You also hear stories of kids who are facing failing a class, or even just not making the best grades, hurting themselves and even sometimes committing suicide. There is a level of anxiety that comes even with being a good competitor that tells you something’s inherently not stable about this system. Even if you are the top competitor, inside of your rise to the top is the reality of decline. Eventually somebody will be better than you, and you know that.
The Alternative to Competing with Others
If we want to choose a different system, one that results in security and abundance and true expansion we have to change our focus from competing with other people and move it into competing against ourselves. Actually, when you look at world-class athletes who are consistently performing on that level they will often share that they don’t think of themselves as competing against other people. They do think of themselves as competing within themselves.
I remember at the last Summer Olympics there was a bit of footage I saw of Michael Phelps before he was going to compete in one of the swimming events. He was sitting there beside the pool and one of his competitors was walking up in front of him – dancing and swaggering and maybe spouting off a little trash talk. But Michael Phelps just didn’t seem to see the guy. He was just in his own zone and, as a result, he won that race. When you look at that footage you see the fellow that was his competitor thought that he was competing against Phelps. But Phelps did not seem to think he was competing against this guy. He was competing inside his own zone of excellence. He was competing against himself.
Your Own Zone of Excellence
The truth is all of us have these zones of excellence. When we compete inside of that, with ourselves, we are no longer inside the mental energy field. We are now accessing and channeling the spiritual energy field. Inside the spiritual energy field we have unlimited access to growth and expansion and healing. Which means every day we can get stronger, we can get better, we can get more and more expansive.
Another thing that occurs to me is something that I read awhile back, a concept that derives from the Jewish system of Kabbalah. It is the idea of the Chaya. In this system the belief is that there are all these Chayas, the souls that preexist our human experience. They’re all in this spiritual realm, and they’re looking at the world. They’re looking at all the work that needs to be done, all of the gifts that have to be brought into the world. And they choose the life they want to life. So the Chaya will incarnate in human form, and then it does the work it’s supposed to do.
Put the Chaya in Charge!
Each of us is brought into the world with a particular purpose, a particular work in mind. That work is clearly understood from the perspective of the spiritual energy field. When we tune into our zone of excellence, we are agreeing and manifesting the work we are supposed to do.
This suggests that not only can we expand forever in that work, but also the work that we are doing is not the work that anyone else is doing. It doesn’t make any sense for us to compare ourselves to other people because we’re not doing the same work. Our work is entirely unique to ourselves. We are our only real point of reference when it comes to living inside our zone of excellence.
The Gift You Bring
The gift that you bring to the world is one that only you can bring, that your Chaya agreed to bring upon your birth. If you do not live in your zone of excellence the world will be impoverished because of that. If you do choose to live in your zone of excellence, every day getting stronger, focusing on your work, then the world will be incredibly blessed and expanded because of that.
It really does come to where we want to set our intention, and where we decide it makes sense to focus our energy – competing with others or competing inside our own zone of excellence.