I just hung up with my friend… we talk every Sunday morning, and have been for seven years now.
He is one of my failure stories.
I have some of those. I have many quitter stories, I have even more testimonials, which are the stories of “flash in the pan” successes, and a few genuine success stories.
My results are not much better than others; the only difference, probably, is that I have a few genuine success stories of lasting alteration of being… lasting alteration of consciousness.
Most teachers encourage sharing of successes. ALL those successes are temporary, all those successes are “flash in the pan” successes… because the work that produces the success has stopped.
The definition of success, in a work of transformation, is PERMANENT alteration of the view of self, the view of the world, or consciousness. Alteration of personal reality.