Failure 

Our conditioning so far as setting goals where our external life in the world is concerned, can be described as an outcome-oriented approach. We set tasks to achieve outcomes and then measure our success or failure against the degree to which the outcome we have set, has been achieved or not. This generally works well to serve the external life projects and goals and to meet the demands of the various outer life roles, responsibilities and occupations.  Where our spiritual life is concerned, however, this approach to setting tasks with the view of achieving an outcome, is bound to end in a sense of failure.

The purpose of formulating a task in Logopraxis work is not to achieve some predetermined outcome but is instead to work with it as a means to enable us to bring a specific focus to our inner life. So, task setting in Logopraxis is not concerned with achieving the task but is about setting up conditions that remind us to observe a truth or spiritual principle. The formulation of a Logopraxis task and the effort to implement it in life, creates conditions that allow us to focus our attention on something higher. Tasks bring a focus to our work that creates new conditions in which something related to the spiritual life (i.e. the life of our mind) can be seen.

The purpose of the task then is observation; it enables us to see what we are given to see in the effort to work with it.

This is such an important point that is often missed. Logopraxis is not a practice that is outcome-orientated but is instead process-orientated. It is a practice that is founded on the acknowledgement that the Lord is continuously revealing Himself to us through the Sacred Texts of Divine Revelation, through the Word. This is a process of a continual unfolding of our understanding of what the Word as the Lord is and what opposes our ability to see it and have a relationship with it.

Therefore, our work is to allow the truths from the Word to show us what it is what we need to see and to leave all outcomes to the Lord.

Why?

Because any outcome we set for ourselves will be based on a complex set of preconceptions tied into the needs, wants, and expectations of the hellish proprium and its sense of what it is the Lord wants for our life. The problem here is obvious; what the hellish proprium wants for our life is diametrically opposed to what the Lord wants for our life.

Let’s take a simple example to illustrate this. The following is a common form of a task that many of us have used.

For this session I’m going to be more loving/charitable to those around me (or maybe even towards a particular person).

Anyone who has attempted to practce a task of this kind will know that it is impossible to achieve. What happens is that we end up seeing just how far short we fall from whatever ideal we hold, so far as what it means for us to be ‘more loving’ towards others. If the goal of the task is to be more loving, then we will certainly fail. Our response to this might be that we just need to try even harder. But when we try even harder, we only end up feeling an even greater sense of failure.

Why?

Because we can’t make ourselves more loving no matter how hard we try.

In Logopraxis work it is our failure to be more loving or to measure up to the expectations we set for ourselves in this regard, that gives us the material we need to see. It is being willing to see what’s offered in the light of the task, whatever that might be, which then turns our work with the task into a “success”. The gift of this seeing is that we come to see what the hellish proprium is on one hand and the operation of the mercy of the Lord on the other. It was never about being more loving; it is always about seeing whatever our effort to practice the task brings to the forefront of our awareness. To see, to really see, the hellish proprium for what it truly is, means that the Word is working to free us from our identification with the hell that it is.

This is why in Logopraxis work, success can be said to be measured in failure.

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STEP 3: SETTING A TASK (PART 2)- FROM THE LOGOPRACTIONERS’ HANDBOOK

STEP 4: PUT YOUR TASK INTO PRATICE AND LIVE IT – FROM THE LOGOPRACTIONERS’ HANDBOOK