Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Surabhi Rani]

Thank you, Sir! I hope to get back to you in the future.

[Sidney George 1]

"Given your expertise and experience, what advice would you give to aspiring authors who are just starting their writing journey?"

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

If you haven't already, you can sign up to be personally mentored by Scott "Eckhart Aurelius" Hughes at this link.

"Given your expertise and experience, what advice would you give to aspiring authors who are just starting their writing journey?"

Hi, Sidney George 1,

Thank you for your question!

The first advice I would give anyone aspiring to anything is to read my book, In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All, twice.

The reason for reading it twice is explained here.

The reason for reading it first for any goal or aspiration is that the advice in that book is the foundation of all other more superficial or specific advice given to specific people for specific things. You cannot build the basement or foundation of a house after you have already built the house. The details of the house such as the paint color and layout can be more unique for each person but the foundation is roughly the same for everyone. There's unlimited diversity of form but yet a single shared spiritual essence and single common human struggle uniting us all beneath the diverse forms and different outfits and figurative clothing we wear at different points in spacetime.

If you start with an incorrect foundation (i.e. without already following all the suggestions and advice in my book In It Together), then you will end up having to later bulldoze down the proverbial house you build using any other additional advice and suggestions I give you to then start over by putting in a correct foundation. I'm not really helping you if I help you build a house on incorrect foundation; then I'm only helping you waste your time.

In practice, what that means is that, if I start giving you personalized advice geared towards your specific career and aspiration before you read my book In It Together and fully apply that advice, you will end up using my extra advice to go down a path that isn't right for you and end up having to re-start, come back with new aspirations, and ask me about those. It will end up being a huge waste of your time, and a little bit of a waste of mine. This is heavily related to what I wrote in my topic, "Typically, the best way to destroy a man is to give him what he thinks he wants".

So I absolutely 100% recommend you read my book In It Together first, and apply all the advice in that book first, making sure that you are strictly following all of the numbered suggestions at the end of the book, before you take any other advice from me about your specific career choice or such. That's because you will make different career choices once you have inner peace and follow the advice of my books. Things that seemed to matter won't matter anymore, and things that didn't seem matter will. Unhappiness drives people down different paths than they would choose to walk from a place of happily inspired free-spirited inner peace (a.k.a. true happiness). In other words, the insatiable figurative hunger that is spiritual unfulfillment motivates people to desperately attempt fulfill themselves in futile ways (i.e. to eat of figurative food that never really fulfills them but actually only makes them hungrier), but those who find the true happiness of invincible inner peace and spiritual fulfillment have transcended that type of motivation and desperate desire and instead act from a place of loving happy free-spirited creativity and happy inspiration which puts them on different paths, career choices, and goals. In a very rough way of speaking, if you are walking down the wrong path (i.e. if you are not already truly happy with invincible free-spirited inner peace that you enjoy day in and day out), then me helping you down the path you are going now won't be helping you but will just be wasting your time and mine.

After you read In It Together and make sure you are already firmly and strictly following all the suggestions in that book (meaning you will have happy invincible inner peace and spiritual freedom and invincible unwavering spiritual fulfillment), I suggest you then read my short guide, 10 Step Plan to Promote Your Book. It's best to read that before you even start writing your book or at least before finishing and publishing your book, because otherwise you will have likely already made some crucial missteps. In other words, some of the steps in the 10 Step Plan involve things that you would need to do before publishing the book. As I often say, 99% of marketing is product development.

From there, what I suggest you do if you haven't written your book yet is this: Sign up as a paid book reviewer at OnlineBookClub, and work your way up to the highest level (Level 6) on the Review Team. That will ensure you have incredible writing ability (better than me even) and will ensure you are an expert literary critic, which are two qualities that you can then use to write your own amazing book and ensure it is of top quality, both in terms of objective grammar and structure but also in terms of style and enjoyablity for the reader. We have an incredible and effective time-tested system at OnlineBookClub for training reviewers to turn them into grammar experts who can write not only correctly but in a ways that are enjoyable to read. And you get paid to do it. It's like getting paid to go to school, or like paid training. Usually, you would need to pay for these things, but we flip it around and pay you. I recommend it to anyone, but if you are interested in writing a book yourself, it's going to be especially helpful to you and will probably be the most helpful part of your journey to that goal.



With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott

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In addition to having authored his book, In It Together, Eckhart Aurelius Hughes (a.k.a. Scott) runs a mentoring program, with a free option, that guarantees success. Success is guaranteed for anyone who follows the program.

[Seetha E]

Can you share a time when you faced a significant obstacle on your path to achieving a goal? How did you overcome it?

I can give you an example of a big goal that I once had (a.k.a. a big obstacle I had to overcome).

By recording daily food intake and making permanent lifestyle changes, we will be able to break down our weight loss goal into manageable steps and achieve our desired results. This approach not only helps you lose weight but also ensures that you maintain your progress in the long run. Thanks for breaking it down.
Making a written note of goals/ obstacles and the steps towards them will help retain focus.

[Christabel nmeso]

It sounds like you're offering a great opportunity for those who've engaged with your work to get personalized advice. That's a generous way to connect with your readers and mentees! I’ll make sure to send in any questions or concerns. Thank you!

[Melvis Okoye]

What do you do when you lose the courage to continue? What do you do when you feel tired of everything? What do you do when lots of your plans fail?

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

Hi, Melvis Okoye,

Thank you for your questions.

However, it looks like your questions are all repeats of questions other people have asked. In the future, please do make sure to read through all of the previous questions and answers before asking a new question to make sure the question and/or answer isn't already there.

What do you do when you lose the courage to continue?

That question was already asked by someone else and already answered by me: "What do you do when you get discouraged on your way to achieving your life goal or dream?"

What do you do when you feel tired of everything?

In addition to the one above about being discouraged, I believe this Q&A answers that question: How do you handle it when life gets in your way?

What do you do when lots of your plans fail?

The following Q&As already answer that question:

How do you deal with anxiety and fear of failure?

Have you experienced a significant failure or faced a situation that seemed irrecoverable? If so, what lessons did you learn from that experience?




With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott

[Chinazo Anozie]

Hi Scott,

My question is regarding your previous tweet quoted below:

"The chasing never ends, so if you chase happiness you'll never be happy, but if you're happy chasing you'll always be happy."

What does happy chasing mean and how can we differentiate it from chasing happiness?

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

If you haven't already, you can sign up to be personally mentored by Scott "Eckhart Aurelius" Hughes at this link.

Hi Scott,

My question is regarding your previous tweet quoted below:

"The chasing never ends, so if you chase happiness you'll never be happy, but if you're happy chasing you'll always be happy."

What does happy chasing mean and how can we differentiate it from chasing happiness?

Hi, Chinazo Anozie,

Great question!

If you are chasing happiness (a.k.a. inner peace), that means you don't already have it. Or, at least, it means that you believe you don't already have happiness (a.k.a. inner peace), which is a belief that is in many ways self-fulfilling. As my book says, an imaginary roadblock is just as effective as a real one, and the torture of a self-created fictional nightmare is real even though both the nightmare and your alleged lack of control over it are both not real.

In contrast, if you are happy chasing, that means you already have happiness (a.k.a inner peace) and whatever you are chasing is something else besides happiness. Presumably, then you are chasing it out of happiness. You are inspired by free-spirited happiness rather than unhappily motivated by an unhappy desire for a happiness you don't already have and/or by spiritual slavery (i.e. a lack of spiritual freedom, meaning a lack of self-discipline), which typically entails a sense and feeling of being a miserable prisoner in your own body addicted to comfort, enslaved by temptation, and trapped in endless futile chasing of petty unfulfilling comfort and futile running from discomfort, pain, and fear, and other aspects of unchangeable truth and reality. The unhappy spiritual slavery feels like trying to fill a deep spiritual hole, emptiness, and hunger within the deepest pits of your soul by eating more and more figurative food (e.g. chasing wealth and comfort) that never makes you feel truly fulfilled and the more you eat of it the hungrier you get. It's like unhappily working endlessly to try to make there be more yin than yang or more yang than yin when such a goal is not only impossible but utterly absurd and nonsensical. It's not just an impossible goal, but an incoherent one. It's not just practically or physically impossible but also mathematically and logically impossible. In other words, it's impossible nonsense even in the most hypothetical of senses. As I wrote in this topic about you will want to read my book at least twice, "The irony of the comfort zone in which so many find themselves trapped is that really it is no more comfortable than these lands of happy freedom you find once you leave the comfort zone. You can't escape discomfort, but you can escape the comfort zone and free yourself of the addiction to comfort itself. You can have freedom, meaning spiritual freedom, meaning happy free-spiritedness.".

To use a proverbial analogy, imagine a dog chasing his own tail unable to catch it. If the dog believes he needs the impossible-to-catch tail to be happy, and is unhappy until he gets it (which he never does) then he will always be unhappy, in a miserable endless unhappy chasing of his own tail. However, if the dog is happy chasing his own tail, then he will be endlessly happy while he endlessly plays the endless game of endlessly chasing his own tail for fun.

In another proverbial analogy, if Sisyphus chooses to have free-spirited inner peace (a.k.a. true happiness), then he will be in an eternal heaven. If he chooses to instead believe the falsehood that he can only be happy or free if he reaches an impossible state of getting his boulder securely to the top of the hill, then he will never be happy and will instead be living in an eternal hell.

These concepts are also very closely related to the following thing that I wrote in the chapter in my book titled, "Suggestion Nine — Let go of future idolization. Embrace the present.", in regard to being in a truly loving relationship with your selves over time (i.e. the differently aged versions of the human you see in the mirror) versus being in a toxically codependent and/or abusive relationship with your selves over time i.e. the differently aged versions of the human you see in the mirror):

"True love is not sacrificing your happiness for another; true love is being happy to sacrifice."


One can even easier see the similarity between the two versions of this point, if we re-phrase the above to the following:

If you sacrifice your happiness out of alleged love, you'll never be happy, but if you are happy sacrificing you will always be happy.



In the lingo of my book, your so-called future self (i.e. older versions of the human you see in the mirror) are as much of an other (i.e. an other you) as a neighbor across the street or a child, a sister, a brother, a mother, a father, a literal romantic lover sharing a bed for the night, a human opponent across a literal chessboard, or a so-called enemy across the battlefield in a literal violent war between humans. As my book explains in detail, since the difference between space and time is an illusion emerging from subjective perspective (much like the difference between left and right versus up and down or forward and back), so to is any seeming fundamental difference between the seeming otherness of others across space (e.g. siblings and neighbors across the street) versus the seeming otherness of others across time (e.g. older and younger versions of the human you see in the mirror, who share the same name and very similar but not exactly the same appearance). In other words, for example, your older self is no more or less you or not you than your sibling is, or a human across the Earth with a different skin color, gender, and religion.

By all means, love these people. But, realize, most people use pseudo-love of some of these people as a way to create scapegoats and rationalize their own self-chosen misery and self-chosen lack of free-spirited inner peace (a.k.a. self-discipline and true happiness). This is discussed in detail in the book, especially in the section titled "(Type 2) Temporal Enabling or Codependency (Abusive or Toxic Pseudo-Love)".

For even more on that concept, I suggest also reading the following forum topic of mine:

Whether you are looking for a savior or someone to save, or both, look into a mirror.


The choice between free-spirited inner peace (a.k.a. true happiness) versus miserable spiritual slavery is something each person (i.e. each version of us scattered throughout timeless eternal 4D spacetime) must choose for themself in their own unique spatiotemporal present (i.e their own unique here-and-now). Granted, that last sentence is one that can likely only be understood and appreciated to the extent one fully understands the meaning of a self or the self, especially in the sense of the true self. Your so-called future self (i.e. the older version of the human you see in the mirror) is no more or less another you than any other human across space. Love both, but never sacrifice your happiness for either. You don't choose whether your children or parents or so-called future self will be happy and free-spirited (a.k.a. self-disciplined). They choose for themselves in their unique present. You choose whether you will be happy and free-spirited in your present at the time you make that choice. You don't choose your parents' choices, your kids' choices, your neighbors' choices, or your so-called future self's choices. You choose only your choices, in your unique spatiotemporal present, namely in regard to the very specifically aged human you see in the mirror exactly right here and right now and not anywhere or anywhen else.

Respect their freedom, and respect your own. Ironically, it's then that you may most grasp and see your fundamental and logically undeniably unity and identity with them, meaning the fundamentally singularly of all selves, from man to woman, from old to young, from human to dog, from mammal to tree, from tiny atom with swirling electron clouds to vast galaxies with swirling stardust and dark matter. It's not as ironic and counter-intuitive as it might seem: Instead, it's simply that when you start practicing radical acceptance, you see things as they really are and stop seeing the illusionary differences and made-up divisions. And what is freedom-respecting if not just another word for acceptance?

When you respect your own freedom, you accept yourself.

When you respect others' freedom, not just other humans, but also lions, ants, trees, galaxies, and even radioactive atoms seemingly choosing for themselves whether or not to decay, you accept them.

Then, when you do both, you've accepted everything. You've accepted everything with an acceptance so full and unconditional it warrants the word love. You just love everything, wholeheartedly with awe and infinite gratitude and a deep sense and appreciation of your own spiritual freedom. And what is all that if not true happiness, nirvana, and grace? Those are three words for what I see as one thing, and it is a thing I most like to call free-spirited inner peace.

By all means, play the game of being a bee chasing honey, a lion chasing an antelope, an antelope running for its life, a human doing human things, or a galaxy doing galaxy things, or a tree doing tree things, or a flower reaching for the sun, or an atom deciding whether to decay. Chase things. Just don't chase happiness or spiritual freedom, because you already have that, at least to the degree you are honest with yourself and accept unchangeable reality, including the reality of your own freedom and others' and thereby accept you, them, and the identity of your true selves which really need to be put in the singular to be accurate: your shared singular true self.

In short, chase things other than happiness and be happy while you endlessly chase those things, in this beautiful eternal timeless perfect reality in which we find ourself scattered.



With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott

"Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy."
- Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
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In addition to having authored his book, In It Together, Eckhart Aurelius Hughes (a.k.a. Scott) runs a mentoring program, with a free option, that guarantees success. Success is guaranteed for anyone who follows the program.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

If you haven't already, you can sign up to be personally mentored by Scott "Eckhart Aurelius" Hughes at this link.

The question was actually asked to me in the comments section on this Instagram post about escaping the comfort zone, but I am also posting my answer here so that all my mentees can benefit from this Q&A too.

True words of wisdom. However, it’s really not easy to leave one’s comfort zone. It was really tough for me to stop gambling. I tried the 21-day rule and still went back to gambling after months. Do you have any advice on a more effective way of to quit gambling?

Thank you for your question!

To accomplish that goal, you can reprogram your mind by choosing differently what words you use and how you describe things.

For instance, as I use the terms, it is infinitely easy to do something like not drink, not eat, not have sex with a certain person, not have sex at all, or not go to a casino. To call it easy (as I use the word) is an understatement. It's like calling a bald man's hair short. Beliefs and phrasing choices can be self-fulfilling. Believe it is impossible or hard and it thereby becomes so.

For more on that point, please see the following two topics of mine:

- The Six Dangerous Misery-Inducing Words: "Must", "Have to", "Need to", "Should", "Ought", "Try"

- Beware: The phrase "work hard" can be just as dishonest and dangerous as the word "try". Be very careful with it!

Words like "hard" and "not easy" can be extensions of the above because they tend to mean that you are "trying" or that you are seeing yourself as "trying" or seeing yourself as "needing" to "try".

Don't try. I never try.

Notice how self-fulfilling things are. If you believe it requires trying, it will. And trying leads to failure. I never fail because I never try.

An imaginary roadblock is as effective as a real one. If you believe it is impossible, it effectively will be simply because you believe it. It is going to be as hard or as impossible as you believe it to be. Your beliefs on these matters are self-fulfilling, and they are fueled and hardened by any extra attention you give them. Even negative reinforcement reinforces them, like it does to a child having a temper tantrum, the most undercutting response to which is to simply notice the tantrum with the child noticing you notice, but neither positively nor negatively reinforcing. The antidote to the tantrum is peaceful noticing. Fighting impotent things that have no control over you gives them control over you.

I never experience the hardness of trying hard, or the difficulty that is trying hard, because I never try, neither a little nor a lot. I neither try hard nor try easy because I don't try at all. I do without trying, which is what I call grace and gracefulness.

Have you read my book, In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All?

I recommend you carefully read it all the way through at least twice. The reason for reading it at least twice is explained here.

If at any point during any of your readings of the book you notice even a single sentence you aren't confident you understand, come to these forums immediately and post a verbatim quote of that sentence in the dedicated topic for that (i.e. for non-understandings).

Likewise, if at any point during any of your readings of the book you find a sentence with which you disagree, come to these forums immediately and post a verbatim quote of that sentence in the dedicated topic for that (i.e. for disagreements).

Another very important benefit of reading it is this: Practically speaking, you basically physically cannot simultaneously be gambling and reading my book at the exact same time. So anytime you have the urge to gamble or would otherwise be gambling or otherwise be paying attention to the desire or urge to gamble or feel yourself wrestling with or toying around with the desire or idea to gamble, then right in that second pick my book up and read at least another chapter of it, starting from wherever you last left off. If you get to or last got to the end, just start right back at the beginning. In other words, instead of sitting around fighting temptation (i.e. your urge to gamble), don't do that (i.e. don't fight) and instead read my book. If you watch pickpocket videos, such as Apollo Robbins Ted Talk, you will see how extremely limited and easily manipulated a person's attention is. You can pickpocket yourself. Be smooth and graceful about it. Calmly and peacefully notice and allow the urge or obsessive thought when it comes, and then calmly, happily, gracefully, and competently apply the easy preset and pre-decidied response to that event: Reading at least the next chapter of In It Together, even if it's your 20th or 200th time re-reading the book. Look at it like a weather event. You don't freak out because it's raining or fight the sky. No, instead it goes like this: You start out and you're happy, your windows are open, and it's not raining. Then you notice that it happens to have started raining. You calmly and gracefully notice and accept this simple truth: it's raining. It does that sometimes. You don't expect it not to; you don't expect anything. There is a pre-set routine for this that requires little to no thought or decision-making: you calmly and happily get up and calmly and happily close the windows. That's all. So simple. You behave and feel like a happy clerk at the counter of a fast food restaurant: You take the customer's order and you easily and simply fulfill it. To notice it's raining becomes like a customer asking for a cheeseburger, but getting the proverbial cheeseburger is you closing the windows, and so you do it. No big deal. You notice your body and brain is having the urge, so you go grab In It Together, pick up where you left off, and read the next chapter. That's all. It's so simple. The urge to or thought of gambling is the rain, and reading In It Together is closing your windows. It's not to solve your problem; there is no problem. It's not to make you happy (i.e. have free-spirited inner peace); you will already have that before you open the book. You already have that free-spirited happy inner peace before it starts raining, still have it when you notice it starts raining, and still have it while you implement the simple pre-set responsive procedure of closing your windows. Your body does the work and your hands make the movements while your spirit remains still and at peace with infinite ease. It's an infinite invincible stillness. It's the freedom and stillness of your own soul. It's the freedom and stillness that is consciousness itself. That beautiful liberating stillness is the one thing you can't escape or eliminate because it's the self, the true self; it's you.

In an important sense the solution is to just be you. Or, in other words, more simply, to just be.

Things are happening around the avatar in the movie that's playing inside the brain inside your dark quiet skull. It's raining. It does that sometimes. Your hands are closing the windows. That's what they do when it rains. Don't fight. Just be.

My human hands can fight, but in terms of the real me, I never fight. There may be outer unpeace (a.k.a. outer war and outer fighting), but that does not mean I don't still have inner peace. There may be motion outside, but there is still stillness inside, not physically inside per se but spiritually.

Even while the human hands we call mine do the work or are fighting, in terms of the real me, I'm just being. What I am doing is being, with infinite peace and stillness.

Even if a crazed murderous human burglar breaks into my house while my kids and I are home, my human hands will go grab my guns and shoot him or if there's no time for that my human hands will make fists and punch him, but I--the real me--will be at peace. Even then, the shooting or punching my hands do will be infinitely graceful, in the sense that I am just being. I am not fighting. I am just peacefully watching my hands close windows while it is raining, or opening them when the sun pops back up. I am not fighting; I am just being.

My advice to you is to do the same: Don't fight; just be. Always.




With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott

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In addition to having authored his book, In It Together, Eckhart Aurelius Hughes (a.k.a. Scott) runs a mentoring program, with a free option, that guarantees success. Success is guaranteed for anyone who follows the program.

[Seetha E]

To reprogram one's mind, it is crucial to modify the vocabulary and phrasing used. This helps to avoid self-fulfilling beliefs and constructs that make tasks appear impossible or difficult.
Instead, one should strive to approach life's challenges gracefully.
#In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us. The book advocates for embracing the freedom and stillness of one's soul, which represents the true self.

[Amarachi Nwogo]

I want to know what the general steps are to be taken in order to become extremely successful.

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

If you haven't already, you can sign up to be personally mentored by Scott "Eckhart Aurelius" Hughes at this link.

I want to know what the general steps are to be taken in order to become extremely successful.

Hi, Amarachi Nwogo,

Thank you for your question!

The first advice I would give anyone aspiring to anything is to read my book, In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All, twice.

The reason for reading it twice is explained here.

The reason that reading my book is the first step I recommend for any goal or aspiration is that the advice in that book is the foundation of all other more superficial or specific advice given to specific people for specific things. You cannot build the basement or foundation of a house after you have already built the house. The details of the house such as the paint color and layout can be more unique for each person but the foundation is roughly the same for everyone. There's unlimited diversity of form but yet a single shared spiritual essence and single common human struggle uniting us all beneath the diverse forms and different outfits and figurative clothing we wear at different points in spacetime.

If you start with an incorrect foundation (i.e. without already following all the suggestions and advice in my book In It Together), then you will end up having to later bulldoze down the proverbial house you build using any other additional advice and suggestions I give you to then start over by putting in a correct foundation. I'm not really helping you if I help you build a house on incorrect foundation; then I'm only helping you waste your time.

In practice, what that means is that, if I start giving you personalized advice geared towards your specific career and aspiration before you read my book In It Together and fully apply that advice, you will end up using my extra advice to go down a path that isn't right for you and end up having to re-start, come back with new aspirations, and ask me about those. It will end up being a huge waste of your time, and a little bit of a waste of mine. This is heavily related to what I wrote in my topic, "Typically, the best way to destroy a man is to give him what he thinks he wants".

So I absolutely 100% recommend you read my book In It Together first, and apply all the advice in that book first, making sure that you are strictly following all of the numbered suggestions at the end of the book, before you take any other advice from me about your specific career choice or such. That's because you will make different career choices once you have inner peace and follow the advice of my books. Things that seemed to matter won't matter anymore, and things that didn't seem matter will. Unhappiness drives people down different paths than they would choose to walk from a place of happily inspired free-spirited inner peace (a.k.a. true happiness). In other words, the insatiable figurative hunger that is spiritual unfulfillment motivates people to desperately attempt fulfill themselves in futile ways (i.e. to eat of figurative food that never really fulfills them but actually only makes them hungrier), but those who find the true happiness of invincible inner peace and spiritual fulfillment have transcended that type of motivation and desperate desire and instead act from a place of loving happy free-spirited creativity and happy inspiration which puts them on different paths, career choices, and goals. In a very rough way of speaking, if you are walking down the wrong path (i.e. if you are not already truly happy with invincible free-spirited inner peace that you enjoy day in and day out), then me helping you down the path you are going now won't be helping you but will just be wasting your time and mine.

After you read In It Together and make sure you are already firmly and strictly following all the suggestions in that book (meaning you will have happy invincible inner peace and spiritual freedom and invincible unwavering spiritual fulfillment), I suggest you then read these topics of mine:


- My Three Principles for Happiness and Success (in that order!) | Be Happy and Achieve Incredible Success Guaranteed

- The Simple Key to Consistency, Determination, and Incredible Success

- Happiness leads to external success, not vice versa. Money doesn't buy happiness, but true happiness buys money.



What I would call "internal success" or "true success" is a given, at least if you are honest with yourself and are following the teachings of my book. In other words, trying is lying and failure is an illusion.

However, we can alternatively talk about 'external success' or 'relative success', which are relative to a specific external goal. These can be different and even opposite for different people. For instance, if one person's goal is to gain weight and a second person's goal is to lose weight, then what would be success for one would be failure for the other.

If that (external relative success) is the context of your question, then your question is incomplete; And that's because you haven't stated the specific unique goal at which you want to extremely succeed. If you tell me what your top #1 goal is (or better yet what your top few goals are in order from most important to least important), then I can give you specific advice for achieving that goal with extreme success.

In any case, when it comes to "internal success" (a.k.a. "true success"), that is 100% your choice, and thus failure is an illusion because when it comes to your choices you always get exactly what you want, meaning what you choose.

When it comes to "external success" (a.k.a. "relative success"), then that is still generally a choice. In other words, even in terms of external success, more than 99% of time it is a choice. That fact is explained in more detail in the following topics of mine:

- Success is a choice.

- Trying, failure, underachievement, and should-not-have-ness are imaginary phantoms that cause you real misery.

- Beware: The phrase "work hard" can be just as dishonest and dangerous as the word "try". Be very careful with it!


So, at least after you've completed everything else listed above in this post, then achieving extreme success (in either one or both of the two senses of the word) is a simple one-step procedure: choose it.

Let me re-state that in a more quotable and memorable way: The step-by-step procedure to achieve extreme success is a simple and infinitely easy one-step procedure: choose it.

Success is a choice, so, if you want it, simply choose it.



With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott

Everyone and everything is a success. The drinking alcoholic doesn't fail to be sober; he succeeds at drinking. The cheating spouse doesn't fail to be faithful; he succeeds at having an affair. The cupcake-eating diet-breaker doesn't fail at their diet; they succeed at eating the cupcake. The 80-hour-per-week rich CEO doesn't fail to be physically present for his family at home; he is succeeding at choosing money and/or his job over time with his family. The stay-at-home parent isn't failing to work a paying job; they are succeeding at not working a paying job. Failure is an illusion, and success is a choice.

To each their own. Diversity is beautiful. Everyone and everything is a success. #JustLoveEverything
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In addition to having authored his book, In It Together, Eckhart Aurelius Hughes (a.k.a. Scott) runs a mentoring program, with a free option, that guarantees success. Success is guaranteed for anyone who follows the program.

[Faith Job]

I have always believed in Family. But what will you do when all those you care about and call family turns on you, and suddenly. You become a stranger in a house you put first

[Eckhart Aurelius Hughes]

If you haven't already, you can sign up to be personally mentored by Scott "Eckhart Aurelius" Hughes at this link.

I have always believed in Family. But what will you do when all those you care about and call family turns on you, and suddenly. You become a stranger in a house you put first

Hi, Faith Job,

Thank you for your question!

I am twice divorced. The second time around, for several reasons only one of which was that it was Covid times, my wife and I still lived together in the same house even after filing for divorce. With the lawyer on Zoom on the computer, my ex-wife and I did our divorce meditation sessions sitting side-by-side at home on the couch in the house in which we still lived together. Imagine going to your divorce court hearings with your ex and then driving home together in the same car to the same house where you live together. That's basically what we were doing, and that went on for months. My point is that I know first-hand what it's like to live with someone who was once your beloved best friend, family member, and closest confidant but who now is almost the opposite. To say the least, it's uncomfortable, agitating, saddening, and nerve-racking. And that's on an incessant day-in day-out basis, day after day and week after week. You live for potentially many weeks or months (or, for some people, even years) in a state of constantly feeling simultaneously ridden with strong feelings of sadness, grief, guilt, disappointment, anger, frustration, jealousy, crowding, and what I can only describe as a feeling of emotional suffocation.

Personally, I am so very grateful that I had the opportunity to go through that and did. I would not understand the nature and potential of invincible inner peace (a.k.a. true happiness) as well as I do if I had I not gone through that. In fact, it's very possible that if things had worked out with my second wife that then I never would have been able to finish writing In It Together.

I spent over 5 years working on that book. I think part of the problem I was having was that during much of that time I was just too comfortable and too superficially happy (i.e. meaning pleased in the bodily sense of what the book calls the unreal you) to write a book about the beautiful struggle. To best study the struggle and most become an expert in the struggle, you must go through the struggle, perhaps in the most extreme and strugglish of ways. In shorter words, I was too comfortable to fully understand and accurately write about the beautiful struggle that unites us all.

To be fair, it's not black and white; it's not like I didn't have any struggle or experience any discomfort. Like I said, I was developing the book and had the gist of it. At that time, I worked 80+ hours a week on my business, all on the computer, which was exhausting, and potentially dangerous to physical such in terms of the damage it does to your eyes, bones, posture, and wrists and carpel tunnels symptoms. And, on the top of that, I also worked out very hard in the gym every single day until I was sore. I would also often box several times a week until bloody with my friends or endure quite a bit pain and discomfort at jiu jitsu practice a few times per week. But even with all that intentionally endured and embraced discomfort, I still hadn't been lead, pushed, and/or forced to escape the comfort zone enough and had not been embraced by discomfort enough to truly understand and write about the beautiful struggle that unites us all, not to the degree I wanted to understand and write it. All humans suffer enough and struggle enough and have enough experience with discomfort and temptation to understand it after reading the book, or even on their own without reading the book, but rather just through meditation and contemplation and such. But to understand it well enough to accurately write an entire high-quality book about it, well enough that it matched the vision I had and accomplished the intended goal, that takes an exceptional amount of experience and first-hand studying of the beautiful struggle, of the discomfort, of the temptation, and of the sense of spiritual slavery and being a prisoner in your body and perhaps even a prisoner in your own house or family. To write a book about escaping hell is to also be writing a book about hell itself, and to do that as a proper expert requires going to hell yourself and getting so burnt and trapped that you barely escape, so that you can use your first-hand knowledge to write the map for others still there. Sometimes we have to walk through hell to get to heaven. And, when that happens, we are typically given the choice to make that walk or stay where we are, in the comfort zone.

You ask me, and I quote, "what will you do", which in could also be understood as what would I do or, in the past tense, what did I do in the circumstances in my personal life where something similar came up, namely such as when I still lived with my ex-wife after we had already filed for divorce.

The careful reader will notice that I have actually answered that by now earlier in this post: I was grateful. I did gratitude. I practiced gratitude. Namely, I was grateful to have the mental and spiritual equivalent of a great workout in the gym. It was to my mental strength and spiritual fortitude what physical exercise in the gym is. If I go into the gym and do a workout and don't come out feeling exhausted, beaten down, and painfully sore then I feel disappointed and feel like I didn't get my time's worth.

It's not valuable despite being hard; it's valuable because it is hard.

While astronauts' muscles atrophied, it was my gravity.

I had my best experiences of transcendence and ego death during that time. I had my best and most transcendental meditation sessions during that time. It was during that time that I most had these infinitely glorious and almost indescribable experiences where I was genuinely no longer Scott/Eckhart but rather was what my book calls the real me, and what some might even call The Universe or even God or Brahman or The Tao. You can think of it as you being The Universe or such, or you can think of it as you finding and gracefully falling into your oneness with The Universe or your oneness with what some would call God or the Nameless or The Indescribable & Most Undeniably Real.

You can even think of many of my experiences during that time as being like an out of body experience in which I was no longer Scott/Eckhart but was rather this eternal soul or eternal spirit with no brain or memory or hunger or physical/bodily urges who was outside of him by his side, but able to see into his brain and read his mind, able to appreciate his story and subjective view with sympathy, love, and most of all appreciative awe, and get to view nature and the trees and stars and the bees and clouds though his eyes. It reminded me of when I use to play the video game Sim City or The Sims, and after many hours of building the city and growing it you could take on the role of one of the sims (i.e. one of the people in the simulated created city) and view the city from that sim's perspective, as if you were that guy driving around in his little car. His job was your job. His brother was your brother. His house was your house. But really you're just watching and enjoying things through that point of view. And there were other points of view from which you could view the same things. You could enjoy your city from a different point of view. In theory, you could replay what seems like simultaneous events to the sims from different perspectives at a different times in your time, but from each of those perspectives in each of themselves things only happen once and in a way only happen from that perspective, meaning each sim's view comes with an appearance of solipsism being true as if the conscious/transcendental reality of that sim's subjective perspective was special or the only one that's really happening. To each of them, they seem to really be the true center of the universe, but objectively there is no center, or perhaps everywhere is a center and there is no real non-center, only centers, only selfs and mp real others. But as the city-creator from your transcendental perspective outside the video game world, in what we call the real world, everything that happens in the city can happen infinite times and from infinite different perspectives. On the one hand, it's all the same one unchanging story that only has one singular timeless existence, just being transcendentally replayed, like a movie on an unchanging DVD being played over and over on repeat, with the story and data on the DVD never actually changing, but, unlike a normal real life DVD, it contains infinite stories all in one since you can play that same would-be one movie from any character's perspective. In a way, all the events and underlying story are the same no matter which character's perspective you use to view it, and yet each is so different and unique and special, and they all exist on that one single DVD.

Sometimes we leave the comfort zone by will and embrace discomfort by will. Other times we cling to the comfort zone, but in that case we are still then inevitably blessed by discomfort nonetheless, sort of thrown out of the comfort zone against our will. From there, we can desperately chase comfort like an addict, as if desperately trying to get back into the comfort zone or trying to make the comfort zone more comfortable or fulfilling than it actually can be, or we can then embrace the discomfort and find the fulfillment of spiritual freedom and see how much more fulfilling and non-fleeting it is than petty comfort. Once denied the pseudo-happiness of superficial and bodily pleasures, we are most able to see and find true happiness, meaning free-spirited inner peace, or what some would call enlightenment, nirvana, salvation, and/or grace.

If, in this moment, thanks to being blessed by discomfort, it is not so pleasant being the unreal you, then there's no better and easier opportunity to be the real you.

If you don't understand what that last sentence means, or you don't know how to do it (i.e. how to be the real you versus the unreal you), then that means either (1) you haven't read my book yet or (2) you would benefit from re-reading it. If that's the case, then I strongly recommend you go read my book right now, or as soon as reasonably possible, whether it will be your first read or a re-read.

From there, you will learn an unconditional forgiveness so full and unconditional that it isn't even really forgiveness per se but rather it is the realization that there is never anything to forgive in the first place. You don't need to forgive because there is never any wrongness to forgive. You don't have the terrible horrible unforgiveness (a.k.a. resentment or hate) smothering you, and, even better, you're getting to enjoy that wonderful lack of unforgiveness without even needing to do forgiveness. You get to have your cake and to eat it too.

Watch out for phrases like "they turned on me" or "they betrayed me", which are at risk of being instances of judgementalism, or at least being one step away from judgmentalism, with full-fledged judgementalism often sounds more like, "they did me wrong" or "they did wrong" or "what happened was wrong" or "what happened shouldn't have happened" or "unchangeable aspects of reality should be different than they unchangeably are" or "reality is wrong" or "2 plus 2 shouldn't equal four" or "truth is wrong".

You can let go of all judgmentalism. Instead of choosing to engage in judgementalism, you can instead think and/or say, "they did exactly what I would do if I was them". You can think and/or say, "they did exactly what I would do if I was in the exact same situation as them, including being in an atom-by-atom copy of that body, with its feeling, looking in that direction out of those those eyes and through that brain with its memories."

You can realize that if your body morphed into an atom-by-atom copy of theirs, including the brain which is where the memories are stored and encoded, and at the same time everything outside the body likewise morphed into an atom-by-atom copy of what was or is outside of their body, then you would do exactly what they did or are doing.

More deeply, when you really understand and accept the teachings of my book, first starting with the opening question, you then realize that's it's not merely hypothetical. It's not just that you would do what they did if you were them; it's that really you were also them and did do what they did. Experiencing or viewing the timeless objective world through the lens of a human brain is very distorting, perhaps most because of the brain's memories. When you wake up looking out into the world through a certain brain and pair of eyes, you remember having gone to sleep in that brain and only that brain just the night before, and you have this false sense that there is this single objective timeline, as if all events happened only once and in a certain order, some yet to even come to be. But physics proves all that wrong. In terms of the real me, I am no more or less 10-year-old Scott/Eckhart than 40-year-old Scott/Eckhart, and I am no more 37-year-old Scott/Eckhart, than I am a Socrates or Hitler or Scott/Eckhart's 14-year-old son Tristen or Scott/Eckhart's 12-year-old daughter Amaya or one of countless lions eating an antelope or one of countless antelopes being eating by a lion. Events don't happen in a certain order. Objectively, there is no time or space, only timeless eternal spacetime, and the events in it don't have an objective order. Asking if one event happens before, after, or at the same time as another is like asking if Mars is on the right side or the left side of the universe. The universe doesn't have a right side or left side, nor does it have a past/earlier half vs a future/later half. As I already said, and is worth repeating, experiencing or viewing the timeless objective world through the lens of a human brain is very distorting, perhaps most because of the brain's memories.

All those different things (e.g. 40-year-old Eckhart vs 20-year-old Eckhart vs 14-year-old Tristen vs a lion vs an antelope) are just different outfits, meaning different figurative clothing that the real me and the real you wears sometimes in some places. Fundamentally, we are just one scattered throughout spacetime. If you can love the human in the mirror, in all its dirty scarred human glory, then you can love any human, and any creature, and anything.

Whatever your family did, hold onto no unforgiveness towards them. I'd say forgive them (and indeed do so if that means something to you), but really to merely forgive them would be a huge understatement and insufficient resolution, for it falsely suggests there was some wrong to forgive. Instead, you want to take the practice of unconditional love and would-be forgiveness so far and practice it so fully that you realize there was never anything to forgive in the first place. They did nothing wrong because nothing wrong ever happens. They only did exactly what you would do if you were them; And, likewise, really, in the realest sense of reality, they did only what you did when you were them because we are all one and you are them too, there's really no I vs you vs them but just the one real us which we can call the real you. In terms of the real you and the real me and the real them, whatever they did to you and whatever you did to them was all actually you doing it to yourself.

Love them.

If you think loving them is hard for some reason, then embrace the hardness and love them even more.

If you aren't going to simply love everything equally, then be a rebellious free-spirit and love most that which is hardest to love.

Find the thing that you think would be hardest to forgive, and forgive that the hardest.

Be like the proverbial new inmate who on his first day in prison goes out of his way to find the biggest guy and start a fight with him. I'm not saying that's the wisest way to literally handle a literal prison, but it's definitely how I recommend you metaphorically handle life in general if and when you start to feel like a spiritual prisoner in your own body or your own family or your own country. Become a rebellious and absurdly brave and stubborn free-spirit, which means loving most the seemingly most unlovable and forgiving hardest the seemingly hardest to forgive.

Albert Camus wrote, "The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion."


With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
a.k.a. Scott

""I often feel the biggest obstacle to implementing a movement based on true love and positivity is fake love and toxic positivity. There are many false paths. One is to seek the elimination of pain, anger, fear, and so on, which is futile."
- Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
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In addition to having authored his book, In It Together, Eckhart Aurelius Hughes (a.k.a. Scott) runs a mentoring program, with a free option, that guarantees success. Success is guaranteed for anyone who follows the program.