Inner and outer purpose

The most important thing to realize is this: Your Life has an inner purpose and an outer purpose. Inner purpose concerns Being and is primary. Outer purpose concerns doing and is secondary. Your inner purpose is to awaken. It is as simple as that. You share that purpose with every other person on the planet - because it is the purpose of humanity. Your inner purpose is an essential part of the purpose of the whole, the universe and its emerging intelligence. Your outer purpose can change over time. It varies greatly from person to person. Finding and living in alignment with the inner purpose is the foundation for fulfilling your outer purpose. It is the basis for true success.

Eckhart Tolle in "A New Earth"

Successful in the world

A man who is successful in the world feels the pain of being a failure as nobody else can feel it. There is a proverb that says that nothing succeeds like success. I would like to tell you: nothing fails like success. But you cannot know it unless you have succeeded. When all the riches are there that you have dreamt about, planned about, worked hard for, then sitting amidst those riches is the beggar - deep inside empty, hollow; nothing inside, everything outside.

OSHO

Fate and freewill

FREEWILL AND DESTINY ARE EVER EXISTENT. Destiny is the result of past action; it concerns the body. Let the body act as may suit it. Why are you concerned about it? Why do you pay attention to it? Freewill and destiny last as long as the body lasts. But jnana transcends both. The Self is beyond knowledge and ignorance. Whatever happens, happens as the result of one’s past actions, of divine will and of other factors.

There are only two ways to conquer destiny or be independent of it. One is to enquire for whom is this destiny, and discover that only the ego is bound by destiny and not the Self, and that the ego is non-existent. The other way is to kill the ego by completely surrendering to the Lord, by realizing one’s helplessness and saying all the time, ‘Not I, but Thou Oh Lord’ and giving up all sense of ‘I’ and ‘mine’, and leaving it to the Lord to do what he likes with you. Complete effacement of the ego is necessary to conquer destiny, whether you achieve this effacement through Self enquiry or bhakti marga (path of devotion). Everything is predetermined. But a man is always free not to identify himself with the body, and not to be affected by the pleasures or pains consequent on the body’s activities.

Those alone who have no knowledge of the Source whence fate and freewill arise, will dispute which of them can conquer the other. Those who have realized their Self, which is the Source of both fate and freewill have left such disputes behind, and will have nothing more to do with them. Success and failure are due to prarabdha karma, and not to willpower or the lack of it. One should try to gain equipoise of mind under all circumstances. That is willpower

Bhagavan

Success!

Success or achievement is not the final goal. It is the 'spirit' in which you act that puts the seal of beauty upon your life. The secret of success behind all men of achievement lies in the faculty of applying their intellect in all their activities, without being mislead by any surging emotions or feelings. The secret of success in life lies in keeping the head above the storms of the heart.
A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him.

-Swami Chinmayananda-