Hamsters on a Wheel: The Disconnect Between Job and Spirit

This summer saw yet another woman friend pummeled by the fists of corporate America – one among many. A brilliant woman with unique gifts, her crime was getting sick and using her sick days.

This sounded eerily like another friend persecuted at work after her assistant was cut from the budget, leaving her to perform physical maneuvers dangerous to her health. I remember colleagues so stressed from staff cuts and management changes, they developed anxiety, depression, high blood pressure, and alcohol problems.

So many beautiful and gentle spirits are crushed in the often hostile and unforgiving landscape of the office block. A saint wouldn’t have lasted two weeks at my last job – if for no other reason than she wouldn’t lie, spy, or sell out her ethics. The message is this: Too many of us try to follow career paths that lead through a rigid tanglewood of hierarchy, patriarchy, ego inflation, and greed.

What would happen if you could tune in to your own drumbeat, following whatever lights you up? This is the message of the volcanic goddess Pele who keeps showing up in card readings and spiritual circles, even as Mt. Kilauea erupts with historic ferocity. We are urged to be authentic, because therein lies our power! A woman’s career should be a natural progression of her personal passion – magma arising from a sacred core.

Pele says, “Women are boiling over inside! Just as lava builds islands and reshapes the landscape, so the fiery passion of women can birth a new order.

“There is too much demand for subjugation of the individual for a corporation’s goal. This is at the cost of workers’ health, spirituality, family, friendships, personal identity, home life, education, and expression.

“You need less stratification – exploding of office hours, working from home, melting the dress code, and all around less regimentation. Honor the individual by letting all work according to their strengths, preferences, body clocks, and health.

“Let all speak and be heard! More work can be done on a project basis and not just strict 9-5 work hours at an office. Give a person a mission and let her fulfill it as only she can.”

Work is a mismatch for a lot of people. Some of us are bold, visionary souls who need to make their own way by becoming entrepreneurs. Personal autonomy, creative authority, and freedom became requisites for me after umpteen years of being a shadow figure in the background of large companies.

However, as a society, we also need to make “jobs” a better fit for workers. We must focus on our humanity to do that. Some defining keywords are dignity, respect, individuality, and personal morality. Nobody should have to choose between their personal ethics and their job duties.

Performance should be based on the work product generated – at any hour of the day or night and regardless of office attendance, apparel, or how many friends you make at the office. Allow people their own style, whether that is group participation, working alone, etc. Hire the best people and then let them be their best – not identically dressed clones of one artificial model.

Service is humanity’s focus now. Each of us is a container of Divine wisdom. Accessing that knowledge enables us to be of service in the world. This means self-care, care of others, extending compassion.

People live their whole lives on a quest for money. Can we learn to magnetically attract money by following our bliss? Perhaps having “a job” is very secondary to you. It may be a means to an end to allow education or the pursuit of other dreams. Possibly, you are more focused on making a life than making a living.

Many Lightworkers have reincarnated after cloistered lifetimes as religious clerics, ascetics, etc. This can make it hard for us to balance spiritual work with the need to earn money. Many such people took vows of poverty in their past lifetimes, and these commitments and ideas about money and the sacred have carried over into our current identities.

As we hunger to combine spirituality with work, we have to embrace a new paradigm. Continuing to honor old vows that serve no purpose in the present lifetime block us from receiving the financial abundance available now. Release old patterns and learn to thrive as spiritual people of the Age of Aquarius. Begin to see income getting as life purpose, resulting in less fragmenting of our lives and more things becoming whole and entire.

If you acknowledged that money can be sacred, and that sacred work can be properly rewarded with money, how would this change your life? Could your spiritual mission of helping, healing, and beautifying become the productive focus of your days? Would you be prosperous by doing what you love? Could you live a full life all day, every day – not just on weekends and in the snatched exhaustion of after-work evenings?

In challenging economic times, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed at the cost of starting a business, but this is where the feminine ideal of inclusiveness comes into play. Networking circles, communal living and business arrangements, collaboratives, and collectives make business ownership possible and profitable. Small start-ups can thrive together through joint advertising and events, consignment sales, offering gallery space, bartering for business services, and providing referrals.

When we stop settling for lowest-common-denominator lives and demand a more satisfying experience, universal forces swing into motion to make it happen. Whether your mission is to change a company from within, mentor people and corporations in compassionate success tools, or become an independent business owner, move forward in an enlightened way.

Financial success, personal satisfaction, spiritual attainment, and healthy societal contributions can all be achieved by the same route – seeing life as an entire mission. Harnessing our full power and potential behind a unified goal brings the force of authenticity into our lives – the enthusiasm for being whole.
---------------------------------------------------------------
If you'd like to read more about the Feminine Business Model and spiritually authentic women's leadership, get my new book: Singing Woman: Voices of the Sacred Feminine