I do not like being busy.
When my day, calendar is full of things to do, I want to do none of them.
Some people thrive on it. It gives them a sense of focus, a place to target the effort and energy and a sense of accomplishment.
But this isn’t so for me.
When my day is full meetings and doings, coming and goings, I tend to forget my real job, the true reason I am here as a conscious sentient human on a conscious sentient planet.
My real job is like a Soul-job; it isn’t one that comes with a description and it isn’t always a tangible experience. It’s more of a knowing and maybe a feeling.
Herein likes one of my perfect conflicts of these weeks - the rejection of what keeps me busy because it doesn’t feel as connected to my Sprit and Cosmic Essence; the annoyance of a piling to do list because it pulls me away from my Being-ness; the eroding of sacred time where I do no-things and bask in spaciousness within.
This week, I have afternoons of back to back working meetings and pile of stuff to deliver to my colleagues, whom I like and respect very much.
Yet, here I am, ferociously typing out this article- not doing the work I am supposed to be, because I want to sit in connectivity with my Spirit and pour out what comes from there. Right now, that happens to not be work that I’m paid to do.
I know and have felt and experienced the Union of Spirit Magic with life’s more mundane tasks. I know what it is to sing my chores complete and certainly, this is how I live. So, I know that as I type this piece out ferociously, I am processing parts of the conflict. Something coming undone as I unlearn the patterns that are keeping my day job separate from my Soul Job.
It is perfect and exactly what I need to be doing in this moment.
Work, Coin & Status
Historically, a big part of my sense of self came from my work - doing my job well, being appreciated, promotions, solving problems, being the go-to person and other related things.
Now, this is a much smaller part, and this is one of the reason for my struggle.
Outside of income, why do we do the jobs we do?
What is it, truly, that we are putting in?
What is it, that we are getting out of the experience?
Are we making products, experiences and services that humanity and the Earth really need right now?
Does any of this even matter, or are we simply working for coin and status?
Money, and the material freedom, choices and lifestyle that our wealth affords are a huge part of work. And yet, it is not enough, is it?
Because even when we have the money and lifestyle, it isn’t like we are content and satisfied; we all quest for more.
So what lies beyond that?
Perhaps work that is fulfilling, impactful and in Service to the World?
Perhaps it is creative pursuits we have put on the back-burner because we were busy working these last many decades.
Perhaps we have no idea and we are only now discovering it.
If you no longer did the job and work you do today, what shall you do?
What direction does your passion and energy take you?
What do you have to change about yourself to let yourself go there?
Are you still the person you thought you were?
These are questions to myself in these weeks.
My mind answers them, as all minds do.
But I await my deeper answers.
They have come… in the form of feelings.
Feeling of Work
I used to be very annoyed at this occurrence; when I would sit in stillness and receptivity to ask a big serious question of my Heart and Soul… and the answer I got was certain yet intangible, in the form of a feeling.
I learned later that this was one of the ways in which my intuition was communicating, especially when great multi-layered change was near. I learned then allow it and how to work with it.
Work may feel like a certain way to us today. I explored this in an earlier piece around creating new realities, which I’ve posted below.
For me it feels like pressure and responsibility for things I don’t essentially care about but I am supposed to. It is sometimes fun and interesting, but mostly I am in a hamster-wheel of stress and responsibility, chasing the carrot of praise and promotion. This is in the present.
My mind and body are used to this and because it was my truth and experience yesterday, this is what I have been bringing into my today.
In allowing this ‘Feeling of Work’ process guided by in intentional questions of the week, other stuff emerged.
The feeling of context and relevance in work to my life, my environment and my world. The feeling of relationship with work, rather than a series of tasks and things I am doing.
It feels simple, peaceful, gainful engagement, and there is a level of gratitude in the work moments that I didn’t know were possible through the workday.
The co-relation equation between income and work in this space is different; like when you move from an hourly wage to a salary, you may no longer think about accrued dollars if you have to work an hour later.
It is similar to that shift, but bigger and deeper in sentiment.
These feelings are not alien to me.
I feel them when I do my Soul Job, even when I am not ‘doing anything’ per se.
I feel these feelings when I face my fears and doubts and change the way I think, when I learn something, when I rest or enjoy myself, when I am thankful, when I choose change and when I remember that I am part of Creation.
This may simply be the work of being alive and conscious and wanting deeply to bring more loving consciousness into the Self and the World.
This is sublime. It is beautiful.
But how does it help with my piling to-do list at my day job that, as of today at least, doesn’t feel like any of the above?
Union of the Works
In truth, I have not found a profoundly eloquent and articulate answer to my own question.
What I do know, is like you, I too am creating my own reality, through my everyday choices, actions, inactions, beliefs and Soul-work.
Through that, there are times of unsurety and what I like to call ‘the sorting’ of things - where what is old is as alive as what is new and they both exist together.
These elated feelings of Soul-work live along-side my vacant feelings regarding upcoming meetings that I have not as yet prepared for.
They seem opposite. Like they cannot possibly live as One.
But they do. I know they do. Even though, I do not see or feel it right now.
To me Seeing is NOT Believing.
Rather, Believing IS Sight.
Once this article is written, edited and published, I will stretch and sigh and return to one thing at my day job that I feel needs the most attention today.
Likely, I will choose something that benefits a team member, and makes their work task more clear, supported and easier. It will be good.
I know change is already here within me.
A month ago, I would have seen this as procrastination and shamed myself for it. I would have started to write this article and thought about all the work that was piling up at my job that I’m not doing. This article wouldn’t have flowed, I wouldn’t have enjoyed this creation process and my job-tasks wouldn’t stay undone.
But in this moment, I am not procrastinating, at least I don’t feel like I am.
With this article, I’m doing the stuff I Love - Connecting to Creation, Allowing, Breathing Deeply as I Write, Sipping Coffee, Being Vulnerable, Trusting - the work of the Soul.
Nourished from this, I keep my faith in the process of Union and Transformation, bit by bit.
In ways that I feel are possible, but cannot know right now, I can bring my Whole Self to a job, to a work, to a service, and in doing so, realize how material tasks are gateways to our Spiritual Tasks.
Separate, only in the mind.
From here, I trust that I will know what needs to change - maybe it is my attitude, maybe a process or workflow, maybe the job has to change - and I have within what I need to administer those changes, without resistance or drama.
Who knows - perhaps tomorrow, I will find deep joy and fulfillment in my busy moments and back to back meetings, as I do in the moments of space and quiet in between.
In this way and more, the how of our work opens to our Material and Spiritual evolution and nourishment.