SPIRITUALITY AND CAREER

"If you follow your bliss," Joseph Campbell said, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there a while, waiting for you, and the life that you ought to be living is the one you are living. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in your field of bliss, and they open doors to you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be."

Oprah Winfrey also is a big believer in people establishing new careers by following their bliss and she is a perfect example of the theory herself. People who love what they do, do it well, and are well rewarded for doing it. Life is far too short to stay stuck in a dead-end job collecting a pay check and being unhappy.

We were all given talents. Many of us lost these because they weren't encouraged when we were children. We may have lost them by feeling inferior, not good enough and unworthy. We are not supposed to hide our light under a basket. We need to free ourselves--to return to our childhood exuberance and become the very one we truly are. George Eliot wrote, "It is never too late to be what you might have been."

It really is never too late. We have only to get in touch with our spiritual side. But then as the philosopher Teilhard de Chardin wrote, "We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience." It is only that we let our human side, our ego, our lesser self, get in the way of the spiritual self we are created to be. That being is not motivated by fear (and resentment) but by love.

How do we get in touch with our higher self? Many religious people are not spiritual. Also, many spiritual people are not religious. If you can formulate a concept of a power greater than yourself, that is a great start. If you already have one, so much the better.

Begin to become a more spiritual person simply by being still. We cannot hear the small voice within each of us that directs and guides when we are noisy and all over the place jumping from one activity to the next. Slow down.

Then begin to meditate. Any meditation method will do. Just still the body and mind so the spirit can come through. Focus on the breaths. Take in deep breaths and watch it go in and out. If you think a thought don't get upset, just watch it float over you like a cloud. You will notice an improvement in your well-being and in your life almost immediately once you start a discipline of regular meditation.

Pray. Even if you aren't sure who, if anyone, is out there, act as if. Talk to this entity, perhaps beginning by saying, "Hey, I don't even know if you're there, but if you are will you show me the way home."

Begin to notice the increased coincidences in your life. Coincidences, they say, are just miracles God doesn't sign his name to. Things will begin to change in your life.

Then all things become possible. If our lives are based on love rather than fear, we can no longer show up just to collect a paycheck because we think that's what we're supposed to do. A new career direction or a career change will begin to reveal itself to you.

You can help this process by using your non-physical guides. Some believe they are old souls we knew in past lives. Others believe they are the departed souls of friends and families from this life. But we all have people watching lovingly over us just waiting for a word or sign from you to begin to help direct you. You can ask them questions as you would ask a friend. Ask, "What is my motivation for continuing to stay in the same old dead-end job and what can I do about it?" Then pay attention. Keep an open mind.

Spiritual awakening has to mean a new direction in your career or a new career because being spiritual means that you cannot conduct business as usual. You will want to act from a higher ground of love which means honesty, integrity, responsibility and compassion. You will not want to work with the notion of what's in it for me anymore and this will change everything.

If you keep the same job but you are different, your co-workers and supervisors will wonder at you. They may criticize and mock you initially, but eventually will come to respect your new way of doing business in many cases.

You can develop your innate psychic abilities to further direct you. Practice re-learning what you were taught to forget as a child. Guess who's on the phone or at the door before you pick it up or open it. Predict what mail you'll be getting that day. Work on empathy. When talking with a friend, try to feel what he feels Then state the feelings to him and ask if you are correct. There is nothing weird or odd about psychic abilities. They are gifts that everyone has.

The more loving and compassionate you become the more you will be on the path to following your bliss. Far from serving as a permission to anything goes, selfish pursuits, you find that you want to serve. You want to contribute to your community and to the world because your heart is full. This is how we are going to change this poor planet--by transforming ourselves one by one.

Following your bliss will put you in touch with the dreams of your real self. You will find yourself doing things disguised as work that feel more like play. Doors will now open for you. Like Joseph Campbell, invisible hands will reach out and take yours and show you the way to your new life's work.