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How can I know what I am doing on this Earth is meaningful and in my highest good?
There are many, many possible answers. It will depend on who you are and how you feel in your life. Some of you recognize that you are in alignment because you feel happy emotionally, some of you recognize you feel you are in alignment because you feel physically energized, some of you recognize you are in alignment because you feel the energy of love moving through you. There are infinite variations, and your experience will depend a lot on what your work is and how you exist in your life. All of that being said, we can give you a better answer than "It depends." The bottom line is this: if you are not happy doing what you do, some part of your work is out of alignment.
Every form of work has three characteristics. Any one of those characteristics can be out of alignment and therefore make your work or your work situation not right for you. First, the definition for work in itself from the perspective of the Records is that work, as we are defining it, is any form of activity that has a purpose, that it is ongoing in your life and, and that it involves you engaging in one way or another with the world, even if it is only through ideas.
Anything you do that includes those three things is work regardless of whether you are paid, regardless of whether you have been hired, regardless of whether you have a clear definition of what it is you are doing. Some of you are called to do things that do not fit in any particular professions; others of you are called to do things in this world that fit beautifully with one profession or another. Still others are called to create or redefine particular professions or occupations. Remember this includes unpaid work or unpaid activities.
In that broad definition of work, every form of work has these three primary characteristics. One is the characteristic of what act your work involves. What act or activity is executed physically in the material world? The second is with whom you do the work. What people are involved in your work and in what ways or how are those relationships built? The third characteristic is being called freedom of expression. This is the question of what parts of your self, your inner self, your identity, are expressed through this work. Those are the three categories to consider when you are asking the question of how you know whether the work you are doing is a right fit for you.
As you look at your work, whatever you are occupied in doing, it is important to look at each of those three categories. The bottom line is if you feel happy doing your work, or in your work situation, then you can assume that it is in alignment for you, that you are right on track. If you feel unhappy, regardless of whether you understand why, if you feel unhappy in doing your work, whatever your occupation is, then look at these three categories and consider which of them is out of alignment. If all three are out of alignment or if the three seem out of alignment, you can know that your work is not right for you; that you need to move into some other field of work or some other form of occupation. If one or two of these categories is out of alignment, often you can realign the category and you will find that you become happy again in your work. It is like a basic equation. Are you happy or not? Yes or no? If no, go on to the next question. The next question is look at the three categories. If all three are out of alignment or if none of the three are out of alignment, then go on to the next question.
Then the next question is what other occupation do you want to be doing? Going back to the second question, if two or one of those categories has a distinct problem, something in it that is not working for you, then you can begin to work with this, make some changes within your work to discover if your occupation is right, but that the situation has been built incorrectly or out of alignment. The first category to address is what is the material function of your job? Is the activity or executing the action, delightful and empowering for you or is it boring, rigid or pointless? If you work in a toy factory building toys, do you enjoy the process of painting and screwing things together? Do you enjoy the physical process of building the toy or do you find it irritating or dissatisfying? That is one thing you might change. You might find that you feel called to working in the toy factory or that you love the idea of bringing toys into the world, but that the act of putting the toys together is not the right fit for you. You need to change within this field of work to an activity that might be marketing the toys or supervising those that build the toys. It may be delivering the toys is what brings you joy. You might find that you need to change your role in your work in order to do the physical activity that brings you satisfaction that you enjoy doing on a moment-by-moment basis.
The second category is the people that you work with. It could be that you are in the perfect profession for you, that you are occupied by exactly the activity that makes you most happy, but you are surrounded by people or relationships that disempower you, that lead you to feel bad about yourself or they somehow get in the way of your happiness. In this case again, you are called to make a change the way you engage with those people or to remove yourself all together from those relationships and situations.
The third category is this category called freedom of expression. Another word I will use for it is purpose. Do you feel a connection between your existence in doing this work and its effect on the outer world that make you feel as if your true self is being expressed through this work? This one is a little less tangible than the first two, but is just as important and just as real and solid. You do not always have the right terms for this. Can you see and feel the connection between what you are doing and its affect in the world that satisfies you or gives you a sense of purpose? If so, then relax and enjoy it. If not, what you may need to do to find satisfaction in your work is to make those connections. Seek a way to perceive those connections in order to give your work a sense of meaning for yourself. For instance, if you find that you really do enjoy building toys and you really are surrounded by people that you enjoy and with whom you feel empowered, and yet you continue to feel unhappy, it may be that you are building the toys but never seeing them used, is leading you to a sense of dissatisfaction so that you might volunteer to join the delivery van and watch the toys being delivered. You might choose to work for the marketing team or visit the marketing team and see the children who play with the toys and how they choose those toys. As you go back to the toy factory and continue building them, you can imagine in your mind's eye, you can remember the joy you saw in those children who are playing with your toys. Making that connection can often lead you to satisfaction. But again, if all three of those categories are not working for you, or if none of those categories can quite be identified, you might assume that your occupation is not quite right for you and it will benefit you to look for something different.
What about those of us who are drawn to mainstream work or working for someone else such as a designer, assistant, architect or project coordinator? Does this mean the ego is still in control? Is doing so-called spiritual work the only proof that a person is awakening?
No. In fact, if every person going through Enlightenment were to begin doing so-called spiritual work, your economy would collapse even more clearly and rapidly than it already is. All of the forms of work and occupation on Planet Earth that people are engaged in, are inherently sacred -- even those that have a harmful or hurtful outcome. The pure form of occupation is sacred. You might need to make some changes about the outcome if you are here to cause harm, but really some of you truly are called, your highest calling, the most divine expression of you on Planet Earth is to be an architect, a project coordinator or an assistant. There are some forms of work or occupation that have been grasped and developed by human beings as so-called professions and there are some that are not. There are some that have not yet been discovered or have not yet been relevant in the world. Some of those fall into the category of being a healer or a spiritual worker.
The fact is all of you can be a lightworker in any field of occupation. On the flip side, you can feel miserable and unfulfilled in any occupation. Which of those you are depends on who you are and how well you are following your highest guidance, your best sense of your happiness. There are people doing spiritual work or healing work who are completely miserable because it is not really right for them. They have imagined themselves to need to do that work in order to be Enlightened enough when in fact they might be better suited making coffee or running a restaurant. The guideline here is if you are doing what makes you happy, if you are doing what brings you joy and satisfaction, then it does not matter what you are doing provided you do it with as much integrity and bringing as much love and light to that occupation as possible.
For those of us coming to the later years in our lives, if we have not yet found our calling, does that mean we have messed up or missed our opportunity? Is our calling a matter of living and breathing in a human self wherever we happen to be?
Any form of occupation can be legitimate work. For some of you, maybe you have never held a job or never found a job that you could say with all of your heart was your passion. Most of you actually fall into this category. Just being in the world, having loving relationships, striving to resolve your own karma or grow and become more loving in and of yourself, is enough for a complete and successful human life.
That being said, some of you have very specific callings that you must fulfill or answer and you feel a passion or a drive for those. Some souls come into a lifetime with an open contract, with an open template to just seek as much love and satisfaction and pleasure that they can find and thereby make the world a better place. Others of you have a contract that says you must fulfill a particular purpose.
For those of you who have that contract saying you must fulfill a particular occupation or purpose, please know that your soul will never leave you stranded or leave you without a road map to do so. If you find yourself in not having lived a life with that state of ambivalence, you can know that what you are is perfectly human. Ambivalence is one of the core settings of the human existence. Ambivalence enables you to be open to new things, it enables you to question and renegotiate what you are doing. It enables you to not become too rigid in linearity. Any form of ambivalence, or what you perceive as lack of structure, is not a sign that you have failed or missed something. If you find that you have never had a distinct occupation, passion or drive, it only means that your purpose here is to do whatever you are doing with as much love and integrity as possible. (April '09)
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