What can go wrong when your work is your spirituality

For some of us, our work has been the place we access and express our spirituality.

The place in our lives where we experience “beyond, becoming, and belonging,” in the words of the Sacred Design Lab.??

That’s incredible! It’s beautiful and astonishing. Not a ton of folks ever experience that in their work.?

I know a lot of Spiritual But Not Religious people who’ve touched spirit through work that we’re deeply and wildly passionate about.?

That absolutely happened to me while organizing. Something spiritual stirred awake inside me.

…and that mode of accessing spirituality can reach a breaking point, like a plant outgrowing the space and soil in its pot.?

When we plow our creative energy, our values, and our spirit into our vocation without nurturing other forms of connection to spirituality, the finite limits of our work will eventually catch up with us.?

Finite limits like: Failures. Disappointments. Rejection. Exhaustion. Burnout. Or even realizing in the midst of success that…life is still life-ing.?

And damn, that experience can be crushing. Emotionally, psychologically, physically, spiritually.

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I was thinking about why and how this happens when a teaching from a Chan poetry class came to mind.

Chan poetry takes readers across “three mountaintops” from which we view reality.?

The first mountaintop is our material reality, e.g. our lives as we’re used to them. My name is Alexis, I have brown hair (on half my head), I live in Brooklyn, and I commute to campus on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.?

When we’re only accessing spirituality through our work, we’re staying on the first mountaintop. Our perspective is limited.

Our experience of our “self” is bounded and fundamentally egoic. Losses and disappointments can feel devastating. Even “wins” can feel crappy when they aggravate our fear and insecurity.?

The second mountaintop is the realization of emptiness: the fundamental interconnectedness of everything and the corresponding truth that nothing is stable or separate – including ourselves.?

Many of us first taste this realization on acid.?

This can be extraordinarily liberating. It can also be disorienting.

Some people interpret this in a nihilistic way.

Our (amazing) Buddhism professor at Union, Kosen, makes a point of discussing the word emptiness. That word feels chilly, even austere, to us in America.?

Commentators and meditation teachers emphasize that emptiness is more like a field of enormous potential and possibility, like a womb with immense creative power.???

The understanding that all things are finite and ever shifting shouldn’t eliminate our compassion.?It can actually transform our ability to act with extraordinary sensitivity to injustice and suffering.

The third mountaintop is the non-dual understanding of the first two mountaintops. That’s a mouthful. It means both things are true at once.?

That state is called “suchness” in Chan.?

It is natural and spontaneous access to wisdom and compassion.?

Jonathan Rubenstein taught me: “Leadership is the first person to become present to what is.”

You can only become present to what truly is when you’re able to see from all three mountaintops.?

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I think us "spiritual but not religious people" are especially prone to accessing spirit at work but nowhere else.

How are you cultivating your sense of divine “beyond, becoming, and belonging” outside of work??

How are you gaining perspective from the second and third mountaintops?

Typically, work and professional development doesn’t support this type of insight and realization. Try bringing the idea of no separate self into a MOCHA or RAPID training and see what happens...

But developing a relationship with emptiness, with everything, with every possibility, can transform how you relate to the concrete circumstances you’re facing in your work.?

It lets your work be one manifestation of the divine, while you stay in touch with the vastness of divinity: every possibility’s possible possibility.

That's what the calligraphy on the top of this article means.

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If your spirituality has lit up at work, are you willing to explore letting it grow outside of those confines?

Can you sense how that could help you as a leader?

(This doesn't have to mean joining organized religion, if that's what you're worried about. I'm in year 3 of seminary as a religious "none" and have I lots of ideas that don't involve converting.)

If you want to expand your relationship to spirit and rehab your relationship to work, and you want support, I offer leadership coaching blended with spiritual accompaniment.

Here are some ways we can work together:

• I offer coaching to career changers through SEEK
• I coach founders, fundraisers and Executive Directors through BUILD
• I offer drop-in chaplaincy sessions to hear how your spirit is doing at work. These are free and you can join my email list to catch the next dates.
• And right now, I'm offering 3 coaching sessions on a pay-what-you-can basis to folks who want to explore a dilemma at the intersection of leadership, career, justice and spirit. You can sign up here.

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Alexis

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PS: Thanks to Kosen for teaching this. Go dig through his dharma talks for Brooklyn Zen Center's podcast for more of him.

PPS: I had fun thinking about Chan poetry and the three mountaintops in relation to the phenomenal film Everything Everywhere All at Once -- check that out here. And if you are a Chan expert and have notes for me, I'm all ears.

PPPS: I'm about to dig into Carolyn Chen’s Work Pray Code and Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time by James Suzman. Stay tuned for more book reports.?