Have you ever been laid off? I have and it kind of sucks. The moment when your supervisor calls you into their office, you begin to feel like dead man walking as you pass by your co-workers knowing on some level what is about to happen. There had been rumors around the office that layoffs were coming. I had even thought I might be a weak link. Even so I wasn’t prepared. It was as if my supervisor turned into a different person. She had emotionally removed herself from me, which only made her, “I am so sorry to have to tell you…” more surreal and impersonal. At that point I disconnected. The rest of what came out of her mouth was, “blah, blah, blah…” No matter how they dished it out, it still felt like rejection. Out of the people they could have laid off, they had chosen me. After the lay off I was a pitifully lost soul for about a year until I got back on my feet. I suffered depression and anxiety as I struggled to find my way. When I regained my footing I started my career as a social worker. I had gone from lost to found. I wasn’t able to realize what an incredible gift my lay off was until a few years later when I had some perspective. I now know that the universe was kicking me out of my comfort zone and forcing me to get to where I was supposed to be. Because of my lay off I look at our country’s economic recession with a sense of curiosity. I ponder what lessons we are supposed to take from what is going on. As people are loosing jobs, savings and homes, instead of pity I wonder how lives will be positively impacted. I feel great empathy for the pain and discomfort in having life turned upside down. But I also have great faith that God gives us exactly what we need to spiritually grow. While we can focus on what is being taken away during this recession, I hope instead we will choose to focus on the profound opportunity for spiritual growth through what is being given.
I believe that when it is time for us to spiritually grow God first attempts to get our attention through quiet knocking. If ignored, the knocking becomes incrementally louder until we open the door. When I got laid off I was working as an administrative assistant at a commercial real estate brokerage firm. I didn’t enjoy the job. I knew that it wasn’t the right fit but I was too complacent to take any action. I wasn’t just lost professionally, but personally as well. I now realize I had heard tapping on the door earlier but I was too paralyzed to answer it. So, the universe had to bust the door down to get me on the right path. When I hear of other people loosing their jobs I wonder how much they really liked the position they were in. When we are passionate about what we do and who we are doing it for it’s contagious. In a state of passion we are expansive, creative and extremely productive. Most companies are invested in holding onto workers that love their job that much. If they are passionate about their work and still get laid off, to me it means that they weren’t being seen or valued by the company they were working for. They were wasting time expending energy that was never going to be appreciated. Either way, they weren’t in a place that they could spiritually thrive and create to their ultimate capacity. If they did in fact work in a job that they were passionate about and for a company that was genuinely heart broken about letting them go, then they could allow themselves to feel shepherded onto another location where their spirits are needed more. In any case, I believe that when we are laid off that we are being told that we were not in the right position or place to fulfill our life’s purpose.
If we aren’t sure if we are going to get laid off we can proactively start asking ourselves about how aligned we are in our work. This allows us to respond to the universe while it is knocking rather than waiting until the door is busted in. My husband was working for a large corporation when he began to hear about down sizing. While his job used to be perfect for him, he knew he was growing stagnant in it. He had always dreamed of opening his own business, but because he was complacently comfortable he didn’t take action. He did get laid off but was quickly rehired by a different division of the same company. He heard the knock. He kept on with the company but began to research and take the classes he needed to start his own business. A year later he was laid off again for good. Instead of feeling rejected he felt invigorated and ready. He took the very low paying job that he knew would prepare him for the new work he was going to do. Less than six months later the universe lined up a miracle and he was in his own business. Once we get ourselves aligned with our purpose we are then going with the flow of universal energy. It is miraculous how things will come together for us when we are heading in the right direction. The faster we can let go of our resistance to the loss of our professional security, the sooner we can answer the calling that is intended for us.
If we haven’t lost our job there are few of us that haven’t lost money in this recession. I believe there are spiritual lessons in these losses as well. The question that comes to mind is whether money is really ours to loose. Is anything truly ours? I believe that while we are housed in human bodies we are primarily spirit. Everything that we have or don’t have is given to us in order to support us in our spiritual development. I don’t believe that any material objects are truly real, but instead are transitory. I can’t think of a single material object or person that I feel a God given right to have my entire life. I learned this lesson earlier in my life when I lost everything financially and began to go deeply into debt. One night I shot awake in a panicked sweat realizing that if I continued to live as I was, I would go under. I had to take on a second job. I thought I had made it professionally and felt humiliated at the idea of taking a step backward. After I realized that there was no such thing as “making it,” energy started flowing again. I found the perfect job as a part time limousine driver; a job I never would have imagined. I worked it for a couple of years until I was financially sound again. That job was a real adventure that added a valued dimension to my life. Ultimately, a lesson to learn is that while we should be grateful for what we have materialistically we shouldn’t become dependent on it. Money and materialism is only in our lives as tools to help us learn the spiritual lessons we are meant to learn. Through my experience I learned that anything lost will be replaced. Everything in life, including our finances, ebbs and flows. Now when life ebbs, I don’t worry. I more drastic the retraction of energy, the more powerful the possibility for expansion will be.
The loss of money has also rippled outward to the loss of houses, cars and frequency of shopping. Unfortunately we are socialized to believe in this country that we are our material objects. We think that our car, home, bank account and clothes make up who we are. In reality, they have absolutely nothing to do with who we are. I believe that is another lesson for us all in our materialistic losses. We are being stripped of our materialism so that we are forced to figure out and rely on who we truly are underneath this superficial mask. Additionally, our losses beg us to figure out what happiness is all about. If we loose half our savings should we be less happy? How about if we have to move into a home with half the square footage? Will our children’s lives be negatively impacted if they need to go to public universities instead of private? I believe the more we answer “yes” to these questions the more vulnerable we are to the spiritual lessons to be discovered through loss. Years back I took a trip down the Nile River in Egypt. As I looked into the villages where people lived in mud brick homes with no electricity or phones I was struck by what appeared to be content happiness. I had a hard time wrapping myself around the revelation that there was such peace when these villagers had nothing but each other.
No matter how we are to be affected by this recession, we must be open to change. It was our resistance to change that got us into this crisis in the first place. We can’t spiritually grow if we defend against change at all costs. In reality, our jobs, towns, homes, cars and clothes do become security blankets of sorts. However, if we take those blankets and pull them over our heads and turn them into cocoons they become smothering. Our spirits are incarnated into our bodies so that we can have the adventure that is our life. To fulfill our life’s purpose we have to be flexible to what life brings. We may have to relocate, learn a new trade, meet new people or move into a smaller home. These changes aren’t intended to break our spirit but to make our spirit. The sooner we let go of our resistance to change the sooner the universe can take us to where we are meant to be, which is always a better place than we could have ever imagined for ourselves.
Which brings me to what I believe can be the most powerful lesson there is to learn through this recession; faith. Most of us say we believe in God, but what does that really mean? Some of us attend religious services regularly but feel betrayed by God when life brings us challenging experiences. While we believe in God many of us haven’t really defined what God is or how it works. This recession gives us the incredible spiritual opportunity to further define God for ourselves. Is God capricious, conditional, punishing and testing? Or is God all love? Are the experiences in our life meant to show how God forgets us? Or are they here to give us the opportunity to spiritually grow to higher and higher levels of enlightenment? There have been plenty of moments in my life when I would have identified God through each of the former questions rather than the latter. However, there came a point when I had to attest that there hadn’t been one experience of adversity in my life that hadn’t brought me to a deeper level of spiritual understanding, strength and peace. In time I let go of the idea of God as testing and punishing. The continued journey into the universal power that is God is ours to explore through this recession.
It is up to you to figure out what you want to do with our current recession. I believe we are all being called to make some sort of change in life whether it be big or small. This may be a change in career, a tightening of our financial belt or the ponderings of what it means to live a life of abundance. You might choose to hold onto the sense that you are a victim who has been betrayed by the system and God. You might continue to keep spending and living unconsciously; burying your head deep into a hole of denial. You might sink into a depression from the idea of significant life change. I hope instead that you might choose to open up to the gifts that are being presented. You are an incredible spirit who has a greater purpose in life. If you have the courage to keep your head up, your eyes will be open to the miracles that will take place in your life as you learn the lessons that are intended to be some of the greatest gifts you will ever receive.