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We’ve had many clients ask us about the big question of whether or not to stay in a job that doesn’t feel right. It can be a challenging decision because sometimes it’s the job and sometimes it’s you. And sometimes it doesn’t matter whether it’s the job or it’s you - if you aren’t willing or able to change the circumstances and/or your relationship to them, it’s just not going to work.
Let’s start with some clues that a change is in order. Do any of these apply to your relationship with your work?
- You’re bringing negative energy from your work life into the rest of your life. Your work life is spilling over into - and degrading - your non-work life.
- You feel guilty or conflicted about aspects of the work you do, or how the company operates.
- You’re trying to isolate your career from the rest of your life (or from your own consciousness). For instance, you tell yourself, “It’s only my job” or “Well, it pays the bills.”
- You’re unenthusiastic, bored, or tuning out at work.
- You feel unable to fit into, and/or unaccepted by, the company culture.
- You dread going to work.
- You’re “phoning it in” or “half-assing it.” Or you start doing things to sabotage your work.
- You start making careless mistakes.
- Your work environment feels “toxic” - for instance, your coworkers or boss is verbally abusive or hostile in other ways, or aspects of the environment are causing harm.
The more of the above questions you answered yes to, the greater the likelihood that there’s a problem. Perhaps it’s time to find a new job. However, it’s possible that you just need a new perspective.
You might benefit from making a list of your “career needs” - that is, the things you simply won’t compromise on when it comes to your work. Be sure to distinguish needs from wants. For instance, while you may want an office with a lovely view, in actuality, if everything else were in place (for example: positive culture, opportunities to be creative, alignment with your values and purpose, feeling appreciated by your coworkers, good benefits, feeling safe and accepted, etc.), maybe the view wouldn’t really matter.
The valuable part about getting clear about your needs is that it makes the path forward easier. If you discover that one of your needs isn’t being met in this job, you really have just two options: (1) see if it’s possible for something to be changed so that this need can be met (2) find another job. When there’s an unmet need in your career (and, again, I want to emphasize that needs are absolutely non-negotiable), you’ll feel it nagging at you - even if you haven’t pinpointed it yet. If you don’t address it directly, you’ll likely employ a variety of indirect (perhaps even unconscious) ways to cause change - like avoidance, sabotage, half-assing it, blaming the job for your unhappiness, etc.
If, on the other hand, you determine that the job really does meet your needs, then the problem is something else. Maybe the issue is your own buttons or limiting beliefs. If so, the good news is you don’t need to start job hunting. You may need to do some personal work that could be at least as challenging as changing jobs, but this will serve you much more than switching workplaces.
However you decide to manage it, I’d like to suggest Sacred Expansion - a stand-alone portion of the Dragontree Life Coach training - as a powerful and effective way to know yourself, release baggage, and get super clear on what you want (and need). And hey, if you actually do want to change jobs, you might consider becoming a life coach. The world needs more people helping others to live to their potential, and our program is great.
I invite you to speak to one of our Life Coaches to help guide you to find work that inspires you, how to create peace in the job you currently have.
Next time I’ll talk about some ways to change how you’re showing up. I definitely don’t want you to stay in a workplace that’s harmful to you, but if it’s merely not everything you want it to be, there’s an opportunity to engage your power of choice and make it something different.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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Some years ago, I was apprenticing under an elder practitioner, and we stepped into the treatment room to meet a tan, muscular guy with a crushing handshake, a loud voice, and a surplus of confidence. “I just need a tune up,” he yelled immediately, lest we consider for even a moment that there could be anything wrong with him. He went on describe a life of conquest and wealth, from climbing Mount Everest to buying, selling, and merging companies. He was also kind enough to share his personal credo: that everyone should maintain a “cash cushion” of at least a million dollars – just in case. The only health issue he could think of was an old ankle injury.
But my mentor was a healer of spirits, not ankles. And I could sense, as he felt the patient’s pulses and asked polite questions, that he was smelling, seeing, hearing, and feeling information on another dimension. We stepped out of the room and he said, “The bigger the front, the bigger the back.”
I’m sure you get the gist of this expression even if you’re not familiar with it. You’ve heard about the preacher who foams at the mouth about moral depravity and then gets caught with a prostitute. In this patient’s case, we didn’t uncover anything scandalous, just a cowering core of insecurity and isolation that made all his accomplishments feel worthless. He had so much invested in the “front” in order to avoid revealing or confronting the “back.” To use the Japanese terminology from last week, we could see these fronts and backs as jitsu (“jit-soo”) and kyo (“kee-oh”).
If a kyo is an inner weakness, instability, or deficiency, a jitsu is the resulting drive to protect, acquire, and resist. Greed is always a jitsu emanating from some misunderstood or unrecognized kyo, and the same is usually the case with other strong drives that benefit only the individual’s ego or pocketbook.
Psychologists and philosophers have been digging for the secret kyos behind pathological behaviors for centuries. Many kyos would fall under what Carl Jung referred to as the “shadow aspect” – that usually hidden part of the personality where we keep everything we regard as wrong or bad. Jung said, “Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.”
It’s interesting to consider this front/back dynamic in an age when obesity is epidemic, military spending is outrageous, and people stab each other for Black Friday deals. What’s the hole we’re trying to fill or protect with so much acquisition and armor?
Whatever our individual kyos, I’m inclined to believe there is a deeper, central kyo embedded in the collective unconscious. It’s the kyo of the kyo, a core weakness that’s the same for everyone even if it’s expressed uniquely by each of us. While it’s gratifying when our jitsu activities lead to the recognition and treatment of our personal kyo, it’s monumental when we uncover and heal the one primal kyo.
As I see it, the fundamental kyo is the belief that we are separate from our world. Separate from God, Nature, Spirit (or whatever other term you like), separate from other humans, and separate even from ourselves, i.e., ultimately alone. This apparent separation is what allows us to perceive a world of attack and defense; a world in which our gains come at the expense of another’s loss; a feeling of guilt (for separating from our source) and blame; and an endless drive to find something that will correct this unsettled feeling.
All these expressions of the kyo are confused except possibly the last – a drive to find something that will correct this unsettled feeling. Of course it’s possible, if this drive is outwardly directed, for it to lead to overeating, gambling, hyper-acqusition, drug addiction, and more instability. But it’s also possible that it might direct us to uncover the truth: that we’re not actually separate or alone, and that we need nothing but to wake up.
Oneness with everything – sometimes called Self realization or unity consciousness – is a theme common to so many spiritual traditions and described by so many thoroughly rational, nonzealous people, that it would be difficult for an intelligent and open-minded person to dismiss it, even if the mind has no point of reference for it. In fact, I’ve noticed that once the seed of this concept is willingly invited into one’s mind, it tends not to leave. It’s compelling, because it would mean an end to so much conflict, an opening to such deep peace, and a resolution of our core kyo.
Over the week, I encourage you to feel into the underlying instability that compels you to seek for things outside yourself. Feel into the vulnerability that makes you want to attack others and defend yourself. Are these kyos different? Or do they emanate from one central idea? Can you determine what that idea is? If so, is it true? Tell me what you discover.
Regardless of your ability to unearth these feelings or beliefs, just arousing the spirit of curiosity is valuable. At the least, it’s better than being at the mercy of below-the-radar impulses.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
P.S. If you didn’t read last week’s article on jitsu, kyo, and amoebas, you can check it out HERE.
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[post_content] => When my wife says I’m the only person she knows who could happily curl up in bed with a 20-pound medical text, I like to point out that I also enjoy books on philosophy. It’s been at least a decade since I’ve read a work of fiction (except to my kids), but I find nonfiction so fascinating, and it constantly challenges my worldview. I know most people find these subjects dry and heady, so I try to tackle them in our newsletters with the aim of making them more accessible and digestible.
Today I’d like to share some thoughts on one of these dry topics – the philosophy of nondualism. Wait, don’t leave! I promise I’ll make it interesting – controversial even. Just bear with me. It might even change the way you see the world.
In a nutshell, nondualism is the notion that everything is essentially one – that all the apparent differences and separation we perceive in the world are an illusion.
Nondual philosophy has many different forms; I can’t deliver a comprehensive analysis in an article this short. Instead, I’ll speak to the perspective of a single Eastern source – Tantra Illuminated by Christopher Wallis – and a single Western source – A Course in Miracles (ACIM) by Helen Schucman.
The first is a study of Tantra, a group of spiritual traditions that arose mainly between 300 and 1300 A.D. They had a significant impact on the development of yoga, Hinduism, and Buddhism. And I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but “tantric sex” is the tiniest fraction of what Tantra comprises.
The second, which might be understood as nondual Christianity, was written by an American in the 1960s and 70s and is presented as a “channeled” work dictated by Jesus.
Though seemingly very different, these two traditions actually have a lot in common. And what they share is a perspective that would alleviate a lot of suffering if it were more widely known.
Both schools of thought focus on discovering the unity within all the apparent differences in the world. They say that when we see a world where some things are godly and others aren’t, where good and evil, wealth and poverty, sickness and health, virtue and sin, life and death, and a host of other “dualities” yank us around and define our experience of life, we’re wrapped up in a dream that obscures the real truth.
And that truth, they assert, is that all things are an expression of one Consciousness (God, Spirit, Universe, Divine Light, Highest Self, or whatever other word you care to use), which is synonymous with Love. These systems hold that everyone and all things are connected, equal expressions of God, and there is nothing to fear and no reason to suffer.
ACIM often pushes non-Christians’ buttons by using terms like Jesus, Christ, and Holy Spirit. For me, raised Jewish, the terminology presented some hurdles at first, but it gets easier the more I recognize that these names – as well as those of most other traditions – are all pointing to the same thing.
ACIM also pushes Christians’ buttons because much of what it teaches flies in the face of Christian dogma. It states that God isn’t outside of us or different than us. It holds that there is no duality of heaven and hell; only heaven is real and we’re either conscious of it or lost in stories of our own making. It says there is no sin – only mistakes made out of confusion. It claims that God doesn’t forgive – because God doesn’t condemn.
Despite these potential objections, I feel it’s a worthwhile study in Western nondualism. It might be a more natural leap for someone with a background in an Abrahamic religion (Judaism, Christianity, Islam are the main three) rather than adopting a completely foreign Eastern nondual tradition. However, some find the reframing of deeply entrenched Abrahamic concepts too difficult to swallow, or the terminology too loaded, making the Eastern traditions something of a clean slate in comparison.
Central to ACIM’s narrative is the idea that you sought to break apart from God, to be independent, and in so doing, you gave your power to your ego. (This might be likened to the biblical story of eating from the Tree of Knowledge, whereupon the mind was given authority and we lost the “Eden” state of consciousness.) The ego protects this idea of independence by asserting that the world is a place of separation, where everything is disconnected, where all things are in competition, and pain, suffering, and loneliness threaten us.
The perpetuation of this dream depends on the ego’s continually empowering itself by generating conflict – with the world and yourself. Meanwhile, the belief that you cut yourself off from your Highest Self (keep substituting words you like) is a source of deep self-blame, which you also project onto the world and its inhabitants.
The primary means of resolving this dilemma, the Course teaches, is forgiveness. By forgiving yourself and everyone else, conflict dissolves, the illusion of separation fades, you see that you were never actually alone or vulnerable, and the world becomes a different place.
Nondual Tantra takes a slightly different view of the origin, but presents a similar human conundrum. In its conception of reality, there is one Divine Light (again, you can call this God, Goddess, Awareness, Spirit, Dao, etc.) that expresses itself in all possible ways – including as seven billion humans – through what is called krida, the doctrine of divine play. The word “play” is used because the Source manifests an infinitely diverse world for its own sake – for the love of it – rather than for some end result.
In order to have an immersive experience as each of these facets of the world, the Divine imbues them with only a fraction of its total awareness. That is, so that you can really experience being you – believing you’re on your own, thinking you’re limited by this body, feeling the full spectrum of human emotion, triumphing over obstacles – you can’t know all along that you’re actually God acting like a human.
You have to forget, so the play feels that much more real – and so that you can later remember. It’s the ultimate game: to dive into a world where you’re blind to the connections and safety nets, where there’s so much potential to feel alone, afraid, and attacked, and yet, to find the light. To remember that it’s all You. To wake up to what you really are, with revelation, relief, and awe.
I have no agenda of convincing you to subscribe to either of these schools of thought. But knowing that our readers are open-minded people who are looking for deeper peace and an experience of connection, I thought you might find it compelling that two traditions from such different times and places offer such a similar message. (And these are just a couple examples of many.)
Both systems declare that you’re so much more connected to the world and your Highest Self than you realize, that the death of your body isn’t the end of life, and that the fundamental matrix of the universe is love. Perhaps there’s room in your worldview for a little nondualism. What do you think?
With love,
Dr. Peter Borten
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We’ve had many clients ask us about the big question of whether or not to stay in a job that doesn’t feel right. It can be a challenging decision because sometimes it’s the job and sometimes it’s you. And sometimes it doesn’t matter whether it’s the job or it’s you - if you aren’t willing or able to change the circumstances and/or your relationship to them, it’s just not going to work.
Let’s start with some clues that a change is in order. Do any of these apply to your relationship with your work?
- You’re bringing negative energy from your work life into the rest of your life. Your work life is spilling over into - and degrading - your non-work life.
- You feel guilty or conflicted about aspects of the work you do, or how the company operates.
- You’re trying to isolate your career from the rest of your life (or from your own consciousness). For instance, you tell yourself, “It’s only my job” or “Well, it pays the bills.”
- You’re unenthusiastic, bored, or tuning out at work.
- You feel unable to fit into, and/or unaccepted by, the company culture.
- You dread going to work.
- You’re “phoning it in” or “half-assing it.” Or you start doing things to sabotage your work.
- You start making careless mistakes.
- Your work environment feels “toxic” - for instance, your coworkers or boss is verbally abusive or hostile in other ways, or aspects of the environment are causing harm.
The more of the above questions you answered yes to, the greater the likelihood that there’s a problem. Perhaps it’s time to find a new job. However, it’s possible that you just need a new perspective.
You might benefit from making a list of your “career needs” - that is, the things you simply won’t compromise on when it comes to your work. Be sure to distinguish needs from wants. For instance, while you may want an office with a lovely view, in actuality, if everything else were in place (for example: positive culture, opportunities to be creative, alignment with your values and purpose, feeling appreciated by your coworkers, good benefits, feeling safe and accepted, etc.), maybe the view wouldn’t really matter.
The valuable part about getting clear about your needs is that it makes the path forward easier. If you discover that one of your needs isn’t being met in this job, you really have just two options: (1) see if it’s possible for something to be changed so that this need can be met (2) find another job. When there’s an unmet need in your career (and, again, I want to emphasize that needs are absolutely non-negotiable), you’ll feel it nagging at you - even if you haven’t pinpointed it yet. If you don’t address it directly, you’ll likely employ a variety of indirect (perhaps even unconscious) ways to cause change - like avoidance, sabotage, half-assing it, blaming the job for your unhappiness, etc.
If, on the other hand, you determine that the job really does meet your needs, then the problem is something else. Maybe the issue is your own buttons or limiting beliefs. If so, the good news is you don’t need to start job hunting. You may need to do some personal work that could be at least as challenging as changing jobs, but this will serve you much more than switching workplaces.
However you decide to manage it, I’d like to suggest Sacred Expansion - a stand-alone portion of the Dragontree Life Coach training - as a powerful and effective way to know yourself, release baggage, and get super clear on what you want (and need). And hey, if you actually do want to change jobs, you might consider becoming a life coach. The world needs more people helping others to live to their potential, and our program is great.
I invite you to speak to one of our Life Coaches to help guide you to find work that inspires you, how to create peace in the job you currently have.
Next time I’ll talk about some ways to change how you’re showing up. I definitely don’t want you to stay in a workplace that’s harmful to you, but if it’s merely not everything you want it to be, there’s an opportunity to engage your power of choice and make it something different.
Be well,
Dr. Peter Borten
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