True Prosperity: Becoming an employee of the Universe

I love the word prosperity. Prosperity represents a fulfilling life encompassing not only material wealth but happiness and genuine fulfillment. I think of it as a state where abundance is free to flow uninhibited through all areas of one’s life.

I think you could say most people long to live in such a state but few people actually do. What is it that obstructs living in a sustained state of true prosperity? True prosperity being grounded in abundance and growth oriented experiences. True prosperity is not achieved by cheating people, doing work that makes you miserable or defining prosperity solely by material wealth.

There are plenty of wealthy people who are miserable and I would not call them prosperous because key parts of their lives are unfulfilled if not a source of serious pain. I set out to discover true prosperity for myself nearly 7 years ago and its been a painful, wild but enlightening journey.

As much as I’ve struggled over the last few years trying to realize prosperity some have repeatedly told me I should just go get a job. Many points on my journey have been characterized by poverty and near homelessness. These people are well meaning in their advice and from a practical perspective it makes sense.

However after leaving a high paying corporate job in 2005 I became disgusted with the whole concept of work which is part of what led me to start this journey.

To begin with, I got another job working for a non-profit that helped the homeless and when that wasn’t fulfilling I found a job working for a large Buddhist organization. I thought for sure doing work for a spiritual organization would be fulfilling. It wasn’t.

In fact neither of these jobs felt any better to me than my corporate job. That’s because they all had one primary thing in common, expending a large amount of effort doing something I didn’t like for money, to survive. It ended up not mattering that it was for a good cause because in the moment my time and effort went into activities that were not fulfilling or nurturing to me personally.

For me something seems wrong about that and I’ve reached a point where I literally cannot do it without major physical, emotional and spiritual consequences. I slowly realized that part of my life purpose was to find a way to achieve true prosperity no matter what I had to go through in order to do that.

One of the major realizations I’ve had over the years is that we as a society and as individuals have become conditioned into lack and scarcity which is the opposite of abundance and prosperity. Part of this conditioning ties our natural survival instinct to money where money becomes synonymous with survival.

We then have to work for money so we can feel safe and secure knowing that we can make it in the world. Prosperity and abundance become about how secure your job is, how much money you have in the bank and whether you have adequate material resources. If these things are unstable, fear and stress result, and even if they are stable, there is a creeping growing discontent that spreads like a cancer slowly eating us away.

Living this way results in an unnatural state where we are forced into obligations we think are necessary for our survival and cut off from true abundance and the guidance of our creative intuition which ask us to live from the heart.

I recently saw a quote on Facebook that I’m not sure who said but it went something like this: “Human beings are the only species on this planet that has to pay to live on it”. There is a certain insanity in that when you think about it.

This is NOT natural for us. In fact, it’s probably the most effective form of slavery (my next article will go into great detail on this) ever devised, because most people don’t know they are enslaved to false abundance in the form of money.

A human beings life energy or effort is tied to working for something that is already theirs to begin with. It’s common knowledge that people will do almost anything for money and it’s no wonder if it’s deeply tied to their survival and equated with abundance.

Many spiritual people start to hate and avoid money because of this and so end up nearly destitute as I did, which is nothing more than another manifestation of lack.

One of the things we see happening today is the false system beginning to collapse in on itself. This is of course inevitable because our system is built on a house of cards. Money is no longer backed up by gold or anything of tangible value, it’s created literally out of thin air, just numbers on a computer or pieces of plastic and paper.

The time has come for us to break free from this mad and dysfunctional way of living, and this is what I’ve been working on for the last several years. Breaking free is a daunting task because the conditioning of lack goes very deep and being tied to survival involves confronting some of our worst fears.

However, if we’re not going to rely on money or a stable job for our security and abundance, what will take its place? As I’ve connected more deeply with the spiritual dimension and surrendered more fully to the guidance of higher self I have realized that the reason I cannot work a job anymore is because I already have one, one which I’ve been neglecting.

That job involves working for the most incredible employer one could ever have, the Universe. I’m an employee of the Universe. That may sound like some new age platitude or some philosophical dream, but I mean it in a very literal, very practical way.

Being an employee of the Universe means following your inner guidance and doing what you love to do, which from this perspective is what you are meant to do. You know already what your meant to do because it is what you love whether it seems like a valid vocation in the usual sense or not.

Becoming an employee of the Universe has some requirements. One is that we open our minds and really take stock of what we truly love to do and are drawn to do. Once we see that, we must let go of what we think we ‘should‘ do and fully embrace what we love.

This requires a great deal of trust at first because the fears of survival and lack based mentality will come in and try to scare us into getting back with the old program, which is working to survive.

We have to have the courage and the faith to resist that and persist because we’re not here to survive. Animals are here to survive, we are here to thrive and create and as human beings we have the capability to co-create our reality.

The reward for persistance is true unlimited abundance. Like any other employer, the Universe pays its employees for doing their jobs. But unlike conventional employers it pays in unlimited abundance, which means you don’t have a fixed salary and your not just paid in money, rather your paid with just what you need when you need it.

Like a traditional employer though the Universe will not pay you if you don’t do your job. That is, if you don’t follow your intuitive guidance and really DO what you love, you cannot expect abundance to flow freely in your life. You may get spurts of it here and there but it won’t be reliable. So we have to ACT on our intuition and passion and ask for what we need in the process.

When we first make the transition to working directly for the Universe, most of us go through a difficult transition phase where we deal with doubt, fear and scarcity. We also deal with obligations from our previous way of living which no longer fit with our path.

These obligations may be in the form of relationships, jobs, houses, places we live, friends etc. To work full time for the Universe we must let go of any obligations which block us from living in the moment, following our hearts and creating true prosperity.

We will know intuitively what needs to be let go of because those things will feel more and more wrong and will stick out like a sore thumb even though we may resist letting them go with all our might.

We also need to learn to get in touch with the deeper part of ourselves, which I call Higher Self or Spirit, because this is where our guidance comes from and its what we have to learn to trust and have faith in.

That’s all part of the process because in effect we are building an entirely new life which rests in freedom, passion and abundance … actually this is just life, mainstream life is a pale shadow of living fully, which is why so many people are depressed, addicted to various substances and self destructive behaviors.

When we really step into being employees of the Universe and partake in true abundance, we realize prosperity and lasting happiness. This doesn’t mean life ceases to be painful, but we have a deeper happiness that is ok with the pain because we are fulfilled and have purpose and direction in life and we realize pain is part of living life in this world.

We’re creating what we are here to create and adding something of value to the world while we express Spirit in a unique creative way.

I believe this is what nearly all of us truly long for and many have already attained some measure of it. Have you?