Guide to Life Purpose

Friends~

Rick’s publisher, Sounds True, has launched a new series of online interactive guides with various life themes, including Life Purpose, which features Rick’s Anticareer and Abundance material quite prominently.

To explore this promising new resource, browse to: http://www.soundstrue.com/guide/lifepurpose/

~W

 

 

An Hour with Rick & Tami

Sounds True’s founder and guiding light, Tami Simon, interviews Rick Jarow on her latest podcast. Hear this conversation between colleagues whose journey has been intertwined for years via their respective work they love:

http://www.soundstrue.com/podcast/?p=1234

Transcript of this interview also available.

The Life We Want to Lead

The video linked below on mortgage foreclosure practices challenges any reductive or ego-centered notion of Creating the Work You Love.

It is quite possible that the same people who press for foreclosures that can ruin other peoples’ lives, go to church, give money to charity, and attend local school board meetings. They just have agreed to see “work” in a similar way that our industrial culture has agreed to see the use of animals as a food source: as something “out there,” as an object separate from “me and my intimates,” as an arena where exploitation and slaughter do not count. After all, “that’s why they call it work.”

The effort to develop “Right Livelihood” needs to be integrated with the effort to develop a just and sustainable culture. Placing work in the realm of “war” and “hunting” is one strategy that may have its place, but it is not the only way to envision working. The same mortgage brokerage and broker my dedicate their work energy toward the mission of keeping people in their homes. There is just not that much reward for it apparently, but you do have to look at yourself in the mirror every day. The very foundation of Abundance is your conscience. If your heart cannot get on board with what you are doing, get out before your wings atrophy, before you accept defeat in the form of mere comfort. I ask the brokerages, “Is this the best you can do?” Creating the Work You Love might be more aptly phrased, live and work your conscience. The stakes are too high for anything else.

http://www.consumerwarningnetwork.com/2008/07/02/mortgage-servicers-secret/

Some Inconvenient Truths about Creating the Work You Love

Creating the Work You Love is really not about work, per se. It is about your life. Work is one arena where the principles of alignment and manifestation come into process. Complaints about “the job,” “the boss,” about “there not being anything that catches your passion,” or about the “evils of the economy,” (etc.) are basically disempowering. No one owes you anything! No one owes you a job, or food, or health care, for that matter.

Loving your work is not a right, it is a challenge; you have choices and every choice, like every thought creates the next moment, which translates into the environment you live in. No one will give you “Right Livelihood,” you have to take it! You take it with the burning fire of your will, with the determination to live your ideal, with the resolve to pull yourself up and out of wage slavery and do something with your precious life that is authentic and meaningful for you, and that can be communicated to others.

It may take all your strength of character to leave behind the distractions offered by the commercial media, to let go of the seductive illusions of more money or “success.” But this strength is the voice of your Spirit to be who you are. Such strength of character knows what success is for you; knows where to uncover the peace in your heart, and knows that having the space and time to share your being with others, to be creative, to love the flowers, and to move into the ever present bliss of creative flow is worth infinitely more than anything offered by the scarcity-driven, machine laden, always –in- a- hurry to get somewhere, facsimile world. As Mary Oliver puts it in her poem, The Journey, “One day, you finally knew what you had to do, and began…”

In peace and freedom,

Rick Jarow

= THIS WEEKEND =

Learn how to develop your authentic vocation and discover the art and science of creating abundance in every area of your life. I’m offering the last two entry-level workshops of the year at the Open Center in New York City this weekend, on October 3 and 4, 2009: “Creating the Work You Love,” on Saturday, October 3, and “The Practice of Abundance,” on Sunday, October 4.

“Creating the Work You Love” reveals how to open the doors of inspiration, transform your desires into action, and find the motivation and discipline to develop your authentic vocation.

“The Practice of Abundance” focuses on how to manifest your dreams and intuitions in the physical world, and get the money, time, support, and resources to do what you want to do.

Both workshops are highly experiential and show you how to connect to your fundamental sense of well-being and live in a conscious flow with the powers of creation. Registration is $120 for members of the Open Center and $130 for non-members.

For more information on these workshops and to register, go to: http://www.opencenter.org/ or call the Open Center at 212.219.2527.

Workshops Oct 3,4 at Open Center, NYC

Rick will be leading his two most popular workshops at the NY Open Center (in their new space) the weekend of Oct 2-4.

For info please see their website:

http://www.opencenter.org/creating-the-work-you-love/

and

http://www.opencenter.org/the-practice-of-abundance/

Your Life, Your Choices

Creating the Work You Love: Manifesting in Times of Meltdown
Omega Institute June 26-28

“When the world is in the way, the sage succeeds;
when the world is not in the way, the sage survives.”

Attributed to the Chinese Daoist sage Zhuangzi (Chuang-tzu) this about sums up our situation. The media frenzy around “swine-flu” like the frenzy around the economy baldly appeals to peoples’ fear-base, smallness, and greed. As Dr. Mercola points out, three thousand people a day die from malaria. But because there is no pharmaceutical company manufacturing a malaria vaccine, there is no media attention. People are paying other people to create and sell panic and because the vast panoramic beauty of everyday life has become all but invisible to so many. This is the real tragedy and this is the real illness!

This is your life. It is precious and sacred. And you have a choice to either really learn about your body and how to work with and heal it, or to give your power away to corporate medicine. Likewise you can put your energy into creating truly sustainable work – not an ego-based dream fantasy of “me,” but an open exchange with the forces of life that allows you be where you are meant to be, or you can continue to be a wage slave.

This is not about fruitless corporate bashing or the like. You can complain about the economy, the health care system, and the rest as loud and as long as you want to, but these are ultimately all reflections of our selves, of consensus mass-consciousness. To step off the tread mill, to free your mind from limited fear-based thinking and reactive action, to be courageously who you are, and to make whatever concrete contribution you can to your community, this is what “manifestation and life-alignment” work is all about. To Create the Work You Love is to relate to the world, and to the world of work in particular, with genuine intelligence and wisdom. It is not about ego-based self-indulgence, but is rather about the realty of abundance that appears as we step out of our petty visions of separation and risk becoming who and what we are meant to be. Then in an instant, we realize that Life supports us dramatically, that Life has always supported us, and that our challenges, losses, and frustrations are the gifts that urge us to release our resentments, our habitual darkness, our blaming, and our lethargy.

Let the dead bury the dead; go out and demonstrate the reality of Spirit with everything you do. This power is real, and its alignment can be cultivated. No matter what way the world is in, you are faced with the task of living a life that you can be proud of.  There is no time but now. Leap out of your insulated circle and break on through. You will be glad you did. 

Praise from French Connection

When I saw this review of Rick’s book by a woman living in France, I was so charmed I made the executive decision to post it here, without running it by Rick first. (He can be reticent re: blatant self-promotion.) However, I’m sure he’ll enjoy this, as he does love France.  The photo sealed its fate to be posted here. It comes from the new blog http://soardreamfrance.typepad.com/ … should you care to share this woman’s fulfilled dream of living there  (or share her joie de vivre if you already do).  I actually could not find her name or email anywhere on her blog, otherwise I’d love to thank her  personally for her inspiring post, which holds more juice than your typical review. (Presumably she’ll see this and discover my appreciation.) How could a blog packing the words SOAR, DREAM, and FRANCE all at once, backed by deelish expressiveness, be anything but tres bonne?   ~Whitehawk

Books… On the Beam

I’ve titled my TypeList entry “Books…on the Beam” for a couple of different reasons. First, there’s the expression that someone or something is “really on the beam”-meaning that they really know what they are doing, are really good at what they are doing or that something is a good thing. You’d think someone who reads as ravenously as I do, would have a Chatette full of bookshelves. No, I don’t own a one but I have something better-huge beams in my semi-vaulted ceilings where I keep all the books I have and have read. The beam in the guest room is getting full and at some point I won’t be able to stack comfortably anymore. I’ve imagined one of my guests screaming in the middle of the night because Robert Ludlum or Donna Lyon (in hard back of course) has fallen on their head while they were sleeping! Books in English are at a premium here in France. I hate to part with any of them, but am always happy to make a loan. We trade around the village and often go to the market in Villefranche where there is a gentleman who has a stall where he sells English and French books. He’s always happy to see me coming! I would like to tell you that every book on my beam is “on the beam”, and most are. You can expect very high stars from me on any of the books that I choose to share here with you. Why would I want to recommend something that I didn’t enjoy or believe was some of the best I’d ever read?

At the moment I have one book listed-Rick Jarow’s “Creating the Work You Love”. I discovered him quite by accident when I was wandering through the Bookstar that used to be on Decatur Street in the French Quarter. Bookstar regularly closed out my Friday night ritual that began with drinks with friends at the Napoleon House. I was struggling with my job and wanting something to really push me to look at my life and my work in a new way. I found it. I can’t recommend him highly enough. I’ve lent the book to friends and recommended it to clients. As you can see, the book in the photo has been well-loved. What you can’t quite get from the picture is the wonderful aroma of gasoline that wafts by with the turn of each page. The last friend I lent it to left if in the trunk of his car. But this book, highlighted in at least 7 different colors by now, pages falling out and reaking of gasoline had to come to France with me. It helped push me on this journey and continues to help me stay the course when I’m discouraged or need a little tune-up. My books were the most important to bring along when I could, and the most difficult to part with when I had to. I was able to find good homes for all of my books or take them to used book stores in New Orleans before I left. It killed me to give up my whole set of Southern Living Cookbooks to the second hand store. Guess I’m doing another kind of “southern living” now.

I’d like to close with the quote from Rick Jarow’s book that pushed me on my way. I was reading him that fall of ‘97 when my friend Wendy picked me up at the train station in Cahors. The first words that came out of her mouth were: “We have to move to Belgium, can’t you come stay in our house for a year?” It appeared impossible at the time she asked, but after a week of watching the morning mist rise over St. Cirq Lapopie I began to wonder if maybe it really was possible. And then I was smacked by this quote by Robert Johnson found in “Creating the Work You Love”:

“If a fantasy is not responded to, it becomes an energy leak. It is the creative faculty, squandering itself into wishful thinking. Wishing for what one does not have is a symptom of unaligned energy.”

Where Do I Belong?

Following is the 4th and final installment of Rick’s series, The Gate of Power and the Flame of Life.  An unmistakable energy of inclusion, cohesion, and re-creation has been unleashed–not only in the U.S., but globally–with yesterday’s presidential inauguration.  The loom is prepped for a new tapestry of participation to emerge, into which we may weave our vibrant threads of individual expression and contribution.  May you feel encouraged to pick up your thread and work (or at least playfully experiment) with it!  Life is less about ‘finding’ something than it is about creating it.  This post seems tailored to the moment.
Fertile blessings to all ~ Whitehawk 

The flame of ignition is brilliant, sometimes spectacular in its bursting aliveness, but it needs much support, not only to generate the threshold energy to start, but also to maintain itself. A good and constant supply of fuel is needed, as well as shelter from wind, rain, and other factors that may block the blissful burning. Many of these factors can translate into the power of belonging: the whole complex of interrelatedness that we bring to what we do. Belonging is not “do I belong to this club” but a deep sense of participation that is the very root of power, strength, and abundance.

In pre-industrial cultures, where a deep sense of tribal identification was the norm, the worst thing that could happen to someone would be to be shunned. When a person or people were cast out of their communities, they would not be able to physically survive. Likewise, the discussions in psychology about the differences between monkeys brought up with and without touching, affection, and the like attest to this same issue. And while belonging may indeed begin with good mothering, it continues on into the fabric of our days. To doubt whether one belongs (as James Joyce does in Finnigans Wake when he puns on his homeland Dublin as “Doyoubelong?”) is to tear the fabric of existence; and yet this is something that has happened to many of us. Perhaps it may have to happen. The tear, the rip, the fall from childhood grace, and the need to recreate a sense of belonging is one of the challenges of our post historical era, in which most people do not have table altars filled with pictures and mementoes of the last five to seven generations of ancestors. 

Of course, there are many realms of belonging. One could say, for example, that you do not belong to this society if you do not have capital, a bank account, a retirement plan, insurance, and a mortgage, and people without these things might appear to be as bereft as people who were shunned in other cultures. The popularity of television shows like “Cheers” and “Seinfeld” that model cute dysfunctional communities that somehow work, reflect the desire for a place of belonging.

Perhaps we are being asked to revision and rediscover belonging in new ways. A sense of commitment to a place, or a neighborhood is one such way, a sense of belonging to an institution was once a way in which work gave one a sense of belonging, but with athletes sold to the highest bidder and companies regularly swallowing one another, it is increasingly difficult to have a sense of loyalty to an institution. The vocational sense of belonging is a bit different; it is an inner prompting if not certitude that I am here to do something, and that path is a way of belonging in the world. And such a path flowers when connecting with a community that can mirror one’s sense of calling. 

There are those who experience a pervasive feeling of not belonging, not to a church, a family, a nation, or what have you. This level of alienation often produces marginal drifters, loaners, and the like, but it can also lead to the discovery of a deeper level of belonging, belonging to life itself: to be able to thrive in nature, to read the signs of the wind as well as one’s dreams, is to participate in a most profound way. I once attended a Native American sweat lodge in a state park. On the second day of the ceremony, a very black man appeared out of the forest, out of nowhere. I do not think he knew the sweat lodge people personally, but he had such a sense of belonging that everyone acted as if they knew him well. 

What is often dubbed “the sense of meaning” is actually a sense of belonging. It has just become deracinated from a community and its participation mystique, like the modernist detour to find meaning in literature and art without religious commitment and the post modern dissolution of meaning altogether; are we to all just go back to church? This takes us back to the “pursuit of happiness” and to the radical idea that this can occur, in its most authentic sense, through the free conscience of each and every individual.  A culture that offers you the possibility to be anything you can dream of and then qualifies those dreams according to their marketability will not sustain the flame of desire.

Belonging deeply to life, on the other hand, sidesteps the ego-inflation of needing a “life mission” and offers “the rapture of being alive,” as Joseph Campbell put it. Great ambitions, as well as great salaries, may be but literal “compensations” for the loss of this deepest sense of belonging in which nature, society, and soul weave themselves together in an offering of fullness. 

Entering this first gate is entering a precinct of power. A power emerging from the full support of nothing, from vast emptiness becoming vast openness, the world as a field of possibility, the constant, ongoing encounter with the regenerate possibility, with the greatness of the imagination. Abundance then is the natural evolution from the material of your own life as in Rilke’s letter to a young poet

“Sir, I can’t give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to the question of whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you without trying to interpret it.”

This rooting of the flame, this abundance of acceptance, is the direct opposite of speedy acquisitiveness. What you can do better than anyone else is to be you; but since you don’t know yourself, the only alternative is to constantly surprise yourself. Here, the first gate, the struggle of the individual is to emerge out of the matrix of the collective, and the willingness of the individual to continually morph and integrate into new form.

Keep the Work You Love

For those desiring to maintain your current employment… this slide show of tips put together by Liz Ryan for BusinessWeek.com may be of interest.  It’s part of Business Week’s ”survival guide for tough times” series.  Also a related article linked to this – fyi. 
~ Whitehawk   

Ten tips for avoiding a layoff;
ten more for being prepared just in case:

http://tinyurl.com/20Tipsforcareersurvival

Workshop Updates; Options for Organizations & Conferences

~ memo ~

To:  All parties interested in the work of Rick Jarow
Re:  Updated workshop information; Rick at your organization or conference

As you may be aware, Rick has taken some personal retreat & reflection time this year.  He is now back in the saddle (see Appearances), and recently discussed with me his intentions re: public appearance work (ie, speeches, workshops, and corporate collaborations).  I’m having some of this info posted on his blog because I know there is considerable interest in his activities, based on email I receive.  I’m also often asked if or when he might be appearing in various places.  Part of the purpose of this message is to encourage you to “be the change” you want to see — in other words, be the organizer who brings Rick to your location!  Consider this an open invitation to organizers/sponsors (established or aspiring) who would like to create a particularly meaningful event for your community, learning institution, or place of business to come forward and connect.  The world is ripe for healing.

The Workshops ~

Rick’s two popular, enduring public workshops — Create the Work You Love: The Anticareer Workshop, and The Advanced Manifestation Workshop: Alchemy of Abundance – have been revised to more directly reflect the context of these times, which many are finding more complex and challenging than ever in matters of work, health, relationships, finances; you name it. How are we to be creative, abundant, courageous, and truly thrive when so much chaos seems to be unleashed everywhere?  These flagship workshops have been honed to honor these amplified concerns.  They can be presented in one-day, two-day, or full-week retreat formats, depending on the needs and resources of the host/sponsoring organization.

Rick also teaches the following workshops that are less widely known, but are valuable offerings worthy of “prime time”~

Depth and Transition: Journey through the Unchartered Sea

Contemporary approaches to loss, illness, or life transition all too often focus on getting out of them, on “learning the lesson and moving on.”  What is lost therein is the rich and fertile loam of the dark woods, the depth that can open the soul to its possibility. This workshop offers an opportunity to explore the darkness, the unknown, and the unwanted as a fearless warrior of one’s truth.

and~

The Healing Wisdom of Hermes: Astrology, Alchemy, and the Tantra of the West

Hermetic teachings, as refined and revitalized by Renaissance and Neoplatonist adepts, offer us the richest body of esoteric spiritual practices to have developed in the West (equivalent to Hindu/ Buddhist Tantric traditions) to which we owe our modern interest in symbolic systems such as astrology, alchemy and the Tarot.  In this deeply experiential workshop, we draw upon these powerful symbolic languages to explore different levels of our own personal and transpersonal realities, to gain insight into long-standing blockages, and to connect with our guiding divinities.

Speeches & Corporate Workshop Collaborations ~

Cultivating Alignment & Coherence @ Work:  Consider the exciting option of inviting Rick Jarow to your place of business to guide your company, department, or board in a session or series.  Business is a realm of significant power and influence – in society, and also of course in the lives of all who comprise the corporate soul.  Wise management understands the value of an aligned and coherent corporate or organizational family.  Rick can contribute to this worthy vision… for the good of All.  Following is a general theme; contact us with your situation and ideas to co-create a tailor-made event (see contact info below).

Your Company as Your Calling

Explore how your organization can more clearly reflect a larger sense of calling instead of short-term opportunity. You are taken through a step-by-step process of assessment, envisioning, and restructuring so that your organization or department can reflect its members’ deepest sense of integrity passion and purpose, as it moves toward sustainability and a heart-centered ethos of prosperity.

Keynotes and Presentations — Conferences

Enrich any thought-provoking or inspiration-generating program with an infusion of that “rarified something” unique to the manner and message of Rick Jarow that resonates powerfully with the collective spirit.  Hard to articulate just what this is… but you know it when you “get it.”  If you or anyone in your field of influence is involved in producing events for non-profit organizations, conscious or “green” businesses, or educational institutions addressing one’s authentic involvement in life, work, or community… consider contacting us to discover what Rick might bring to the program! We can go over what sponsorship would entail, and look at time availabilities in 2009.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

DO YOU HAVE A LEAD TO, OR POINT OF CONTACT AT,
AN ORGANIZATION THAT MIGHT BENEFIT BY
RICK’S OFFERINGS?  CONSIDER BEING A
CONDUIT FOR CONNECTION.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Contact lpentell@earthlink.net
to set something spectacular into motion!

Much light to you,

Laurie Pentell

PS — New Gallery page is up, featuring some of the photos we’ve been receiving of Rick’s travels over the years.  Fun!