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/

Jewel in the Darkness in NYC 2/28/09

All,

On February 28^th I am offering a completely new workshop: “The Jewel in the Darkness” at the Open Center in NYC. This workshop is the distillation of my past years of experience with ongoing Pluto transits, and their attendant manifestations (which in my case have been chronic illness, separation from loved ones, and the loss, and recuperation, of a home.)

As a part of this work, I went into retreat from public appearances for six months to nurse my wounds, but more importantly to allow myself to receive and fully experience the total impact of the “darkness” that was enveloping my life. It has been said that some souls inherently open toward the light while others move toward the abyss. In my own case, it has been both. As a result, I came out of this period with a profound sense of the value of darkness and of the gifts that could be received if there is enough patience and openness.

All this occurred in my life before the economy crashed, but I look at the economic landscape as an absolutely analogous situation. If you remain, consciously or unconsciously, in the mode of the victim (“How or why has this happened to me?”) you deeply disempower yourself and pass that off to people in your immediate life. On the other hand, if you can take the words of people like Hilda Charlton seriously, who emphatically declared that every problem is an opportunity, you can grow, not sentimentally, but profoundly.

I share from first hand experience the remarkable gifts of illness and loss – insight,  knowledge, true compassion, and the literal metamorphosis of consciousness from fixated to free. These things are hard to speak or write of, which is why I want to share the passage through the shadows as a meditative experience in which each person can process their own journey.

This was best expressed by C.G. Jung, shortly before his death when an interviewer asked him about his experience of God. Jung replied (paraphrase) that for me, God is everything and everyone that came into my path that was unexpected, unsolicited, and unwanted. Likewise at the end of his essay, “Self Reliance,” Emerson challenges his readers by asking if they think that a new job, a new love, new found health or wealth will actually make their life any better. Nothing will do it, says Emerson, but “the triumph of principle.”

Just what is this “principle” that allows one to deeply receive whatever life offers and turn it into positivity, knowledge, freedom, and peace? It is neither a mystery nor a “secret,” yet we tend to forget it in the clamor and din of events and illusions fostered by contemporary culture.

This workshop functions as a staff of strength, remembrance, and awareness that we all have the power and ability to come through whatever we have to go through with full integrity, power, and peace.

Rick Jarow