SPONTANEITY AND BLOCKAGE
When the workplace is run in a deliberate, forced way, nothing new can happen there. If you try to force the soul, you never succeed. When I was in Germany, my consciousness became intensified and relentlessly active. Consequently, I began to develop a sleep problem. If you are doing physical work during the day, you can survive with very little sleep. If you are doing precise and difficult mental work, you need your sleep. I began to have major insomnia. After rising, I could work for about an hour, then I would be suddenly tired and frustrated. I hated going to bed at night, and every night I made furious attempts to get to sleep. I tried everything. I remember one night being particularly exhausted, and I said to myself, Face it, now you will never sleep properly again. You will never have a night of complete rest. You are going to have this problem for the rest of your life. The strange thing was that as soon as I admitted that to myself, within five minutes I was fast asleep. Over the next few nights my rhythm of sleep returned. What prevented me from sleeping was the deliberate commitment to try to get to sleep. As soon as I let go of the desire to sleep, sleep came naturally.
When the will and the intellect are brought as deliberate forces into the workplace, this only makes the bland similarity even more entrenched. When the imagination, the force of illumination in the soul, is allowed to stir, it opens up the workplace in a completely new way. You should not be neutral or indifferent to your work or workplace. It is very important to have a careful look at the kind of work you do. You should try to establish whether the work you do and your workplace is actually expressive of your identity, dignity, and giftedness. If not, difficult choices may need to be made. If you sell your soul, you ultimately buy a life of misery.
Respectability and security are subtle traps on life’s journey. Those who are drawn to extremes are often nearer to renewal and self-discovery. Those trapped in the bland middle region of respectability are lost without ever realizing it. This can be a trap for those addicted to the business world. Many people in business operate only with one side of their mind: the strategic, tactical, mechanical side day in and day out. This becomes a mental habit that they then apply to everything, including their inner life. Even though they may be powerful people in the theater of work, outside of the workplace they look forlorn and lost. You cannot repress the presence of your soul and not pay the price. If you sin against your soul, it is always at great cost. Work can be an attractive way of sinning deeply against the wildness and creativity of your own soul. Work comes to dominate your identity. One of the most disturbing stories in twentieth-century literature portrays the surrealistic destiny of an utterly meticulous and faithful functionary. This is Kafka’s Metamorphosis, which has the uncanny opening sentence, “As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning out of troubled dreams, he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect.” With deft anonymity, surrealistic detail, and black humor, Kafka is unequaled in his ability to portray systems and their functionaries.
THE ROLE CAN SMOTHER
If you only awaken your will and intellect, then your work can become your identity. This is summed up in the rather humorous epitaph on a gravestone somewhere in London: “Here lies Jeremy Brown born a man and died a grocer.” Often people’s identities, that wild inner complexity of soul and color of spirit, become shrunken into their work identities. They become prisoners of their roles. They limit and reduce their lives. They become seduced by the practice of self-absence. They move further and further away from their own lives. They are forced backward into hidden areas on the ledges of their hearts. When you encounter them, you meet only the role. You look for the person, but you never meet him. To practice only the linear external side of your mind is very dangerous. Thus the corporate and work world now recognizes how desperately they need the turbulence, anarchy, and growth possibilities that come from the unpredictable world of the imagination. These are so vital for the passion and force of a person’s life. If you engage only the external side of yourself, and stay on this mechanical surface, you become secretly weary. Gradually, years of this practice make you desperate.
SISYPHUS
When weariness becomes gravity, it destroys your natural soul protection. It is reminiscent of the myth of Sisyphus, who was condemned for his sin. In the underworld, his task was to roll a huge boulder up a hill. He would painstakingly roll the boulder slowly up and up almost to the summit, then the rock would roll out of his grasp and crash right to the bottom. If Sisyphus could stop and decide never to roll the stone again, he would have peace. But he is the prisoner of the futile and is condemned eternally to begin the same task but never complete it. He has to roll the boulder up the hill eternally in the sure knowledge that he can never get it over the summit. Anyone in the business or corporate work world who remains on the surface of the role, and practices only the linear side of the mind, is like Sisyphus. They are in great danger of a breakdown. A breakdown is often a desperate attempt by the soul to break through the weary facade of role politics. There is a profundity to the human soul that the linear surface of the work world cannot accommodate. When you remain in the rut, you become caged behind one window of the mind. You are then not able to turn around toward the balcony of the soul and enjoy the different views through the other windows of wonder and possibility.
Rapidity is another force causing massive stress in the workplace. Baudrillard, a French philosopher, speaks of the exponential speed of modern life. Where things are moving too quickly, nothing can stabilize, gather, or grow. There is a lovely story of a man exploring Africa. He was in a desperate hurry on a journey through the jungle. He had three or four Africans helping him carry his equipment. They raced onward for about three days. At the end of the third day, the Africans sat down and would not move. He urged them to get up, telling them of the pressure he was under to reach his destination before a certain date. They refused to move. He could not understand this; after much persuasion, they still refused to move. Finally, he got one of them to admit the reason. This native said, “We have moved too quickly to reach here; now we need to wait to give our spirits a chance to catch up with us.” Many people who are secretly weary of work have never given themselves time, or taken time out or away from work, to allow their spirits to catch up. Giving yourself plenty of time is a simple but vital reflective exercise: Leave all agendas behind you. Let the neglected presence of your soul come to meet and engage you again. It can be a lovely reacquaintance with your forgotten mystery.
The Celtic imagination testifies to a different concept and experience of time. The recognition of presence and the celebration of nature were only possible because time was a window on the eternal. Time was never reduced to achievement. Time was time for wonder. This is still one of the charming things about Ireland. People here still have time. In contrast to many areas in the Western world, people here inhabit a more flexible and open time rhythm. The ideology of rapidity and clinical efficiency have not gained a grip here, yet.
THE SALMON OF KNOWLEDGE
Surprisingly, there is often great irony in the way the soul behaves. Sometimes in the work world a person with analytic, linear vision can miss out totally on the harvest and fruits of work. The imagination has a particular rhythm of vision that never sees directly in a linear way. The eye of the imagination follows the rhythm of the circle. If your vision is confined to linear purpose, you can miss out on the secret destiny that a form of activity can bring you. There is a lovely, old Celtic story about Fionn Mac Cumhaill and the salmon of knowledge. Fionn wanted to become a poet. In Celtic Ireland, to be a poet was a sacred vocation. The poets summed up in themselves a supernatural power, the power of the druid and the power of creativity. Poets had special access to mysteries that were not available to the common masses.