Work is the Curse of the Awakening Class

The February 20 Lunar Eclipse fell in my 6th house – work and health. Storm clouds are gathering there for me now, as they have been gathering for so many of us, with outsourcing, offshoring and inadequate health care coverage being the order of the day.

The morning after the eclipse greeted people at my workplace with a slew of corporate communications announcing the most profitable year in a decade and across-the-board reorganization, meaning – yes, they said it – job cuts.

Thing is, they said the second part as if it is something new. As if we haven’t already had successive rounds of reorganization and layoffs over the last few years. As if we weren’t already cut to the bone -- deep into the bone in some areas. In fact, there have been so many layoffs now, they stopped acknowledging it when people go. People are disappearing in ones and twos each week, and you don’t realize it until you happen to go looking for them and find out that they were laid off a month ago.

Then on Friday there was a brief meeting with my boss that brought the storm clouds to me personally. No, I was not laid off. Let’s just say that for more than a year, I’ve been dealing with a bad situation at work. They have been stringing me along with promises to “make things right.” This week the time came for them to show good faith toward doing so, and they reneged. In fact, they acted as if they had never made the promises to begin with, which tells me they may have other plans for my position there – plans I won’t like if they involve me at all.

So I am angry right now, but not overwhelmingly so. In the past, I would have been carried off by my anger. I would have let it drag me down into the drama of the illusion. This time I feel the anger, to be sure, but I am only wading in it. My head is clear.

I have been unhappy in my job for a while. What my company has given me now is a gift because it clarifies where I stand in relation to my job. It keeps me from allowing myself to once again be sucked into their agenda – so that my soul purpose is lost while I scramble to fulfill my company’s goals for me and once again my job takes me out of alignment and crowds me out of my life.

So thank you, bosses. I will not be revisiting that road of gross misalignment. I will not confuse myself into thinking that my employment in your organization has anything to do with my true career, my professional mission, my contribution to the world. I am reminded: my job with you is merely a paycheck, and it may be eliminated at any time on short notice. I will treat it accordingly. I will not be giving it a second thought when the clock returns my time and creative power to me.

Well, duh – right? But I have a long history of being compulsive about work. I want my work in the world to be my mission, my life center, my raison d’etre. My natural desire is to plug into it and pour my creative essence in. Because of the exploitive nature of work under capitalism and the toxicity of the American economy, I inevitably end up doubly abused.

During the eclipse the moon was occulted in my sixth house, signifying upheaval and possibly loss in the work and/or health spheres of my life. My philosophy is not to hold on and wait for the waves of change to slam into you. Instead, I try to review what needs to be changed and then embrace the waves offering up the change as a sacrifice.

So throughout the eclipse, I meditated on surrendering my negative attachments to my job. And yes, surrendering my job itself. I received a vision of a waterfall in a lush forest. I went down to the base of the waterfall and found a tails-up penny in the sandy riverbed there. Then a tiny white crystal emerged and nestled itself between my eyes. Time will tell what role this crystal play in my life, but if it is anything like Falcon and Bear -- who came to me during last year’s lunar eclipse – it will be an ally. I am ready for whatever the bosses throw at me.

My one-pointed focus remains and continues to sharpen. Unrecognized, unrewarded and unvalued in the world of late-stage American capitalism, it nevertheless is all that is.