This story is about coming alive, not bashing the government.
In fact, I worked for the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services—at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and later in the Office of Inspector General (OIG)—and found that feds in my orbit seemed driven by what drove me:
A deep and sincere desire to improve collective quality of life.
But after six years of toiling to realize my desire, my own quality of life had deteriorated.
So I resigned.
Why resign rather than take a sick leave of absence?
For three main reasons:
- My soul had been nudging me for ages to change directions in my career.
- Taking leave would have let me return too easily if / when the going got tough.
- I was forced to pussyfoot around issues that I thought could make difference.
There was a day some colleagues and I flipped through old OIG reports with jaws dropped and practically salivating:
As hamstrung program analysts, we couldn’t believe the latitude that our predecessors had to write reports with teeth, and imagined how sweet it would be to taste that reality.
“What happened?” we asked each other in desperation.
Whether we were suffering the effects of lack of courage, lack of will and / or something else from higher-ups in our branch and beyond wasn’t clear.
But it was clear that I was walking deeper into a health crisis.
My late brother, a pastoral counselor, put me on the path to recovery:
Rather than wag his finger at the sorry state of my spiritual life, he just said that I might like Kabbalah, or Jewish mysticism. Times were tough so I checked it out. And he was right—I got hooked and opened my mind to other “spiritual stuff.”
Soon after, I joined a New Thought church and lapped up lessons that we’re extensions of Source / the Creator / God, and that Jesus came to show us how to master our divinity.
Why am I telling you this?
Because, …
I believe that all our challenges—poor health; depleting work; broken / exploitative care systems; scarce affordable, safe and supportive housing, to name a few—grow from us not knowing that we’re divine creators / love made manifest.
I also believe that my feeling depressed lately grew in part from my reluctance to say so unambiguously—I was of the mind to gain more authority / grow a bigger community around Village Company 360 before spreading the good news that everyone has healing powers and can make other miracles.
While studying Kabbalah, I took a certain lesson to heart:
Discomfort is light—new awareness that allows for change—trying to be revealed.
From the discomfort of depression, I remembered to ask myself what new awareness was trying to surface, and got part of my answer from someone on YouTube:
Some of you want to grow platforms, she said in effect, before talking about spirituality, when talking about spirituality is a way of growing your platforms.
Healing / coming alive starts with a change of mind.
It’s like Einstein said:
We can’t solve problems with the same level of thinking that created them.
My idea to dodge spiritual / unconventional stuff until later simply replaced OIG-imposed pussyfooting with self-imposed pussyfooting and I was hurting for it.
What’s more, it was disingenuous and unwise:
Leaning into the spiritual / unconventional helped me through years of 24/7 caregiving for my parents, which inspired Village Company 360 in the first place.
And how did it make sense to try to attract my soul community—my village—while withholding a big part of my operating system?
Pussyfoot
verb (used without object):
To act cautiously or timidly, as if afraid to commit oneself on a point at issue.
Barry Marshall and Robin Warren didn’t pussyfoot when it came to what they knew. Before they were Nobel Laureates, they were heretics:
They dared to buck the dogma that bacteria couldn’t survive in stomach acid.
Today, untold numbers of people are living free of the burdens of gastric ulcers with the help of antibiotics, thanks to Marshall and Warren sticking to their guns.
Amid ridicule, no doubt.
Discomfort is light—new awareness that allows for change—trying to be revealed.
I had a choice:
To let my self-imposed gag order trigger another health crisis, or to avoid all that by not hiding my convictions and intuitions.
I’m writing this now because I chose healing by choosing the latter.
And already, I’m feeling quite a bit more alive than before making the decision.
Discomfort is light—new awareness that allows for change—trying to be revealed.
Robert Califf—commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration—is feeling urgently uncomfortable about U.S. life expectancy.
According to the Washington Post, he issued a warning to colleagues, some of whom summed it up like this:
Americans’ life expectancy is going the wrong way. We’re the top health officials in the country. If we don’t fix this, who will?
Uh, how about We The People?
We’re divine and have the power to make miracles, after all.
The true problem is that We The People don’t generally know it.
And even those of us who do imprison ourselves with our thinking.
Top officials didn’t reduce America’s life expectancy any more than they can fix it.
But if they’re serious in that quest, they can show it by not pussyfooting around government-issued agricultural subsidies, and other legislation, that actively work against public health.
They can also invite more minds to their table, knowing that high ranking doesn’t in itself mean that they who have it—in or out of government—know what’s best for the masses.
Let’s be clear:
As within, so without.
Or, our way of thinking—fueled by the way we feel—creates our outer reality.
The world isn’t at peace because too many minds are filled with images and ideas that cause disturbed emotions, which infect susceptible people, go viral and spread unrest.
And sicker, shorter lives.
We now accept the mind-body connection.
I wonder:
How many heretics were burned at the stake trying to bring this truth to light?
What advances might we have made by now had it gained traction sooner?
How much time are we willing to waste before making the mind-body-spirit connection?
Our bodies are finite but our souls have no limits.
In other words, we’re more spirit than not and all human experience is spiritual.
If we’re serious about healing and living long and healthy lives, it’s time to embrace what our souls want to express, whether through words, behaviors, projects…
We needn’t do anything drastic and can set our own pace, but remember that keeping comfortable isn’t compatible with revealing goodness.
Mastery is closing the gap between our physical selves / personalities and souls. Or, aligning our default thoughts, words, deeds and emotions with love and kindness.
I’ve hardly mastered my divinity, but feel more peace and optimism than ever in my life—even in the face of hardship—by rewiring my brain with spiritually-based guiding beliefs.
Remember:
We’re more spirit than not and all human experience is spiritual.
So doesn’t it seem wise to use spiritual tools to transcend spiritual matters in earthly garb?
It does to me. If it does to you too or if you think that one day it might…
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Thanks for reading.
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