What’s a Life Worth?

It’s been my job and my pleasure to work with people on their problems for nearly forty years now. In that time, people have come with all sorts of presented issues. Obviously, many a of them are work or relationship related, though they always go much, much deeper on examination. When asking people to get in touch with what they really want to do, it’s often quite clear to them at the outset. When it comes to the question of why they don’t act on that knowledge, there are all sorts of issues that they present as stopping them.

It’s the mortgage is large, the kids school fees need to be paid, or that they may not be able to find another position quickly and they can’t afford to take the risk. It’s all really understandable. Indeed, we have all been brought up on the ideology that getting a job (any job) is what we grow up to do. It’s about taking responsibility, being able to afford things, and put food in our bellies, rooves over our heads. Once again, this is all real, and essential.

Unfortunately, the culture of our world that has made money a priority has never taken into consideration that each of us is unique, with special aptitudes and creativity, that no one else, now or ever, will have in quite the same way. In fact, it has been developed in such a way that this aspect of humanity is shelved completely as a priority. But it wasn’t always so. This culture we have had for thousands of years was preceded by a different one with different frames of reference.

We moved from coexisting and co-operating with Nature being provided for by her, to a system where ownership was the predominant paradigm. It wasn’t long before money became the currency of that ownership, creating a pyramidal hierarchy with those that had at the top and those that had less in decreasing order with those that have none at the bottom. The idea of a special potential was lost in the need to climb the pyramid for self-esteem built on what you owned rather than who you were. In the first part of my upcoming book The Infinite Compass, I explore the shift in consciousness this brought about, overtaking our Nature-balanced approach to life, replacing it with the model that has done much to destroy the planet and our souls. The second part offers some indigenous wisdom as to how we may turn that around again, person by person, returning to balance.

This system requires that we trade everything: our time, our energy, our dreams and desires, as well as other people, for the privilege of owning more. We have essentially exchanged our life force for money every day of our working lives. If we have not found employment that fulfills us, providing for our creative growth as a being, we turn around at retirement age, no longer to be seen as necessary. We are no longer in the ‘work force’.

The interesting discovery I have made is that when we follow our felt sense and our passion, when we take the risk to step outside the conveyor belt, we are shown ways that we can thrive as well as grow into our unique selves. It takes courage to shift the priorities away from those supported by the culture we have currently been obedient to, but it pays off. The examples I have seen are numerous; clients that step out to find themselves thriving as they never would have imagined. Indeed, I have done so personally.

It is easy to see where this corporate culture has led us. We are on the brink of climate disaster. There are wars raging all based on who owns what. Relationships become power struggles; the resources of the world plundered to collapsing point. When thinking about this today, it occurred to me that all the resources in the world, no matter if they be human, animal, plant or the planet itself, all the energy that it has taken to create this devastation, has been now been converted into the balances of offshore bank accounts belonging to a handful of men. What do they do for the world with it? Nothing! It’s just so many figures on a balance sheet, locked away, while the world as we have known it cries out for replenishment.

Time for another paradigm shift. Time to call on the individual talents of the beautiful beings that still inhabit the Earth to help to build a life with the importance, and love, of all things taken into co-operative account. Together we can build this world anew if we step out of the trance that the current culture has lured us into, and just begin to realise the wonderful divine beings that we collectively and individually are.