“Wild Work” – Your Purposeful Bliss in Action

W e wake up every day with a singular question roaming our consciousness: ‘What’s next?’ No matter how stoic our outlook, no matter how set in stone our daily routine, we thrill to the call of the unknown. Then an image, or idea pops into our head, the room fills with the crackling ozone of anticipation, and ready or not, we  jump in – activating a dizzying stream of synchronicity, serendipity and deep collaboration. This my friend, is ‘Wild Work’ – Your Purposeful Bliss in Action.

M any of these posts have been dedicated to helping you to reach this point; to fully inhabit the place where your creativity takes charge of imagination, and creates possibility. The next stage is fully stepping into that possibility and guiding it into reality. You are the architect & builder of Your reality, and this is the ‘Wild Work’ that you’re here to accomplish.

 

You got Sixteen Tons, Baby!

Work is how we bring our conscious attention into action. It may be ‘Sixteen Tons,’ apps, shows, or sixteen loaves of bread; Work is about applying our unique skills to contribute to the world we live in. Forget the specifics, every working action we perform carries with it the promise of emotional, intellectual & spiritual fulfillment, if we’re wise enough to accept it. Otherwise we run the risk of falling into the bottomless illusion of work as a burden, and the hopeless feeling that we are victims of it’s endless monotony. How you feel about work, reflects how you feel about life; but no matter how you feel about anything, everything you do matters deeply, and everything you Are has Sixteen Tons of exquisite value.

F eelings are the energetic tools that consciousness uses to guide us, so take a cue from Joseph Campbell and ‘Follow your Bliss’ as you release the pain points and chart your path through the working world. Discard any thoughts that create the illusion of separation, and embrace those that reveal connection – these are the ones that hold true – because you can’t build, create, or sell, effectively unless you do. Success is service, and like Ella Says, you gotta Ac-cent-tchu-ate The Positive, so sell it baby, sell it!

“Your task is not to seek love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.”
Jalaluddin Rumi

Xanadu 

Time for a little Thought Experiment. First, envision the home of your dreams and walk into the largest room in the house. Now close your eyes for a moment, asking your consciousness to fill the room with everything, everyone, and every experience you ever desired. Open your eyes and feast on the magnificence, my lucky friend, you finally have it all!

Now what? Okay, close your eyes again, breathe deeply, and ask yourself this question, what do I treasure most? Is it the incalculable wealth, the silken wardrobe, the love of a partner, children, or the warmth of a friend? Whatever they are, let the rest fade, and the most blissful, remain. Now open your eyes, what do you see?

Quickly, write it all down!!! These are your Spirit Guides, the psychic totems that will happily lead you toward the work that you need to do. Let’s make it a Life-Art project: Set up a ‘Bliss Board’ and pin a favorite photo of yourself in the middle. Then start surrounding it with phrases, pictures, drawings, or any pin-able object that represents the most important symbols of your bliss. Take your time as you radiate outward, adding every new ‘charged’ thought, idea & image that shows up. Now pick your favorite colored yarn, start connecting the elements that harmonize, and stand back. Can you see the patterns? Great! Now you’ve got a map to glide deeper into your Wild Work.

T he Bliss Board is there to jumpstart your imagination and spark your creativity until you become so familiar with it’s patterns & lessons, that the board becomes an integral part of your consciousness. Bliss, my friend, lives within you, and the work it brings forth, will electrify your world.

Bring out your Dread

Eric Idle & Monte Python’s genius aside, the first step into ‘Wildness’ is to bring out and discard all the dead perceptions that are getting in the way of effortlessly accomplishing your work. What I’m going to tell you next, you already know, but bear with me as I work my way through it. First, you are performing the work, the work is not performing you. That means you are the ground of being that the work rises from. Second, the secret of all successful endeavors are the people who orchestrate and play them forward, so without your contribution, the work doesn’t soar.

“Find a place where there’s joy, and the joy will burn out the pain”
Joseph Campbell

If you dread your job, it just means that you’re not connecting to the work, and the work is not connecting to you, so ask yourself where the job fits on your Bliss Board? If you can’t find a place for it, it’s time to change jobs. Your time and energy are too precious to waste on doing work that doesn’t feed you – junk work, like junk food, won’t sustain you.

M anagers, your primary function is appreciation! Employers love metrics, and they can be helpful, like the gas gauge in your car, but you can’t measure the true value of a good employee until you lose them. Great pay and benefits aren’t enough to retain employees in the modern business world, and you need to give them attention, gratitude and appreciation. These soft tools build trust and loyalty, and promote Working Bliss, and every manager knows that a blissful worker – is a supremely productive worker.

“Your visions will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”
C.G. Jung

Working on Purpose

If you need more BG on creativity & consciousness just pick any post on this site, they’re loaded with it; but the bottom line on work is crazy simple: You are capable of doing any work that resonates with your chosen purpose, because purpose leads to Bliss. Forget to choose, and your work will lose the power of meaning that connects it to the fierce energy of your spirit. You need to sync your work with your purpose, or it will be a constant energetic drain.

Y ou gotta love it, or leave it! You’re free to choose any profession or craft to get wild with, as long as you align your purpose with it’s mission. Bliss is created when you connect your purpose to your work, and allow your creativity to link you to everything & everyone you interact with.

‘Showing Up’ to Work in the Wild

Performing work in the wild requires that you stay present to all the miracles, big & small, that surround you. The tools, the people, the environment, and the mechanics of work are enlivened when you focus your complete attention on them. Our central task is bringing ideas to life, so discard the labels, and look into the elemental physics of work: The play of energy & matter that you set in motion, and shape to completion – this is what you do every day, and it’s truly amazing.

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.”
Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Shaping the World

We are the potters and the clay, and we shape ourselves as we shape the world around us. It takes courage to face a formless lump of clay, a blank screen, or the silences in a heartfelt conversation, while staying patiently committed to the belief that your creativity will provide the vision you need to perform the work. And this is true of all work, art, commerce, or both. If you fully accept & appreciate this reality, you will hone your potter’s skills to perfection and encourage those skills in everyone around you.

“The mind was dreaming. The world was its dream.” 
― Jorge Luis Borges

We Can Work it Out – 

1. Seek Your Bliss • Bliss is the goal, and the path to it is coded into your DNA & activated through your life experience. Think connection, imagination & creativity. Work the Thought Experiment above to discover the true nature of your purposeful bliss, and faithfully follow it’s guidance. Trust yourself and in your innate ability to do the Wild Work of shaping reality to fit your purpose.

2. Release Your ‘Wild’ Child • When you were a child, you worked the wild fields of imagination with focused purpose, and created whole worlds from the fertile ground of your Being, and dang it, you were good. Why should adulthood be any different? It’s not, unless you judge it so. So greet each moment with youthful passion and keep asking ‘what’s next?’

3. Stay Awake to the Possibilities • Work is only as valuable as you perceive it to be, so re-boot your take on it by celebrating the value of everyone & everything – especially you – that shows up. Blissful fulfillment is threaded through every action you take, so release your negative illusions, and bask in the magnificent possibilities that are hidden behind them.

4. Drop Dread • Make sure your work reflects your Bliss, if not, change partners. Your indomitable working spirit needs ‘like’ minds to enable you to accomplish the Wild Work that feeds your creativity. And remember, you are the ‘Maker’ here, so you might as well make the music sweet.

5. Do Everything On Purpose • Life + Purpose = Blissful Creativity. No matter what Work you choose, make sure your head, heart & purpose are in sync with the craft, or profession you’ve chosen. This ‘sync up’ should also be at the forefront of every job interview you have, because without it, the relationship will eventually fail. Wild Work is only wild if your Bliss remains untamed.

The ‘Day to Day’ 

My old vocal teacher used to say, ‘Practice, practice, practice.’ For your Bliss to take root in each aspect of your life, you absolutely need to make it a part of every waking moment. Sure, there’ll be times when you hit the wall, so what?! Just pick up your beautifully resilient self up off the floor, and get back to your Wild Work. It’s easier than exercising, or dieting, and even more important, it reduces stress, increases effectiveness, and boosts the amount of creative fun in your life. When we activate our Bliss, everybody wins, so we really are the champions, my friend. Whenever I face an automatic door I wave my hands in an opening gesture and intone, ‘Open Sesame’ and lo, it opens! I urge you to approach your life with this same level of screwy confidence, and share it with us – it’s a wonderful feeling.

A few blissful tokens of my Wild explorations:

Photo Credits – Main: Fares Nimri ; Totem: Samuel Zeller ; Orchestra: Larisa Birta ; WPA Mural: by Charles Wells, via WikiCommons, Public Domain; Pottery: SwapnIl Dwivedi ; Cat: Alain Pham

About Scott J Mulvaney

Scott is a Filmmaker, Writer, Web Entrepreneur and Passionate Mystagog of the divine joys of Creativity, Visual Storytelling & Cinematic Language.

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