What does it mean to "earn?" What are the ways one can earn, and what are the forms of payment one can expect? For most of my life, I've had a terribly narrow answer to these questions. Earning means making money, and that is done through hard work. Period. These are the beliefs I brought with me into this life, and they were reinforced by my family and my culture. They were also responsible for the highly reinforced bars around my mind and heart which led me to working myself sick while utterly failing to notice the abundance all around me.
I recently spent some time with my journal working to understand this concept, to broaden my view of earning and to explore what other forms of abundance can be attracted through various methods of collection. What I found in those pages was what my soul already knew. The work before me now is to help my human brain catch up. Here's what I wrote:
In what ways can I "earn?" What do I receive through each of these paths?
HARD WORK. This is the "old" way to earn, the way I have strongly favored in this life, the way brought forward from past lives. Through hard work I earn precisely what I expect to earn. Thanks to human nature, this will always be less than I could have earned. In this moment, owing to my current level of development, it is also likely to be less than I am worth.
Tying my earning to hard work is, for these and other reasons, strongly limiting. Hard work is tied to perceived effort, and to the perception of time. These are further limits to my ability to earn via hustle.
Through hard work I earn the comfort of familiarity. Hustle earns me a seat at the table that rests directly in the center of my comfort zone. I am permitted to stay here without growth or development, allowed to repeat the same patterns without being asked whether or not they are benefitting me.
Hard work earns me a robust ego, so pleased with my dedication and self-sacrifice. Ego is always happy to engage in hard work, as it is a very handy tool for avoidance. The harder I work, the less I have to feel or acknowledge. I earn ignorance, with its attendant bliss.
All of this is to say that, with hustle, I earn bigger and more deeply rooted problems, born of neglect and denial. I also earn exhaustion, burn-out, and suffering without learning or growth.
COOPERATION. This kind of earning is written in my soul path. I am uniquely aligned to earn through cooperation. Through cooperation I earn community--friends, mentors, allies, teachers, students, followers.
Cooperation allows me to earn new points of view, new skills and ways to approach situations and people, new phrases, new tools, new growth. I also earn leverage here, the ability to contribute a smaller amount of personal effort to create a greater end result.
Through cooperatively built community I earn resources far beyond those I could develop alone (or through hard work). My mind, soul, and vision are multiplied by those of another, or many others. I earn exponentiation, the compound effect in an instant.
REST. I am currently learning how to earn through rest. This is part of my life's lesson. Through rest I earn quietude--the cessation of the constant rattle of thoughts, tasks, judgements, assessments, analyses. In this quiet space I can hear my true voice, and the guidance being offered from a gentle and abundant Universe. I earn peace, and the ability to share this peace with others and to offer it freely into the world around me.
Rest allows me to earn healing, of my mind, body and soul. In rest, repair takes place--growth, strengthening, mending, mobilizing. Through rest I earn balance, the harmony between action and response, input and output, being and doing, creation and allowance. This healing is not just for my present self, but for my line, for my ancestors and past selves. This inability to be still, to feel safe in rest, is a wound. I am earning closure, the release of this limiting belief which my soul has carried for so long.
Through rest I earn attention, not from others but for myself. Being still allows me to generate greater attention, and to focus it on a wider array of targets. In rest I am able to see with greater clarity, to better understand what is taking place within and around me and how I am responding to these happenings. Through rest I earn true sight.
Through rest I earn peace. Sincere, soul-deep peace. Not happiness or contentment; peace. This peace is the route away from ego and into Divine. Through rest I earn my place at the true table, in the center of the universe. I earn my ticket home.
ALLOWING. I am only just beginning to realize that earning is possible through allowing. This is a foreign and curious concept to a soul so long bound to hard work. But I am beginning to see how to earn through allowance, and I am eager to lean farther into this understanding.
Allowing also earns me peace. Through allowing I can earn without stress and struggle, with grace and ease. Indeed, allowing pays direct dividends in ease, and freedom. Within allowing there are no requirements of time and place, no office or schedules to keep, no minimum number of hours that must be worked, no clock to punch.
Allowing earns that which is for my highest good, and the highest good of all. It earns me guidance, which will show me the easiest path to this greatest good. More ease here, the grace that comes with understanding that I don't have to know all of the answers, to understand the plan. I earn a new comfort zone, one filled with equal parts undefined variables and faith.
In allowance I am unlimited by my human mind, unhampered by ego and its co-pilot, fear. I earn the freedom to receive the complete measure of abundance from the Universe. Through allowing I earn my full and true power. I earn my place in this world, as a leader, a rule breaker, a world shaker, a consciousness raiser. I earn my weave in the fabric of Divine, my soul's purpose in this life. Through allowing I earn my own divinity.
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This exercise was immensely enlightening to me. I am still learning how to transition from hard work to allowing, but I no longer wonder if this is the right choice. After this reflection I can clearly see how limiting hard work has been for me, and how unlimited allowing will become. I see with crystal clarity that everything I WANT to earn is available through allowing--ease, peace, my fullest potential, support at every turn.
The challenge for me in this transition is great, but I now have the understanding that the rewards will be far greater. In allowing I will earn what was never available through hard work--the connection to and the support of the Divine, to become divinity herself.