🌊 The Plunge #12: Working While Spiritual

Or, how your time in utero can enrich your time "on the clock"

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Once a month, I write 🌊 The Plunge, a deep-dive essay on a topic I’m eager to talk about with you. Today, I picked an easy one, a topic unlikely to stir up any discomfort for you or for me 😬 - spirituality and work.

Deep breath. Let’s dive on in.

“Faith is to know the pattern is there, even though none is visible.”

from The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese

I met with a new coaching client this week. She filled out a questionnaire before our session, a survey that includes the option to check a box next to the statement, “I consider myself a spiritual person”. She left it blank.

When we met in person, she said some things that sounded, well, sort of spiritual. So I asked her again, “Do you consider yourself a spiritual person?”

She said, “I never know how to answer that question, so I left it blank!” She went on to describe a worldview and a history of experiences – ones she’s sought out – that sounded, well, very spiritual.

But she wonders if the label “spiritual” describes her. She’s sure she’s not religious, but she’s less sure if she qualifies as spiritual.

Before we go any further, I’d love for you to weigh in (anonymously, I promise). How would you answer that same question for yourself?

Uncomfortable Yet?

If this topic brings up uncertainty or discomfort for you, you’re not alone. In a world where an increasing number of us have no religious background, and those of us that do may also have a trunkful of religious baggage, we aren’t even sure what spirituality means these days.

Furthermore, if we do identify as religious, spiritual, or both, we don’t always feel comfortable acknowledging that part of ourselves in our everyday spaces - including our work.

We’re wise to be wary. Spirituality at work can be a veritable minefield, and plenty of people have made a faulty step and caused or experienced harm. So, we compartmentalize. We keep things tidy.

And yet.

What gifts arise when we mingle our sense of the sacred with our exercise of the mundane?

I’m interested to explore that with you.

First, let’s get on the same page.

What is Spirituality?

I’m no Webster (of dictionary fame), but here’s my best shot at defining spirituality:

Spirituality: a sense that one is a part of something bigger than oneself, something that is meaningful yet not fully knowable

You sense the pattern is there, even though you can’t quite make it out.

Spirituality detects significance and surrenders to mystery.

Spirituality often – but not always – involves a belief in God or a divine force (or several! The more divine forces, the merrier, I always say!) Even some atheists consider themselves spiritual, citing their connection to greater humanity or the awesomeness of the universe as that “something bigger” they’re a part of. (And fun fact: did you know that many consider Buddhism to be a nontheistic religion?)

What differentiates religion from spirituality? Religion is inherently spiritual, but it goes a step further and prescribes specific beliefs and practices that illuminate the “something bigger”, cultivating a shared understanding and communal praxis of spirituality.

(Side note: Religion goes awry, IMHO, when it loses touch with mystery and idolizes certainty. Crusades and other atrocious messes ensue. I digress.)

Thanks a Lot, Womb

Spiritual types like me may understand the near-universal human tendency to seek meaning and wholeness as evidence of a mystical impulse arising from the soul. We see indications of this tendency as we survey the fields of history, anthropology, and sociology. However, the human search for wholeness can also be understood by checking in with a newer friend on the scene: science.  

Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

Neurobiologist Dan Siegel describes the neurological origins of our search for wholeness on the Coaches Rising podcast in stunning clarity. I’ll paraphrase what he shares (starting at 19:30):

We’re all on a lifelong journey to get back to wholeness. As a fetus, you experienced no separation between you and the womb. You felt at one with it. And you didn’t have to do anything. All the nutrients you needed came through the umbilical cord. You didn’t have to breath or eat or make sure you were protected. You were just being.

In the last 2 months in the womb, that “simply being” state of wholeness gets embedded in implicit memory, encoded for later retrieval. The way implicit memory works is that it’s not tagged as “something from the past”. It just has a feeling of familiarity. Everyone has this implicit memory of wholeness.

When you come out of the womb, the contrast is stark. It’s a do or die situation. You have to breathe or die, eat or die, pee and poop or die, be protected by people you depend on or die. It’s a huge contrast to that “simply being” state of wholeness. But that state is encoded in us as something familiar, something we long to get back to.

In other words, one of the first things we ever know is that we are a part of “something bigger”.

Our implicit memory emits echoes of wholeness, and all of us, in our own way, are following that siren song.

Spirituality & Work

Last year, I was asked to create one of many booths for a “Resilience Expo” featured in a leadership development program I coach in. For my booth, I suggested what felt like a dicey topic: “Spiritual Resilience at Work”. My clients approved, and I got to work.

My booth at the Resilience Expo

On the day of the Expo, I wondered if anyone would stop by my weird little booth. As leaders milled about the space, I spied a few furtively eyeing my signage (and candles), then averting their gaze as they took the long way around my station. I didn’t blame them. Spirituality at work sounds a little woo-woo at best, and like an HR nightmare at worst.

I didn’t end up with a vast crowd that day, but I did hold many rich conversations with people from an array of spiritual backgrounds. What they all had in common was a longing to explore how their spirituality mattered for their work and their leadership. They told me how their spirituality…

• made their work richer and more meaningful

• helped them grow and evolve their leadership

• gave them perspective and grounding at work

• sustained them in tough times in their career

• helped them make ethical and caring decisions on the job

• gave them a sense of purpose in their vocation

They said it was refreshing to be able to talk about their spirituality at work, to integrate their spiritual selves with their professional selves more intentionally. They said they wished they had more avenues to thoughtfully connect those dots.

Resources for Going Deeper

In case you can’t tell, I’m passionate about the possibilities that arise at the intersection of our work and our “something bigger”. Here are some resources to help you integrate your work and your spirituality:

📚 Books: Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity (David Whyte), Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation (Parker Palmer)

🌟 Calling Cards and other resources on purpose-filled work by Richard Leider

🎴 Listen for Joy art and wisdom card decks (If I’m facing a tough time or wrestling with a decision, I draw a card or two and allow the art and the words in the accompanying booklet to open me up spiritually.)

🪞 Ways our work reflects or “images” God (Heads up that this resource contains Christian references, as it’s from my own church. I love the list as a way of thinking about how everyday jobs have a connection to the nature of the divine.)

🪶 For a Leader, a blessing poem by John O’Donahue

A Blessing, from Me to You

O’Donahue inspired me to write a blessing for you, so I’ll leave you with this today. Hang on while I put on my priestly shawl and light a candle… Ok, ready.

May you know you are held in the fabric of something greater than us all.

May you offer the gifts that you’ve been uniquely given to bless your fellow humans and the world beyond you.

May you trust you are loved and guided.

May you walk in light and in peace.

I’m Curious About You

I would deeply love to hear from you on this topic. For those of all spiritual and religious backgrounds, including “none”:

1. How does your belief about the “something bigger” inform and impact your work in the world?

2. What helps you integrate spirituality and work, if that matters to you?

[Ahem, please don’t get creepy in the comments. For example, no handing out ugly brochures that say “Do you know where your soul will go when you die?” in Papyrus font, no megaphones on street corners, etc. etc.]

See you next week on The Diving Board for our monthly 🍹Poolside Chat🍹! Submit your questions here.