As adults we all recognise work as something we do to earn money so we can live well, buy clothes, food, houses, cars, holidays and more. It pays for the essentials of living, as well as the luxuries, if we can afford them. This is perhaps the most basic understanding of what work is – a means to an end to survive and potentially thrive. But is there more to work than meets the eye? Is it more than just a means to an end, even though that in itself is a very worthy and valid reality for many people?
Many of us can also recognise work as something that provides meaning and purpose in our lives, as well as the pay-cheque at the end of the week or the month. There is no doubt that for myself, my work as a surgeon has definitely provided more than a salary – it can be a very rewarding and fulfilling job because it is inherently involved in caring for and helping others. On the other side of course, it can also be stressful and challenging when expectations are not met, complications occur, and perhaps even lives are lost. Staying healthy in such work also means finding ways to understand and address such challenges, otherwise they have the potential to detrimentally affect us and our ability to work effectively.
A number of years ago I believed I no longer wanted to do the work I had been trained to do and had committed many years of my life working towards. I had fallen out of love with surgery and at the time didn’t understand why. There were many factors involved, including not having the skills at that time to cope effectively with the stresses and challenges of the job, but also more importantly the sense of meaning and fulfilment I had previously obtained from the work had gone. Doing it for a pay-cheque was not enough. The responsibilities and challenges seemed to outweigh the benefits, meaning and purpose. Yet on some level it didn’t make sense that I would want to walk away from something I had been so committed to and which had previously been my raison d’être. Work had become a burden and a trial, a labour I no longer enjoyed, and it seemed the only option was to walk away – but to what? I had lived my dream job, and now it seemed in tatters, and I had no second dream job lined up.
I realised it wasn’t just work that I was struggling to find meaning in, but life itself, and both are interlinked. Without the meaning from my work, the meaning of my life was also being called into question. Was my worth as a human being solely dependent upon my work as a surgeon or was there more to me than my work? Was my identity solely wrapped up in what I did – and if so, what did it mean if I no longer did that work? Who was I if not a doctor or a surgeon? Who was I – full stop?
A period of self-exploration, searching and seeking and healing followed and led me to a man called Serge Benhayon and the answers I had been seeking. Answers about life, God and who we are and the challenges with my work – should I leave or stay? I thought I needed to leave, but I learned it wasn’t work that was the problem but my relationship with it, how I approached it, my investments in it and my reactions to it and more.
By changing my relationship with myself and coming to know myself anew and in truth, I could change and reimprint the work that I do and find true meaning and purpose. I could and did heal the wounds and hurts sustained in earlier years by applying the wisdom of the ages and receiving the healing therapies taught by Serge Benhayon. I learned and confirmed that I am much more than what I do; that whilst I might work as a doctor or a surgeon that is not who I am. That who I am is Love, and the work that I do is a vehicle for me to share and reflect that love to all by how I live, move, express, care, operate, relate, behave and more.
Listening to Serge Benhayon’s presentations on The Ageless Wisdom also transformed my understanding of illness and disease and healing in a way that was empowering, liberating and in itself healing. It enriched my understanding of medicine beyond what my imagination could have hoped for – indeed not just medicine, but all spheres of life. It introduced me to a different paradigm of medicine, based on the energetic understanding of the whole person, and indeed the whole Universe, and allowed me to see, feel and know a way of healing based on living the truth of who we are – The Way of The Livingness.
Whilst on the surface everything might have seemed the same with regards to my doing the same job, everything in fact was different and transformed because Love was leading the way. How I saw myself changed. My self-worth was not dependent on what I did and being seen from the outside to be a good doctor or surgeon, but came from an inner knowing of who I truly am, irrespective of outer appearances or occurrences.
Work was no longer focussed on what I needed it to be for me, in the sense of needing it to fill me up to feel good about myself because I was helping others – instead I go to work knowing who I am and what I bring and share that with all to the best of my ability, knowing that my presence alone can do more than any words I can say.
It is now about bringing the love that I am into all my interactions, to have it fuel my movements when I walk the hospital corridors, slice open an abdomen, make a cup of tea or have a conversation. The doing may seem the same, but the quality has been transformed.
Of course I am a work in progress and far from perfect, and do not live this in every moment of every day, but THAT is now my work and my purpose – to have the Love that I am flow through my veins and infuse every cell, every muscle and every organ that I may embody the love of God in all that I do, all that I move, express and live, including my daily work as a surgeon.
When I slip into old ways of being and relating or get frustrated, annoyed or upset, I know I am no longer fuelled by Love in those moments and my work is then to move to reconnect and return to love so that love, not emotional reactions, judgements or false beliefs, fuels me once more. This work, the work of Love, is a 24/7 job and its rewards are a life of joy, vitality, wellbeing, expanded awareness, service and much, much more. And what’s more, the boss is second to none on this earth!
When we make work about Love then it does not matter what we do – whether we are a surgeon, a cleaner, a carpenter, a pilot, a hairdresser or a refuse collector – for the nature of the work is then just a vehicle to share and reflect the Love we are through what we do and its ramifications spread far and wide and way beyond what our eyes can see. When we make work about Love, we know it’s not just about work, but making the whole of life about Love – first, middle and last. Work is no longer work as we know it but is the work of making all areas of life about Love.
It takes each part, each person playing their role, to make up the whole with no part being greater or lesser than the other. I cannot do what I do without the nurses, the admin support, the cleaners, the porters and so forth each playing their part – all deeply interconnected and necessary to the smooth running of the health service. And so too it is for the wider sphere of work as a whole – with few exceptions, no job is greater or lesser but a necessary part of the whole sphere of life where we each have a vital role to play in the interconnectedness of life. If we don’t show up and play our part, it’s not just our workplace and the people in it who lose out but the whole world, nay, Universe suffers. What grander purpose do we need than being an intricate and necessary part of the whole sphere of universal life?
What is work? Work is a vehicle by which we can share the Love we are, through what we do, that all may know and feel they too are that Love and be it for themselves. Work is the work of returning to the Love we are, in every moment of every day, in every sphere of life. It is the means by which we serve Him who gave us life, that all may know the unending love He holds us with and in, eternally so.
