Why the spirit weeps in the modern workplace
Diagnosing the common symptoms of spiritual illness at work
In 2021, a record number of people quit their jobs during a period called The Great Resignation.
This baffled economists, journalists and corporations. Studies showed that over 24 million American employees left the workforce between April and September alone.
However, stories emerged about the unspoken pain people were experiencing in their careers. Some spoke of a numbing shell that they wore to manage their weekdays and others spoke of their nervous system as if it were a car battery that no longer worked, broken down on the side of the road. A hidden epidemic revealed itself.
The collective psyche was beginning to realise that modern work was making us spiritually ill.
"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation.” – Henry Thoreau, Walden
Modern work is making us spiritually ill
You may have felt the symptoms of this spiritual illness yourself.
Pulling out your laptop to begin work only to find yourself crying. Landing a job that your parents applauded you for only to find yourself scrolling LinkedIn during your spare time. Losing your mind at the monotony of sending emails or attending soul-sucking Zoom meetings with lunchtime and the trip to Europe you’re planning being the only things you can cling to.
These are all symptoms of spiritual illness and the accepted structure of modern jobs and careers is at the root of what’s making us sick.
In this article I’m going to explain what spiritual illness is, what spiritual health is and how you can identify if you are spiritually ill using four common symptoms. Finally I’ll explain how to begin moving towards your own spiritual health and explain how it will benefit you and society as a whole if you do.
What is spiritual illness?
If you have ever seen Francis Bacon’s ‘Study for a Portrait’ which he painted in 1952, you would visually understand the definition of spiritual illness. A man in suit and tie held within rigid lines, seemingly screaming in a glass cage with no sound made. This is the quiet desperation Thoreau speaks about.
Spiritual illness can be defined as a condition that occurs when an individual is unable to access their own life-force.
They are disconnected from the spiritual plane of their own life (by the spiritual plane I mean the non-material aspects of existence that give someone meaning, sacredness and personal truth).
Put simply, there are areas in our lives that are unseen which need nurturing or we become spiritually ill. In a world focused on consumerism and dominated by the newfound values of neofeudalism, our society has lost connection with the spirit of existence.
"I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life. They seek position, marriage, reputation, outward success or money, and remain unhappy…even when they have attained what they were seeking. Such people are usually confined within too narrow a spiritual horizon. Their life has not sufficient content, sufficient meaning. If they are enabled to develop into more spacious personalities, the neurosis generally disappears. – Carl Jung”
What is spiritual health?
Health extends beyond our biology.
This was a major insight that gained traction during the early 20th century with the emergence of depth psychology. However, psychology is not enough either and unlike physical health or psychological health, spiritual health requires being in union with our individual purpose and the purpose of the divine at the same time. They are woven together.
In other words, our spirit needs to be in our work. When we nurture our spirit we become spiritually healthy. We feed our immaterial existence which is as important as our physical one.
But this is missing from modern work and the spirit has been exiled to weekends, before and after work, and during holidays.
As if everything is not connected. This goes against Leonardo Da Vinci’s key insight, “Realise that everything connects to everything else.” With the spirit missing from modern work, its absence is leaving us hollow.
“The word spiritual originates from the Latin word spīritus which means breath, spirit or soul. So when I speak of spiritual fulfillment in our career paths I mean that every step should breathe life into our own soul. Our work should enliven us, not decay us.”– Joel Uili
Symptom 1: Poor mental health
Depression, heightened anxiety, irritability and muddy thinking are symptoms of spiritual illness in the workplace. People who cite them typically believe that there is something wrong with them. But this belief implies that the self is isolated and that we are lone islands.
However, general systems theory tells us that human-beings are not closed systems —we are open systems and are shaped by our environment. Meaning that the modern work environment shapes us.
When we are suffering at work, this is a sign that we’ve noticed something is wrong and does not mean that we’re broken because we’re suffering. Considering one’s mental health requires a close examination of their environment.
Placing yourself in a sick environment and becoming unwell doesn’t mean you are the cause of the illness.
Here’s a thought experiment to help you begin viewing the impact of the environment on your mental health. Close your eyes and imagine you’re visiting a peaceful Japanese zen garden. There’s absolutely nothing to do. No clock and no tasks on your to do list. You’re just moving sand slowly, raking intentional lines. Your mind quietens and you are completely present. Now ask yourself, “Why do I believe my work can’t exist in an environment that feels like this?
“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” – Jiddu Krishnamurti
Symptom 2: Needing the money
“I have bills to pay.”
This is a common critique people will make when confronted with why they’re staying in a job or career that’s unfulfilling. However this is just one expense in the cost of existence.
But how much should one be compensated to repress one’s soul?
What’s it worth to pretend you’re doing okay for the next 40 years of your life?
Is the financial compensation worth the emotional and psychological pain of being spiritually unhealthy?
Whenever money is brought up as the main defence it means that we are ascribing an ultimate value to it. If we think of our values as gods, we obey what we believe in. Earning money to maintain what we have easily becomes a tyrannical god keeping us unnurtured on the spiritual plane of existence.
Even if we don’t believe money is life’s most important value, when we cannot leave jobs because of it (as it is directly connected to our perception of safety), it means that it holds power over us. A revolt against money as an ultimate value becomes a spiritual necessity.
To begin thinking about money’s impact in your own life, think about saints like Saint Francis of Assisi who took the vow of poverty. This dramatic transvaluation takes money and places it as something that is not valued very highly. This is unfathomable in our modern world and homelessness is seen as the opposite of a life well lived. But for Saints it allowed the divine to become the ultimate value. In our own epidemic of spiritual illness, caused by modern work, it offers us an insight into a different way of being. This doesn’t mean you can’t make a lot of money in your life nor is it about giving up money. It is about rearranging your life so the most important values such as spiritual health and spiritual fulfilment exists in your work.
“Remember that when you leave this earth, you can take with you nothing that you have received, only what you have given.” – Saint Francis of Assisi
Symptom 3: Becoming your worst self
Finding oneself in frequent fights with partners, disgruntled easily with friends and family, and getting frustrated over seemingly small and trivial things are signs of becoming your worst self which is another symptom of spiritual illness.
When this happens it means someone is going through a reverse transformation. This means that someone is slowly moving backwards on the spiritual plane of life. It’s anti-becoming. Their immaterial existence isn’t being nurtured and they’re slowly dying inside.
It’s like being in charge of caring for the Gardens of Versailles yet never watering it, never pruning it, and letting the weeds grow everywhere. It becomes uninhabitable. The wild overflows into all areas of one’s life and causes devastation.
Modern work disconnects us from the spiritual plane of existence and increases our chances, the longer we remain there, of becoming our worst self.
If we stay, will we be able to take care of the garden within ourselves or will we lose ourselves to the overgrown weeds?
To begin understanding the person you’re becoming at work, do this action item. Before you leave for work or before you log onto work, stare at yourself in the mirror. Really observe yourself. Look into your own eyes. Notice your clothes, your general energy and mood and notice how much you want to go compared to how much you don’t. Then ask yourself this important question, “Does this work bring out the best version of myself?” And if you’re really brave and a student of the truth, you’ll know. But that’s not enough. So, when you get home after work that same day, before you throw off your shoes, eat what’s in the fridge and binge Netflix, Substack or YouTube, do it again. Stare at yourself in the mirror and observe and ask, “Does this work bring out the best version of myself?”
“The greatest hazard of all, losing one’s self, can occur very quietly in the world, as if it were nothing at all. No other loss can occur so quietly; any other loss - an arm, a leg, five dollars, a wife, etc. - is sure to be noticed.” – Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness Unto Death
Symptom 4: Low energy & burnout
Waking up day after day to do something you’re not passionate about will wear on you over time.
The short-term bursts of new jobs, promotions and work from home flexibility will fade and what’s left is someone who has to use a tremendous amount of energy just to show up.
In the chakra system, which has roots in early Indian tantric spiritual traditions, it speaks about energy centres. One of those centres is called the Solar Plexus (Manipura), which is associated with willpower, self-assertion and action. When it is blocked it’s said that we may become tired and experience low energy.
So whilst a break might temporarily rejuvenate someone who’s burnt out, a blocked solar plexus chakra reveals that when our identity and spirit is not in our work we will burn out again, soon. Because the fire of life is not being fed and sustained.
Work can provide us with energy but this needs to occur on the spiritual plane of existence.
In other words, when the work is taking us away from spiritual fulfillment, rather than towards it, it’s only a matter of time before we find ourselves back where we started.
To begin understanding how work can fuel you, think about an activity that you’re not paid to do and yet you do it because you enjoy it. This could be creating lo-fi beats, taking care of your vegetable garden, looking over celebrity natal charts, discussing video essays on pop culture with a friend, doing research for your dystopian sci-fi novel, flipping tarot cards to begin your morning or doing the breath of fire every night. Whatever it is, reflect on how you feel before and after you do these activities and notice that they give you something in return for actively doing them. Ask yourself, “What is in these activities that is missing from my work?”
“The essential thing is to work in a state of mind that approaches prayer. – Henri Matisse”
A spiritually healthy you at work
A spiritually healthy person is not simply someone who meditates before work or goes to therapy regularly.
Rather, they are someone who is in a proper relationship with their own life.
They are aware of the spiritual plane of their existence and ensure that it is given a central place in the work that they do. Knowing that their individual purpose and their divine purpose are woven together as one. If they find themselves in a place that doesn’t allow them to pursue their calling, they actively seek to change their circumstances, rather than submit to them. Seeking the work that’s meant for them in this lifetime. Here they are more creative, have more energy, are deeply devoted to their craft, they’re in conversation with their own nature and they find the space they need to spiritually grow.
A spiritually healthy society
A spiritually healthy society is one that puts the individual's spiritual health as an ultimate value.
Whilst the Great Resignation was a rebellion against symptoms, we need to move towards a world that seeks spiritual health in the work itself. Not through re-organising people within the current structure, but fundamentally re-organising the structure of what we value in modern work itself.
We know that when we are fulfilled at work we become more present in our relationships, connected with the people around us and serve the world in a way we can take pride in. We do better work, we’re fed by that work and we want to keep doing it. Doing this on an individual level creates this same change at the societal level. Here’s a direct quote from one of our students, Bella, on discovering her Career Archetype and its effect on the rest of her life:
I never doubted I’d get what I came for, but this process surprised me again and again. It has turned my life upside down and transformed my identity to the core, shifted my daily habits, revolutionized my relationship with my partner and my family, changed how I relate to everyone really, and realigned my lifestyle completely. — Bella, Career Archetypes Student
The world becomes a better place for all of us when we prioritise our spiritual health collectively.
Our divine nature is respected and the spirit is allowed to exist in our work, healing us in the process.
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This article was amazing! Thank you!
"But how much should one be compensated to repress one’s soul?"
Oof, knocked the wind right out of me.