Just for Today — Be Devoted to Your Work

We are discussing the fourth Reiki principle in this post. We have already looked at the first three:

Just for today — do not worry

Just for today — do not anger

Just for today — be filled with gratitude

Now we’re looking at the principle that says — just for today — be devoted to your work.”

We are going to look at work — what we usually think work is and we will see if work and making a living is the same thing as work and making a life. We will the look at the work which if the real purpose of our soul.

Work, What Is It?

When you think of work, what thoughts come first to your mind?

The idea of work seems to many of us to not have a very positive feel and connotation. We do not seem to like the idea that to work well is to live well as Thomas Aquinas tells us.

You see for Aquinas, living and working went hand in hand. I believe that this is true because he gets the two in the proper sequence — to live and then to work. While for most people today, we seem to live like we work to live and this is a most unfortunate occurrence.

Aquinas says that we should display a good activity. Our lives should show off or parade our inner beauty for others to see and enjoy. In this way, we return beauty to our communities. Our work is a means to increase the beauty of the world, of one another, and of the worker.

In her writings, Hildegard of Bingen likens a person who does good work to an orchard bearing fruit. She says that “our good work permeates the universe and makes the cosmic wheel go around.”

She says that three things are important about work: first, humans are fruitful and flourishing when working; second, we are about good work; and third, our work affects the universe, our work actually contributes to turning the big cosmic wheel.

Jesus and other writers in the New Testament talked about lives that bear good fruit.

Working to Live or Living to Work, that’s the Question

So how do we make the leap from our common idea of living life working to make a living to a new idea of living life doing good things and making a life all the while performing a job?

When considering this question, the main thing that each of us needs to do is to remember.

We must remember that we do have the power to choose to make a life rather than to just make a living. You see, the main job that your soul must accomplish is to evolve — to be.

The soul that you are desires to be the grandest version of the greatest vision that it can conceive. You are on this planet to produce something with your soul. Your body and your job are simply tools of your soul.

As you allow your soul to be all that it is designed to be, then you can go about the business of doing the job that you have chosen for this lifetime.

You see jobs are to the real issue of work like leaves are to a tree. If the tree of your life is ailing then the leaves of your job will fall. But fiddling with the leaves is not going to cure an ailing tree. One cures an ailing tree by treating its roots and so we cure the crisis in work by treating the root meaning and purpose of life. By remembering why it is that we are here in the first place, to allow our souls to experience all that we can and to do good things. In this way our tree becomes healthy and we are like that fruitful orchard.

My prayer for each of us is that we will make the choice right now to concentrate on making a life that is worthy of the soul that you are — that spark of divinity — of God — that lives in your physical body. And as you make this choice, just for today, each and every day, you will find that truly the work you do will be profitable. But if it’s not, then just maybe your soul is trying to communicate the message to you that a change is something that you should consider. May it be so for each of us!

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