Recently I had a “come to Jesus moment” when my boss asked me how I felt about promoting sales for the food we sell being that I am a vegan.

Currently, I am working in what Marie Forleo calls a “bridge job.” A job that pays the bills while I work on creating my own enterprise. I was okay with that until my boss backed me into a corner. Immediately I had to do an internal scan of whether or not this job was in alignment with my integrity and authenticity as an evolving conscious being. It clearly wasn’t and I needed to change that ASAP.

Through this process of internalization, I had another click and that is I have been hiding and working in pseudo jobs or as Steven Pressfield calls them “shadow careers” so that I do not have to express my full potential. By doing this, I have been selling myself short and been basically pimping myself out for low wages because I am too afraid to take risks and expand myself to do the work I really am supposed to be doing.

The context I have been working from has been from fear and not faith—I realized I was living in default by my unconscious patterns and my life was expressing that back to me.

Lately I have been thinking of the patterns I have around my jobs. I have always hated all of them—I can’t say that I really liked any to them at all. When I am honest with myself, I have liked certain ‘ideas’ or ‘concept’s’ about them but never the job itself. All these have lead me into fields that were not so appropriate for me and left me energetically and financially depleted. I have a history or long standing pattern of having ‘soul sucking’ jobs that kept me living a less than mediocre life.

That was my wake up call.

The context of prostitution I am referring to is I am negotiating my truth in exchange for a false sense of financial security to obtain a feeling of stability in the physical realm.

Carl Jung believed that we all embody certain “archetypes” which are models, behaviors or personalities which are derived from our ego, our personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. There are approximately 78 archetypes but we live out only four of these as our main unconscious identities that we associate ourselves with on a daily basis.

The shadow side of the prostitute archetype misuses their power to excel themselves financially by doing something for money that is not in total alignment with who they are. I had this shocking revelation that I have been doing this my whole life and now it is time to change that.

The light aspect of the prostitute archetype is having belief and faith in something greater than our self. If we strive towards our path, and follow our bliss no matter how ridiculous or grandiose it sounds we will be supported and guided. It requires a belief that everything we need is already inside of us. Instead of relying on external sources which compromise our integrity, we trust that we have all the resources inside of us to create what we really want. When we give ourself permission to be who we really are we step into our own power.

Here are a few things that I realized:

There is a tremendous pay off for not taking a leap and living the life of our dreams and staying in our cozy comfort zones. For each one of us they will be different.

• We get to stay in the security of just fantasying about our ideal life to avoid having taking action.
• We can continue to keep playing small to avoid risk of failing or being rejected.
• We don’t have to put ourselves out there in front of the whole world to judge or criticize.
• We don’t have to stretch ourselves to reach our peak potential.
• Waiting until we think we are ready is just an illusion to hold us back and keeps in shrinking in life.
• Not living our peak potential is spiritual suicide.

 “Fulfill your dreams otherwise someone else will hire you to fulfill their dreams.”

~ Paramahamsa Nithyananda

 Tips on how to reach beyond our comfort zone:

• Approach it like as an ‘experiment’ don’t set any high goal or expectations. Just try to to have a light playful attitude.
• Do one small action towards our dream a day.
• Develop a buddy system. When two or more are gathered there is more power.
• Get a coach, mentor or teacher to support us.
• Learn from those who are currently succeeding. If they can do it we can too.
• It’s ok to think and go big!
• It’s like the lottery we can’t win unless we play.
• Kick fear to the curb and start where we are now. It’s never too late.
• Un-attach ourself from what anyone thinks, we have more value that we give ourselves credit for.
• We know more than we think we do.

If we are stuck in a “shadow career” let us take the opportunity to look in and ask ourselves, why are we not going after our dreams?

I did this exercise and a lot of things came up that were lurking underneath the shadows. One of them was I don’t deserve to live the life I want and I am not qualified to serve others in the capacity that I would like.

On the flip side to all of this, I had the realization that sometimes we have to go through things that we don’t want in order to know what we really want, only then can we courageously step into our greatness. If we have been doing a less than ideal job we can look at it as an opportunity to grow and expand.

Everything and everyone there had something to teach us. Once we have learned the lessons we can move on and create our desired reality with grace and excellence.

Our destiny is looking for us as much as we are looking for it. Cosmos wants to co-create with us. Cosmos wants us to succeed.

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Editor: Bryonie Wise

Photo: Hugo Kintzler