Spirituality is rarely honored in the Western workplace. At best, a spiritual life is treated the same as a lunch break or workout at the gym. It is an activity crammed into stolen time. Work has become so dehumanized for most of us that we don’t even consider the workplace as a part of us. We don't claim it as our space in the way that we claim our homes. We think of work as a place where we "must" spend our time—and we derive pleasure to the extent that the time passes quickly and is generally free of turbulence.

Rushing through work, however, often robs us of the pleasure that comes with the discovery of the solution to a difficult problem. The goal to finish whatever-now-no-matter-what consumes people, and strips work of meaning and strips us of our sense of self at work. Constant focus on the goal to finish also leads to mistakes, and worse—an overload of stress that does us absolutely no good.

So how do we change this? What do we do?

We not only acknowledge the soul in the workplace; we celebrate it—this sacred essence of our self. We reclaim our identity and we reclaim our work. We can do this by applying some important principles that form the foundation of Vastu Living: Creating a Home for the Soul. Vastu Living is the first adaptation of an ancient discipline from India that has been designed specifically for the contemporary Western lifestyle.

...Rethinking the Business of Work

Two important steps in your practice of Vastu Living relate to how you think about your workplace and your work. First, please don’t view your work space as temporary space that doesn’t belong to you. It is your space. It is where you work, so claim it for yourself...

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© Copyright Kathleen Cox. This article was originally
published at our website, SoulfulLiving.com, in May
2000, as part of Soulful Living's "Soul at Work" Issue.

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