Q:In Doing Nothing you suggest that our work “should be an extension of our silence,” but with all the economic pressures in today’s world how can one earn enough money to lead a reasonably comfortable life freeing up time for this inquiry?

SH:We each have the capacity to generate a life unburdened by financial pressures. The interplay of fear and insecurity along with the need for identity, purpose and defining activity leave most people driving forward on a endless treadmill. While it may sound a bit esoteric, in fact, the penetration of the mind structure (which is essentially survival oriented), and the resulting opening to the actual movement of consciousness (which is essentially secure and whole) by anyone answers the financial question.

The money question, after all, is simply a metaphor for our chances of survival, we need more to assure our security and that carrot-on-the-stick keeps us running through our life. But the money metaphor misses the point of life entirely, which is that life is relationship, not individual. We know this fact of relatedness — deep in each of us is the passion to live that fact, but fear instructs us to take care of our security first, and we are paralyzed.

We have it backwards.

Living from the drive for security expresses itself as what it is — insecurity and lack. Living from the passion of relatedness expresses itself as what it is — love and security, including financial. The pathways to financial prosperity are present in each of our lives already, as quantum potential, but like Kabir’s thirsty fish, we do not recognize it.

The mechanics are something like this:

1) Perceive the need for security as the ground to your life’s work, not as the end, but as an integral part of any life expression.

2) Dedicate the excess that you may accumulate to those in need.

3) Unleash the passion of purpose in your self regardless of how it fits in your current life. You may or may not lose friends, colleagues, spouse or the approval of society.

4) Integrate your expression. Let go of the mask and let your face show.

5) Commune with those who share your vision, communicate with those who don’t. Your life is interactive — informing and being informed.

6) Cooperate in the logistics of life. A living community is the greatest wealth builder, share the business, house, kitchen and car. Tremendous resources are wasted on the lonely lives encapsulated in the suburban house and urban apartment.

7) Trust the flow of your passion. It isn’t rational, but it can use the rational mind as a tool and a technology to make things work. It isn’t emotional, although it deeply feels the flow of emotions as vital information about relationship. It is the integral viewpoint which puts together the individual as actor and the whole as context in each moment.

8) It’s about transformation. The passion thing, the money thing, the “what do I do with my life” thing — all the things are subsumed by the mystical fact of the transformation of our lives by the energy of consciousness.

9) You know what not jumping off the cliff is, but you can’t know what jumping off the cliff is — without jumping. Nobody can tell you how to do it, nobody can do it for you.

10) The choice to live our passion is not dangerous, it is much worse, it is unknown. But what is known can never be new or creative. If we die in our passion, at least we have lived, if we live in the known we have already died.