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Divine Inspiration Destroyed My Day Job
Finding my creative voice meant walking away from the company I founded
Our oldest myths hold a secret about creativity: It’s a gift from the gods themselves. Or rather, the Goddess, as more often than not, divine inspiration is said to flow directly from a head honcho who’s a She.
For example, the Yoga Tantra tradition offers us Shakti, whose name is synonymous with Divine Feminine power. As the force that creates the entire universe, Shakti is present in every living thing, including us. She embodies every one of our cells, every aspiration, every so-called wild hair idea that seizes us. Shakti cannot help but create — it is what She does. And because She embodies us, that creative urge is present in each of us, too, regardless of how we choose to honor it.
I had one of my first awakened experiences of the power of Shakti a few years ago. I had recently returned to my leadership role at the employee engagement consulting company I’d founded after the birth of my second child, and secretly, I was struggling. I’d experienced a spiritual epiphany of sorts several months earlier at a business conference (of all places), and my heart was suddenly calling me down a completely different — and frankly, scary — path. After years of working hard to grow my company, suddenly all I wanted to do was learn more about ancient spiritual traditions, especially those that honored a female source of creation.
I couldn’t even begin to wrap my brain around how I’d make such a drastic career shift — or whether I could call it a career shift at all! So instead, I spent a lot of time contemplating whether I could bring my newfound interest into my current line of work. Would a Sacred Feminine force care about helping employees feel more connected to their corporate jobs? Could I furtively do Her work in the business world in some way? And what, exactly, would that work be?
Over time, I felt like I had somehow faded into a one-dimensional, cardboard version of myself, there to serve the needs of others only.
“Follow the energy” is a phrase I’ve since learned from one of my teachers; it means the ideas and activities…
