Living and Working With Meaning

By Tanis Helliwell

“Although attempting to bring about world peace through the internal transformation of individuals is difficult, it is the only way.”  –H.H. The Dalai Lama

Our Work is Worth More than Money

Often we have too small a view of what our life work is. We define ourselves by our paid work such as “I’m a massage therapist, a teacher, a marketing manager.” Defining ourselves by just one role underestimates the larger significance of our accomplishments in life. To my way of thinking our real work is to make the world a better place and, if we achieve this, our life has meaning. Working is not solely to make money in order to buy houses, cars and computers—although these are nice to have. Instead, work is essentially about how each of us contributes to the greater good of the world?

Living With Meaning is Our Work

As you might know I have been in retreat off and on for the last few months. The purpose of this retreat has been to catch up with myself, to digest and assimilate all that has gone before in my life, and to shed light on the path showing me where best to walk in the coming years. I figure that I have another ten or fifteen years left where I can be of best use in the world, and that’s if I’m lucky, so what is the best use of this time? My retreat has confirmed that the most important path we can take in life does not entail doing more, but being more, which is, in fact, means to be just who we are. This is the real work. For me, writing books and teaching seminars naturally flow from this central core of ‘Who I am’ and from my desire to share what I have learned with others who might benefit.

There is a great deal of freedom in this approach to life and work and this attitude is the same one with which to approach ALL things we do in life. For years, I have known that my real meditation takes place in action and in attempting to be conscious every minute of every day. I think that this continual consciousness is attainable only when we no longer have anything to prove either to ourselves, or to others. Being conscious in every moment is every bit as important a ‘work’ than giving a seminar to hundreds of people. It’s like what Maharishi said years ago that if 1% of people meditate they create a field that brings the rest of humanity into coherence.

This means that how we lead our life is our work. Work that we do outside of our daily paid work whether it is charity acts, volunteerism, coaching a soccer team for kids or helping an older friend who is dying is all work, which increases the greater good on our planet. Other work is how we relate to our family and friends, our co-workers, the waiter who serves us dinner. Every one of our thoughts and actions impacts on others and it is our work to act in a way that brings peace and love into the world.

Benefiting Others Benefits Us

And as we benefit others by our interaction with them we also are changed. Through treating others as we would wish to be treated and having their good in mind we develop our compassion and learn more joy and trust in the universe’ willingness to provide us with just what we need at any moment. Work is not an end, it is a means—a tool that helps us to evolve in consciousness. As we are transformed we transform others

Here are some questions to help you see the great good that you are doing presently in the world.

1. What work do you do that you are paid to do? How does it serve the greater good of the world?

2. What other activities or roles do you engage in that also serves the world?

3. How have you become a better person through these two kinds of work in the world?

I have been writing poetry in my retreat and I would like to leave you with one of them. I hope you enjoy it.

Rainbow Dust

 Skirting your issues, circling your core

Leads to endless lives in illusion.

But ‘Who am I?’ is an arrow

Piercing the veil,

Killing you dead.

Fears of greater and lesser disappear

Only ‘What is’ remains.

Nothing to defend, nor uphold.

Only rainbow dust of God everywhere.

Tanis Helliwell, a mystic in the modern world, has brought spiritual consciousness into the mainstream for over 30 years. Since childhood, she has seen and heard elementals, angels, and master teachers in higher dimensions. Tanis is the founder of the International Institute for Transformation (IIT), which offers programs to assist individuals to become conscious creators to work with the spiritual laws that govern our world.

Tanis is the author of The High Beings of Hawaii, Summer with the Leprechauns, Pilgrimage with the Leprechauns, Embraced by Love, Manifest Your Soul’s Purpose, Hybrids: So You Think You Are Human and Decoding Your Destiny.

For information on Tanis’ courses, click here.