suyenas

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About suyenas

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  1. This is a personal post as I'm looking for some perspective on a career decision that I can't discuss with most of my friends as they are not really into spirituality&awakening. Let me provide a little bit of context first: I'm in my 30s and I'm from an Eastern European country - a country which is run by a ruling party centered around Stage Blue values and a country where rule of law, judicial independency and other Enlightenment ideas have been seriously jeopardized by the government in the past few years. A country where corruption runs so deep in the society that no 2-hour video of Leo could do it justice. I completed my education in the fields of law and finance with multiple years spent abroad and I've always been interested in the big questions of how collectives work, let it be the legal, sociopsychological, economic, etc. point of view. I consider myself Stage Yellow on political, societal issues with a very strong side of Stage Orange when it comes to material existence & financial stability, etc. something that I'm sort of in the middle of transcending. I started my career back then on a typical Stage Orange trajectory: working for the biggest names in business, working 80-100 hours a week, earning a lot of money. When I realized I'd sacrificed my health, social life and general joy of life for something I don't really enjoy, I quit immediately. Basically, I was a textbook example of someone realizing the limits of Stage Orange as their health has deteriorated and no success and material wealth could bring lasting happiness, only void and nihil. Despite this, I haven’t been able to fully transcend Stage Orange in the financial stability aspect and ever since I’ve been employed in less demanding jobs but still in the corporate world. Although I had such a start to my life after education, I've never been a "careerist". I don't want to achieve a spectacular thing, be a CEO of a company, build a legacy, have some impact or anything and I don't have a vision for myself in 5, 10, 20 years, I usually drift with the flow of life when it comes to life decisions. Oh, here is a nice looking job, let's try this one. But the thing is, I’ve come to the point where I must face the fact that I don't enjoy anything I do in the private sector, I’m just sick of the idea of looking for ways to make more money for a company (I mostly work in strategic positions, although lately I’ve been involved with IT software developments.) Simultaneously, as a young European idealist with (then) Stage Green ideas about society, politics and the world in general, having witnessed the recent developments of my country, I was involved in founding a progressive party and building it bottom-up grassroots-style from scratch with a vision to transform our corrupt home country to a more open and fair society. Over the years, this party has grown to a leading opposition force. This was a very rewarding and insightful experience for me, but over the years I’ve become disenchanted with the workings of a party and politics in general (even though I know and I am 100% sure that these characteristics are inevitable and necessary at this stage of individual&collective consciousness). As my thinking slowly evolved from Stage Green to Stage Yellow, I just couldn’t carry on with the tribal nature of politics, opinions, etc. I just couldn’t see myself as a liberal, socialdemocrat or anything anymore as I could more and more relate to all the different perspectives. I realized that having noble ideas about equality, human rights, etc is not sufficient to challenge such complex systems ten thousand years of evolution has built. I quit the party with its internal ego games and due to an abundance of free time & encounters with psychedelics, I discovered spirituality and actualized.org. Ever since then, spirituality has been the main focus of my life, I meditate 2 hrs a day, I attend a retreat every summer and my reading has mostly centered around spiritual books. I’ve had some glimpes of the Truth on psychedelics but my spiritual practice hasn’t been a walk in the sun: the purifications, facing my own devilry, my complexes, my small and huge self-deceptions has been quite excruciating for me with prolonged periods of isolation – something that has improved in the past year as my meditations have deepened and I could see the other side of all this darkness. And we’ve arrived at the present: I have decided I will quit working in the private sector and find something that I really enjoy doing. Upon deep introspection, I can certainly say the two major things that interest me are spirituality and politics. I can’t make a living from spirituality as I’m not really interested in that aspect because I could see the dangers in going down that road. And most importantly, spirituality for me is about overcoming my own suffering first and because of this, I treat it as a very personal side of my life. I rarely discuss it with friends, I don’t spread the world, I don’t engage in metaphysical debates, etc. This leaves politics as the last candidate. Funnily, fate has rubbed it in my face: I’ve been offered with a chief of staff position for one of the leaders of the party I founded. This person is also a Member of the Parliament and thus would be involved in legislation. He is also someone I could trust - even though he is also fighting some inner demons, his heart is in the right place. This position would be ideal for me as I don’t like attention and I don’t want to be in the front line, I’m more of a background person with good management skills and a broad, general understanding of legislation, government and economics. The thing is the thought of going „back” to politics scares me a little bit. My main reservations revolve around the superficial and ego-centered aspects of politics and the potential for corruption. In this party, there are people genuinely interested in making the world a better place but there are also persons with huge egos and flawed personalities – and this created a rather interesting community with sometimes toxis dynamics. And even the well-meaning people can get caught up in ego-fueled debates, conflicts. Plus, I can’t really underestimate the corrupting influence of the ego involved in politics and this makes me fear the possibility of me getting to those places. On one hand, I can see myself in a better position as I don’t have a sense of mission: I don’t really think that you can change the world, the world changes itself in such complex ways that you can’t attribute it to anyone’s "doing". Of course, I have an idea of what a more conscious, just and fair society looks like but I don’t hold it as an absolute truth. On the other hand, what really exaggerates the dangers of politics, is my own struggles with my self-deceptions in the past few years and the corruption of power. As a result, I’m really torn by the doubts whether I could have the best of two worlds: focus on spiritual development and do something I enjoy. What do you think? Do you think spirituality and politics could go well together? What measures would you suggest I should take to mitigate the potential dangers? Thanks a lot in advance! tldr: I’m at a major life decision point where I could take up a job in second-line politics. Somewhere deep in my heart I feel this is something I would enjoy doing but I’m hugely conflicted whether this is compatible with my spiritual path which is the main focus of my life.