Make Work Your Offering
an Inner-World Exploration
For years, I have blessed my work. I used to put a book blessing in every book. This filled me with the intention to touch hearts and change lives with what I offered. When I was deeply into Reiki, I energetically put symbols on every piece of paper I passed along in the various offices I worked in. Now I do a physical blessing over each idea I share, whether it’s in the form of an email, a post, a newsletter, a podcast, a video or a book. I add a blessing for deep service to each offering.
I enter my day mindfully with the intention to serve. However, recently I came across the idea of seeing my work itself as an offering and this expanded both my thinking and my experience of doing the work.
My job is to make the offering. That’s it. Put it out there. Share light. Make my ideas and insights as clear as I can and let them sail forth into the web of life, and land where they land.
I’ll probably never know the lives I touch. My job is just to make the offering.
What qualities do I put into my work?
If I see my work as an offering, what do I offer? What do I bring to this work? What am I giving of myself?
I get excited about what I do and always bring a great deal of passion for the ideas I write about. I bring my skill as a writer and that gift keeps evolving and improving. And I bring my best self to my work, the most curious, enthusiastic, exploratory, mind-mapping discoverer self I can provide.
My job is simply to make the offering. That of my readers, my audience, is to do with it what they will.
I just do the very best I can in the present moment. Then release it. All I need to do is focus on selecting the concepts to share, decide what form to share it in, and make certain I complete projects so I get them out the door. My focus is on choosing the most impactful topics to share, and on creating thoughtful offerings.
If my job is just to share, does that let me off the hook as far as promoting?
I wish it did, but as I have to make it easy for people to find me, I have to make my work readily and effectively available. I can make certain my words of introduction are inviting and supportive. And I can trust the energy created in my focused intention to the work to call out to those who need to find it.
What is the intention of your work?
Spend some time identifying the intention you have for your work. Mine has organically shifted from helping people increase their self-awareness – which I have done for years – into exploring and promoting spiritual expansion in several forms and encouraging people to creatively deepen their spiritual practice.
I gave myself permission to move into deep philosophical exploration and to trust that those who were called will follow me. I do the work that calls to me and send it out into the world. My intention is to make people think about their spiritual life, the form of their spiritual expression, in creative ways they can actively and effectively apply to their daily lives.
What’s the intention of your work? Are you meeting that intention?
Share your offering with a strong heart
The deeper I move into my own spiritual understanding, the more my personal passion deepens, my heart becomes more inclusive, and my need and desire to share what I learn and how I’ve figured out how to apply it expands.
My calling is so deep and urgent and clear to me even when it shifts and changes directions that all I know to do is to follow the calling, explore it, explain it and put it out there, trusting and knowing it touches the hearts of those who need it and are ready for it.
Honor your process of creating
Sometimes it feels like I’m re-writing an article forever. There comes a stage when I know I have no more to offer at this point in time from this frame of consciousness, and then I release it. That effort, that ever-deepening exploration, is simply an integral part of the love in the gift I finally share. Then I surrender my work to the web of life and let it go where it may, and create change where it’s called to do so. My work becomes my offering.
Be at peace with what happens
Sometimes we can tell how our work impacts others. For instance, people may buy a lot of what we offer. But for me, as a writer, putting out esoteric ideas, the actual consumption and application of my work is a bit trickier to measure. So I have to trust. Trust that the people who need to hear what I offer do find it. That those who read it add the ideas to their lives in ways that are best for them.
And the primary way I have a clue as to the effect of my work is the open rate on my posts and newsletter, which really only gives me numbers. What people do after they open my post is unknown to me. Do they read it? Do they apply it? Does it change them? I have to trust that the ideas I share are reaching the hearts that need them. Is your work offering intangibles? How do you measure it? How do you know how well it is in service?
In one of my shamanic journeys, I was given the image of a carillon, a bell tower, sending my notes out over the countryside, never knowing who heard my melodies and how it affected their lives. We just keep playing our songs.
What heart offerings are you receiving?
One of the ways to measure the effect of an offering is how it affects your heart. Look at the people who touch you and look closely to see why. It can be a newsletter, a webinar, a video, a personal email, a book, a podcast, a conversation. Who has offered ideas that changed your life? When you receive those ideas, do you put them to work to create a positive shift in your life? How excited were you to ,have those new doors opened for you? Those are heart offerings and you are to offer your heart offering through your work.
What emotion do you consciously put into your work?
I often sprinkle my writing with a sense of humor and a bit of wise-cracking. I fill my work generously with the passion and excitement I feel for what I’ve discovered or figured out or learned. Now I’m going to make certain that with every article or book I share, I send it out as an offering with my deepest respect and love.
There will be a conscious blessing of each offering before I press “publish.”
Bless the work that feels mundane
You may be faced with repetitive tasks in your work, doing the same thing over and over. It would be easy to dismiss that work, to see it as not interesting or not adding to the overall value. But when you see each task as adding to the sacredness of the whole offering, it makes a difference. What would happen if each Amazon employee blessed every box that crossed their paths! What would happen if the person mowing the yard blessed every blade of grass and the earth and planet beneath it?
Bless the small things
I can feel gratitude for the skilled minds and hands that made my computer, which makes so much of my work possible. I can feel gratitude for my typing teacher in high school 70 years ago. I can bless the staff here with gratitude for the care they give this senior center.
Look around at the small things you can bless and offer your gratitude for their offerings. They offer support for you on your own journey and have an impact on the offerings you consequently share. Bless your own work deeply and broadly and be aware of all the support you get in order to make your offering.
Feel the sacredness of your work
Everything we do sends out a ripple that affects our interconnected web of life. Your thoughts, your actions, your beliefs, your intentions. All affect the whole.
We have each been given gifts, unique gifts that make everything we do a sacred offering. Know that. Feel that. Experience the sacredness of the offering of everything you do.
Sacred work is when you set about to make an offering, gather your gifts and talents and wrap them in an intention of goodness for others.
Know your work is sacred. Know the work of others is sacred. Feel it. Know it. Experience it. Absorb the sacred offerings that come to you. Send forth your offering as the sacred gift it is.
Be at peace with what happens
Do your work. Follow your calling. Use your gifts well. And be at peace with what happens. Your job is to make the offering.
To Sing a Deeper Song, consider:
What are the Foundations Stones Upon Which Your Build Your Life
