Financial Crisis

Question: Our company (along with many other companies) has made huge layoffs. I have worked with a lot of these people for many years. In this time of unprecedented economic downturn, people without jobs and families losing their homes, is there anything you can say to those of us who have experienced this loss and trauma? I don't know what to say to my friends and coworkers who no longer have a job, and the prospect of finding one when most companies are not hiring is bleak. It's easy to tell them that the universe will provide and something better will come along when I'm not the one having to find a job at the age of 55 or 60! Any words of wisdom would be appreciated. I could just say nothing, but I feel compelled to give them some kind of comfort and let them know they are in my thoughts and that I wish only the best for them. It truly is a stressful time in the world right now.

Answer: Certainly these are difficult times, and odds are the darkness has not fully settled in with regards to how events will continue to reveal the deep cultural lies underlying our present predicament. There will be no easy "way" for people... except "roads" that seem easy because they run downhill spiritually.

As far as working to help lighten the load for those less fortunate, there will be a time for that as well... and only time will reveal the requests we must each deal with according to our understanding and possibility to respond. Yes, optimism is needed, but it must be in "things unseen, and not in things seen." Otherwise, we simply build again the completely false psychological structure now seen crumbling at our feet.

Real hope, real goodness is right before our eyes. We need only be willing to see it; for seen properly, what are these economic "blows," these seeming winds of destructive change? They are the distinct action upon us -- individually and collectively -- of a broader intelligence revealing to us, through each painful blow, where we have misunderstood the purpose of this life due to the unconscious influence of a level of self responsible for that misinformation.

We must remember that healing ourselves (at any level) always begins with an awareness that something is out of order. To resist disorder -- to deny it, blame others for it, or hope it goes away by itself -- is to refuse the gift of that revelation… as unwanted as it may be at the moment.

So, let us each do our individual work of remaining as receptive as we can to the lessons being offered now, and know that if we will do our part in consciously welcoming these discoveries, the Divine will do the rest. Then we may trust that all of this will be seen as it is in reality... Good.

(Correspondence. For more help dealing with the economic crisis be sure to read our Uncertainty FAQ.)