SPIRITUAL RETAIL
 Member ~rabbithowl

Spiritual Realism is an energetic way of being in which we engage 24-7, no matter where we are or who we are with. It is not limited to a couple of hours on a Sunday in a “special” place. It is not something you can just study or read about. It also extends beyond the meditation chair. Spiritual Realism is not just a mental state, though a positive attitude is crucial: a sound, open mind is the soil in which Spiritual Realism is sown. But Spiritual Realism actually lives and flourishes, energetically manifests, in our actions and reactions, our behaviours, our interactions and relationships with others, in the real world.

Including, the workplace. Work, for me, has become a kind of spiritual playground. It is a place where I can make manifest what I have learned so far about Spiritual Realism in a palpable, tangible way, if I make that my intention and exert my spiritual will. I then have the opportunity to see, first hand, its positive results in my interactions with others and in their reactions to me.

Anyone who knows my story is aware that I have some pretty serious work karma to resolve in this lifetime. I thought for years (and probably for lifetimes) that serving the public was something best avoided. The thought of it left a sour taste in my mouth. I could think of a million things I would rather do instead. I considered it a threat to my freedom and to my future career - it was going to take time away from my creative pursuits. Moreover, I was embarrassed to be working retail for minimum wage. I thought it was beneath me. Afterall, did I get a B.A. to sell Christmas ornaments or fancy lingerie? I longed to be playing my flute in concert halls and firmly believed that a patron should just appear out of nowhere and end my slavery to the coin.

You could say that I had a bad attitude.

Which is probably why that patron never showed up, and why I continued to find myself in one retail situation after another, feeling exploited and unappreciated, being frustrated by the underutilization of my skills and talents; that is, when I wasn’t unemployed, having quit in a fury of indignance, in revolt against the poor treatment I and my co-workers received and the emptiness of consumerism, but at the same time being consumed by my own overwhelming self-importance.

I hit financial rock-bottom last Spring. Having $1.50 in my bank account was a wakeup call. I had to ask my parents, yet again, for money. I knew I didn’t deserve to be dug out of my hole of debt when I had freely chosen to quit my “undesirable” retail position.

At that moment I changed my tune. When the Bay hired me back last March, I resolved never to quit a job again, unless I had a guarantee of another job to go to. I was not going to quit because I was overworked or undervalued, or because I (erroneously) thought I was “made for better things”. I finally rejected the conceited notion that I was somehow “above” working retail. I stopped thinking that what I did to get by financially defined who I really was, and, importantly, stopped judging the other people with whom I worked by the same cruel criteria.

I decided to grow up and take responsibility for my own life.

But upon my reentry into the workforce, I still had a lot of work to do, beyond selling luggage on the 4th floor of the Bay:

Working retail is probably one of the fastest and most effective ways to become a die-hard misanthrope, as anyone who has worked or is currently working in customer service can testify to, which is why the situation for me, as a Spiritual Realist, has been so beneficial: misanthropy is simply not an option! I have had to find another way of thinking, feeling, Being. Spiritual Realism forced me to rethink and alter so many of my negative, limiting opinions, feelings and thoughts about myself, other people, and work. I hated people for their bad behaviour, I resented having to wait on them, I wanted them to change. But how could I expect them to change when I was hanging on to such a bad attitude? The change had to start with me. No matter how stressful, maddening, and wearisome it has been at times, I can now say I am grateful for my retail experience and the invaluable lessons it has taught me.

One of the biggest demons I had to face, which had been keeping me perpetually miserable for so many years, was Resentment. I finally beat her into submission last September with this:

So, I’m not playing in the Symphony Orchestra. So, I’m barely making enough money to survive. But I have a lot of wonderful, interesting things to do and, more importantly, incredible, amazing people to love and hang out with in my spare time. And just about everybody has to work. A lot of people are stuck in jobs they don’t like. Make the best of it! And you know what? It could be a lot worse! So stop complaining, look on the bright side, and be grateful!

At that point I stopped dreading and resenting work. I found myself whining about my job a lot less. And to my delight and surprise, I developed a true appreciation for freetime. It was a freetime very different from that which, in the past, I had felt was “owed” to me and caused me so much guilt. I went to work and worked hard, ethically and diligently, and in consequence derived much pleasure from my time off. I knew I had earned it honestly. I found myself feeling happy more frequently at work, and at home I was able to almost entirely forget about work and enjoy the rest of my life.

In September, I transferred from the luggage department to the HBC Rewards desk. I was lured by the promise of more paperwork, which appealed to my phlegmetic mind, and less selling, which I was finding more and more distasteful.

Well, my frustration and impatience as I grew tired of hauling luggage and dealing with customers’ bad attitudes and complaints probably inspired my Higher Self to arrange for my transfer.

So to my shock and dismay, instead of avoiding uncomfortable interactions with customers, that’s about all I’ve had for the last six months - 7 hours straight, 5 days a week. The desk has proved to be a fierce battleground where I have had to fight and defeat all sorts of ghouls and demons from my past and present, and also attempt to transmute and transform other people’s ghouls and demons, which, I have to admit, is still a huge struggle.

I think I’ve embraced this spiritual challenge with a resolute heart. I have resolved to make the best of the situation and to keep a positive work and life attitude. I understand that I am there for a reason, and I refuse to succumb again to the weakness, sullenness, and selfishness of my lower self.

I am a Spiritual Realist retail worker:

Every co-worker and customer who stands before me is worthy of my attention, respect, and compassion. Each is unique, but each one is also connected to me through our shared human experience. I am learning to be kind, even when I’m not treated kindly. I am learning to be patient and compassionate, even when faced with customer tirades and tantrums. I am learning to not punish other people for the insensitive, malevolent acts and energies of the few. And I am learning to not bring work home with me. If a problem arises at work, whether it’s a matter of workload or an interaction with a difficult customer, I try not to bring that home to my loved ones and allow it to spoil my time off. I attempt to deal with it at work by speaking my truth, addressing the issues promptly, standing up for myself whilst keeping my ego in check, and demanding action, even providing solutions, if change is needed.

As beneficial as my work experience has been to my spiritual development, I am not here to celebrate Capitalist-driven consumerism. In fact, my disdain for it has only increased. It is not helping or serving the public which offends me anymore; but rather, the way consumerism and materialism have poisoned people and our society. I think my continued rejection of the whole Capitalist paradigm has helped me to maintain my sanity whilst working in its mind-numbing sweatshops.

I have seen the suffering that people, by accepting this toxic paradigm, endure. People’s adherence to this life-denying paradigm is one of the principle causes of their negativity and malaise, their bad attitude, their withdrawal from Life. They suffer from the sickness of consumerism, of buy and sell, supply and demand, where everything and everyone is a commodity with a value based on net-worth. I have seen co-workers struggling to make ends meet on insufficient wages, consumed by fear and worry - how will I pay this medical bill, my rent, my mortgage? My child is sick - can I afford to miss a day’s work to be home with her? I have seen people stuck in the mire of their own minds, their lower separate selves chomping greedily, lustily on their self-preoccupied, self-indulgent, self-important, neurotic thoughts. I have seen sleeping, sad, listless people, gliding with blank stares through the aisles. I wonder, do they even know why they are there?

“Sweetie,” I feel like saying, “do you really need another frying pan?”

The application of the principles of Spiritual Realism to work and to life is truly a continuous process. The learning never stops; it is never completed. It remains a daily challenge for me and my co-workers to keep our composure and compassion when a customer launches into a diatribe about poor service, throws a crumpled coupon in our faces, starts ranting about the parking policy, threatens to report us, talks over top of customers we are trying to help, and so on. Just because I’m a Spiritual Realist doesn’t mean that I’m going to white-wash what’s really going on out there in the world, in the workplace, particularly in customer service: the vibes coming off most people are atrocious - life-draining, soul-sucking, threatening. I understand that people feel disempowered in their lives, and that because of this they get some perverse satisfaction out of treating customer service workers with disdain, contempt, and disrespect. I understand this, but I don’t accept it. I don’t think any of us should. Perhaps instead of abusing strangers these people should question their twisted devotion to the god Mammon and his will-to-power agenda. I think it’s pathetic and disgusting for a person to take out his or her feeling of disempowerment and victimization, which he/she took on in the first place, on other people, particularly those at the bottom of the workforce food chain. We in retail are constantly told by management to treat our customers with courtesy and respect, to give them due attention, make them feel special. This is not all that far removed from what Spiritual Realism asks from us in our relations with others. But I tell you, it takes great perseverance and a solid will to do this when the first thing out of a customer’s mouth is a complaint and their energy is grasping, negativizing, even violent. It’s yet another example of people refusing to take responsibility for their own lives. They feel they’ve been treated unfairly by life and so others should have to hear about it and feel their pain, resentment, and anger. People’s level of conceit is shocking. Selfishness, self-importance, arrogance ooze out of so many of them, in the way they speak, in their gesticulations, in their energy. So many rude, small-minded people with way too much money on their hands.

“What are you doing here?” I want to ask them. “Why don’t you go have a coffee and a conversation with another human being instead of buying another blouse? Better yet, why don’t you go home and spend some time with your family?”

Wow, there’s a concept.

Weekends used to be the quality time you got to spend with your spouse and kids or your friends. Now it’s the time to run, harried, children in tow, through the Eaton’s mall. Shopping’s good if you want to completely avoid having to actually connect with someone else.You can keep yourself good and distracted by packing yourself with a bunch of other human sheep and cattle into a store, utterly focused on what you need and want to buy.

No wonder retail workers are given such a hard time. I mean, the customers aren’t interested in connecting with you, not even on a most basic human level. In fact, if anything, you’re an obstacle to them getting what they want. The fact they have to speak to you at all is an annoying waste of time. You’re there to take their money, and there is a lot of repressed resentment and outright paranoia that manifests itself in this situation. The sales associate is not to be trusted.

And then there are the customers who resort to manipulating or bullying you, all to get something for nothing.

It’s all a big game of “who has the money? who has the power?”

I don’t bother resenting people for their bad behaviour anymore. Instead I feel pity for them: pity that they are so horribly misguided, that they are victims of their own self-preoccupied separate selves, pity that they have allowed themselves to be brainwashed and manipulated by the souless, Capitalist agenda of corporations, governments, and their media, that they have allowed their lives to become so devoid of meaning and spirit that they have to fill it up with material things, that they no longer know how to communicate with other people in a respectful, polite, civilized way.

In the end, none of us have an excuse for being a negative, toxic person and treating other people poorly, carelessly. We can’t use Capitalism or “society” as an excuse, anymore than we can blame our mothers or the weather. We are all capable of seeking Truth, seeing through the lies told to us by the t.v., corporations, governments, and, in an act of righteous defiance, choosing a different way of Being. We all have the capacity to look at ourselves in clarity and change. If you are suffering, if your relationships are falling apart, do you not pause and reflect, even if only for a moment? Do you think other people, or (abstract) societal institutions, are ultimately responsible for your unhappiness, for the void inside you, for your cold heart? Do you think that life is supposed to be painful, that being victimized is a part of it - some people are on top, others are on the bottom - that’s just the way it is? When did you accept that view of yourself, of the world, of life? And why are you taking it out on other people - family, friends, strangers?

I’m coming to the end of my time at the Bay, but I’m leaving friends, co-workers behind to keep fighting the battle for sanity in an insane work environment. I don’t plan on forgetting them, or all the people I have served who remain twisting wretchedly in the winds of our current Capitalist regime. But you know, none of us are ultimately helpless to effect change in ourselves and in the world. Maybe it starts with cutting up the credit card that keeps tempting you into debt and lining bank managers’ pockets. Maybe it starts with putting back on the rack that new purse you don’t really need. Or maybe it starts with cracking a smile for the sales clerk ringing through your carton of milk at the grocery store.

Creating a civilization, becoming human one step at a time.
 

Copyright © rabbithowl, 2003.

 

Blondchakra Spiritual Realism 3/14/2003 12:05:40 PM Thank you so much, Rabbithowl, for opening your heart and sharing with us your step by step discoveries on your epic journey to becoming a Spiritual Realist. Oh, I can feel so deeply with you all the poignant illusions and the brutal pain that are attacking the glorious lotus flower that is you, in your awakening to the true essence of who you are. Your soul searching is so descriptively expressed, and your message is so immediate that we recognize the dilemma we are all faced with. Like the sharp boom of the Chinese gong you wake us up to our responsibility to look within ourselves for the cause of our suffering. Spiritual Realists do not blame others for their incapacities. With clear vision and sensitivity you show us that where we are at this moment, our present situation, is the purpose for our being. Our Higher Self has brought us to this place to unfold the strong qualities within us. I am inspired by your courage, Rabbithowl, in making the great change in yourself. The world around us is still sad. Consumerism and selfishness abound. The capitalists at the top echelon of the ladder thrive on the financial need of those at the bottom. And people escape the emptiness within by more and more materialistic acquisitions. Yet, as you show by example, there is within all of us this unique being waiting to express itself, and always the possibility to change. This is a most wonderful piece of writing, which demonstrates Spiritual Realism in practice. Musicman Spiritual Retail 3/16/2003 4:05:13 PM Thanks, rabbithowl! Your article is an excellent example of where the rubber hits the road in trying to be a Spiritual Realist! Musicman paris Spiritual Retail 3/26/2003 9:53:13 PM This is an awakening experience for you! You demonstrate that an understanding of the situation helps to shift from personal resentment to empathy. Deep down, I don't think that people really want to be rude, angry, or frustrated. These are symptoms of the voidness that they feel. Send out peaceful thoughts to these people, and let it go. I admire your strength! Scorsagphoenix Belated Props 4 Fab Commentary 6/22/2007 5:41:30 AM Greetings & Salutations Rabbit Howl, Reading your Heart-felt depiction of the "white, suburban maelstrom," the "Machinery of Night" and "dark, satanic mills," which envelop most of us in the Memorable Fancy of an inescapable tractor beam - I can see myself on both sides of the aisle... I've been the grocery clerk errand boy sent to collect a bill & I've been the 'Truly' dedicated misanthrope, snarling pointlessly, w/ the atavism of ancestral memories & projected frustrations coruscating through me w/ the visceral force of a shot-gun wedding...The culminating fear, pain, & paranoia which has brought me to your fine essay...There is a great deal I could manufacture by way of some lame attempt @ literary criticism, but in this present forum, I have the gleeful sensation of being already 'cut off at the knees' knowing that your shared observations chronicle the deeper, more fundamental awareness that our core, essential natures, our 'Higher Selves' in Hesse's & whoever else's splendid formulation, transcend the meagre roles generally allocated for us in this "Best of All Possible Worlds," where you can count yourself lucky to 'avoid a draft' or the many other pitfalls of advanced civilization W/ its now pre-eminent consumer-driven focus & dirge-like leit motiv....But "the poor you will always have W/ you..." And we, I count myself among the "great unwashed" & the "grateful dead," are often more apt to flash a smile...Perhaps 'cuz - 'there's nothin' left to do' but smile, smile, smile...- But actually, more encouragingly, away from the enclaves of mindless insensibility, there does seem to be some hopeful developments of an emerging consciousness of the kind of enlightened disposition attainable by actively seeking the "Fruits of the Spirit" and actively demonstrating compassion for others as well as ourselves...Though perhaps it's easier in the hinterlands, the less populous regions of mountain & desert where I have been for many a moon now... Anyway, for what it's worth, I think you are a very gifted/talented writer... I don't know if or when you will see this humble addendum as I am so far to the back of the caravan, but kudos, nonetheless... There is a feast of provocative elements to your personal odyssey, & I thank you sincerely for lending badly needed perspective to the shambles I sometimes make of my own "Private Idaho"... So until the "Eternal Hourglass of Existence" goes back to zero, I'll keep you in my prayers & ask for the same in return... Buona Fortuna W/ your musical aspirations - Marcus Aurelius would be proud...   Only Spiritual Realists can comment: Read Spiritual Realist Principals and Practice and Member Agreement to find out if you are eligible to become a member: Sign-Up Already a member?: Login

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