I am nearing the end of my career. Just a few more days and I will quit my job, take my savings and fund a life of spirituality and service. The compensation won't be monetary, at least at first. The people I work with have not understood why this is happening at all. Why would anyone quit a six figure job at such an early age? Dreams are hard to carry out, why give up the surety of a salary and company health insurance?
I haven't been able to explain because my spiritual reality does not really overlap with the corporate reality of which these people are a part.
This is not the first time in my life when I pursued a spiritual life as my only work. At the age of 40, I also quit my job, gave away everything, and went off to live in a monastery.
Walt Whitman does an admirable job of explaining why I do this:
"Well, every man has a religion; has something in heaven or earth which he will give up everything else for -- something which absorbs him -- which may be regarded by others as being useless -- yet it is his dream, it is his lodestar, it is his master. That, whatever it is, seized upon me, made me its servant, slave -- induced me to set aside the other ambitions -- a trail of glory in the heavens, which I followed, followed with a full heart....When once I was convinced, I never let go.... "
