It’s December 2004 and there is no money coming in. I dump a large sum out of an IRA to pay my bills. My partner has money, but I am not allowed to not have my own in this marriage. I am embarrassed about my lack of green stuff.

"Best thing you ever did," chimes my partner, Keith, over and over about my quitting the post office in January 2001. Since then my right work has manifested—choir director, healing music and healing touch practitioner, flutist, writer, hospice musician, composer! And it has all manifested on a volunteer basis. I’m doing what I love and the money isn’t following.

I got a parcel in the mail on my birthday in 2003. My picture and article were in a paperback book that had been published. My payment—a copy of the book. Around my birthday the next year I directed a hundred singers and debuted one of my choral compositions to an adoring crowd—all for no pay.

If we teach what we need to learn, having neither money nor right livelihood, qualifies me as a teacher for this subject. I pray for guidance. I sit in my purple meditation room as the laundry piles up. I ask the picture of a guru on my altar, Babaji. He says to fill the body with light.

I am angry. Why can’t I fix this problem after four years of having it. For a while I got some gigs as a "caregiver," looking after the aged, the disabled. The pay was only eight dollars an hour but I felt a bit like a good-natured monk looking after parts of our society no one else would. Financial realities set in however.

There were brief moments of hope. Perhaps the hospice will fund a position for a musician. I send out many packets of information regarding my skills in this area and make some follow-up phone calls. At one juncture, one of my choir positions was going to be increased except they didn’t want me in the new position they wanted to look around and get somebody better. 

Late at night I scour through an old notebook where I had scribbled down my life mission. Hmm. I am doing my life mission, in five different volunteer positions. I ponder the voice of pop spirituality, which has become a kind of superego in all our heads. "What’s the matter with you, can’t you just put into practice the principle of doing what you love for a job and live happily ever after," says the voice.

Yes I am to honor my life vision, write those poems and compositions, offer healing, yet it’s okay to make money some other way not tied to these callings. I know that regardless of how I make money my life vision needs to be attended to each day like a garden.

The money will come. I can smell it like sex, driving me to seek it from the dark need of survival. A talk with my partner one morning tips the balance. We end our conversation, with him saying a prayer for faith and hope for me to find a way out of the money dilemma. I am crying. Christmas is coming and I feel like not talking to anyone as hopelessness visits me like a shadow.

Anger shows its face. Anger at the pompous personal growth movement. Spirituality is supposed to create a wonderful creative livelihood? Has anyone revisited the Benedictine Rule lately with its mind-boggling fourth chapter on humility, in which we are told to accept any work at all that comes to us. It isn’t true I have to be able to manifest some special work situation. Just make a living in a way that is harmless to you and the world, says the self.

I visit a counselor. She expresses concern for my survival, says I’m like a "canary in a coal mine." She calls on me to call forth my Warrior Energy, that I might respond to my sense of crisis and make my way with savvy through the world. She tells a fable about someone spending all night contemplating the suit of armor that they are to put on and take up their path as the spiritual warrior.

I lay awake at night, imagining the armor there by my side. In the morning I slide my legs into the metallic garments, lift the breastplate over my head and draw a breath from deep in the belly, igniting the flame of spirit.