I'm very excited that I've just launched my book,
Latest book,
The Spiritual Entrepreneur on Amazon as Kindle and physical copy now.
And I just want to give you a sense of this book.
It's written in four sections.
The first section is the open door,
Which is really about how do we start the journey,
Whether you're thinking about the journey as an employee in some company,
Or whether you're at the beginning of the journey,
This sets the scene.
The next section is called an open mind.
And this really explores resistance and the nature of resistance and limitation and how we move beyond resistance into entrepreneurial thinking,
A more expanded sense of identity,
A new work ethic,
A new sense of purposeful direction and flow and bliss.
The next section is open channel,
Which really explores the dynamic of the masculine and feminine in business within ourselves and in the world.
It also explores chapters such as your weirdness is your brilliance,
Creative synergy,
There's no such thing as luck,
Your internal GPS,
Unseen friends,
Signs and synchronicities,
A win win game,
Our abundant universe.
The last section is called open flow,
Which is really about the laws of the universe,
Spiritual laws,
It's about vibration,
It's about multidimensional gifts,
It's about vibrate your business,
Stream your business,
Align your business.
And I just want to read to you the introduction to give you a sense of the beginning of the book.
No one in my family was religious or spiritual.
I never remember the term spirituality being mentioned once while I was growing up.
My earliest taste of what I now know to be spirituality came through reading super comic books and watching sci fi TV shows and movies.
I love the feeling of my mind expanding into these new worlds.
And as a child,
My passion for the weird and wonderful was somewhat tolerated by my family.
As a teenager,
It was increasingly less so.
My parents seemed less interested in my higher education,
And were more concerned that I got a job as soon as possible.
My father worked in the printing industry for many years,
And did not seem particularly happy with his career choice.
I cannot remember if he ever said it or if my mind felt it,
But the idea that I should get a proper job was seeded around this time.
No one in my family was entrepreneurial.
All the adults were salt of the earth types.
One grandfather was a craftsman making bespoke saddles before going off to World War One.
The other grandfather worked on fitting tram lines in London,
Apparently receiving a gold watch when he retired.
All of those years for a gold watch,
You know,
He also received a certificate celebrating 40 years of consistent and solid work with an engineering company,
And my grandmother hung it on her bedroom wall.
And I was drawn to look at it often.
It seemed to hold some strange warning about what potentially lay ahead of me.
I was very close to my grandmother,
And I remember she told me to get a secure job.
So there was these two words,
Which was the summation of career advice from my family,
Get a proper job and a secure job.
Being an entrepreneur was not an option my school ever really presented.
I had to learn everything I now know from the ground up.
Looking back,
I had a difficult time doing my A-levels.
I was feeling overwhelmed,
Not with the work,
But with some deeper emotional issues.
So I gave up school and looked around the world of work to find the best fit.
Nothing really grabbed me,
So I took a deep breath.
And before the age of 18,
I entered the world of international banking in the city of London.
For the next 10 years,
I was a paper shuffler,
Moving paper documents around from one tray or one desk to another.
I felt like a very round peg in a very square hole.
This was probably the most difficult and most depressing period of my working life.
During this time,
I got married,
Had two children and had a mortgage.
I felt I was living in a pretty but not so pleasant golden cage.
After a decade of working in the city,
I felt drained.
Despairing and seeing no future beyond this,
I decided to press the eject button on my life.
I set the stage for my leaving and as I was losing consciousness,
A voice in my mind that I did not recognize as my own said there was hope.
And this voice repeated the same message three times.
I accepted the statement that it was not my time to leave.
My aborted attempt to leave the planet led me into a year's convalescence and 10 years of psychotherapy.
As I recovered,
I found a new career and a local authority working in a special housing directorate.
I had swapped a rigid and rather anal conservative working environment for a politically anarchical left wing one.
This was not an easy time,
Especially in the beginning.
But as it settled into the role,
I did discover some hidden abilities that had no room to breathe in the rather stuffy halls of international banking.
I found I was good with people,
That I could solve problems,
I could manage projects.
In time I was promoted and I found I could manage people.
I stayed here for about a decade.
During this time,
My father died in 1991,
January of 1991.
This triggered a spiritual searching that led me first to a white witch and then to a gifted crystal healer,
Who in turn introduced me to a brilliant spiritual teacher called Jill Edwards.
I read her book Living Magically three times before attending one of her workshops and booking some one to one sessions.
Jill was really the person that woke me up and I trained with her on and off for about nine years.
This was an amazing time where I began to experience things I had not encountered before,
Like intuition and synchronicities.
Jill introduced me to the concept that we create our reality and taught different methods to put this magical idea into practice.
Jill was a spiritual teacher and my first real example of a spiritual entrepreneur.
During my time with Jill,
Some of the gifts she gave me were permission to explore,
Research,
Simplify and synergise different ideas.
I have honoured these gifts to this day.
Jill also introduced me to many spiritual channels and teachers and most importantly to a spiritual organisation called Alternatives,
Based in St James' Church,
Picadilly,
London.
I joined as a volunteer in January of 1995 and this organisation has been putting on spiritual talks since 1982 and was to play a pivotal role in my spiritual development,
Later helping me on the path of the spiritual entrepreneur.
This was a strange and magical time.
I was still doing a conventional job but on some evenings and weekends I was exploring the many worlds of spirituality.
My heart,
Mind and spirit began to expand slowly but surely.
For several months I considered resigning from my 3D job and one day I asked the universe the question directly in meditation,
Should I resign?
I received the answer dramatically during one lunch break shortly after as I was returning back to work.
There was a man with a t-shirt walking in front of me and on the back of the t-shirt was the Nike brand slogan in white letters saying,
Just do it.
Yes the answer was clear but my ego mind rejected it.
Don't tell me you're going to resign from this world paid job because of a t-shirt,
Said the ego.
I considered the thought for a moment and caved in.
I started to reflect along a dark path of how stupid and how ridiculous it was of me to even think about resigning.
What was I thinking?
What would I do beyond this job?
As I was thinking all of this I decided to ignore the sign in front of me.
Then within a few minutes my attention was strongly pulled to a window to my right where there was a window sticker repeating the message,
Just do it.
The answer had come twice within a few minutes and I knew in my heart it was the right thing to do.
I resigned the next day.
This was in March 1997 and I woke up the following day to a double rainbow in the sky.
I'd never seen anything like it before and I took it as a very positive sign that I was heading in the right direction.
To be honest I have never regretted that decision taken 25 years ago.
My journey has been so intensely powerful and magical since then.
Like interlocking steps of a staircase,
The choice to resign opened the way to a whole new life and trajectory.
After resigning I found work in a spiritual bookshop.
The environment was actually not that great and I was fired within several weeks.
This was my first experience of being fired actually.
Apparently the micromanaging boss did not like me very much.
Not long after I started to work in the office of alternatives,
Earning a grand £5 an hour which was not that bad since the minimum wage was around £3 an hour.
I started working selling books at their weekly events and one week I was presented with £10 for selling so many books.
This was my first time I'd earned money doing something I loved.
The work felt like play and I almost refused the money.
But this felt like an important marker in my journey.
When I joined alternatives as a volunteer the two directors were Nick Williams and William Bloom.
William was already a seasoned writer and author of several spiritual books.
Nick published his first book in 1999 called The Work We Were Born To Do and this combines spiritual principles with the area of work.
Nick subsequently introduced a conversation of embracing spirituality in our work and in our dealings with money on the alternative programmes of events.
And I really like this practical approach to spirituality and I still do.
Fast forward to the turn of the millennium and I was made a co-director of alternatives.
Several months later there was an argument between two other directors and they both resigned one after the other.
Yes,
It may seem strange to hear that such antics went on in a spiritual organisation but there you go.
I was left alone for a short time at the helm of this majestic organisation and I often refer to this organisation quite lovingly as the mothership.
During my years with alternatives I visited a few spiritual communities including Fintan in Scotland several times.
And this community began in the 1960s and grew out of a vision of three people.
Peter Caddy,
Eileen Caddy and Dorothy MacLean.
The founding story of Fintan is actually amazing and I do encourage you to check it out.
Anyway,
My experience with them encouraged me to start connecting with the over-lighting angels of alternatives.
I would regularly meditate to connect with this group of beings in the higher plains asking for their guidance and assistance.
I felt the channel open and I got some very practical advice around recruitment,
Marketing and event ideas.
And this helped the organisation and also helped open my mind to the possibility that there are actually beings in spirit who understand the various dynamics of business on the earth plain.
At alternatives I listened to many wise authors and teachers.
I found some good friends there and three of them became mentors of sorts.
Nick who has since left alternatives to pursue his own path in his career.
Tom who has left the earth plain a few years ago and Damian who is now in semi-retirement.
During this period I trained in coaching,
Business consultancy and NLP with a brilliant teacher Michael Breen.
I also wrote three personal growth spiritual books,
One about money and abundance,
The other about spirituality and work.
Around 2006 I downsized to part-time work to devote more time and energy to my own part-time business as an author,
Coach and workshop facilitator.
I remained a director of alternatives for 13 years and in 2011 I resigned giving one year's notice which set the date of my leaving for the all-important winter solstice 2012.
My time with alternatives has been transformational experience giving me my first taste of visionary leadership.
I gained experience in event management and I'd been introduced to entrepreneurial thinking.
I learned how to bridge spiritual ideas with the practicalities of running a business.
I learned to ask spirit for guidance and help and I learned there was no problem or issue that was too big for spirit to handle.
Before leaving alternatives a dark night of the soul kicked off 2010 to 2016 which completely reset my system and I wrote about my experiences during this time in my book personal transitions.
When I eventually came out the dark night I wrote about my new sense of direction and spiritual perspectives in my ebook of starseeds which is available free on my website.
One thing is certain on this journey you are not alone.
There are countless thousands on this earth plane walking with you.
You are supported loved and guided by many beings in spirit and by infinite intelligence.
We are equal partners on this journey spirit will not do everything for us.
Spirit is there to support and guide us.
Another constant is we are more resourceful than we realize.
Our gifts and talents do not come from this lifetime alone.
As you can probably tell this is not a regular business book.
Most conventional business books you can buy today tell you how to introduce systems to reduce your working hours,
Use data and analytics more effectively,
Formulate strategies and predict the market and leverage your assets,
Make the perfect pitch,
Be an ace negotiator,
Outsmart your competition,
Dominate the market,
Elbow the competition,
Boost your profits,
Have an exit plan and so on infinitum.
And that is not exactly what this book is about.
Writing this book felt like piecing together parts of a jigsaw.
It's not written in any linear conventional way.
It's divided in four sections.
As mentioned the first explores the beginning of the journey and whether this path is for you or not.
The second part looks at the nature of resistance which is a constant on this journey though usually strongest at the start and at pivotal moment.
The third is the sacred union of the divine feminine and wild masculine which is the union of yin intuition,
Imagination and creative self expression with yang strategic thinking and effective action.
The final section is about the magical nature of the universe,
How to engage the flow and expand all limits to possibility.
This book contains much of what I've learned on my journey.
I have learned from the dead ends and challenges as much as from my successes and experience of miraculous flow.
This is a journey beyond the old paradigm of work which has been by and large a yang nose to grindstone driven affair.
Into the new emerging paradigm that includes a spectrum of softer yin,
Spiritual ideas,
Perspectives,
Values and methodologies.
I'm still on the spiritual journey because it is fun,
I'm still learning and there's a need for what I'm offering.
Perhaps I would write a different book on the subject a few years from now but for now this will suffice and I hope it serves you well.
Blessings Steve Nabel.
Thank you.
