How to Know Thyself When Your Job Is Draining All Your Energy

What Krishnamurti said on earning a living

Krishnamurti says our real problem isn’t work, but the self-centered wastage of our energy.

Krishnamurti gets asked this question in one of the retreats: “Most of my energy goes into earning a living. Is it still possible to be deeply unselfish and intelligent?”

He refuses to accept that daily work is the main obstacle. Instead, he turns the question: the issue is not work but how we waste energy.

He invites us to look directly at this wastage. We dissipate energy in endless talking, inner and outer conflict, office politics, family friction, comparison, ambition, and the illusion that we are isolated individuals “fighting everybody.”

We also waste energy by chasing ideals – like “non-violence” or utopian political and religious visions – instead of understanding what is actually happening in us now (for example, the fact of violence itself).

The greatest drain, he says, is being constantly concerned with oneself: one’s hurts, problems, achievements, images, and spiritual progress.

This self-centred movement is inherently limited, so the energy it has access to is also limited. When there is freedom from that self-concern, there is a sense of immense, unconditioned energy.

Out of seeing how we waste energy, a different quality of energy appears. This very seeing is the beginning of intelligence.

Intelligence, for him, is not the refined activity of thought. Thought is always based on past experience and memory, therefore limited and divisive. Intelligence is something outside that field, which can then use thought, but is not born of it.

If I boil his view into one para: He asks us to watch our own minds silently, without motive, to discover all this firsthand. Intelligence, in this sense, never creates division. From that ground, questions about livelihood, unselfishness, and right action begin to look completely different.

Watch the same lessons in video format here (you have to have a lot of patience and dopamine reserves to watch the video!)

What Osho said on earning a living

Osho sees earning a living as fine—even necessary—if your work becomes play, meditation, and not slavery. He comes at this from a few angles that keep repeating across his talks and writings.

1. Earning a living is natural, not “unspiritual”

Osho is blunt that life needs money: for food, shelter, health, beauty, music, art, books, travel, and the refinement of your senses (like in the “I Respect Money” talk you’re watching). Money itself is neutral.

It becomes ugly when it’s driven by fear, comparison, greed, or guilt, or when you repress your love of life and then call that “spirituality.” He often criticizes religions for being “against life” and therefore automatically against money and livelihood.

For him, it’s perfectly okay to work in the marketplace, do a 9–5, run a business, teach, or code—provided you’re not selling your soul in the process.

2. The real issue is how you work, not what you do

Across his discourses, his line is: no outer job is inherently spiritual or unspiritual; your consciousness while doing it is the key. A few consistent threads:

• If you are unconscious, even a “noble” helping profession becomes mechanical and dead.
• If you are present, creative, and playful, even simple or routine work becomes sacred.
• The “right livelihood” isn’t a fixed formula; it’s any work that doesn’t numb you, doesn’t deliberately harm others, and allows awareness and joy to flower.

He’ll say: you can be a sweeper, a clerk, a CEO, or a monk—if you are unconscious, everything becomes a burden; if you are conscious, any work can become meditation.

3. Doing work “for others”: service without martyrdom

He’s very suspicious of the phrase “for others” when it comes from ego, duty, or spiritual ambition. A few key points he repeats:

• If you haven’t discovered joy in yourself, “service” easily becomes resentment in disguise.
• Helping others out of guilt, moral pressure, or to gain respect is just a subtler form of ego.
• First become inwardly rich, playful, relaxed; then helping, teaching, or serving flows naturally, almost like overflowing water—it doesn’t feel like a burden.

So he’s not against working for others; he’s against self-denial-as-virtue. Real compassion for him is spontaneous: you still might be in an office job or a government role, but the quality shifts from “I must sacrifice” to “something in me wants to respond.”

4. The two “works”: bread and being

In some talks he distinguishes between two levels:

• Work for bread and butter – Everyone has to do something to keep the body alive; that’s okay and unavoidable.
• The real work – Discovering who you are, waking up from conditioning, living from freedom rather than fear.

His point is: don’t confuse the first for the second. Earn your living, but don’t forget the deeper work. And if you’re lucky, over time your outer livelihood can come closer to expressing your inner work—but the priority remains inner clarity.

If I boil his view into one para: earning a living and doing routine work are not the enemy of awakening; doing them unconsciously, resentfully, or against your own being is. Transform the quality of doing, and “earning a living” becomes another doorway into meditation rather than an obstacle to it.

Watch the same in video format here (you have to have a lot of patience and dopamine reserves to watch the video!)

Conclusion and few questions

Money and work are not the enemy; unconsciousness is. The question is not “Can I be spiritual and still earn?” but “What is happening to my mind and heart while I earn, spend, and strive?”

A few questions to leave you with:

• Where does most of your energy actually go: into the work itself, or into inner noise about it?
• Does money in your life serve sensitivity and aliveness, or mainly numbness and escape?
• In your current job, what parts feel like genuine play or joy—and what parts feel like quiet self‑betrayal?