004: Through You, Not About You: The Sacred Path of Service
Issue 004 | July 31st, 2025 | Why your greatest contribution comes from surrender, not striving
In a world that teaches us to build empires, what if our greatest contribution lies in becoming channels?
This month's exploration of Service arrives at a critical moment. As entrepreneurs and creators, we're experiencing a collective exhaustion with the performative nature of modern business. The endless pressure to be the expert, to have all the answers, to maintain the polished facade - it's not just wearing us down. It's blocking the very thing our audiences most need from us: our humanity, our truth, and our willingness to serve something larger than our own success.
The submissions in this issue reveal a profound shift happening in how we understand service in the context of Sacred Business. Each writer, through their unique lens, points toward the same revolutionary truth: real service doesn't flow from us—it flows through us.
’s featured essay offers us a powerful distinction that reframes everything: the difference between work that's "about you" versus work that's "through you." When we stop trying to be the source and instead become the channel, our work transforms from performance to sacred service. This isn't just philosophical musing—it's a practical framework for dissolving the very struggles that plague so many heart-centered entrepreneurs. Her vulnerable sharing of that morning in the coffee shop, when everything shifted from showcasing expertise to creating containers for others' wisdom, illuminates the path for all of us.This theme of releasing ego-driven control weaves through every contribution.
challenges the pyramid model of leadership itself, suggesting that true influence multiplies when we move from commanding from above to cultivating from the center. His circular leadership model echoes the Sacred Business principle that everything is connected—that our role isn't to stand apart and direct, but to position ourselves as servants at the center of an interconnected ecosystem. When leaders become cultivators rather than commanders, teams transform from managed resources into co-creators of something meaningful.’s contemplation on caretaking adds a spiritual dimension that grounds all of this in ancient wisdom. Drawing from the Bhagavad Gita's teaching about our right to the work but not its fruits, Taylor reminds us that service and non-attachment are intimately linked. When we release our grip on outcomes and focus on the quality of our presence and intention, we tap into an abundance that the achievement-oriented mind cannot access. The recognition that "how I do one thing is how I do everything" reveals service as fractal in nature—transforming the world through transforming ourselves.What emerges from these diverse perspectives is nothing less than a new—or perhaps anciently renewed—understanding of what it means to serve through our businesses. It's not about having more answers, building bigger platforms, or perfecting our methodologies. It's about recognizing that we are all caretakers of something sacred moving through us, seeking expression in the world.
This is the heart of Sacred Business: understanding that our businesses are not monuments to personal achievement but vessels for collective healing and transformation. When we make this shift—from pyramid to circle, from performance to channel, from attachment to flow—everything changes. Our work becomes nourishing rather than depleting. Our influence expands not through force but through service. Our businesses become movements that awaken others to their own creative power.
The invitation in these pages is clear: What would change if you trusted that the best of what you offer doesn't originate with you but flows through you? What if your business existed not to prove your worth but to serve what's trying to emerge in the world?
The answer, as these writers demonstrate, is waiting on the other side of surrender.
Featured Essay
Your Creative Work is Always Asking: Am I 'About You' or 'Through You'?
by Rachel Connor
Work that's 'about you' stays small, safe and focused on self. Work that's 'through you' becomes spacious, purposeful and alive. It flows between perspectives because it serves something larger.
"The shift from 'about' to 'through' is the shift from creative struggle to creative flow—and from business as self-promotion to business as sacred service."
Which is your current project asking for?
I discovered this distinction the hard way. It was in a cramped coffee shop on a rainy Tuesday morning with condensation streaming down the window. It was one of those days when it felt like everything I'd built was crumbling around me.
I'd been staring at my screen for two hours, the cursor blinking at the top of a blank document. The retreat I was designing—one I'd promised would 'transform people's relationship with their creativity'—felt off. Every sentence I wrote seemed hollow, reflecting my own need for validation rather than serving the people who would trust me with their creative dreams.
Somehow, the retreat had become about me proving I was worthy of charging what I was charging. About me demonstrating my expertise. About me building a reputation in a field where I still felt like an imposter.
And it showed. The language was tight and performative. The exercises felt forced. Even the structure seemed designed more to showcase my knowledge than to create genuine transformation.
That morning, something shifted. Maybe it was exhaustion, maybe grace, but I found myself deleting everything and starting with a different question: what do these participants really need?
When service becomes the channel
Once I shifted my focus, the words that came through felt different. They had breath in them; they had space. They conveyed something I hadn't put there consciously: a knowing that belonged not to me but through me.
Instead of content designed to showcase all my methodologies, I was creating containers for people to discover what they already knew. Rather than exercises that demonstrated my expertise, I identified practices that invited participants to access their own wisdom. The content became simpler, more direct and more honest about the messy reality of creative work.
When I asked 'what do these participants really need? the answer was clear: they needed permission to trust their own creative instincts, support in navigating their inner critic and they needed witnesses to their authentic voice. They didn't need me to be the expert; they needed me to be the midwife for their own knowing.
"This is the sacred business paradox: the moment we stop trying to be the source of wisdom and allow ourselves to become a channel for it, our work becomes magnetic."
Not because we're performing our expertise but because we're trusting something bigger to move through us.
When your business operates through you rather than about you, several things happen. Your clients sense authenticity rather than agenda. Your marketing stops feeling like self-promotion and becomes infused with the warmth of invitation. You experience the work as nourishing rather than depleting, because you're not constantly generating from your own limited reserves.
"You become less important; and, paradoxically, more essential."
The sacred economics of service
In our achievement-oriented culture, this shift feels counterintuitive. We've been trained to build businesses that showcase our personal brand, our unique methodology, our proprietary frameworks. But sacred business operates on completely different economics: the economics of flow, rather than accumulation.
When work flows through you, it doesn't diminish your reserves because you're not the original source. You become what the poet Rainer Maria Rilke calls 'a bow in the hands of the archer': essential to the process, but not the power behind it.
I've watched this principle transform not just individual creatives but the businesses they run. The coaches who stop trying to fix their clients and start holding space for their clients' own wisdom. The artists who stop performing their talent and start surrendering to what wants to be created. The entrepreneurs who stop trying to build empires and start, instead, to build bridges.
Their work becomes undeniably alive because it's connected to something larger than themselves.
True service requires us to become less important while simultaneously becoming more essential. This is the sacred paradox that heart-centred entrepreneurs navigate: the more we diminish our ego's involvement, the more powerfully we can serve. Service becomes the channel through which our deepest gifts flow to those who need them most.
Recognizing the invitation
How do you know when your work is asking to move from 'about you' to 'through you'?
The signs are usually written in your body before your mind recognises them.
Work that's 'about you' feels effortful, even when you're skilled at it. There's a subtle tension, a holding; a sense that you must constantly prove your worth. You find yourself defending your approaches, comparing yourself to others, wondering if you're 'enough.'
"Work that flows 'through you' feels more like collaboration than creation. Ideas arrive instead of being forced. Solutions emerge rather than being constructed."
There's a quality of surprise—even to you—about what comes through. You become curious about your own work rather than protective of it.
In practical terms, this shows up differently in business contexts. A coach might notice their sessions become more transformative when they stop trying to have all the answers and start holding space for their clients' own wisdom to emerge. A writer discovers their newsletter feels more authentic when they share their genuine struggles rather than their curated successes.
The service activation practice
Here's a comprehensive practice I've developed for distinguishing between these modes and deepening into service:
The daily service check-in: Before beginning any creative work—whether it's writing a newsletter, designing a retreat or having a client conversation—pause and ask: 'who am I serving with this work today?' Then ask: 'what needs to be served here beyond my own needs?'
Notice what shifts in your body when you ask these questions. Often, there's a softening, an expansion, a sense of relief. You're no longer carrying the full weight of creating something from nothing. Instead, you're opening to become a conduit for what exists already and is asking to be expressed.
The service audit: Monthly, review each aspect of your business through the lens of service. For each offering, ask:
How does this serve my clients' highest good?
What would change if I approached this purely as service?
Where am I still making this about me rather than through me?
The service reframe: When you catch yourself in 'about you' mode, pause and ask: 'how can I transform this into service?' Often, the same content or offering can be completely reframed by shifting the intention from self-promotion to service.
Then, as you work, keep checking: 'am I pushing this forward or allowing it to emerge?' The quality of attention is completely different. One feels like effort, the other like attunement.
The ripple effect
When your business becomes a channel rather than a monument to your personal achievement, something unexpected happens: it creates space for others to access their own channelling capacity. Your clients don't just receive your service—they learn to access the same source you're drawing from.
This is how sacred businesses become movements rather than just enterprises. They don't just solve problems; they awaken people to their own creative power.
"The highest service is to help others discover they don't need you. They need to learn to access what you've learned to access."
And the retreat I redesigned that Tuesday morning? It became the foundation for everything that followed—for the event itself and beyond, in the rest of my business. Not because it was perfect but because it was honest. It served something larger than my need for validation and, in doing so, created space for real transformation to occur.
The sacred business invitation
Your work is always asking you the question. The question is whether you're listening.
"What would your business become if it existed not to prove your worth, but to serve what's trying to emerge in the world?"
The answer is waiting on the other side of surrender.
This week, choose one aspect of your business—a client session, a piece of content, a marketing message—and experiment with approaching it from pure service. Notice what shifts. Notice what flows. Notice how it feels to be essential without being important.
"The world needs what wants to come through you. But it needs it as service, not as self-promotion."
The moment you make that shift, everything changes.
Know someone who needs this reminder? Share this with them ↓
Rachel Connor is a contributing writer for The Sacred Business Writer’s Collective focused on helping creative professionals overcome barriers to authentic self-expression. You can follow her on Substack here.
Community Insights
From Pyramid to Circles: What if Leadership Isn't About Being On Top?
by Marc Engel
Marc takes us on a journey from pyramid to circle, revealing how the most influential leaders aren't standing above their teams—they're cultivating from the center. Prepare to reimagine everything you thought you knew about power and position.
"I'm tired of just managing people. I want to actually empower them, help them grow... you know, be the kind of leader I wish I'd had."
Caretakers, In Service To
by Tylney Taylor
Through a beautifully unstructured meditation on service, Tylney reveals how releasing attachment to outcomes paradoxically opens us to receive abundance we couldn't previously perceive. A contemplative journey into the fractal nature of caretaking.
"You have a right to your work, but not to the fruits of your work" – This ancient wisdom from the Bhagavad Gita stayed with me for four years, appearing in seven different books like a persistent teacher.
Find What's Blocking Your Channel
by Sacred Business Flow
The Harmony Map Assessment reveals which inner pattern is preventing you from becoming a clear vessel for the work that wants to flow through you. If you're exhausted from performing your expertise instead of channeling true service - and sense that your energy blocks are limiting your impact - this assessment shows exactly where your sacred flow is being disrupted. For entrepreneurs ready to shift from "about me" to "through me," discover which of the 9 Fundamental Frequencies needs attention to amplify your service...
"You can only serve others to the depth you've served yourself."
Your Voice in the Flow
As we close this exploration of service as sacred channeling, we're reminded that the most profound transformations happen not in isolation, but in community. Each voice in this issue—from Rachel's vulnerable revelation in a coffee shop to Marc's circular leadership vision to Tylney's contemplative journey - demonstrates a beautiful truth:
When we share our authentic experiences of service, we create permission for others to step into their own.
This is the heart of this publication: not a platform for polished expertise, but a living ecosystem where your unique journey of integration becomes medicine for others walking similar paths. Your struggles with service, your breakthroughs in surrender, your experiments in becoming a channel rather than a source - these stories matter. They're not just personal experiences; they're collective wisdom waiting to emerge.
We invite you to consider: What sacred knowing moves through you that could serve this community? What integration of business and spirit have you discovered that others need to hear? Your voice—with all its particular texture, all its hard-won wisdom, all its still-forming insights—has a place here.
Our next issue explores Discipline—not as rigid control or harsh self-denial, but as sacred devotion to what matters most. How does discipline become a practice of love rather than punishment? What happens when we apply consistent, gentle attention to our highest vision? We're seeking your stories of sacred discipline, the kind that creates space for grace to flow.
Learn more about contributing to Sacred Business Flow →
Remember: The work that wants to come through you is precisely what someone else needs to receive. Let this be your invitation to serve through sharing.
Help us grow this community of heart-centered entrepreneurs. Forward this issue to someone whose voice would enrich our next conversation ↓
The Sacred Business Collective is a curated publication celebrating entrepreneurs who understand that everything is connected—your service, your business, your purpose, and your impact. When we honor this truth, we create businesses that serve as expressions of our deepest gifts.
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What an unexpected gift of grace this articulate collaboration! A resonance hums in my bones and heart. Appreciation and respect merge in a thank you for what you've offered here in service to something greater. I look forward to future posts.