Catherine Rice owns an accounting business at Ananda Village that serves clients in and beyond the community.
Q: How do you balance your busy work life with your roles as a mother and spiritual aspirant?
Catherine: I feel that on some level it’s a dharma, a spiritual destiny, for me to be doing what I’m doing. I need to be providing this service for my own spiritual welfare, and there’s a deeper aspect that’s happening behind the scenes. It’s not just creating financial statements and balancing bank accounts. I feel it’s something I’ve been given to do for this life.

For a majority of my business clients to also be my fellow devotees has been a blessing. I couldn’t have imagined a better situation. When I’m fifty, maybe I’ll be doing something else, but for now it feels right, and it’s definitely requiring that I work on a sense of balance.
What does it mean, to be in balance? How do I balance a work environment with raising a child, and having my own creative space and my yoga practice? How do I make it all connect? It’s been a challenge, but also an opportunity for great growth.
I’ve also grown in the sense of becoming stronger in myself and clearer in my communication skills. I never thought I would want to manage people, but it has benefitted me inwardly. We’ve had tremendous expansion this year, and the question I think Yogananda is asking of me now is, “How much energy are you willing to put out? And will you be able to keep it together?” If I have to be honest, there were times when I was pushed to the max, where I felt spiritually parched and dry because I wasn’t allowing space for my needs.
Something that’s helped me stay centered is keeping a niche open for some creative time. I’ve resumed working with stained glass, and I’m finding the effects are completely the opposite of the intense mental energy I’m putting out all day in the business. I go to a stained glass class on Thursday nights, and I’ve gotten fairly steady commissions to create windows. That part of my soul was crying out to be nurtured, and in letting it happen it’s given me energy.
Our personal experience of what we’re doing takes place in our mind, and in how we perceive it. If I see my job as exhausting, and I’m always dwelling on the fact that I’m tired and I’ve got too much to do and I’m not sure when I can do it, it clouds the picture. I feel it’s very important to have a positive perspective on what I’m doing.
Q: Where does that perspective come from?
Catherine: I think it comes from putting yourself there, and from trying to stay in touch with that place inside yourself through your spiritual practices.
Q: When you feel you’re in touch with your spiritual center, does it tell you what to do?
Catherine: A lot of help can come from the inner guidance. I’ve learned a lot also from working with people and trying to improve our situation together. As I meditate on the business I’ll get ideas. For example, I realized that maybe I should limit my tax consulting to two days a week. So I’ll get these little inspirations to streamline the business and keep the energy flowing.
It’s all about energy. An aspect I’ve enjoyed of working with other devotees is that we’re able to relate to business from the same level of energy-awareness. We’re all trying to have good, clean energy because it magnetizes what we’re doing, so the channel can stay open and more energy can flow through us.
This year I handled more than ninety tax returns. I serve something like sixteen businesses with their general ledger and financial statements. We process probably a half-dozen payrolls at least twice a month, and I want to give good, timely service – that’s my goal for this year. I want to help my staff be strong, to where they’ll be competent to work independently and accurately. I’m focusing on giving to the client this year – that’s my New Year’s resolution.
I think it’s very important for your magnetism to want to do things right and get your business set up correctly. A long time ago I became involved in a business that had operated for two years without any kind of accounting system. Their accounts payable bills were sitting unopened in a cardboard box, and it was really blocking their energy. If you’re looking to run a business, I think it’s very important to put it all out on the table.
Q: Do you feel there’s a spiritually valid way of doing business?
Catherine: I think so. I feel that the kind of energy you’re putting out will come back to you. It may not manifest on the financial plane, but it can come back to you in the form of referrals. When you’re selling a product, you’ve got to be right there for your customer. When they place an order, they expect responsiveness. Businesses have rhythms, and it’s not like you can plan a business and it’s all suddenly there. You have to keep working at it constantly, putting energy into it and trying new things and seeing where they take you, because you’ll learn from it.
After each tax season, I pull back and reflect on how I can do it better. I need some new gear now, but I can’t just run out and buy it, so the present rhythm will demand patience.
Q: Do the rhythms of business tie in with the rest of your life?
Catherine: Yes, and I do have to plan my life. There’s a space under Josh’s bedroom that I’m developing into an art studio. I’ll have space for my stained glass and dried flowers and pressed flowers and calligraphy, because I need that creative side. I’ve got the space to set it up, and it’s exciting. As time goes by, the pieces are unfolding at the right time and allowing other things to happen.
Q: The idea of balance has spiritual overtones. Have your meditative practices helped you stay balanced?
Catherine: I think meditation brings it all together. If I didn’t have the perspective of the spiritual path, I might take it all too seriously, but the spiritual framework helps me keep a perspective, otherwise I think I might get sucked into the work and become too absorbed. Without the spiritual teachings and a spiritual path, I think I would have a hard time on emotional and psychic levels. I think I wouldn’t have the sense of peace I have now.
Q: Many people want to be fulfilled through their work.
Catherine: Yes. I was raised with Christ’s teachings, and that was kind of inborn with me. But without the practices that give you a direct inner experience, and without being around my gurubhais, I can see where I could get sucked into the work.
Even if the community were to disappear, I would still be Yogananda’s disciple. I would still have the teachings. It’s what’s inside of me that’s important. You could wash the community away, and it would still be every bit as important to keep moving from that center, because that’s what I most deeply believe in and resonate with. I’m an energy person, and as a working mom it’s not as if I have a whole lot of time for meditation. To be honest, when I get time I try to take it as far as I can, and I keep trying to improve. I’m always trying to enhance my spiritual practices and my spiritual life, but my “spiritual life” is really my whole life. It’s not just my meditation hour.
I try to keep reading the barometer of where I am. How was my energy today? How was my attitude? How was I feeling inside? Because, yes, we can meditate and pray and chant and exercise devotion, but how do we take it into what we’re doing during the day? You have to introspect and analyze it within yourself. How was I able to handle that situation? Was I in my spine? Was I coming from a centered place?
During the last week of tax season when I might be putting in twelve‑ or fourteen‑hour days, I’m still a mom, and I’m not getting lots of meditation time. It’s those high-paced critical times that I look to, to see how my energy is and to find myself. How am I relating to people? Am I staying calm? Am I having fun doing this?
I’ve pulled all‑nighters to get the work done, but I’m trying to get away from that and make the business more efficient so I don’t have to put out that kind of intense energy, and risk getting away from where I want to be. I want to make sure I have enough time to nurture myself, to give myself time to meditate, and to be with my child.
You have to go with the flow, but you can’t always be attached – “It has to be this way.” If you put up rigid parameters, “This is all I can handle” and so on – you’re just setting yourself up to be let down. You have to stay within the flow, and certainly you have to put out energy to rise to the occasion, but if I’m feeling way out there, I’ll know I need to take time to pull back and get centered.
I talk to the other business owners, people who’ve struggled with the thought that, “Gosh, I’m putting out all this energy, and what about my spiritual life?” And what works for me might not work for somebody else, but I am trying to work with my reality the best I can, and holding the hope that it’s all leading to something better for me and those I serve and those who work for me.