
Wish I’d Known, But Then I’d Never Have Learned
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Based on HolisticCircle’s “Spiritual Conversation” podcast with host Philipp Kobald and guest Marla Bace
The Corporate Cult (Now With Extra Branding)
If you’ve ever suspected your job might secretly be a low-budget religion with better coffee, this conversation between Philipp Kobald and Marla Bace might just confirm your heresy. Bace, once a stalwart of the corporate machine with titles like CPA and Chief Marketing Officer in her arsenal, calmly reveals that yes, your workplace probably does have its own liturgy, rituals, and saints (they’re called executives). And yes, it is entirely possible to be spiritually starved while drowning in KPIs.
But rather than burning it all down, Bace did something more subversive — she woke up. Slowly, clumsily, beautifully. And now she coaches others on how to navigate that same quiet rebellion.
How to Sell Your Soul (And Get Promoted for It)
From the moment Bace marched out of university with her degree — and the familial expectation to become a doctor, lawyer, or accountant — her life began to conform. Like many healers trapped in suits, she buried her creativity under spreadsheets and stifled her inner knowing with quarterly earnings reports. The result? Corporate success, yes. Spiritual bankruptcy, definitely.
In one particularly telling memory, she recalls exiting the office in the pitch black of a November night and realizing: this is what it means to be plugged into the matrix. There were no red or blue pills, just the resigned flicker of fluorescent lights and a nagging sense of spiritual homesickness.
Your Guides Are Louder Than Your Boss (Eventually)
The beauty of hindsight — especially when viewed through a spiritual lens — is that it lets you reinterpret your breakdowns as plot twists. Bace sees every pivot in her career as a divine nudge, lovingly disguised as burnout, misalignment, or an existential eye twitch.
When she couldn’t take another day in financial reporting, she pivoted to marketing. When that, too, began to feel like a costume party for someone else’s life, she shifted again. Each time, she left behind the illusion of certainty and moved closer to herself. Now, as a certified coach, she helps others navigate the same spiral staircase to authenticity — without needing a corporate exorcism.
Enlightenment by the Water Cooler
Perhaps the most delightfully awkward truth of the episode is this: spirituality already exists in your workplace. You just might have to squint past the annual compliance training to see it.
Bace and Kobald explore how corporations often function like unacknowledged cults — with their own mantras (“We are family!”), their sacred texts (PowerPoint decks), and their rituals (soul-draining Monday meetings). But there’s hope. Because increasingly, CEOs are meditating, lawyers are booking energy healers, and business leaders are admitting — out loud — that purpose matters.
Bace even drops the concept of a “Chief Consciousness Officer” without laughing. And somehow, it doesn’t sound ludicrous.
The Resume Doesn’t Say ‘Starseed,’ But You Can Feel It
A quietly radical part of Marla’s story is her willingness to own her spiritual awakening without turning it into a personality cult. She’s not claiming to be a guru. She’s just a woman who figured out that ignoring her inner guidance system for three decades was, in business terms, a terrible return on investment.
Her clients range from entrepreneurs to attorneys, many of whom now seek her out not just for marketing strategies but for energy alignment and intuitive clarity. The lines between the cubicle and the cosmos are blurring — and she’s there with a flashlight and a very reasonable hourly rate.
From Career Ladder to Spiral Path
The journey Bace describes isn’t linear. It’s a cycle of forgetting and remembering, suppressing and rediscovering. And for anyone in the healing world — especially those navigating the double life of professional identity and spiritual calling — her story is a deeply affirming blueprint.
You don’t have to blow up your career to live your purpose. But you might have to start asking different questions. Like: What stories am I telling myself? Who benefits from me staying small? And most powerfully — what if I’m not wrong for feeling out of place?
Watch Your Language: The Cult of Corporate Speech
The pair gleefully poke fun at corporate speak — those vague, glossy terms that mean everything and nothing. Words like synergy, stakeholder, alignment. Terms that sound suspiciously spiritual but are often just the latest branding strategy for squeezing more out of workers with fewer benefits.
Bace offers a quiet alternative: real alignment. Not with targets, but with truth. She doesn’t promise overnight miracles, but she does believe that work — and by extension, life — can be reimagined from the inside out.
No Crystals Required (But Totally Welcome)
For healers who’ve ever hidden parts of themselves to appear “professional,” Bace’s journey is a gentle permission slip. You can meditate and run a business. You can quote your guides and balance a budget. You can bring all of yourself to the table without checking your intuition at the door.
And no, you don’t need to wear flowing robes or smudge the Zoom call. Unless, of course, you want to.
The Real Bottom Line? Alignment.
If capitalism is to evolve into something more conscious — and it must — it will do so not through massive revolutions, but through individuals like Bace. People who ask better questions. People who refuse to split themselves in two. People who understand that a thriving business is one that allows people to thrive inside it.
As she told Kobald, “You’re not a number. You’re a being.” That might not fit on a shareholder report. But it’s a hell of a business plan for the Age of Aquarius.
The Niece Who Asked the Questions I Never Dared To
Towards the end of the conversation, Marla’s polished poise gives way to something unmistakably raw. She tells the story of her niece — Harvard MBA, Georgetown grad, a woman firmly entrenched in the system — calling her one day, quietly desperate for answers. How do I clear energy? What’s a reading? Where do I even start?
For a moment, you can hear the thud of a generational baton being passed — not from mother to daughter, but from the woman who had to survive her way into awakening, to the one who might just get to live from it.
Marla didn’t have a Marla when she was 25. And that’s the point. Her story is a blueprint, yes — but also a gentle rebellion against the silence so many of us inherited. If her niece gets to make bolder, freer, more conscious choices because of it? That’s not just coaching. That’s healing backwards through time.
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By Philipp Kobald in cooperation with AI
www.HolisticCircle.org
@2025 HolisticCircle by Philipp Kobald