Do Spirituality and Business Mix?

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Although I have been a coach and consultant for awhile now, it was only yesterday that I really considered the question of whether spirituality and business mix. It took me under an hour to realise that the question is silly - of course they do. All of life is spiritual, even what appears not to be. Business is traditionally understood to be a profit-seeking enterprise, an enterprise that positions and creates situations within the economy to put itself in the flow of money, or green energy. It is the fount of abundance. Spirituality has to do with an understanding and intimate knowing of self, its quirks, foibles and its intrinsic nature. It is the source of peace and happiness, the end of suffering. Now call me silly, but I see nothing wrong in having both. If I'm going to be sitting in a fountain of abundance, I'd like to enjoy it, thank you very much.



Source copyright: Memes/Wikimedia

So let's think about this a little: How does spirituality really involve itself in business? What would we do differently? Is it just fairy dust over harsh reality? Does it even help the business, or does it become an unnecessary burden?

Clearly, the instinctive answer most of humanity has had to that last question is no, that it is inherently separate of business. So, instead of going into into woowoo, let's have a look at that. I had a quick Google on business objectives and this came up: http://www.bized.co.uk/educators/16-19/business/strategy/presentation/busobjectives2_map.htm

Let's have a look at how an understanding of spirituality tones and tunes the whole business thing. I will talk mainly about the spiritual side here and italicise each of the words relating to the mind map.

Clarity and Understanding

Being spiritual is being clear. It is about understanding why you are doing something, and that each action is a choice. This is an act of self-empowerment. Why do people engage in business? It is to express this self-empowerment, this individuality. Why do people work for businesses? Because they see it as a means to survive. We do things out of fear, out of greed. If we are really clear, then we can do this from a very empowered state, a state of choice. We are clear that this is our decision, and not what the world has forced on us. Getting out of this victim mentality is the first step to a spiritual life, and it is also the only way one can really be personally satisfied. From this state of choice, personal ethics can arise, and this will reflect into business ethics.

Spiritual Decision-Making

From this clarity, we know why we are doing stuff. We are much more efficient about it. No time is wasted moaning and worrying about situations. We see each situation as it truly is, and are at full liberty to choose the appropriate response. This means seeing what is needed to achieve customer satisfaction, for one thing. Because we are clear about us, we can be clear about them. It stops being an us versus them situation, because we understand us, and then it's a question of how clear or confused they are, and what we want to do about it. We understand their needs and wants because we understand how the human psychology and psychosis works. That's going to help brand loyalty and turnover, too. Because we have clarified our own values, who we are, what we do and what our business does, others can be clear about us too. This is how we develop a brand. Otherwise we're just being incongruent.

The implementation becomes much easier, too. Seeing through their mind, we can see how marketing and sales techniques can be incorporated, with complete integrity, whatever that means for us. When we market, there is no fear about where the next sale comes from. We have evaluated the situation in clarity, we have chosen our response, and we can implement our decision. It either works or it doesn't. If it does, great. If it doesn't, we can remain clear and efficient about it and go back to the drawing board. No time is lost on self-pity, or on useless wringing of wrists.

Psychological Comfort, Adversity and Being

So we have become clear, clarified our values, made our decisions, implemented them, corrected them and implemented them again, only better. All in a very clean and efficient way. This is a spiritual post, but it occurs to me that those are all words which would get the average entrepreneur or businessman excited. The spiritual component has one advantage the alternative doesn't - spiritual comfort. If you have an image of austerities, of Shaolin monk discipline and the beating of breasts when you think of spirituality, try thinking instead of the Laughing Buddha. I am not saying that business is not austere - the very nature of life can be austere, and that is quite enough, thank you. Our job is not to make it seem even more harsh. We meet it with spiritual compassion and grace. And enjoy ourselves, by heck. In no tradition that I know of did God of whatever understanding say "Thou shalt face a difficult life, and then confuse thyselves to make it more difficult. And maketh sure thou really suffer!"

We learn how to enjoy ourselves. To be appreciative, and to be grateful. We learn to be meek, and realise that reality is such, and always wins, no matter what we want. This is ultimate humility - to do the ultimate prostration before God. And once we realise this is our spiritual place, we can start to enjoy it. It is a huge burden off our shoulders. All the guilt, all the fear, all the worry. You know what? It wasn't my problem after all. It was God's business. And if it isn't, I'll make it His business. He, in all His Glory, can manage THAT can of worms.

So when businesses turn bad, and when things seem to fail, and they do, although the average marketing course would have you turn your eyes away from that fact, you are still unshakeably at peace. You are still doing what needs to be done. The rest is reality. No story arises in your mind that it should be this, that or the other. You can simply smile amd move on. It is the end of attachment. Or, if something arises that needs to be done, you can do it. You have created true business resilience.

Personal Self-Realisation and Transformation

So we develop the understanding of the self and the soul. We see that our "self" is very fluid, very liquid. This means that we are locked into a whole journey of self-discovery through business. This turns it into the vehicle of our enlightenment. How? Pain and suffering only arises when there is attachment. If we are to be self-realised, then we must first identify our attachments. Yes, sitting meditation could probably do it, but that is not the only way. We use our experiences as the direct catalyst. When there is pain, by deduction there is attachment, and then we become the cat who goes mouse-hunting. Time to find that sticky, vulnerable part of us that goes hiding. Adversity becomes very useful for this. In fact, if we're not careful, we can become enlightened.

As we become more and more open, we can become whoever we want to be, as the situation calls for. This is not being two-faced. It is being efficient, and if you've been reading with any degree of attention, you'll have become aware that spirituality is deadly efficient. You are no longer bound by norms you are not choosing to be bound by. So, you can manifest any personality type to deal with any situation. Will it be perfect? Probably not. Will it be easier than before? Almost certainly. You can transcend how you were taught to be, and so become what you choose, realising at the same time that even that is not you, that ultimate and innate peace comes from within. And the business becomes a place to be enlightened. AND make more money. Sounds like a good proposition to me.

A Miracle by Grandmaster Wong

Well, well, well. Some days it really pays to be on the good side of Grandmaster Wong. As some of you will know, I have just made the trip from London to Malaysia. The first night I slept more than twelve hours. Tonight I awoke at about 4.30 am. With nothing better to do, I decided to do my homework and practice some qigong meditation.

In Spring Forest Qigong style, I called upon my master's energy and meditated. What goes on when I'm in hocus pocus mode is for me to know and for you to find out. However, mid-meditation, which turned out to be a learning meditation, I felt a pang of regret that a notebook I had written containing nearly one hundred techniques to be potentially released to my students had disappeared.

For those not in the know - I had an epiphany a few months back and started to consolidate everything I had learnt in the industry into a "few" (if you knew me you wouldn't be surprised - I believe I'm past the hundred and twenty mark now in notebook 2) techniques. Things that had no place before integrated into very simple and elegant techniques. I completed notebook 1 and have been writing notebook 2. When I was packing for Malaysia, notebook 1 went missing. I simply couldn't find it. Finally, I shrugged and simply packed notebook 2 for the journey. Maybe the techniques weren't supposed to be released after all. Non-attachment, right?

Flash back to this morning and my pang of regret. I was just contemplating the missing notebook when Grandmaster Wong indicated I should look in my backpack. I was certain I had checked it when I packed it, and it was now jammed full of documents and notebook 2. So half-believing (I really should know better by now) I turned over in the bed and reached, in the dark, into my backpack. My hands found a lump of paper which did not seem like the usual documents. I prodded. And fished out notebook 1.

Some days the hocus pocus gets even me.

Lives of Quiet Desperation

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We lead lives of quiet desperation. Even in the self-help and metaphysical industry, in which I have been participating for the last 16 years (yes, I can't believe it's been that long either), there is generally a remarkably insensible approach to peace that defies common sense. Of course that's my opinion.

So how do we find peace? There have been many, many tools that have arisen in the last half century which have helped. Many swear by one or the other. I have my favourites, as readers of this blog no doubt have realised. However, there is a very subtle difference in the many approaches which can make a huge difference in the long run. It is simply this - are you finding "peace" in lieu of freedom?

I don't know what others may think, but it seems to me that if I want peace, I really don't want to lose any freedom with it. Otherwise, I might find being locked up in a padded cell with a straitjacket pretty peaceful. No bills to pay, no one to look after. More commonly, though, that is what happens in the mind with some of the techniques out there. If you are truly at peace, you should find the range of your behaviour widening, being more able to find more joy and adventure in life, being able to participate in it more without feeling threatened all the time (whilst being smart about the risks, of course).

Doesn't every technique do this? Well, actually, no. I am an advocate of a peaceful method of finding peace. If we go out with a technique or method designed to hammer whatever's bugging us in that moment back into place, I'm not really convinced that's really peace. We still have to be a manager, an overseer. And if it gives us peace, then we have to constantly guard and monitor that peace. In short, it's a full time job!

So the only way out is to make peace a way of life, a state of living. And also to incorporate our method of working out the kinks to peace into that way of life. We don't make it a huge effort to "fix" ourselves. The "problem" fixes itself in response to our approach, and life lives itself. Now that's true peace. Fire the manager, thank you very much. I didn't sign up to this lifetime to play manager to peace. Talk about a stressful job!

So whatever the method, live peace, and reflect truth, and if your zone of possibilities expands effortlessly, you're probably on the right path. If you're having to put more and more effort into living some kind of "life" in the hope of finding peace, take the padded cell. You might find it less stressful.

Does the Byron Katie stuff only work if your turnaround is totally believable to you?

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I got this question in the mail, and in writing the answer decided it would be worth posting it up here as well. Clearly, I am not Byron Katie and I don't own The Work. Her material is available at www.thework.com and I have referenced it a few times now on this blog.

Think of Katie's stuff as an exploration of truth - your truth. It won't work for someone who is not going to go with it with an open mind, because they have already made up their minds. It similarly will be very much less effective if you try to approach it like some kind of tool to "fix" something. So, to answer your question, yes, it works when your turnaround is believable to you, but that is when you can find examples. It doesn't ONLY work via the turnaround. The questions are enough, sometimes.

Is it true? As Katie says, there are only two answers - yes or no. There is no "but if..." or "yes but..." or "in this situation..." You already have the "yes" in you. We are giving equal opportunity to the no, to see if it is true for us. It is not coercing the mind, and if you do that you'll find it won't work.

Can you absolutely know it is true? Look in again and check. This is where Katie can get some flak from people just coming to the work, because it looks like we are trying to make you say "no". It's not. It's just saying, check your reality map. If it's true for you then by all means stick with it. Go with what you feel. Close your eyes and see if it is true. All that is being asked is that you stay in your integrity.

How do you react when you think that thought? This is an education into how you react when you believe something to be true. Is it worth the pain and misery?

Can you find a single stress-free reason to keep that thought? This is a question she throws in sometimes. I heard a really nice variation of it once - give me one single peaceful reason to keep that thought. And if that reason makes you feel pain, it is NOT stress-free.

Who would you be without that thought? This is research. It is research into what you are outside that thought. Or, as I put it, thought on - pain, thought off - no pain. We're not trying to submerge it or anything. We are simply recognising that reality that the thought creates pain, and without it the confusion lifts, and so does the suffering.

The turnaround can be broken into three parts - to the self, to the other and to the opposite.

"He is a selfish jerk."

1.) To the self - "I am a selfish jerk (especially when thinking about him)."
2.) To the other - doesn't apply here.
3.) To the opposite - "He is not a selfish jerk."

The turnaround is again an exploration of your truth. You don't kick a turnaround under the rug if it just doesn't ring true at first. You write it down and think about it. Give it equal airing time to see if it is as true or truer than your original statement. Then you start finding examples.

Examples
- "I am a selfish jerk around him." Look at your answers to the question about how you react when you think that thought. How do you act around him? Do you pout, become quiet, react? If you took away that thought, you would meet the person for the very first time, not the person you are constructing in your mind. Which is why Katie likes to say that "no two people have ever met". We're all reacting in our minds. And when you act that way, do you think it provokes him to act that way?
- "He is not a selfish jerk." Take your mind away from just the one or two instances it is replaying. Now look at examples of when he is not selfish. You will find them. We are never completely one way or another. The thought provokes us to look at it with a biased mind.

The trick is to approach this with an open mind, a passion in finding the truth, even if it turns out to be what you didn't think it was. If you approach this just wanting to "fix" something, or if you try to force an answer that doesn't work for you, the work is unlikely to succeed.

Enlightenment Isn't Always Pretty

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Enlightenment isn't always pretty. There is a definite ruthlessness about it. There is honesty that is required. Enlightenment is, as Adhyashanti would put it, the end of your world. There are a few common mistakes that followers of the path can fall to, and the main one amongst the New Age/spiritual crowd is the trap of trancendence.

With techniques of energy control and power often available to them (and they are increasingly easily available these days), the average seeker can now "attune" himself to high level vibrations indeed. Nothing wrong with this. In fact, it can be a definite plus. The downside is when this ability to skip above the regular frequencies of existence is abused. It is to be used as a privilege, not as a shield.

If one harbours resistance or attachment somewhere, the responsibility is to enter into it and release it through whatever process one can use - thoughtful inquiry, wrathful visualisation, determined emotional openness. If one instead chooses to continually play with higher energies and pretend it does not exist, this creates a problem. The attachment of the energy festers. The very fact that one has to use a technique to remain in the realm of higher frequencies indicates that that is not the resting state, the default option.

So, one comes back and destroys the chains of attachment with whatever method. One could even use the higher energies to attune it, whilst sitting in those frequencies. However, the key is that the garden must be weeded. When this is done, the higher states become far easier to dance the dance of enlightenment.

Compassion is the Mark

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The Master views the parts with compassion because she understands the whole. Her constant practice is humility. - A Thousand Names for Joy by Byron Katie with Stephen Mitchell

Compassion is the mark of enlightenment. Or is it? This is one I have worked with in many ways, and still would not claim to understand much of it at all. Yet I have recently had some insights regarding compassion. We can engage with compassion in two main ways. One is, having some degree of awakening, we are able to perceive the dance of luminosity and emptiness, and thus are able to view each individually component with generosity and openness, with compassion because you see them for what they are, not what they threaten your ego-identity with.

The more practical application of compassion for most people is the high watermark. Compassion is very useful, because we can use it as the eternal compass, the measure of how open and receptive to emptiness we really are. Even in traditional psychology, we find it easier to be kind when we perceive our basic needs are met. I defer back to the perceived needs/wants of the ego - approval, survival and control.

So, in our daily practice, we can ask ourselves, "How compassionate am I feeling?" and "Can I allow this degree of compassion to increase?" In increasing it, we are feelingmore open, and this allows a greater sense of awakening to the dream-like nature of reality because we are no longer grasping it. We do this with a sense of humility, not with a sense to conquer it, for conquering is in itself an ego trip. This work takes a tremendous amount of personal integrity and honesty. If we find ourselves stuck, then we can explore the stuckness, identifying the reluctance. The reluctance is always this - the ego will have to give up some part of itself. That part will inevitably be a recipe of survival, control and approval tied up with a thought.

We increase our willingness, faith, trust and surrender into compassion. We allow it to support us, just so. It is like the sea rushing into the dry desert. And we die into it, into a state of emptiness and luminosity, resonating and recognising ourselves as this state.

If there is further stuckness, we then apply a more dualistic solution, going lower down the energetic scale to activate the triple liberators. We sit in duality, educating ourselves with the wisdom insights and exposing ego to the reality of pain which its thoughts create. Then we use the determination to create more openness. This is the more wrathful version of surrender.

Either way, compassion is the mark we can aspire to. When we go into it, we disappear and integrate completely into it, like a drop of milk in a glass of water.

The Triple Liberators

After months of silence, it is appropriate to discuss the three liberators, as I call them, or the three liberating emotions. These are not anything like the usual suspects like love or compassion or faith. Rather, these three liberators have to do with the baser suffering instinct.

They are outlined here as an idea, but it is highly encouraged that any work with these be done with supervision of appropriate professionals. I do not bear any responsibility for anything arising from their use or misue.

They are:

1.) Hopelessness/weariness - The weariness of experiencing the pain of daily life. This also includes the weariness of holding onto thoughts that create suffering and pain in our minds through unfulfilled wants and desires. This creates tension and desire and ultimately suffering.

2.) Anger/retaliation - Sometimes the ego reacts to suffering not with weariness but with anger and a sense of having being done an injustice. This energy, although apparently opposite (and in some ways it is) to the energy of hopelessness, can also be applied when channelled to good use.

3.) Jadedness/cynicism/pessimism - This happens when the ego goes neither into victim mode in hopelessness or revenge mode in anger, but instead steels and covers itself with an air of indifference, or protects itself with lower expectations. This lowers sensitivity, and is trickier to deal with in some ways than the other two, but it is still workable.

The trick with these three emotions is to temper them with the appropriate insight. When mixed with wisdom, they can create the motivation to surrender to God, or to release a belief or thought that is creating pain. The key wisdom insight is to realise that there is really nothing to fight against, or to hold onto. That reality just is. Byron Katie's work is a good starting point for this. Whereas my favoured path is to work the emotions, she works the wisdom directly. This approach is a mix of both.

When Katie asks someone to write a painful thought down in her Judge Thy Neighbour worksheet, it is accessing a thought of pain. Then she asks, "Is that true?" and "Can you absolutely know that that is true?" These are questions pointing to the flimsiness of thoughts and belief. They create the wisdom insight that everything is really depending on which side you take, which point of view you are persuaded by.

Then she asks, "How do you feel when you think that thought?" and "Who would you be without that thought?" These questions point to another wisdom insight - that really it is the thought which is creating the pain, not reality itself. It is like green glass held before a light. Put it in front of it - pain. Take the glass away - no pain. It has nothing to do with the light of reality itself. It is the glass filter of thought that does it.

This bears an extreme connection with the triple liberators, for the answer to "How do you feel when you that thought?" is precisely the suffering which leads to the ego reactions. If one were awakened, just becoming aware of that thought would prompt one to release it. However, more often, then is a determination to cling on. The Work of Byron Katie then goes on to change the perspective using a turnaround. There is another way.

We can take the wisdom insight derived from the Inquiry Process, or indeed any other insight-based process or even spiritual principles such as Buddha's Four Noble Truths (1. Life sucks. 2. Life sucks because you want things. 3. So stop wanting things. 4. Deal with it.) and apply it to the emotions, transforming them into liberation. We turn them into a burning determination to be free of the pain, to release the limiting and painful thought, come what may.

So, weariness and hopelessness becomes a determination to find peace. To reside in peace, even if it means giving up all perception of how the ego thinks the world is battering it. The energy of anger is even more useful - it is already looking to strike. We simply guide it to the right target - the offending thought, not the world. In cynicism, expectations are low. The way to deal with it is to recognise that since one doesn't really expect much, there really isn't much to lose anyway, and to play along just in case something spectacular happens.

By confronting and sitting in the emotions this way, and constantly applying the wisdom insight that the pain is arising because of a thought, one gains the determination to be courageous, to open one's mind to the acceptance of what is, of reality. The alternative is suffering. Why is there determination? Because initially fear and uncertainty buffers us as we enter the unfamiliar territory of being open minded. As we do, we hold onto the forged determination to enter into the flame, and our dual minds die into peace.