Fusing the Business of Your Soul with the Soul of Your Business

You have a source inside you, a cool spring that sometimes
stops flowing, frozen
or clogged with silt. Spirit
is the art of making what’s
blocked start moving again. - Rumi

I promised a story on the beyond competition mindset for today, but I've postponed it until tomorrow. Speaking of competition, the extent that one ceases to perceive any 'us' or 'them' is the extent that one ceases to experience competition. Not because your competition is squashed like a little bug, but because when you are rooted in one Presence, then who is the Giver, who is the Receiver? If you think the marketplace is vicious, watch the competition in your own mind.

Begin your spiritual life with the understanding that all conflicts must be settled within your consciousness. - Joel S. Goldsmith

Turns out Dave really was simply busy. Although he says he blew a gasket when he heard the title of my forty day series, explaining that: "But  business has no soul, and that's okay. But trying to put one there only creates confusion, and really, aren't we trying to put one there in order to gain a competitive advantage?" The short answer, yes, for some people. Maybe many people.

I'm writing for those that wish to reconnect with that cool spring again. A wise man once told me I didn't need to go to India to discover myself. He's also the one that told me about The Autobiography of a Yogi - a mind-shattering book where I unveiled another layer of how much I do not know. Yet I witnessed he could not or would not live or embody his spirituality, including within the workplace. He wasn't in integrity with the naive entrepreneurs that often sought his counsel. He traded his soul for the price of that which he acquired.

Do not require a description of the countries towards which you sail. The description does not describe them to you, and tomorrow you will arrive there and know them by inhabiting them. - Ralph Waldo Emerson

This series is for those that do want to live out their integrity, authenticity, and graciousness. What good is it if you are centered, calm and compassionate - but - and it's a big but - only when hiding in a Himalayan cave? Business will bring up all your unresolved shit, pardon the language. (Marriage is an even tougher spiritual practice.)

We cannot choose 'whether' to engage with the world, only how to. - Stephen Bachelor

It's time to re-publish a relevant snippet from We Are All Zen Students, We Are All Businesspeople before we start. It begins here where a reader writes about their contemplation of a new entrepreneurial venture. (This is someone that does not need to work for financial reasons):

It really clicked when I read your post on Parsifal. I have been fascinated with the Parsifal myth since I first read it in Joseph Campbell. Like a lot of people, I was on a bit of a spiritual quest in college and after. I started with metaphysics and worked my way east and back west again. There is  no question that Joseph Campbell's writing meant the most to me.

Maybe Joseph Campbell settled my wanderlust or more likely getting married, having kids, and starting a career led me down a more pragmatic road for the past decade. But in the past couple of days I have gotten introspective again. I forced myself to think of why I really want to start a business. After all, my life is pretty good. [Candid description of a pretty good life follows...] Honestly, I don't want for much. Why do I have the urge to put it all on the line... I know that the urge to do it is real. I know that I have enjoyed working on this idea as much as I have enjoyed any work that I have done before...

My reply:

Ah, perhaps that is it: "my life is pretty good." From what you've said, you realize you don't need to devote your life to an ashram or monastery or meditate in silence in a cave or to travel around the world seeking adventure to embark on the hero's journey or spiritual quest. The journey is inward.

It's too easy in an ashram anyway. The real tests on the quest come via relationships. Only in relationship can you see mirrors of yourself all around you. I can think of two arenas right away that will bring up every piece of baggage, every edge of your Ego, trigger every button and expose each blind spot and more: Marriage and Business. (You've already got the marriage relationship covered.) Yep, business. It's easy to be "calm", "centered", "authentic" and in living in "integrity" safely esconed in a hermitage. But you only test your mettle in relationships where it's NOT as easy to stay true to yourself (or even explore what "true" to your "self" means).

Anyway, perhaps you are drawn to the business as a way of stretching yourself to your full potential. Perhaps business is the context of your Kurukshetra (battlefield of Bhagavad Gita) or your Forest (Grail legend)?

My sense is that if you read this blog that perhaps business is your Kuru, your Forest as well (but the main thread that ties readers together is this sense of adventuring and questing, rather than retreating from the hero(ine)'s journey).

And that's what the forty day series is about, not injecting something that sounds soulful to spiff up our flagging businesses and tune into a hot trend, but rather putting our whole higher self into it, no holds barred.

Comments

[Jay Sennett]

I woke up thinking about your yesterday's post.

What I want to say is:

People are cynical, I think. In our post tobacco, enron, world com, and current wal-mart, nike, coffee corps, etc, it is easy I think to feel cynical about business.

Making claims that business has no soul and then resigning from participating in the solution isn't an answer, I think.

And I don't even think it is very cool.

In our luxury and proliferation of options, many Americans have confused what is with what might be.

And, more importantly, we believe that we no longer have any power to change things.

If business has no soul (and I disagree with this opinion) how much have american citizens contributed to this state of affairs?

The statement itself suggests a kind of giving away of power to forces outside of ourselves.

We have, at this time in history, a great need to tell ourselves we are victims. Since we're the wealthiest nation in the world, we can't really claim we're under the thumb of despotic regime.

So marketing and business gets blamed. "They sell us nothing but crap." "The stuff they sell to kids these days." Easy. And trite too.

A lot easier than turning off the television, living with a smallfootprint on the earth, spending our money with compassion and creating businesses where the primary mission is to enhance the well-being of others.

For whatever it is worth, it is because of you and Hugh at gapingvoid that I've reassessed my life's work and decided to start a business, a microbrand publishing company where customers have input throughout and in an ongoing manner. a business, too, that will, gasp, rely on marketing...

Finding good and compassion in the world, and holding people accountable, is much harder work than sitting on my arse complaining about how bad business and marketers are.

Take heart! You're touching raw nerves and showing us the true nature of our difficulties...a very bodhisattva thing to do, btw ;-)

yours in the work.
Jay

[Sensei Myriam]

Thank you for sharing your thoughts and heart.