Making Practical

Practice means 'making practical,' so that your life is not divided between your spirituality and your mundane existence but is so intimately interwoven that there can't be a difference. - ShantiMayi

I absolutely love that definition of practice. I often get comments and email wondering how I can possibly talk about business in one breath and then spiritual awakening in another. And why not?

I'm exploring a variety of topics and I want to make a public declaration (just so I'm held accountable) of being more practical in this blog (according to definition above).

Rather than talk about mysticism, I'll dwell in the Mystery and write from there. Rather than talk about what I already know and foist it on anyone, I'll endeavor to share what I'm exploring and discovering midstream, what I don't know and what we all probably know but haven't allowed ourselves to know. If you want to steep yourself more in mysticism - which is really a unmediated first-person science - you might want to check out my other blog, Pointing to the Moon (it's been around for a while in comfortable obscurity).

One business theme that intrigues me are business models in the post-industrial age. Or business models that address the 'abundance gap' cited in Dan Pink's A Whole New Mind: Moving from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age. From Relevant History: "The abundance gap." Incomes have risen dramatically since 1950, but satisfaction has stayed the same; that's the abundance gap. (When Steve Case puts $500 million into wellness, he's aiming at that gap.)

In a series of posts at Mystic Bourgeoisie, Chris Locke of Cluetrain fame writes on Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Also cites Brian Millar - as in following quote - and businessballs.com: "In my experience as a creative, few planner presentations are complete without some reference to Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, a theory put forward by Abraham Maslow, a behavioural psychologist, in 1943." On how advertisers may interpret these needs:

1. Biological and Physiological needs - wife/child-abuse help-lines, social security benefits, Samaritans, roadside recovery.
2. Safety needs - home security products (alarms, etc), house an contents insurance, life assurance, schools.
3. Belongingness and Love needs - dating and match-making services, chat-lines, clubs and membership societies, Macdonalds, 'family' themes like the old style Oxo stock cube ads.
4. Esteem needs - cosmetics, fast cars, home improvements, furniture, fashion clothes, drinks, lifestyle products and services.
5. Self-Actualization needs - Open University, and that's about it; little else in mainstream media because only 2% of population are self-actualizers, so they don't constitute a very big part of the mainstream market.

Open University and that's about it? And zilch in Self-Transcendence needs? I think I spot a ripe nonconsumption area (referencing Clayton Christensen here).

I know this blog skews towards those in self-actualization and self-transcendance camps (transcendence is often inadvertently left off as Maslow revised his pyramid of needs later on) of the pyramid, and I'm also certain it's higher these days than 2% of the total population, so I'd like to conduct a survey. (And I don't abide that there's really a 'ladder' or pyramid we're climbing much myself either, but I don't throw out all of what Maslow says either.)

I have no clue what the answers will reveal. If you'd like to chip in on questions or help me shape the questions in the survey, let me know within the next week. I'm not a prototypical example of a consumer, but neither am I opposed to buying things, experiences, or services. Go figure, a self-actualizing friend whom is in many categories a spendthrift just dropped $500 the other day on a new digital camera.

Oh, and if self-esteem were really dependent on fast cars, the right handbag and lipstick shade, then (ouch!) that miniscule dent on your new convertible Beemer would be a huge rift in the shifting sands of self-worth. How stable is that? (BTW, I don't have a Beemer; I have a ten-year-old clunker that used to elicit pangs of shame as I whip past multimillion dollar homes in the Valley. I've held onto it as an experiment in self-esteem. But I'm thinking I've integrated the lesson now.)

Bonus: A twenty-something writes about meaning, boredom, retail therapy and "why the young don't care anymore":

We know lots of facts, but we don’t really understand any of them.   We know about the kids with limbs blown away because we've seen tons of pictures, but we have no context with which to relate, and therefore no ability to feel compassion.  All we know is life around us: if not TV, then Internet, movies, radio, magazines, billboards.  It’s a sterile life of same-old same-old that leaves us feeling bored, craving either meaning or annihilation.  The meaning part is the vulnerable chink in my generations’s cynical armor.  The Japanese writer Haruki Murakami says that we’re all hungry for narrative - a good story that gives our existence a sense of explanation.  If we need to care about the world, then tell us why.  Make us believe.  So far, nobody has done that for us.  A few people have tried; Murakami and Palahniuk are working on it, and in some cases, they’ve helped to shape concerned minds who seek out ways to make the world better.  In the absence of a good story, we’ll take anything we can get or become nihilistic. We become like the character No-Face in Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away: we’re living in a place without meaning that makes us feel hollow on the inside, and we’ll consume anything and everything in our path in order to try and fill the void.

p.s. Speaking about integrating mundane & profound: Here's the story about the woman quoted at start. "Mary gave up her position teaching at the University of Oregon to pursue spiritual practice full-time. She traveled to India and entered into extensive meditation with her teacher, who gave her the name ShantiMaya. She thought she would remain in India, but after many months of practice her teacher sent her home with $40 in her pocket and told her to return in six months. She found a temporary job in a vegetable-canning factory, working eight hours a day, seven days a week, for $5.35 an hour.

One day I was sent to a room at the back of the factory. I was completely alone, scrubbing huge pots and pans. Then one moment swept me into a wave of silence, and I became completely still like a rock. It was so minute, so delicate. From that little needle popping the bubble, I stood looking deeply into a place where I was not, where nothing was, and nothing was not. There was no me; there was no not me. I was standing in a yellow rain suit with a pair of boots and a hard hat on, and rubber gloves. It was very simple and very deep. This lasted for about an hour and a half. I looked at the clock as soon as a sense of time returned. After all, I was at work!

There has never been a time that it hasn't deepened, and there has never been a time that it left. My teacher knew it when I came to see him. Without speaking, he knew that this had happened." (From The Translucent Revolution)

Comments

[Irina]

I'd love to participate in your survey! I absolutely agree that consumption is only a sign of self-actualization rather than a cause or an effect, and not a necessary or sufficient sign at that!

[Jory Des Jardins]

Sign me up too! Two percent seems awfully low! Paul Ray's Cultural Creatives, strike me as self-actualizing. Some stats on this group:

This group is estimated to be comprised of more than 50 million Americans (Carnegie Mellon University professor Richard Florida gauges that number to more than 30% of the American workforce -- some 38 million people -- including artists, scientists, architects, designers, musicians, and the like) . This group is influencing a fundamental shift in values, attitudes, and subsequently, the economy. They are defined by Ray and Anderson as not being New Agers or liberals. Though many of them are baby boomers, age is not a defining factor. They encompass several generations and share numerous personal values, including:
 ecologically sustainable products and services, and concern for the whole planet;
 authenticity—personally, at work, in business and in politics;
 emphasis on the importance of bringing women's issues into public life.
 big-picture perspective in the media, including first-person stories and good news, too;
 infusing spirituality into American life

[Evelyn Rodriguez]

Thanks Irina, The survey will be up for all to participate...

First, I'm looking for help with shaping the questions within the survey. I'd be happy to share the results with anyone putting in that effort.

Jory, familiar with Ray's work, yet I'm not sure all of the Cultural Creatives map right into self-actualization & transcendence levels of Maslow's pyramid.

And then within those, you can breakdown further. For instance, Ray says that there are sixty million Cultural Creatives within US. Of those he estimates 1/3, or 20M, are "in the process of awakening" [moving towards transcendence]. Fewer than 2M live in what he calls "significantly reduced-egoic access to the divine or no-self," which Arjuna Ardagh's book terms "translucent." Ardagh says that writer and teacher Satyam Nadeem feels these estimates are low because we tend to have "ideas about what kinds of people would qualify and tend to look to people with a similar background and belief as our own." Nadeem estimates 50M translucents worldwide.

[TonyD]

The last big self actualization purchase I made was the money I spent incorporating my own business.

I'd like to help out, though I'm not sure what I can do.