Business is how we transact ideas. But somewhere we separated spirituality and business. The development of our brain enables us to communicate with one another. What we communicate through the lens of business is a trade of some need, want, or desire for another need, want, or desire. The transaction of ideas is what business is based on. A business transacts two types of ideas. The first is based on the concept of value. The second is based on the opportunity of trade.
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The Business of Determining What’s Valuable
Value is a recognition that something is useful. For instance, a bowl of berries is useful in maintaining energy in the body. I know the value of a bowl of berries because I’ve equated it with my need for maintaining my personal energy. An indirect value would be the value that I place upon a coin. The coin itself cannot help maintain my personal energy. However, I know that I can trade the coin for the bowl of berries which will maintain my personal energy. The coin itself has no real value, only the symbolic value I place upon it.
This is where a trade transaction turns into a business transaction. If I trade nuts for berries, I’ve traded between two items that are of intrinsic value. If I trade coin for berries, I’ve made a business transaction based on symbolic value.
It’s important to make this distinction because business is based on symbolic value. Because of this, it may not inherently be spiritual because money itself has no value. Imagine meeting an ascended master in a dream and trying to explain your worries about not having enough money. Do you think they’d want to give you financial advice or would they attempt to help you see the issue from a different perspective?
How to Inspire Spirituality in Business
What would it take to combine spirituality and business? What Does it Mean to be Spiritual? I would say that the best way to make a business spiritual is to have it be in alignment with the Soul’s Purpose. When a business is in alignment with your soul’s purpose, the business is ecological, honest, and community oriented. I can imagine going back 6000 years to a time when we farmed and traded what we grew to create a well-rounded diet for everyone that participated in the growing and harvesting process. Now, I realize that the agricultural revolution has significant downsides to culture, gender, and spirituality. However, it forced us to grow as human beings and learn to be collaborative, ingenious, and feed a growing population before completely wiping out all the animals on the planet.
Using this 6000 year old scenario to compare against the last 500 years, we’ve grossly abused the idea of symbolic value and placed it above the value of human life. Slavery, war, and cultural genocide are the shadow of business development. Western European investing opportunities over the last 400 hundred years have led to great advancements of wealth and opportunity at the expense of life and liberty in countries like China, India and Africa. What would those ventures like the Dutch East India Trading Company have done differently if they’d had truly spiritual business principles?
- The venture would have given back to the cultures they took from.
- The company would not have engaged in slavery but rather in opportunity for laborers.
- They would have ensured that all the communities their trade affected benefited from the venture.
This would have made them not just monetarily successful, but mutually successful to everyone involved.
The Business of Wants vs. Desires
There’s a spiritual essence behind our needs, wants, and desires that thrives if they’re in alignment with our soul. Business practices have supported the fundamental needs of people, and also misled them into throwing wants and desires out of balance with our actual needs.
Business itself is based on the symbolic value of money as a method of exchange. Otherwise, you could just trade what someone else needs for something you have that they need. If you want to bring value to business itself, you have to provide what someone needs, but many businesses are catering to people’s wants and desires.
Differentiating Desire and Want
In the article Desire vs. Want, MJ Blehart points out that “want” is to acknowledge deficiency in some thing. Desire on the other hand is simply a wish to obtain. The idea is that we live in a universe that is abundant in everything we need, so to want is perceived of as being in lack which isn’t in alignment with having. How does this work?
You probably remember the law of attraction. Theoretically, in order to attract some thing, you have to be in the same energy as the thing. Like attracts like. In business, the exchange is between what only has symbolic value as opposed to intrinsic value. You actually would not want to be in resonance with money although people do. They spend their lives trying to attract money, thus coming into an energetic relationship with an inert substance.
Another way to look at desire is in the Buddhist perspective. Desire is a craving for pleasure that can never be satisfied. It’s like an endless hole that can never be filled. This craving only leads to suffering, and thus is a source of attachment in which the soul can never be liberated from the wheel of death and rebirth. Contrary to the previously mentioned wish to obtain, it may be better to consider that a genuine need engenders no artificial attachment. If there’s no attachment, the endlessly filling a hole that can never be filled never exists. You’re only attentive to what actually is, which is our needs.
People’s Needs and Maslow’s Hierarchy
The three domains that business serves are needs, wants and desires. Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is a great evaluation of the needs of a human being.
The bottom of the pyramid points to the physiological necessities of the body or what we absolutely cannot live without, namely: food, water, shelter, and clothing. These are the things that promoted trade which later became our first businesses. What business afforded people was the ability to move beyond tribalism. One was no longer dependent upon the inter-support systems of people working together for a common goal around survival. A business person could extract themselves from the tribe by providing loans, brokering trades, and managing resources for the tribe.
This of course points to Maslow’s second layer of the pyramid which is our needs for safety. By manipulating people’s needs for safety by introducing possible harm for disobedience to the business, a business person could gain great wealth and power. For example, providing security from some threat that unbeknownst to the people is actually perpetrated by the security business itself. This never leads to real happiness because its nigh impossible to hold the true essence of unconditional love in one’s heart when part of that heart is soured with fear and manipulative practices. The great illusion is that more wealth and power will lead to fulfillment. However, they can’t because the nature of wealth and power is desire which is in itself emptiness.
Needs do not come from the same place as desire, nor are they born of want. If you removed a person’s opinions, beliefs, even their senses, the body would still need air, food, water, sleep, and protection from the elements to survive. However, the needs of the body are different than the needs of the heart. People need each other. When people don’t have substantial human contact and connection, we get depressed, withdrawn, and possibly even mentally ill.
Spirituality in Business Needs
This is where I would depart from Maslow’s hierarchy. Everything above the two lowest levels is of a spiritual nature. This is the quest for meaning and we do it in different ways. Spirituality in business is one of those ways. For some people, business is a means to an end, however, for some, spirituality in business is a way of life. If one is to find complete fulfillment and meaning in one’s life and do it through business, one must be in touch with their Soul’s Purpose.
If it were obvious to people what would actually bring them fulfillment, it would be so much clearer to them that their inner suffering could be alleviated by really knowing themselves. They would also see that their endeavors would help them reach fulfillment because they were ecological. Meaning, all must benefit from the business, including the Earth herself because Mother Earth is a living being. Thinking you could be happy after slowly killing your mother wouldn’t be questioned.
Business Has Lost Tribal Knowledge
When the tribal communities lost their brightest and most savvy to business practices that manipulated their physiological and safety needs for personal gain, the world went in the wrong direction. We’re still suffering from it to this day. The value of coin has replaced the value of true essentials to living. Unwholesome business practices have left their scars on the human psyche. Reparations could take centuries.
In Native American traditions, decisions are made not for now but for the next seven generations. If we adopted a practice like this globally, we might possibly begin to undo the damage that we’ve caused to ourselves and the planet.
Spirituality in business is essential because business has the greatest impact at making change because they have the greatest reach and the greatest influence. As I’m writing this, The Rainforest Action Network (RAN) is releasing “Banking on Climate Chaos”, an exposé on how the biggest international banks are funding the destruction of the planet for non-renewable resources like oil and gas. Read More. This global reach has positioned itself by perpetuating destruction rather than funding brilliant new ideas for the sake of profit. Another example would be the 100 years it’s been since Nikola Tesla’s work was confiscated by the U.S. Government. We undoubtedly could have free energy for everyone if it weren’t for greedy business practices.
Business and Self Regulation
Nowadays, it seems that there’s no possibility for businesses to regulate themselves. When left up to their own devices, businesses will take short cuts for profit. Which means that they’ve lost their tribal affiliation. If an employee of a company disagrees about the direction the business is heading, the business simply exercises their at-will employment, which means that they can terminate you at any time, and for any reason. That wouldn’t work in a tribe. You would have to live next to your neighbor so any bad blood would need to be reconciled.
This also means that regulatory bodies need to be formed outside of the business to keep it in check. This is not a spiritual approach, it’s policing. To live up to the best that humans can be, corporations need to stop acting like businesses and start acting like the people which constitute them. The heads of corporations should be held liable for their oversight which would bring back the benefits of tribal governance. This would make them spiritually responsible.
In Conclusion
A big problem is the spiritual reward for wholesome spirituality in business practices. Spiritual reward is so subtle, it’s almost imperceptible. It’s quiet, it’s graceful, it’s radiant without being glaring, and it’s inside every human being, if only we were taught where to look for it. The reward is not from a God that lives on high, somewhere outside of ourselves, waiting to judge us. It’s the quiet spark of life deep inside us and every living being. It’s an endless flow of love that shines in every cell of our body, if only we could repair the eyes to see it. Seven generations may not be enough to change our business practices, but we need to start somewhere.
You also may want to read, “Better Customers, Wiser Business Growth With Astrology.”
Also, be sure to check out, “Can Spirituality Exist Without God?“
