So I had a huge epiphany on a three-week break I took over the holiday season.
Actually I had several epiphanies, but the biggest one was about the seeming separation between the “sacred and the secular.”
Said another way, the made-up separation between the spiritual and the everyday practical.
Part of this very insight was how this applies deeply to business and work, as much as it applies to life.
Letting Go into the Flow
My business has been better than ever, since I let go of trying to be successful and scramble around taking massive action, or applying the right strategies that “they” said will work for anyone. Instead of using the right strategy or magical path to success, I do what occurs to me.
Granted people have different types of businesses and work procedures to follow, but more often than not we are taught to follow what’s outside us to know what’s right, instead following the knowing that is inside of us.
I think that’s a big mistake, and it’s why I tell my clients that clarity trumps strategy. Even if the strategy laid out before us has all these fancy steps, we are taught to trust that more than just knowing the one next single step that feels right on.
It may be a strategy I learned. It may be a variation of that. It may be something totally different.
Because it’s not the strategies that are the problem, it’s the alignment for the individual or company, talking from a business sense.
This requires a real relaxation of the mind to do this, and with a busy mind it’s hard to do.
I’ve only recently started talking about this with my family, friends and clients more openly than ever, because I wanted to make sure it was REAL.
But this is about more than just business. The letting go I’m talking about wasn’t necessarily of what I’d call a spiritual nature, but it was towards letting whatever was present take over, let well-being come out naturally, and let results flow from there.
So this past year with the help of many people, I learned to let go like never before.
I tapped in, and the path to well-being and success started lining and lighting up with what felt like any effort. With way less effort than I was putting in.
No, it hasn’t all been sugar and honey, I still have fear and scarcity thoughts that rule my mind at times.
But I really saw how it was that over-effort that was getting in the way more than anything.
The Everyday Spiritual
As part of my three-week hiatus, I went on a four-day personal retreat at the Shambhala Center at Red Feather lakes here in the wintry mountains of Colorado. It was absolutely stunning. Shambhala is of the Buddhist tradition, but all are welcome. I am not a Buddhist or religious in any way, but I seem to have become quite the spiritually-minded man now.
During my retreat, I read a book that really impacted me called Smile at Fear by Chogyam Trungpa. Who was in my opinion an amazing (and controversial) spiritual teacher.
In reading and contemplating his work, I saw the false separation we often make between the spiritual and the practical and how this can cause a lot of mental and emotional pain.
Call it spiritual pain if you will.
It certainly has caused me a lot of pain when my mind separates the spiritual as something to be done alone in meditation/contemplation only, something out of this world or away from “real life.” We wonder why we go around feeling disconnected from our lives, without purpose always seeking solace in the next vice or material thing to try to find happiness.
Only to find that feeling of gratification is fleeting once we get what we want, or live in great disappointment when we don’t get what we want.
It is all an ego/mind game in the end, and I am happy to now know that this is completely solvable.
When we look deeper towards the deeper nature of reality, towards what’s true (which I term as what spirituality is really all about), we can transcend this mind game.
I am no stranger to this game and I’ve got a conditioned mind just like you – just like we all do.
Prosperity from the Inside-Out Is a Spiritual Game
By removing the separation between spiritual and the practical everyday, it doesn’t mean we have to be poor.
We absolutely can be prosperous
By intending to see what’s true and merging the sacred and the secular, it doesn’t mean we have to shut off our intellect. It means we include it recognizing it as a part of the whole, but just one aspect of everything.
We can use our heads and our hearts in unison, to live a life of great joy and purpose.
It doesn’t mean we shut away from our problems, but instead get even more real with them, perhaps looking at how our thinking alone is making these problems a much bigger deal than they truly are. Yes, even extreme problems can be shifted with thinking, which many of us have experienced whether it be serious loss of finances, health or loved ones. All of which I have my own experience with.
It wasn’t until I started getting right with how this all works, how our small minds can mislead us, that things really started shifting for me this past year.
Being “everyday spiritual” means we also have even more compassion for ourselves and others in dealing with family, at work and everywhere we go, even for the “asshole” who cuts us off in traffic, or the cranky person in line at the grocery store, who just needs a little love sent their way, because they are suffering.
So what if all we did was sacred and spiritual? I know for some reading this, it might seem radical or weird or confusing.
But bringing a spiritual sense into the everyday is inherently practical, or so I’ve found.
More than that, it’s very powerful and can even bring tremendous results that we have never imagined.
Hell, I have a degree in Molecular Biology and have a fair amount of scientific background from it. If this stuff wasn’t working, I wouldn’t be doing it.
Of course, trying to be more spiritual in order to get more success isn’t how it works. That is just inauthentic and goes against how the system works.
For others what I’m saying here, might resonate deeply.
Spiritual is practical, and if it isn’t, then it’s not a game worth playing. I wouldn’t be playing it this way if it wasn’t.
It’s Up to You
If what I’m talking about interests you, then by all means go for it. Go all out with it. I think the world needs more of it, as long as it’s in a loving way that’s inclusive.
Spirituality is awesome when we come from that place.
And whatever your current spiritual view or practice is…how can you eliminate the separation between it and your everyday, practical, “real-world” life?
Love,
David
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