Corporate Spirituality? / May 9, 2014

Corporate Spirituality?

For a number of years friends and ex-colleagues have humoured my interest in weird stuff. Some displayed a genuine curiosity in my new world, others dismissed me as an impressionable fool taken in by pseudo-science, while others simply disappeared from my life altogether.

It was interesting to share a beer with a few of them the other night and have them direct the conversation toward spirituality, (an area of conversation I actively avoid these days). I have long since lost the desire to explain or justify my seemingly mystical life style, especially in pubs!

These guys were asking about meditation, mindfulness and presence, all concepts which seem to be weaving their way into the corporate arena.

I thought it ironic that I was interested in their current experience of the world from the "corporate" perspective, whilst they were trying to make sense of the non-material world. In fact I have noticed this reverse flow in a number of people recently. Those who have been playing in the meta-physical playground are actually looking to pull their experience into the material world, whilst those wholly associated with the physical are looking for something else.

Someone pointed out that I was ideally positioned to exploit the meeting of the two worlds. I pointed out that were I wishing to "exploit" that knowledge I wouldn't have learned anything.What has become clear to me is that the motivation or aspiration informing our choices ultimately determines our experience. 

Corporates teaching meditation to improve the bottom line or schools using Mindfulness to improve exam results is a bit like fighting for peace or toasting sobriety. It's a bit like the system giving tools to temporarily escape the system, as a means of perpetuating the system!

The shift which is moving the spiritual back to the material will impact aspiration and motivation of the system at its roots. That is really exciting.

Bill