The CEO and the Devotee: A Tale of Intoxicating Romance
Much of my life has been a tension-filled dance between 2 very distinct parts of my personality — the Devotee's monasticism and the CEO's ambition.
In college, while going through the grueling process of getting a communication and marketing honors degree, I was simultaneously wholly devoted to rigorous meditation and other consciousness-altering practices.
Post-college, I spent 4 years living and working on organic farms, quite literally as close as I could get my inner-Devotee to her perfect ascetic life. The start of my business coincided with this hermitage. I suddenly found myself silently weeding by day and wholly engrossed in the world of commerce by night.
I thought stewarding a company would demand a disciplined spiritual practice.
It became obvious that the company was, too, the disciplined spiritual practice.
I've had this iteration of my business for 5 years now, and every step of the way, I have been invited into the dissolution of these 2 seemingly opposite worlds.
Life always invites me into the experience that these parts of myself are not so different and, even more, desire to be in an intoxicating union.
Here are 5 ways the CEO and the Devotee aren't really that different.
1. The living entity of your business demands presence, especially if you want to avoid being wholly consumed by it
The foundation of a devotional life is presence.
Likewise, the foundation of a business that you are in collaboration with — not controlling or avoiding — is presence.
Or attention well paid.
Presence is a peculiar thing. By nature, it involves both focus and space. It can very easily be hijacked by neurotic control or dissociated avoidance.
If there's anything my spiritual practice has taught me, it's that true presence humbles you. It brings you into contact with the orchestra of Life and Death, always playing their ecstatic symphony for those with the ears to hear.
The CEO (who serves the spirit of the company and, by default, Life) has mastered this. They are in the practice of striking the illusive balance between listening and carrying out, being and doing, receivership and stewardship.
The moment they begin to move into control, thinking that it is solely them and their personal will "running" the business, they lose touch with the greater conversation, and the company begins to suffer — like a garden fried from too many nutrients.
The moment they begin to avoid or remove their precious life force from the collaboration, avoiding rather than engaging what is, the company begins to suffer — like a garden ignored in the peak of Spring.
2. comparison is futile
The moment the Devotee wishes they were further along in their practice, more advanced, and had gained greater spiritual power — they have lost touch with the essence of the practice.
The practice serves emptiness first.
It's a tricky thing that the western mind loves to hijack — always wanting to get somewhere.
Most modern-day commerce is in direct opposition to this. Profits and progress are the sole priority. More and bigger is better. Nonstop growth is the goal.
Yet, my time as CEO-Devotee has revealed something different.
If I approach business the same way I do my practice, I give the company space to become what it wants — not what I think it needs to be.
To expand, break ceilings, and bloom in its proverbial Summer and to withdraw, fortify, and stabilize in its proverbial Winter.
Just like the Devotee knows, more is not always better. The incessant need to progress can be the very thing that stops it. A sole focus on what is being produced will ruthlessly chip away at the potency of the frequency that imbues the form. Putting profits before everything poisons the essence of the purpose.
3. Chop wood, carry water
Before enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.
After enlightenment, chop wood and carry water.
– Zen Proverb
In spiritual practice, we learn that advanced practice is basic practice mastered. The deeper we go into consciousness, the more the idea of the mundane dissolves. Everything is practice; a chance to come into more profound engagement with Life.
Everything is strung together by the primordial joy of Creation, continuing to create itself.
When the hierarchy of what is spiritual and what is not begins to dissolve, we are free.
This directly applies to business.
It's commonplace for the front end to be revered as ‘the thing.' Be it sharing on social media, accomplishments, the book, the program, the podcast, etc.
When all Devotee-CEOs know that the front-end manifestation is simply the byproduct of endless wood chopped and water carried in silence.
There are so many aspects of a company's ecosystem that we never see.
If you don't approach every aspect of business — from taxes to planning to payroll — as an opportunity for sincere devotion and, within that, transformation — you miss out on the hidden wisdom born from penetrating engagement with commerce.
Just like washing the dishes, all of business is the practice. You will one day realize that you are not stewarding your business, but rather, the business is stewarding you.
4. If you're unwilling to practice engaging life — as it is, you will suffer
Ah, the excruciating esoteric core of all cores. The art of meeting yourself and Life as they are. Every spiritual tradition — East to West, North to South — has found some eloquent way to put this axiom into words.
The paradox is transformation can only take place through acceptance of what is.
The annoying thing is there's a lot of 'what is' that we have created intelligent strategies to avoid.
Yet, that's the play of it all.
Spiritual practice brings you into bandwidths of consciousness where you meet the paradoxical enjoyment within resistance, tension, and contradiction. You know that when you have found a pocket of resistance, you are onto something really good.
The futile desire to be "free of resistance" or in “total acceptance all the time” reveals itself as more intelligent strategies that keep you from directly engaging with Life.
If you consistently relate to your business from needing it to be anything other than what it is, commerce will quickly become an arena of great suffering.
This doesn't mean that there won't be disappointment, dislike, and defeat for what is. In learning how to meet it, you, by nature, create the space for intimacy with your personal feelings, meaning, and story — not avoiding them through steamrolling your experience, needing it to be better before you've met the bitter.
From here, you begin to naturally come into contact with a field of what could be.
"The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am (and my business just as it is), then I (and my business) can change."
—Carl Rogers
5. The best leaders are those the people hardly know exist
"A leader is best
When people barely know he exists
Of a good leader, who talks little,
When his work is done, his aim fulfilled,
They will say, "We did this ourselves."
—Lao Tzu
The Devotee knows that true spiritual power lies in subtlety or emptiness. The more subtle one becomes, the more one becomes a part of The Dao or Life.
When spiritual practice is harnessed in service to satiating your inner hungry ghost — the practice is lost.
The Sufis say that the incoherent seeking of "the interests of rulers" is the surest way to create karma. Yet, a commitment to The Way or the practice will be the same vehicle that brings you into touch with the powers you are meant to steward — be it those of rulers or those of farmers. Also, what's the difference? 🙃
The Devotee, practitioner, or healer knows it has done its best work when you barely knew it was there. When the person's experience is that they transformed themselves.
As I continue to navigate the many roles of being a CEO, I have been humbled by the recognition that these verses ring true in commerce. If I am over-managing or under-managing, if I am not welcoming mistakes and mishaps as ripe opportunities for learning, if I fall asleep in the dream and think that my personal will is steering the ship — the whole ecosystem suffers.
When I am as graceful and skillful as I can muster as a CEO, I — and most of the company — are barely noticed. The magnificence of the vital ecosystem becomes invisible to the patrons. They can simply enjoy whatever offering they came for.
In leading a team, the team flourishes when my management is imbued with trust, and their experience is that they did it.
