You already know that what you do as a business has effects people. Whether it’s jewelry, consulting, coaching, healing, medicine, accounting, cooking, whatever you do, you’ve seen enough moments when your client or patient or customer experiences what you do and something happens. They change. Their heart opens. It’s tremendous.
It’s healing.
So, sure, your business is a vehicle for delivering healing. But is it possible for the business itself to be a healing presence for you, for your clients, for everyone it touches?
Before we consider that question, let’s open the door, because I hear another question knocking first.
What Is Healing?
Our modern culture has a fix-it mentality. On the face of it, it’s not so bad. If something’s broken, you fix it. Unfortunately, when you’ve got a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.
The fix-it mentality that we are immersed in brings with it the assumption that everything that doesn’t meet our on-steroids sized expectations is missing something or broken and needs fixing. We then set about trying to fix it, usually through a lot of hard work, whether physical labor, or spiritual efforting.
Healing Is Not That
My Sufi sheikh talks about being drowned in Oneness. The teachings he refers to explain that there is nothing but Oneness–that any experience we have of individuality or independence is an incomplete witnessing of reality.
If you carry the fix-it mentality in your consciousness, then it’s easy to see an incomplete witnessing as a “brokenness” that needs to be fixed or healed. This, too, is an illusion.
In Sufi healing, the Divine quality of Salaam is often invoked. The Arabic word “salaam” is usually translated as “peace” but that’s not really its deeper meaning. Salaam, and shalom in Hebrew, carry the meaning of “wholeness.” Peace comes from wholeness.
Healing is experiencing the wholeness of how all is One. It’s being reminded of that Oneness, not mentally, not intellectually, but in our bones, in our kishkes, in our hearts. That love is available no matter who you are, where you are, or what situation you are in.
Even in business. Crazy, eh?
When you experience wholeness, that is healing. Sometimes that experience changes the external reality and illnesses leave, businesses do better. Sometimes the external reality doesn’t change. But wholeness, peace and love infuse the entire experience. Nothing is broken. Nothing is wrong. Everything is perfect just as it is.
That sense of wholeness and perfection is a very strong ground to stand on and provides a really stable foundation for forward movement, growth and development.
Healing is the wholeness. The movement forward isn’t the healing, it’s a byproduct of the healing.
As I mentioned above, you’ve experienced this sense of wholeness in your work. But what about in your business?
Toxicity in Business
To experience wholeness in various aspects of your business, you need to get intimate with it. Many people run into this problem when they’ve had previous experiences with business that have left a bad taste in their mouth, or worse. Who wants to get intimate with something toxic?
It’s important to acknowledge this. You weren’t wrong. People really do use deception, manipulation, fear, and other experiences of brokenness and separation from Oneness to try and accumulate more in the physical world. This is really painful, and anyone whose heart has awakened even a little bit instinctually recoils from it.
If you let those past experiences keep you from getting intimate with the basic structures and functions of your business, you are missing out on a whole lot of love, wholeness and healing.
By intimate, I mean letting the stuff of business into your heart. What if you let the essence of sales, marketing, or finance into your heart? What if you asked in your heart “Is there love available here?” Because if there is love, then wouldn’t you want to find it?
Sounds kind of woo-woo, but let’s take a look at how it functions in the real world.
An Example
One of the big uglies in business is marketing. Is there love available?
There are many parts to marketing, so let’s just get intimate and look at one part right now. Many marketing teachers advocate talking about the problem. This can be manipulative and painful. So many heart-centered people want to avoid marketing that talks about pain.
However, at the heart of it, what if you could talk about someone’s pain in a nonjudgmental way? In a way that transmits acceptance and love. That just because the pain is there, it doesn’t mean they are bad or wrong?
Just typing that paragraph I experience a deep sense of relief. I took a deep breath and was able to relax. The sense of safety and acceptance that comes into my heart when my pain or struggle is acknowledged is really profound.
When someone reads your marketing and experiences this acceptance and love in your message, they touch wholeness. Their heart heals at least a little bit. Without manipulation, someone can read it, feel wholeness, and then make a decision from that place about whether or not to work with you, rather than from panic and manipulation.
We had quite a few people who applied for the Opening the Moneyflow course who ultimately decided they didn’t need it. They came to that decision with a sense of wholeness. The course still sold out (almost-one spot left), and it felt so good because each person who decided to sign up or not sign up made that choice from a place of wholeness.
That, to me, is healing.
A Second Example
How about that other bugaboo, money? Financial accounting is a necessary part of business. When you don’t seem to have enough of it, it can be scary. And even if you do, the detail involved in tracking pennies and making sure money is there for taxes, expenses, and all the other things that come up can drive a person crazy.
Is love and wholeness available here?
What if you took the time in your heart to feel, to experience, to really taste what’s happening with that money? Your clients and customers paid you. Every penny they gave you represents the trust and care they have in you and for you. To receive each penny in gratitude is an amazingly fulfilling experience.
Then giving attention to accounting for it, to tending to all the pieces of the business that need care and trust. Paying your taxes, which support the societal infrastructure that makes your business possible, as imperfect as it is. Paying for services like the heat in your office, or the roof over your head, even if you work at home. Or your autoresponder, or web host.
Think of the people who work to maintain and deliver those products and services that maintain your business and your life. Each of those people have family and loved ones around them. Each of them is investing some part of their life energy into supporting you with what you need.
When you pay your bills and deal with your accounting while aware in your heart of your interdependence, you begin to taste the fabric of wholeness. When your heart witnesses the love present in supporting each person in your business’ circle, it’s healing.
Yes, our economic system is imperfect. Yes, there is a lot of pain and suffering there. Yet, the more people become aware of the love, the wholeness, the interdependence, the more each of us will make choices that will help our economic systems and societies give and care for all who touch it.
That’s your business being a healing presence. That’s tasting wholeness.
Every Detail In Your Business Contains the Universe
There is love and wholeness in every nook and cranny in your business. As you let yourself become intimate with what is truly there, then your actions and choices become expressions of that experience of wholeness.
Then your business becomes an expression of that wholeness. It becomes a healing presence in the world, just by doing what it’s doing.
Seven More Days in 2009
As the year winds down, I want to ask you to set aside a little bit of this season for contemplation and devotion to your business. And I’m not talking about your to-do list.
I want to encourage you to pick one or two places in your business where you feel some pain, revulsion or rejection in your heart. And open your heart, face the pain, and get intimate with them.
Begin to ask the question, where is the love here? What is the true nature of this aspect of my business? How can I taste and express the wholeness that touches even this part of my business?
I wish you a quiet, peaceful, loving year.
peace,
Mark
15 Responses
Timely and incredibly touching & useful – as ever, Mark!
Joy, peace and gifts to you too!
I love your explanation of peace as wholeness. And the link to healing through the work that we do. Thank you.
Mark, thank you for this profoundly healing article, and for continuing to emphasize the truth that Wholeness is the ground of our being.
In business, as in life, fragmentation is healed when we stand in wholeness and hold that which is incomplete in our hearts.
Love shapes, holds and heals everything. This blog, and your voice and vision, are proof of that.
.-= Hiro Boga’s lastest post: Sunday Poem #14: Buddhist Chronicles 4 =-.
thank you mark i just loved reading this.
i see money as love in action out in the world. it would be good for me to business itself as love in action out in the world as well. i am going to take your advice and spend some time with that idea.
.-= ABCcreativity’s lastest post: waiting for inspiration =-.
How awesome to be loved and named in a post about business healing!
I am soooo glad we connected this year too Mark. Staying with you and learning from you has been a real gift. And I will never forget crying into my eggs and bacon when you so gently gave me the space to heal a “business hurtie” (in Josh’s words) by your very compassionate questions and encouragement.
The world is a better place with you and your family in it — thanks for sharing your gifts so openly.
Happy holidays!
-Pam
Hey Mark,
I’ve always been about “results”, helping clients get “measurable” results.
And I’m realizing results are really great AND results without spiritual connection and experience doesn’t “take”.
Clients may achieve something they want but without the internal shift they get from spiritual healing there’s a hollowness and the notion that “if I just achieve this one more thing, then my heart will feel whole.”
I had a final session with a client yesterday and I felt sad and thought, “I’ll let the Divine guide this session and trust my client will get what they need.”
And the session felt great. I still felt some sadness that this was a final session but I also felt I had gotten out of the way so Divine love and guidance shone through. I felt peaceful and whole.
I’m looking forward to more connection in 2010.
Judy
You all are so welcome. This is our mission in the world here at HoB- we believe business can be a healing presence in the world, and still be effective at helping you make a living.
Love is always available in every moment. I’m so grateful I have these teachings to help me remember that when I lose my way.
This seems like HoB’s signature piece. Salaam – wholeness, peace and love – are what I learned to surrender to. Creating a small web based business was “just” the tools. Even though I’ve closed my business for now, my 4 years with Mark and Holly have resulted in a true life Miracle. I will never forget your bountiful gifts. Salaam aleikum!
.-= Celeste Varley’s lastest post: Stumbling on Happiness * =-.
This is one of the bests posts I have read on a blog in quite awhile. Time and time again this site blows me away with its insightful, heart-felt, yet business-minded advice.
Productive Flourishing is also another great one! It is very cool to see two incredibly intelligent and understanding individuals working together.
I look forward to what the new year will bring for all of us.
.-= The Emotion Machine’s lastest post: Top Twelve Things To Do While Unemployed =-.
Before I forget, as I’m prone to do, I want to say thank you for your kind comments and promoting our Lift Off Retreat. It’s exciting – and I’m glad you mentioned that the Lift Off we’re talking about isn’t the hypey kind; it’s the kind where your business takes on meaning, sustainability, and wholesomeness.
As is usual, we share a lot of common thoughts on the issue of business, healing, and holism. I’ve had it in my mind to write on this for awhile, but alas that we only have 24 hours in a day and so few of them where I’m worth anything for writing. All in due time.
What I will say now, though, is that it’s a powerful realization to recognize that our businesses add value to the world. Whether we choose to think about that as “changing the world” or making it a better place or just simply relieving a small bit of suffering that’s out there, the fact of the matter is that many of us compassionate, creative people tilt the scales, even ever so slightly, towards value and harmony instead of tension and discord.
Or, perhaps better put: we can share our gifts with the world through our businesses. It’s a “pushing out” process rather than the “pulling in” process that we’ve seen in rampant capitalism and consumerism.
This realization shifts the perspective from “what can I sell?” to “what can I share?” The second-order question that comes up then is “what’s the best way to share this?” instead of “how much can I sell this for?”
I could go on, but maybe I should somewhere else.
One last thing that I don’t know that I’ve told you: you are one of my brother-teachers. There are a few words from different traditions that mean roughly the same thing, but I can’t remember them right now and you catch my meaning.
Thank you for today’s lesson and remembrance. And for the ones in the past that I haven’t thanked you for.
.-= Charlie’s lastest post: Your Happiness Counts =-.
@Celeste- how right you. It is. 🙂 Aleikum as-salaam
@Emotion Emotion- thank you for that! It feels good to know that what resonates so strongly with me clicks so much with you.
@Charlie- hey brother, the feeling is moo-chew-all. Or is that me just eating cookies and milk? Love ya. Can’t wait to see your perspective on the whole kaboodle.
Mark,
What a wonderful post to read upon my return to home and to work. Thank you.
I appreciate you.
p.s. We met yet another cool person from Portland in the airport on our way home. It’s calling to us, I tell you!
Mark, I’m catching up on email while the baby sleeps in (yay!). What a beautiful, nurturing article. Thank you, thank you.
Yesterday I was listening to a teleclass that had an offer to participate in a year long program for $25/mo. I could feel my heart pitter patter over it and this “I’ve got to have it” anxiety take over and that part of me that doesn’t feel enough without the next class, book, ecourse, etc., etc. stir and begin to say “feeeed meeee”. It was tempting. Only $25/mo., I’m sure there was some pearls I could gather in that time, yada, yada, yada.
But I recognized something didn’t feel right. I was falling into old patterns. The baby had fallen asleep in the car, and I realized it was a perfect time for me to do some Remembrance, sitting there in the car, in the driveway, with the snow falling all around. So I did, and I breathed into that needy, hungry part of my heart and I called in the Divine and little by little it started to melt and the “but I waaaannnntttt it” got fed properly which resulting in being able to walk away from the “irresistible offer” without regret. It was a huge step for me of changing an old pattern. Many thanks.
Woo-hoo! How beautiful! I rejoice any time that part of our heart gets fed. I helped someone who applied to our year-long program get to the same place, and she walked away, too. And it felt great. I love that feeling of connection.
Thank you so much for sharing that story.
Hi Mark, Thank you for this beautiful post. I love the idea of healing in business. I strive to write my copy in a way that inspires action out of excitement and vision and possibility, rather than inspiring action out of fear. I think this works so much better and really attracts the right people for me. I don’t believe it is right to use fear as a means of gaining success. So thank you for your great work. The Remembrance has been a miraculous gift.