In our Community we’ve recently introduced Compassionate Accountability, to help everyone take the steps needed, week after week, to develop their business.
In one of the first calls, I asked the question in a Remembrance meditation, “How have you been hurt by structure?” The responses from folks brought up a lot of vulnerability.
So many of us have been hurt badly by structures. Structures and rules have been used to create impossible standards that we can’t measure up to. They’ve been used as an excuse to shame and run roughshod over our non-linear tendencies.
I think about how painful my high school experience was, and how much of it had to do with trying to fit into a structure that I just didn’t fit into.
The misapplication and abuse of structure has been the reason that our culture has left very little room for grief. Or for intuition, or Divine timing. No room for being human. No room for mistakes.
The wounds run deep.
This is true in business as well, when the industrial age forced a life-sucking structure onto workers in the new factories, and our work culture has echoed that structure ever since.
I think of my kids, who thrive on a certain amount of structure, but also rebel against structure for two reasons: (1) when the structure has no flexibility in it, and (2) when they have no say in the structure, that is when it’s imposed on them without their input.
How the past can keep you stuck
And yet… if we let a painful past with structure keep us from taking on a healthy structure, then our businesses cannot develop.
How can we stand up without the structure of our bones? How can we write and talk without the structure of grammar?
We need structure, but the tyranny of structure is killing us.
The metaphor most often used by my Sufi teachers is the tree. The sap within the tree is the life force, represents what is known as the Divine “haqiqah” – the Divine Presence of Oneness, the nondual awareness of life and eternity.
However, the tree, to grow strong, needs the bark, needs the cellulose, the structure of the tree. Otherwise the sap is just there, in a puddle, on the ground.
We humans create artificial trees that stand strong, but have none of the beauty, flexibility or uniqueness of the live tree. Even a dead tree has more aliveness in it than an artificial tree, as it decomposes and contributes to the cycle of life.
If you’re willing, I invite you to ask yourself these four questions:
Take more than a few moments with each, to let your heart settle, so there’s time for the answers to emerge.
- Ask yourself the question, with a willingness to be surprised, with tenderness, with compassion: How has structure/rules been used to hurt you in the past? Or, How has structure/rules been painful to you in the past?
Take some time with the question. Notice what your heart shows you. - Next, ask yourself, have you seen or experienced any healthy examples of structure, where there was strength and flexibility, spaciousness and focus?
- Then, a third question: what is your heart needing in order to embrace a healthy sense of structure? Again, be willing to be surprised.
- Finally, ask your heart to show you, how would the right amount of healthy structure help in developing your business?
If you’re willing to share, I’d love to hear about your relationship with structure, and what you saw with these questions?
With love and appreciation,
Mark
Heart of Business
Every act of business can be an act of love.
