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Spiritual Practice and Business Leadership

One of my clients, the founder of a successful construction company, recently told me that one of his top executives had resigned to dedicate himself entirely to his own business.

This might seem reasonable if not for the fact that this person had spent years using my client’s company’s resources, relationships, and know-how to build his business in the same industry.

Essentially, this person used my client’s company to finance the birth of his own business, mitigating the risk by maintaining his position as an employee, and left when his company was safely established.

This behavior could be described as ungrateful, unethical, and a breach of contractual commitments. However, the most relevant part of this story is how my client responded to this situation.

In the business world, we often see the beginning of an exhausting legal battle when something like this happens, a period full of negativity, conflict, and suffering for everyone involved.

On the other hand, my client chose silent forgiveness and love over resentment and anger, becoming a living example of our highest human potential, as true leaders do.

Of course, he felt betrayed, used, and robbed at some point, but he managed to transcend these experiences to reconnect with the essential love that unites us. He chose peace instead of war, celebrating what had been, accepting an ending, and compassion for human clumsiness, reminding us all that love is possible. Always.

When I asked him how he had made this decision, he replied that it was thanks to the spiritual path he had begun a few years ago.

flower growing in asphalt

[The loss of an authentic spirituality.]

In my opinion, the significant problems we see in the world—marginalization, poverty, war, climate change, indifference to suffering, and evil—originate from a lack of authentic spirituality, a practice that frees us from the ego and reunites us with love.

Some religions, conceived as frameworks for a beneficial and authentic spiritual practice, fail because they are filled with the egos of men who have turned them into mechanisms of ideological, social, political, and economic control. Worse still, they have become labels that define us, feeding our egoic identity and separating us instead of uniting us.

These religions have gradually dissociated from the genuine, humble, and intimate spirituality that we all need, leaving millions of people orphaned of a practical, living guide to help them advance on their path and discouraging many others by absurdly excluding them.

How is it possible for religions that preach love to become vehicles of hatred?

The word religion comes from the Latin “religare,” which means “to reunite.” The foundations of the religions I have come to know are beautiful and valuable; they respond to the human need to satisfy our existential curiosity, reconnect us with the creative essence of life within us, with our human family, and offer us a purpose on our life path.

We must lose our fear of the word spiritual and accept that all humans are inherently spiritual. We must integrate spirituality as a natural aspect of our human experience without fuss.

To live fully, we must attend to our innate need to maintain a conscious and dynamic relationship with the creative source of life, our essential nature. This need is as evident as our need for food or oxygen and must be attended to daily and naturally.

The absence of a spiritual practice turns the era of abundance into misery, immersing us in scarcity and fear.

The egoic mind dominates our attention, obsessed with defining and completing ourselves through achievements and possessions, doing and having, productivity, and materialism. This is the great lie of the ego, which keeps us, prisoners, on the hamster wheel of existential scarcity, running nowhere, trying to fill our inner void and dissatisfaction in the wrong places.

The great spiritual teachers have explained the truth with simplicity and humility.

“All sorrow is due to the fact that many are seen where there is only One.”

~ Anandamayi Ma

The creative source of life, which many call God, is often described as a shared experience of unconditional love that unites all living beings.

Separation and selfishness arise when we live distracted from it, engrossed in our individual experiences. Our lives are filled with competition, envy, conflict, indifference, and harm. It is a failed system filled with suffering.

Kindness, generosity, and “love thy neighbor as thyself” arise from knowing oneself loved by becoming aware of the experience of universal love.

How can we give if we don’t know what we have? Love must be at the center.

The Discalced Carmelite monks I have been studying with in recent years refer to it as “the experience of God.”

A space of intimate and silent encounter with the source of life, where we transcend the ego’s illusion to reconnect with the unique, essential reality: the universal love that transcends form, time, and space.

A loving, wise, creative force that drives life. The encounter with this entity heals us. It cures our egoic disease of separation, reuniting us with life and revealing its essential qualities of peace, love, and joy in us.

Our purpose is to intentionally relate to this infinite love and facilitate its creative will on earth, honoring, respecting, and celebrating all life forms.

When we embody the “experience of God,” harm is not possible. We know ourselves as united with others and wish for their well-being and happiness.

As my Buddhist meditation teacher would say: “Would you intentionally harm your hand?”

From this perspective of oneness, the universal principle of “giving is receiving” is also easier to grasp.

[Living from the Practice]

In the last thirty years, I have been fortunate to witness, through my personal experience and that of many others, what happens when a person diligently applies themselves to their spiritual practice.

It helps us be generous, share, and collaborate without feeling threatened. We are benevolent and compassionate toward others’ clumsiness and patiently accept their life processes and our own.

We don’t take ourselves so seriously.

We help others as we can and offer what we have without attachments.

We celebrate life’s diversity from a consciousness of oneness: Otherness and oneness here now.

We quickly forgive and support without judgment or mockery those who are less mature in their path of evolution in the “consciousness of God”—the liars, the selfish, the aggressive, those who harm us, those who offend us, those who hate us, for they are the ones who need us most.

We can compassionately look beyond their behavior to recognize the suffering that originates it.

We put love where it seemed impossible, as my client did.

Through our practice’s divine alchemy, we transform suffering into love.

We wonder at the mystery of life and feast on it with deep gratitude to the source, our sisters, and our brothers.

Chipmunk with acorn. Life is abundance; feast on it.
Life is abundance; feast on it.

[A new form of church]

The word church comes from the Greek “ekklesia,” which means assembly, a group of people gathered together in one place for a common purpose.

For centuries, the church was the primary institution of society, an active body in legislation, education, social organization, and the economy, often wielding more power than kings and armies.

In my opinion, the company is the leading institution in today’s society.

Companies influence our culture and behavior with their messages. As workplaces, they expose us to different people and make us interact with others, allowing us to grow by confronting our fears and limitations, the conflict of coexistence, and everyday work.

They are an excellent vehicle for change, as our commercial activities profoundly affect the communities we serve. Not only with the products and services we provide but also with the values we support and promote.

On the other hand, our companies are sources of wealth. This economic power can contribute to the well-being of all if invested with generosity and abundance, without a scarcity mindset.

The company is the primary creative force in the world, thanks to entrepreneurs, masters of manifestation, who turn ideas into reality.

The challenge and the great opportunity of our time is to help more entrepreneurs create consciously, free from fear and selfishness, from abundance and universal love, guided by the “experience of God.”

The company is an ideal instrument for expressing the loving essence of life. However, we cannot offer what we are unaware of, hence the need for the spiritual revolution to reach business leadership.

Through mindful leaders, this basal love transforms everything it touches. It settles into norms and regulations, becomes alliances and cooperation, integrates into our corporate culture, floods decision-making, how we relate to others, and how we position ourselves in the world.

Sprouting from love, existential abundance, the desire for happiness and well-being for others, generosity, and trust, our business organizations become catalysts for this transformation, affecting all who collaborate with us.

What we do with our businesses, the products and services we offer to the market, ceases to be the most important thing, and we focus instead on how it is done and why.

This is the essence of post-materialism, a time in which we are more interested in preparing ourselves to access and reflect the loving nature of life than in accumulating possessions.

[Business leader, spiritual leader.]

As I mentioned, the key to this evolution lies in the spiritual alignment of the entrepreneurial leader. A person who, in exercising their responsibility of spiritual leadership, serves as a living example of what is possible, inspiring others to develop their spiritual relationship.

The entrepreneur is situated in a place with immense impact potential, at the center of a star, where their teams, clients, communities, investors, suppliers, allies, and families converge. Millions of people are exposed to their presence and energy. A slight shift towards love in the entrepreneur generates a powerful ripple effect.

[Practice is the Path.]

Mindfulness has been the spiritual practice that has worked best for me, but there are many others. What matters is to find one that resonates with us and not abandon ourselves. The opposition of the egoic mind is strong and constant, hence the importance of sustained practice.

With love,

Juan

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I am a former CEO and entrepreneur with 18 years of experience. As a conscious executive coach, I am dedicated to helping business leaders cultivate presence, peace, and purpose to maximize their positive impact.

Additionally, I host the “Life Is The Practice” podcast, where I explore the connection between mindfulness and leadership.

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