Non-duality, Love and Running a Business

Curious about running a business from a non-dual perspective and if it’s even possible. Gosh this has come up so many times over the years in this blog! Pouring out my agonies and fears and successes.

In my very little business (7 employees) I have to do it in a sort of ‘this is the agreed game we are playing’ kind of way, pretend we are all separate to an extent….yet it has thrown up many incongruencies, conflicts, hard decisions and questions over the years. (Yes, excellent training ground!).

Like, why would I want to make maximum money from this ‘other’ who I feel such overflowing love for and who is not other at all. It seems I have to ‘other’ them and ‘self’ a me to engage with it all. Yet that is actually impossible. The client base is wealthy so it’s relatively easy in the sense that making a profit isn’t exploitative, as they aren’t struggling financially.

Yet still, they are me and usually they would prefer to give me as little as possible, and I’m supposed to want as much as possible.

And also with employees, I want to pay them as much as I possibly can, why wouldn’t I ! They are me. Yet the ‘sensible’ business model way would be to want to and try and pay them as little as possible and maximise profit.

I see them as sovereign powerful beings and would love to see them thriving and expanding, busy with more fun higher things than struggling financially. Yet the industry is relatively low paid and aware there’s a larger dominant surrounding economic model which has a strong influence that has to be navigated with.

There’s a running joke in my company that it is run by ‘The Force” (as in star wars) and we laugh about the clients’ reactions if they knew that.

Aware that my ego kind of likes that I’m posting this, as it could be interpreted as virtue signally. Tick, clock that. Some goals above might seem virtuous but that isn’t the motive, which is to live in a congruent way, probably in a right livelihood sense.

Maybe that’s the succinct question there, can you run a business in a truly no self, non-dual, right livelihood way? Or maybe if I was truly in a non-dual no self state none of this would even come up and that alone should be the focus and everything else would fall into place.

I just posted this in a couple of non dual FB groups, that have a few fully enlightened folk there, be interesting to hear their take on it! Will post any interesting or illuminating responses below.