Masters and Grand Masters
Shambhala Masters: Running A Business
Balancing the needs of your colleagues, instructors, your students, their parents, your family, your business and your own personal needs is enough to drive you to drink. It appears to be impossible now, and the complexities are ever increasing. Every-day life does not get simpler, instead its demands compound one upon the other until life drains you of all your energy. This is currently referred to as “burn out.”
“Burn out” is not a new contemporary problem. It is age old. Since antiquity life has used up people and exhausted their Life energies. Shambhala masters have known for centuries that the only way to protect yourself for being completely depleted of your Life energy and your Integrity (for the two are one in the same) is to be unshakably clear about your priorities.
KNOWING YOUR PRIORITIES
Primitive groups of people originally used culture (shared myths and belief systems) as a tool to enhance the individual's capacity for seizing every opportunity for maximizing Life and contributing to evolutionary excellence. In this sense then, culture and Nature’s Intent are united. They are One. As cultures mature however, their myths and belief systems develop a momentum and direction of their own. This momentum and direction diverges greatly from Nature’s Intent and severely interferes with people’s ability to contribute to evolutionary excellence and to honor his or her Core Integrity.
PITTING THE INDIVIDUAL AGAINST SELF
And so, instead of participating in the noble, creative process of Life alongside Nature, instead of learning how to work with Nature's harmony and balance, the cultural myths and belief systems begin to pit people against the earthy matrix which hosts them. Consequently, you have been trained through eons of history to try to outwit Nature, rather than learning how to harmoniously interact with her. You have been trained to out wit Nature by over focusing on the culturally established priorities. The culture keeps you so busy, so embroiled with meeting everyone's expectations that you actually do not have the time to assess what and who you are, or what you are Called to do. You do not have time to worry about Personal Integrity. Over-focusing on the cultural priorities to the detriment of your Personal Priorities pits you against your Core Self (your spiritual center).
OVER-FOCUSING ON PERSONAL PRIORITIES
People who prostitute their Core Self to the culture priorities often become hostile to conventional expectations. They can become self-destructively defiant and anti-social. Others will strike out against the culture in another way. They become over-focused on their Personal Priorities and disregard the priorities of the culture. This too is Self-destructive.
What does all this have to do with you and your business? Everything!
To run a successful business and not be left feeling like an empty shell, you must do both. You must recognize the importance of commonly held beliefs and values of your community and yet you must be flexible, courageous and creative enough to be committed first and always to your Personal Priorities, to your Integrity and to your Self. In the finest sense of the Shambhala Life-Skill of SELF-BALANCING, you must hold the paradoxical tension between the opposing pulls of your cultural priorities and your Personal Priorities.
Self-Balancing is easy when your cultural priorities and your Personal Priorities do not conflict. But much of the time they do. For Shambhala Masters this is not much of a problem. Shambhala Masters make a decision, a commitment to their Selves and to Life. They are first and foremost committed to their Personal Priorities, with an informed, keen focus on their social/community/cultural responsibilities.
By keeping an informed, keen focus on their social/community/cultural responsibilities, Shambhala Masters are not frightened into abandoning their Personal Priorities. They respond in a timely manor to paying their employees, bills and taxes without being overly generous with their time, money, energy or patience suffering fools to secure favors. Shambhala Masters responsibly support their families without capitulating to their family’s unreasonable demands on their time, energy, money and patience. Shambhala Masters run their businesses without being directed by the cultural expectations that they have to be rich to consider themselves successful.
Shambhala Masters spend very little time and energy fretting over whose feelings will be hurt, who will quit, or who will like them. They spend little time fretting, not because they do not care about these issues, but because Shambhala Masters have already made a commitment to themselves to honor first and foremost their own Integrity … and, most importantly, they have made that commitment publicly known. Family, friends, students, student’s parents, business associates, colleagues, teachers and neighbors all know that Shambhala Masters are, first and foremost, committed to Personal Integrity and evolutionary excellence.