Run, churches & corporations. RUN!

I had a conversation with a 20-something yoga student after class. She has a “good” engineering job with a Fortune 500 company, and she teaches yoga. We be all kindred like that.

“I’m not getting much out of my job anymore,” she said. Hmm.

You know those fears churches have that doing yoga will turn you? They’re on to something. Corporate America, listen up: Beware the All-powerful Yoga. When your top performers get into it, they will start to see things differently. It’s a pretty obvious byproduct of an awareness practice. Yeah – you get aware.

Aware of what? Of what we’re doing that’s Real. Think of Real like the ultimate good – it’s that seed, that common, shared, non-subjective, objective (for complete redundancy) good we can all agree on that doesn’t have a bunch of shit layered over it that is often far removed from the seed. For instance: you might be of one religious affiliation, I might be of another. Or none. The real question is, why do we believe in our religion or secular philosophy? Do we strongly identify with the shit layered on it, or is it more like this: We believe it because we are certain that it is what humanity really needs. We believe it can take care of humanity. All of us. This is what we all want. (Disclaimer/Reclaimer #4: Yes, despite all my assy ‘tude, I believe that this is human nature.)

Religion, then, is an application – a subjective one – of the objective good. What matters is the objective good. This is what I call the Real. And this is what yogis or anyone on a path of awareness-building gets really good at seeing.

So, my friend was letting go of a subjective application of good. We’re all raised knowing that success is good, right? And success is defined by contrast – having a “better” job than the status quo, more money more house, more car. Contrast can be a good motivator, but it has one negative side effect – it damns a good chunk of humanity. It requires a separating worldview. So, success as known in this culture, that good, good thing, is then, having more than the next guy. And, everyone can be successful. Wait – all of us? Holy paradox.

Did you know the Pope is commie? Yeah. He recently condemned “trickle-down theories.”

But wait – what the hell do you mean, “a commie?” I know plenty of people who would take that as a commie-plement. Fuck it – trickle-down, trickle-up – let’s drop the discrete categorizing. (My engineering brain would like to remind you that discrete is “A or B,” and continuous is “A through B.”) Open this shit up. Don’t pretend all your values fall in line with one subjective application of good.

So, should my friend quit her job?

Come on. We yoga fools ain’t that stupid. Two things to remember here.

1) You can’t make change inside when you’re on the outside. Duh.

Be an inside fighter. It is so hard to keep on keepin’ on. But if all the managers across the country had the kinda skillz yogic study can provide – from communication to motivation to creativity to productivity – the US of A would seriously rock some fucking Real.

2) Eating – it’s not optional.

There’s a fallacy out there that our livelihood – how we make money – must come from our passion. Well, sometimes it won’t. We can use our livelihood as a means – to either support our pursuit of passion outside of work, or as a step to making it possible in the future to make a livelihood out of our passion. Yogis call the means artha. We can’t all give our culture the amazing shit we got to offer when they won’t pay us enough to eat enough (to shit). So, we gotta get comfortable with leaving our future uncomfortably open. We stay curious. We work and we create and we look for connections in what we do. What’s humanity calling for from you? Where, and how? Do this Real thing: stay curious about how it’s all coming together.