Today’s Karmic Workout: The Virtue Of Grace

Second Sapien Today’s Karmic Workout: The Virtue Of...

Today’s Karmic Workout: The Virtue Of Grace

Karmic Muscle Group: Intentionality
Today’s Exercise: The Virtue Of Grace

[Author's Note: I founded a company with a friend in 2008. As I developed the business plan, I put a great deal of thought into what a business organization should aspire to cause in its culture. I have had a lot of training in practical organizational behavior and had founded organizations in the past that, at least for a number of years, flourished into exceptional, thoughtful and fulfilling cultures. When I started organizing my company, I wrote a document called The Seven Virtues Of Habitata. I have since posted this document as The Book Of Seven Virtues on this site. The main concept of these operating virtues is that work life, home life and community life should be ethically harmonious and designed to empower each other. If it does not support the life of employees, then a company should not be asking them to do it. This is not just because it is unethical to ask employees to harm themselves, it is bad for business when a company creates harm. Managers many not understand the hidden costs of harmful conduct, but it is there in every case. We run organizations understand this. The fact of the matter is that a person, a family and an organization each have only one life and it should be focused on fulfillment and the creation of benefit for all. Producing profit without this integrity is lazy, short-sided and will ultimately costly.

What I found is that what is good for life generally is good for business specifically. The employees of my company are extraordinary. We have a very diverse group of people that collaborate as a fierce and passionate family. We have some unusual practices at Habitata. Our employees make the final hiring decisions from a pool of qualified candidates based on who they are willing to be responsible for bringing into the family. The selection must be unanimous. If they are not willing to fight for the person in the beginning, then we will not have the type of employee we are looking for. They must be worth taking a stand for.

Our managers cook lunch every Friday for our workers and after lunch the entire company discusses one of the Seven Virtues. We practice high social impact hiring, meaning that we give preference to the chronically unemployed, veterans, felons and others who really need a job. We hire people in their 60's and 70's because we believe that experience is the most valuable trait in an employee. In 2011, after already having to lay off 15% of our employees, we had to make another cut. This time, we cut me, the company's CEO instead of cutting to other employees. Our management does not believe that it is appropriate to allow workers to be treated as "disposable" people and so we made sure that the pain was felt at every level of the company and not just at the bottom. Our employees are so well trained that they can practically run the company without a CEO.

The outcome of these practices is a diverse family of people who believe in what they do and believe in each other. Absenteeism is nearly non-existent. It is not unusual to see employees hanging out hours after their shift is over. We invite all our employees to company networking events and proudly have them explain our company to corporate CEOs and political dignitaries. They frequently leave mayors, congressmen and senators in shock over how our company not only works, but has survived against impossible odds. As we say at Habitata: "the impossible we do right away, miracles take a little longer."

For the next seven workout sessions, I am going to offer the Seven Virtues, one by one, in TLB's traditional exercise format. I hope that you will take them to heart and apply them to your own life. The Virtues are not only the key to right living and fulfillment, they are good business practices that cause truly great, profitable companies to stand out in a cynical world.

You may want to print out the post about the Virtue of Grace and keep it with you during this exercise. It is best to get started on this exercise in the morning.]

Find a quiet place to read and contemplate. Turn off your cellphone. (Come on, actually turn it off. No vibrate, no hoping that it won’t ring. Turn it off as an act to create solitude.)
Establish meditative breathing for 3 minutes. Take long inhales and long exhales of equal length. Relax and clear you mind. It is important to eliminate distraction by creating focus on breath.
Take a moment to read about the fifth virtue, grace, out of The Book of Seven Virtues post (see link above) or you can read just about compassion by clicking here.
After you have read about the Virtue of Grace, take 3 minutes to think about how you are going to practice this virtue all day. This will require that you pay attention to what you are actually doing and thinking all day. This will be much harder than you think. We spend a considerable portion of our day steeped in self-concern, but worse, most of our actions are propelled by reasons why. Grace is the great karmic interrupter – it is an expression of pure intention disconnected from reasons why. It is kindness purely for the sake of kindness and does not require preconditions.
For the rest of the day, we want to focus our attention on what can be contributed to people around us for no reason whatsoever. Unlike compassion, we are not looking to respond to the condition to others, but rather simply contribute for contribution’s sake. Do not wander off. The focus here is on what difference you can make regardless of a reason or a motive. This is pure creation.

Training Note:
Grace is a word that has all but disappeared from our language except to describe elegant movement. It’s origins are in the Latin grātia meaning “favor, kindness, esteem” and is a derivative of grātus meaning “pleasing”. In many European languages, grace is the root concept for saying “thank you” such as gratzi in Italian or gracias in Spanish. The notion of grace is to please someone and show them that you hold them in high regard. Grace is the art of making people feel valued for no reason whatsoever. You do not earn an act of grace. Grace is bestowed out of pure generosity and intention and does not respond to conditions.

Grace also means “mercy, clemency or pardon”, again, notions of generosity that is not required by the circumstances. It is the disconnection for cause and effect that makes grace a particularly powerful virtue. Because it is born out of pure intention and not concocted from rational reaction to conditions, it has the power to disrupt destructive chains of events. Grace has stopped wars. When used powerfully, it can interrupt the domino effect of events can cause peace simply because there was the presence of mind to impose grace.

When used in conjunction of the other virtues, especially skillfulness, grace can be a force of incredible effectiveness in an organization. It strikes at the heart of harmony like a lightening bolt and can disrupt destructive exchanges and arguments. Grace is the foundation of truly liberated thinking because it depend on nothing but the will to express grace itself.

Karmic Benefits:

Stepping Out Of The Stream: most of the time, we are being swept away by the circumstances of our lives. We live mostly as a reaction to conditions, rather than a cause. When someone is rude to us, we are justified in an indignant response, but when we choose to show kindness, manners and good breeding, we destroy the animosity that was unleashed by the thoughtlessness of others. This is a nearly magical power in a world where most people are barely aware of impact of what they do or say. This is why grace is key to true nobility.
The Creative Foundation Of Nobility: if nobility is the art of living a life on principle, grace becomes one of the most power tools of the art. It is born of pure intention and creativity and can be imposed in any circumstances, though skillfulness would have us use grace when it is most likely to be recognized by others and, hence, most effective. Grace is generosity simply because “I said so” and for this reason is often attributed to divine behavior in many cultures.
Providing What Is Needed When It Is Needed Most: it is easy to be swept away in torrent of circumstances, especially when emotions are agitated. Grace can be a meditation on being that has the mind resist the temptation to be reactionary and maintain a presence of mind to spot the opportunity for unconditioned generosity. Sometimes, all the world needs is a single act of grace to derail a freight train of destructive thinking and put life back on the more wholesome tracks.

It May Be Fiction, But It Is One Heck Of A Karmic Workout.

Read The Lotus Blossom, D. M. Kenyon’s fictional account of a teenage girl who turns off her cellphone and enters the very real, but mystical world of Budo warriors. Humorous, irreverent and heart-wrenching, The Lotus Blossom is an unforgettable tale of a Midwestern teenage girl’s transformation into a budo warrior in the midst of the turmoil of the Information Age. Available in all digital formats, paperback and soon to be released in hardcover.