Summer Swim illustration courtesy of Weather Girl Shop on Etsy

Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about all the systems that surround us.  Just take a look at the booklet that comes with a new charge card and imagine the intricate web that supports all those terms & conditions.  Now, expand that to the level of the IRS and you’ll come to appreciate the sheer weight of these systems set in place to manage life.  When I began reflecting about this month’s business ethics topic, I naturally folded it into my current line of thinking.  I saw it as a grid like energy pattern set up between 2 parties.  In this grid is all the information that’s needed to help the people of the world conduct business with one another. As a small business owner, I then imagined how this grid helped me to interact with my customers. What I asked myself next was quite intriguing, “Why do I need any system between myself and others?” I was curious, so I continued exploring.

I’m a visual thinker and so I often see things in my mind as I begin asking questions.  I saw “business ethics” as a sphere of coded information buzzing around, but I wanted to know what was behind all those words.  Looking deeper beyond the symbols of information, the bubble popped open and I very clearly saw what was in the center—the individual.  You stand at the very core of your business ethics—nothing else.  If you remove all the systems that surround you, what is left behind is just you standing on the Earth beneath the Creator (insert whatever words resonates with you).  Keeping it very simple, you stand in your own 100% personal liability under Universal Law of Do No Harm.  It’s a reset button that wakes us up from the duality of existence and opens our eyes to meaning of the Mayan greeting In La Kesh—I am another you.

The Goddess Within illustration courtesy of Weather Girl Shop on Etsy

As small business owners, we are actually already in touch with this because we are the business and the business is us.  We are not big, multi national corporations that outsource labor to 3^rd world countries with a shipping department big enough to fit in a warehouse.  We’re the craftspeople, the shipping department, the PR firm, and the marketing director all bundled into one lovely being.  In my business, when an issue with a customer arises, it is handled from the heart and not from a dusty legal binder.  I listen to the issue and then work to find a solution that serves the whole.  I treat others as I would want to be treated and do so in an authentic way.

If we can truly honor others within the unity of consciousness, we will no longer need these systems in place.  It is when we see ourselves as separate that we live in a dualistic reality where we need something to protect us from those ‘things’ and ‘people’ out there.  Until we are all living in the consciousness of oneness, running a business can be kept simple.  Paramount to anything else, you must know who you BE because that is the lead in to all action.

Share how you approach your business from a heart centered place in the comments below!