Is it spiritually damaging to work for a large corporation whose values I don't subscribe to?

'SERGE.  I can see that this is a big dilemma for you and it is one that  faces many people today. One might reframe your question and ask: is it moral to receive money for engaging in work that you say doesn’t seem  to support the well being of where  one senses our planet needs to be headed? Should one’s efforts   be directed to shoring up a reality which, if we are, as a species, to survive - or if a fairer and more just world is to come into being - needs to pass away? At another level, it seems to be a conflict of head versus heart or materiality versus spirituality.


What makes this issue more problematic is that you say you don’t just love your work but you love it immensely! I mean if you  hated what you do and sat at your desk feeling uneasy or guilty,  this dilemma would be easier to resolve and you would pack up working for Goldman Sachs or whoever and you’d try and get a job at Greenpeace or something like that. So it shows that a lot of your psyche is locked into what you do, and you  don’t seem quite ready to make a break. No doubt you  also get a lot of kudos for your efforts, and you are, you say, well paid, and money is a great temptation, isn’t it? Even so called ‘heavy duty gurus’ can  succumb to its seductive lure!

What is positive, however, is that you are starting to ask the right question, which, if you want a direct response, may be yes. Or let me put it like this. Perhaps it is not  so much spiritually damaging for you ( unless, of course, you work for a business that sells arms or something like that), so much as spiritually limiting. If we spend many hours of each day seeped in a culture more concerned with profit than people, something of that  mind set enters our psyches, and unless we are quite developed,  and  will have evolved specific antidotes, it can  gradually and imperceptibly  harden us and close down our capacity to be kind, soft and tender (which are values I think, that  are hugely needed in our world today).

Put another way, it is hard to work in an organisation and not be part of its philosophy of life. I have several friends who, when we were all boys together  at university , had   big hearts and were open to a vision of a better world. And then they became ‘ serious city men’, and  worked for big firms and gradually much that was soulful about them, began to close down, and today it is hard to get any conversation out of them other than what they think the equity market is going to do or whether house process will go up or not!

That  all said, don’t let me necessarily discourage you from staying at your job. What I define as  the real meaning of ‘downsizing’  ( becoming de-soulled!) may not apply to you. Not everyone’s humanity necessarily  closes down as a result of working in a large corporation, and  if every good person left that world,  the only ones that would be left  to run the show, would be the sharks,  or the ‘Gordon Gekkos’!* And that’s not  what is needed.  Actually, I think the system needs transforming from within. And many people are doing this. For example, I had lunch last week with a friend who has a very high-up job,  who is a real ‘big noise’ in the city. And I know of few men with a bigger heart. ‘ I try to bring my humanity and caring for my staff’ into all I do’, he told me. And I looked at his warm, kind, and open face, and I knew he was telling the truth, and I thought how lucky the people were who worked under him.

So just as a little light in a dark forest can go a long way, so the same is true of a good human being working within the old system. I have another good buddy in California who  is a director of the Bank of America. Not only has he persuaded all his fellow Directors to learn to meditate, but single handedly, he has got his Bank to loan millions of dollars to specific poor people  in third world countries at a ridiculously low interest rate.  My point is that there is nothing wrong with the corporate world or with large organisations per se.  They have a soul; they have a compassionate face and  often it  has become covered up and so it is simply about helping them uncover it. In other words, the problem is not with large organisations but  with the cultures that  certain people have injected into them.  Change the people and the culture changes. So who knows: perhaps, as you love your work, your role is to stay put and focus on bringing higher values into your firm. Yes, it is tough to do this and it requires a lot of discipline, but why not give it a go. Why not try to be your own person and  choose not  to surrender to the mind set around you, that is, be in the rat race but refuse to be a rat, and then you can serve as a transforming agent or a kind of de-rattifier! People like you – like my big-hearted corporate friends - are badly needed.  And if you feel you earn too much money, you can always give 10 or 15 percent  of it away to the poor and needy.

• The main character is a film about corporate greed called Wall Street.

Serge is a Transpersonal Psychotherapist, Organisational Consultant and Seminar Leader. He works with both individuals and couples from all over the world on SKYPE. He has recently created some interesting new programmes to help people with their spiritual development. To contact him, email him on info@sergebb.com.