The Spirituality of Teal

To my mind, one of the main reasons Frederic’s book has been so popular is the fact that it is deeply, though subtly, spiritual. It addresses man’s deep yearning for meaning and understanding. It reflects an inevitable hope for something greater than what our senses just present to us. It addresses deep longing for peace, harmony, safety, love.

There’s this longing in everyone to go beyond what we experience as mundane, empty, confusing, devoid of sense, very often painful, causing suffering and despair. We want to go beyond to understand, not to just avoid suffering and difficulties.

What you, Joost, Pim, Freek and Catelijne, have been doing is also spiritual, although you may not ascribe to that term. It doesn’t matter, because spiritual very much like Teal eludes conceptualization. You say you want to make work fun. But it’s a tip of an iceberg.

If fun were limited to the superficial meaning of the word as in “we had fun last night”,  you wouldn’t have rocked the boat as much as you have done so far.

Two years only and your blog and initiative causes ripples reaching the remote shores. And it’s not because you want to make work more fun, pardon me for saying it like this, but it’s because you are on a spiritual journey to find out how to live meaningful lives where work is so vital an element of the whole jigsaw puzzle.

Spiritual is not religious, although it may be. Spiritual means transcending the hubris of knowing it all and claiming that life is only what you make of it. Spiritual means courageous to step into the darkness of not knowing and understanding but trusting deep down that there’s a way. Yeah, walking away from your corporate careers is just one of examples of that. Spiritual also means coming from the inside, coming from the mind, consciousness.

And in this sense man is a spiritual animal. Whatever he does, whatever he has done throughout the whole of history, it always comes from his mind, his consciousness. All those places you visit and all those people you talk to reflect the state of mind which led them to where they are now. “The 8 habits of companies you wish you worked for”, are the habits of the mind not of the behavior, which only follows the mind.

Teal ain’t real? Oh, yes, it is! It is as real as the air we breathe. You don’t need the name “air” to know you need it to live.

You don’t need to ascribe to the conventional name of a next stage of consciousness to experience its results. Teal-the-state is there and doesn’t care if it is misunderstood or misused, or twisted or what have you.

Teal-the-method ain’t real and is one of erroneous ways which make people say “My company will go teal”. But Teal-the-method will pass into oblivion, that’s for sure.

Teal-the-stage, however, will spread until man reaches another stage of the evolution of consciousness. I for one love the idea of Teilhard de Chardin who, way before Wilber (whom I greatly respect), said that man’s consciousness evolves from point Alpha to point Omega and I feel we are well on our way, tripping and falling but stepping along.

I am really grateful that you pushed the Teal button, because there’s been a lot of misunderstanding and Teal-the-method seemingly was gaining the ground.

But it’s only natural, when you come to think of that. In the world of dual thinking, nondual reality is difficult to grasp, especially if we try to do it only intellectually.

And by the way, isn’t it interesting that the whole conversation is happening on the verge of Christmas. Jesus would know a thing or two, how to run a Teal company to the delight of all those employed.

Thanks again, guys, thank you Frederic, thanks to all of you commenting and reading. Enjoy the season of Peace, Wisdom, and Joy and Fun, too.

Featured Image/graphic link added by Enlivening Edge Magazine.

Pullout quotes added by Enlivening Edge Magazine.