"Spiritual Business" = An Oxymoron ...?

After a few years since encountering this term, or various permutations of it, the term still baffles me. I kept my thoughts to myself for a long time, because I first felt the need to truly understand the words, and the term within its proper context. A context that I was not very familiar with, that I am more familiar now.

The two words, separately, are no strangers to me. I understand them in the conventional sense of each of those words. 

Spiritual. 

Business. 

But I have never seen them combined this way before, until recently.

"SPIRITUAL"

First, let us start with my understanding of the word "Spiritual". My understanding of this word is pretty standard. That is to say whatever a standard English dictionary will say about the word is my understanding of it. 

Oxford Dictionaries described "spiritual" as an adjective 

(1) relating to or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to things 
(1.1.) Having a relationship based on a profound level of mental or emotional communion 
(1.2.) (of a person) not concerned with material values or pursuits 

(2) Relating to religion or religious belief. (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/spiritual).

Now, in the context of our discussion here, we can exclude definition (2) almost immediately. So let's focus on (1).

As you can see from (1) and (1.2) alone, there is much cause for my lengthy pondering on the matter of "Spiritual Business".

QUOTE

(1) relating to or affecting the human spirit or soul as opposed to things 
(1.2.) (of a person) not concerned with material values or pursuits

UNQUOTE

But before we carry on, let's see the definition of business as I understand the word, which is very much conventionally. This is to say: Let's check out the dictionary. So off we go back to Oxford Dictionaries.

"BUSINESS"

"Business" has been described as a noun: 

(1) A person's regular occupation, profession, or trade. 
(2) Commercial activity. 

(I am excluding the other definition which among others includes: Australian Aboriginal English (?) traditional law and ritual, a situation or series of events typically a scandalous or discreditable one, theatrical slang, British informal term for a very enjoyable or popular person or thing, and a group of ferrets). (https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/spiritual).

"SPIRITUAL BUSINESS"

From what I could see so far, the word "Business" in "Spiritual Business" is one which has been used in a way that has been described by Oxford Dictionaries as (1) and (2) above.

That is to say, the word "Business" in "Spiritual Business" means: occupation, profession, trade, and commercial activities.

So, in my own understanding of things, which is very conventional, and very "mainstream", the term "Spiritual Business" means: 

A person's regular occupation, profession, trade, and commercial activity, which has to do with the human soul and spirit, and a realm not concerned with material values and pursuit. 

Spiritual Business = Commercial activities to do with the human soul and spirit as well as a realm which do not concern itself with material values and pursuit. 

Can you see why I found myself wondering if the term "Spiritual Business" is an oxymoron?

But, we all have to live, and nothing is free in this world. Does this include spirituality? How do we reconcile the idea of material-free spirituality with material-dependent physical existence of the human person?

This topic has been swimming around my mind ever since I paid for my first tarot reading session over twenty years ago. A sense of discomfort about how spiritual consultants are remunerated (which they must!), the role of our modern economic model in all this, and the traditional communal one which I grew up with in the old country. 

CONCLUSION?

I can not offer you a revolutionary idea as to how to resolve what I see as an inherently paradoxical situation embodied in the term "Spiritual Business". A paradox which seems exist in the modern alternative spiritual practices that I have stumbled upon so far. A paradox which exists because we all have to live and apparently living is never free.

What I can do though, is try share with you the practices of the old country that I have had the privilege to experience in the past. From memory, these experiences felt and seemed less paradoxical, if at all. What I can do is to try to abstract those experiences to the best of my abilities into some basic principles from which we may be able to dialogue further about this very interesting reality. 

The old country is very old. We may yet learn something interesting from the ancients. From a land where old practices evolve and adapt, weaving in and out of other practices that came after them, as they continue on the same continuing unbroken thread which goes back over thousands of years.

Stay tuned for my next post.