Excel Sheets. Spiritual Practice. Possibly two phrases that have never before been written together.
It is an association that would never have occurred to me until it cropped up in a conversation with a friend.
Over the years we had been chatting about the circumstances in which she most easily felt calm, at ease and aware of the magic of life. She had the idea that it ought to happen for her in meditation and had tried many different meditation strategies. She could stay comfortably silent in a group meditation, carried along by the communal dynamic, but on her own, she found meditation to be slow torture.
Her culture and her community of friends highly valued meditation, so for many years she kept exploring meditation, but sitting on her own, it was always uncomfortable and distressing. She was so sincere in her desire to meditate that she asked me to nudge and remind her to get into practice.
Then in a conversation, she casually mentioned some quiet spiritual experiences she was having. In those experiences, she was completely calm, felt the presence of a higher power — whatever you may wish to call it — and a heightened sense of intuition, which helped guide her important life decisions.
I asked in what circumstances she was having these encounters. There was a pause as she gathered her thoughts. With some embarrassment she finally responded that her spiritual awareness surfaced when she was at her computer deeply involved in Excel spreadsheets, and organising the complex arrangements for very large international conferences – speakers, rotas, tech, flights, breakout rooms, accommodation and more.
Her answer excited me for two reasons. The first reason for my excitement was very personal, because I experience a lowkey panic when I have to work with information that is tabulated inside spreadsheets. (I interpret this as a form of dyslexia.)
The second reason for my excitement was because this was a breakthrough moment for my friend as she realised, acknowledged and validated for the first time that her consciousness expanded into a state of spiritual connection when she was working on complex spreadsheets. She had never really acknowledged this to herself and never to her friends because it was not meditation.
We talked about her experiences. She said that her mind and body just felt incredibly content and peaceful when working on complex arrangements on a spreadsheet, and she went into a ‘flow’ state. In this experience of psychological harmony, another crucial part of her mind – of her psyche – was liberated to go into an altered state of consciousness.
She was multitasking. Seen from the perspective of one psycho-spiritual model, her left brain was happily doing its mental thing, liberating her right brain to do its intuitive-spiritual work.
For decades I have been promoting the idea that people have very different ways of entering into spiritual awareness, and it is crucial for each individual to understand how they best do it. I find it really easy to meditate on my own and that is my preferred practice. But teaching spiritual practice and listening to students and colleagues, I have had to learn and value that there are many different gateways for entering a state of calm connection with the magic of life. I was astonished when I first heard people saying that mindful spiritual awareness happened for them while swimming. (I can’t do that. I can’t do spreadsheets.)
There are huge variances between, for example, people who practise ecstatic drumming and those who prefer a gentle walk in the cloisters; or those who chant and those who sit quietly reading inspiring texts.
People have very different gateways and circumstances to spiritual awareness; and it is really helpful if people know what they are and value them.
Spreadsheet spiritual practice! Once I was over the mini-trauma to my established ideas, I reflected more calmly about it. I recalled that I had several other friends, who also love working with spreadsheets. I need to ask them whether they too can go into a spiritual state when engaged with them.
I also found myself thinking of all the people who relax doing jigsaws and the members of my family who love puzzles. I remembered too a headteacher I once supported and was helping into reflective practice. The only time that he could calm and think more expansively was when he was working on the engine of his classic motor car.
Spreadsheets. Puzzles. Mechanics. These might be surprising, but knitting, weaving, embroidery and crafts are already well recognised as spiritual practices, and they are in a similar zone. These are all circumstances that one hundred per cent work for some people and provide gateways into calm and altered states of awareness.
Over and over again we can also observe children going into magic-land with the tiniest of figures. A blade of grass can be anyone or anything as a child’s awareness goes through a gateway into the world of imagination, play and connection.
So, we come back to this core insight — that there are very many different gateways and circumstances that enable people into spiritual awareness. Meditation is only the best way for meditators. Just as movement, or dance, or reading, or nature, are the best ways for others. And now we can add to this list of spiritual practices – spreadsheets.
There is a wonderful cultural development happening in our world today. Historically, most religions and spiritual traditions have suggested specific ways of worship and spiritual practice. Today’s spiritual culture is expanding to a recognition of and respect for each individual’s best approach. Whatever path people take, though, they lead to a destination of greater compassion and service, expanded consciousness and deeper connection.
Let’s welcome spreadsheets into the wondrous toolbox of spiritual strategies.
Wow I resonate so deeply with your blog about meditation and spread sheets. In the past I have berated myself with a big spiritual stick believing that I’m not meeting the normal narrative for spiritual practice. I am 48 years old and have been using computers and gaming since I was 4 years old. Over the past 5 or 6 years I started to notice that spiritual flow when gaming. I feel how something in me steps into my higher consciousness particularly when playing rhythm games in virtual reality. I love the explanation that whilst one side of my brain is navigating the gaming environment and problem solving, the other side of my brain is free to embrace a higher state. I’ve started learning piano in the last year and find the same thing happens there too. Whether I’m learning a new piece or playing an already learned familiar song I feel that spiritual flow increasing and it brings me so much joy.
Enjoy your new bike.
When doing spreadsheets, the mind is fully focused
Congratulations on your new Duke! Looking at it from the front, it does have an insect-like appearance. The design makes sense, considering that insects also zip and dart about at high speeds. = – )
When I was 17, while on the back of my boyfriends’ Norton, I soon found out that I was not a natural rider. Instead of leaning into curves, I instinctively leaned the opposite way—not a safe strategy to say the least! Though my motorcycle riding history is brief, I understand the appeal of motorcycles, with the sense of freedom and exhilaration they provide.
Regarding the topic of your eletter—like you, Excel spreadsheets leave me cold. Still, I can appreciate that someone who enjoys working on them is liable to enter a calm, ‘zen-like’ zone. This got me to reflecting more deeply into what gets me into a flow state. My musing eventually led me to my childhood.
In 1964, when I was 8 years old, our family moved from Vancouver, B.C. to a rural area in the semi-desert Interior. The grasslands landscape, with its cactus, sagebrush and tumbleweeds, was strikingly different from the city I just left. Most impactful and surprising of all, though, was the night sky.
Living near the bright lights of Vancouver, I thought a few stars twinkling here and there was normal and ‘all there was’. That illusion was shattered the first evening I went outside and looked up at the expansive sky above my rural home.
Gone were the big gaps between stars. Now the sky was virtually one mass carpet of stars– so many stars they almost seemed to touch each other. I was gobsmacked and awe struck, and filled with complete reverence. This ‘sense of the mystery and wonder of life’ has carried forward to the present day. No matter what type of day I’ve had, looking at the night sky can almost always calm me and bring me back ‘home.’
Thank you, William, for sharing your thoughts regarding Excel spreadsheets and spirituality. May you enjoy many joyful excursions on your new KTM 990 Duke.
i like this article. I find it very relaxing to stroke my cat or dog and even weeding. I feel then so connected with all what is.
I sometimes get ‘insights’ when watching tele – as if part of me is relaxed, switched off or focused enough for things to come up (or get in). Very unspiritual…
I can sit for hours drawing and shading and playing with depth and shadows and emerge refreshed and content with life. I used to get the same experience after hours of being emerged in a statistical analysis of a dataset. Numbers and scoring still excite me today. I never thought of these as spiritual. How interesting. Thank you, William.
My cd player packed up playing in my Figaro car. So l now drive and chant Om Shanti Shanti Shanti Om. I have found this helps me find my Peace within and l love the feeling it gives as l drive my car.
Wonderful! Just what you have been teaching all these years !
No set formula, we are all different.
Thank you 🙏🏻
Oh I love this. I have two experiences that are a bit similar. One time we were collecting a very large stone from an old disused quarry, for a project. The four of us could not lift it to the trailer. We dragged it with ropes, heaving it up and over a big pile of dirt put there to discourage people entering the site. Feeling pleased with ourselves we finally positioned the stone at the tailgate of the trailer, however we were dismayed at how we had not thought things through as the stone was impossibly heavy for the four o f us. Then I just seemed to know what to do. I energetically instructed everyone to pull the stone up onto the lowered tailgate. Then I instructed the man to stay in the trailer and get ready to gently pull on the ropes. I reassured him that it would be reasonably effortless and announced that us three women would not only be lifting the stone but also the heavy tailgate between us. On the count of three we did exactly that and the stone was soon sliding into the trailer. Yes of course it is O level physics but the speed and the knowing of what to do was a feeling of being ‘in the moment’ and having complete confidence. The second experience involved a garage door falling off its hinge but it will be for another time.
I have long considered fishing a spiritual practice in Britain: completely acceptable for men to put on special garb and sit for hours looking at water, with nothing very much happening. People who wouldn’t be seen dead meditating or praying or doing yoga.
Yes Paul. I used to go fishing when I was young. My Grandad was in WW1 and he went a lot after the war.
Paul my Mum was the Fisher person in our family , I was always hopelessly getting my line tangled around something.
I always felt that I failed that measure of manliness and then I realised my mum kicked arse .
Gender roles were bullshit .
I’m sure my mum took as much pleasure and in her own way , a deep connection to the water elementals and the tasty denisons of the deep .
As to the Zen of spreadsheets , not my cuppa tea ,I’ll leave that to others .
Give me a snagged fishing line any day