Does Spirituality Decrease Motivation?
The complicated relationship of spiritual growth to personal agency.
A well-publicized 2018 study concluded that mindfulness meditation in the workplace decreased employee motivation. However, because it improved the ability to focus, meditation didn’t lead to a reduction in employee performance.
I’m not ready to draw any firm conclusions from a single study. But it seems clear that the relationship between spirituality and motivation is complicated.
I recently did a talk with the talented and wise author Jay Michaelson. After Jay and I spoke for a bit, there was a Q&A session with the group. One of the sticking points in the conversation centered around the relationships between ego, spirituality, and motivation.
The word ego is used to mean different things. Here is an excerpt from my book defining my use of the word:
I use the word ego to refer to the process of identity construction.
As process, ego is constantly attempting to assert itself. This is demonstrated by the fact that humans will put virtually any content to work in the service of constructing identity.
For example, if you use a particular pen and begin to relate to that pen as “my pen” then the pen may become part of your identity. Losing this pen might be experienced as a loss far deeper than its financial value. Even if you were given a new, identical pen, the loss might not be restored until you had invested the new pen with your identity.
Ego is the process that can take a pen (content) and make it part of your identity.
We often conflate processes with their products. For example, a product of the process of oxidation is fire. Yet we tend to think of fire as a fixed entity rather than an ongoing process.“Ego,”as it will be used throughout this book, is not a fixed part of your mind. It is an ongoing process. The product of ego is constructed identity.
Along with ego’s constructed identity, you also have an unconstructed identity. The spiritual journey is about becoming intimate with your unconstructed identity.
This intimacy can lead to a shift in identity. When this shift occurs, ego, along with its moods, beliefs, goals, and opinions, is no longer the sole concern. Most of the time, it’s not even the main concern. Ego’s constructed identity is understood as being contained within something wider.
It would be difficult to live as a human being without an ego. It’s useful to understand that when someone says your name, they are trying to get your attention. Ego, the process that allows you to take external content (e.g., a name) and make it part of your identity, is what makes this possible.
But if the only identity you can perceive is the one you’ve constructed, then unconstructed identity remains invisible. For unconstructed identity to be properly recognized, ego needs to get out of the way.
For most of my life, ego was the only game in town. On occasion, I escaped ego’s grip. During these times, I experienced that there was more to my life than my constructed identity. But when I returned from those occasions, I believed my constructed identity had had a spiritual experience. In reality, my constructed identity was an impediment to these experiences. But I was unable, or unwilling, to recognize this fact. In this way, I avoided the identity shift that came later.
For the spiritual identity shift to take place, ego needs to be relegated to a different role. Although ego doesn’t need to be destroyed or dissolved, its relative value shrinks when compared to life prior to the identity shift.
Ego is responsible for teaching us that we are independent beings. This allows us to function as humans. But because ego teaches us that we are independent, a common concern about relegating ego to a different role is that it will lead to a loss of agency. If we aren’t independent actors, then perhaps we won’t take independent action.
This concern about personal agency was raised by an audience member during the Q&A session. Here’s how I responded:
Motivation to have a positive impact on the world often comes from ego. It’s natural to be concerned that relegating ego to a smaller role will have negative results. But to extend the analogy from the video, ego’s efforts to have a positive impact are akin to trying to steer the ocean’s waves. This takes a lot of (misplaced) energy.
Unconstructed identity is more humble. It knows we don’t decide where the waves will go. And because it defines its tasks with greater wisdom, unconstructed identity is more effective. Ego tries to control the ocean’s energy by steering the waves. Unconstructed identity takes advantage of the ocean’s energy by riding them.
For the person attempting to steer the waves, a person attempting to ride them isn’t helpful.
Ego sees the humility of unconstructed identity as a loss of personal agency. This helps ego retain its central role in our lives.
Spirituality may indeed decrease the motivations of constructed identity. Spirituality may also lead to the loss of a certain type of agency. But other motivations, and a different type of agency, may arise in their place.
If you think you are steering the waves, it's dangerous to take your hands off the controls. But if you are willing to give it a try, you might like the results.