The following article was first published in Network News Issue 7, April 1996

Reconsecrating Our Work

I am profoundly grateful that the Foundation, as a spiritual community, has agreed to host a conference that recognises that business has a pivotal part to play in the transformation of our world. My personal business history starts from the other end of the spectrum, having been educated in a materialistic world view. But the normal trappings of business and social success could never fill the feelings of inner emptiness that resulted from that view. So I went through various shades of green, wrote long ethical statements and finally came to the conclusion that my crisis and that of our affluent western world was not about environmentalism or social responsibility per se, but was essentially a crisis of the human spirit.

To reconsecrate our work is to embrace again the spiritual reality and purpose directing our lives. Only from that deeper understanding and basis for our business activities will arise the solutions to our pressing problems. Business for Life is not business as usual.

There is still a large gap between right livelihood and much of current business practice. The transition period is fraught with potential upheaval, but transit we must. My willingness to focus this conference ends a long period of sitting on the fence waiting for someone else to do it. I’m coming out of the spiritual closet and wearing a business suit.

At the root of the problem is the rise of materialism, defined as the denial of a spiritual reality behind our material existence. The flip side of that problem is the poverty consciousness that often arises in a spiritually focused environment with its implicit judgment and/or denial of a material reality. So this gathering will look at how we can mend the rift, how we can marry spirit and matter and so have our material and spiritual needs fully realised. How can we experience the mystic and the pragmatist and not have the one deny the other? This tension is beautifully summed up in the words of the poet laureate, Ted Hughes:

The real problem comes from the fact that outer world and inner world are interdependent at every moment. We are simply the locus of their collision. Two worlds, with mutually contradictory laws, or laws that seem to us to be so, colliding afresh every second, struggling for peaceful coexistence. And whether we like it or not our life is what we are able to make of that collision and struggle. So what we need evidently is a faculty that embraces both worlds simultaneously. A large, flexible grasp, an inner vision which holds wide open, like a great theatre, the arena of contention, and which pays equal respects to both sides. Which keeps faith, as Goethe says, with the world of things and the world of spirits equally.

The conference logo is a powerful image of this tension/resolution dilemma. On the one hand we have the symbol of apparent opposites: spirit/matter, work/pleasure, masculine/feminine and so forth; and then the possibility of creating something entirely new out of their integration – becoming whole, coming home.

For the past 500 years we have been developing rational, analytical thought to a new peak of perfection. Along with this development of the masculine principle has been the flowering of the age of discovery, the industrial age and now the technological age. But in this period the world of mystery and metaphor has been so eclipsed that we now live in a spiritual vacuum. There is an anthroposophical metaphor about the traveller to a city of 500 years ago. What welcomed him on the horizon was the cathedral spire soaring into the sky pointing heavenward. Today any traveller to a city in the modern world is confronted by the towering block of the international bank and the the transnational corporation headquarters. St Paul’s Cathedral is finally obscured by the Nat West Bank tower and Lever Brothers building. The transformation is almost complete.

The “almost” is important, because as Carl Jung succinctly sums up, “Man cannot stand a meaningless life”. As we approach the next millennium a new spirit of business is emerging. Business is beginning to look at the crucial role it needs to fulfil if we are to move gracefully into the next century. Presently this search is largely driven by fear – the fear of survival, both personal and planetary. This is manifesting itself in the grudging “greening” of business. Now we are ready to start the next major shift which is the re-imagination of the world, which includes again making work divine. Business is sacred. Without this fundamental shift in consciousness we will never create a sustainable world.

We need to re-imagine a post-industrial era. We need to create it and imbue it with love and therefore give it life so that it can breathe in and through us. We need to do it now. This conference is not about theorising because the time for that is past. It is about becoming the fullness of who we truly are, accepting our material and divine natures, and living our potential. It is pioneering the new tomorrow by living it today, not just in our heads but in our hearts. Then we will experience business as sacred and give meaning to the oft quoted phrase that, “Work is our love made visible”.

During the conference week we will make time to practise inner listening because the answers cannot be found in our minds alone. Together we can find a “third way”. A way forward that arises from having the courage to step beyond what we already know so that we can truly create a future quite unlike the past. If you are prepared to challenge the assumptions you have made around your business, then come and join us. No one of us has the whole solution but we can draw out the answers that are always available when we ask the right questions. We can then support each other to commit to and embody that which we know to be the right course.

While this is primarily an experiential gathering for participants, we have invited key speakers to help us on the journey. Personalities from the world of business who are out there trying to walk their talk, including Anita Roddick of the Body Shop, Ricardo Semler from the Semco partnership in Brazil, Glen Saunders from the Mercury/Triodos Bank with its anthroposophical base. Futurists Hazel Henderson, Paul Hawken, Willis Harman. Helping define sustainability will be John Elkington, Jonathon Porritt, Margrit Kennedy. Management consultants with a “different” view point, John Cleese, Jack Hawley, Jane Bowles. Holding a spiritual perspective, Deepak Chopra, Ram Dass, Professor Chakraborthy. These and others at the cutting edge of their various professions have been invited to join us to “bring us to their edge so that we can explore together what lies beyond”.

While we await confirmation of the final list of presenters we can guarantee our own in-house faculty of Fellows and staff who will hold an “empty unknowing space” to allow the possibility for something entirely new to drop into our collective awareness. Perhaps we will meet in October?
Johnny Brierley

Network News 7 Johnny & Jill Brierley

Johnny & Jill Brierley with their youngest child, Gemma