The following article was first published in Network News Issue 8, July 1996

 

Bridging the Great Divide

As I promote the next October conference, Business for Life, I am amazed at the pace and depth of change taking place in mainstream business. Can you imagine phoning the World Bank to speak to the director of the World Bank Spiritual Unfoldment Society? Was I really losing my marbles or was this an out of date April fool’s joke? “Hello this is Richard Barrett here. Oh, don’t worry. Whenever people call they have the same reaction: incredulity. Why? Well because it must sound like an oxymoron. How could such a bastion of intellectual economic conservatism have anything to do with spirituality. Yes, I would be delighted to speak at your conference…” So begins a wonderful connection with yet another organisation that holds a transcendent reference. Barrett seeks to create within the World Bank: “A consciousness of love and understanding that contributes toward transforming the way we interact with one another and the way the organisation interacts with the World.”

Well, what do you know? It’s so exciting “out there” that I can hardly contain my enthusiasm. The desperation to find greater meaning in the workplace is gathering momentum. So much so, that we are looking at designing a virtual conference to run alongside the Business for Life event itself. This way we can provide an interactive electronic discussion that anyone anywhere in the world can take part in. It’s all happening out there in cyberspace and inside in innerspace. It’s a silent revolution that is unstoppable, so it’s time to get on board or go back to sleep. Just as no one has a monopoly on the Internet, no one has a monopoly on spirit. It’s like the crisis of the military: there’s no longer really an enemy “out there”. We’re all on the same side.

As business begins to embrace a larger perspective, what has been happening in the pioneering spiritual communities? I think there is still a great deal of suspicion about whether business can provide a legitimate path of spiritual unfoldment. It is easy to see why – pick up any newspaper and it is full of stories of financial scandal. Let’s face it, business does not have good press, but then neither does the new age movement! Spiritual or eco-communities who have struggled for so long to awaken humanity, could find themselves overtaken by events if they hesitate to accept and embrace this emerging ecology of commerce. It is clearly not an “either/or” (spirit/business) but a “both/and” scenario. Mainstream business is beginning to demonstrate that it has a transcendent reference. Can the new age demonstrate commercial realism?

I am grateful that the Findhorn Foundation, as a spiritual community, has agreed to hosting a conference that recognises business as pivotal to the transformation of our world. My personal story starts from the other end of the spectrum in a materialistic world view. 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 the crisis of the human spirit.

So this gathering will look at how we can mend the separation and alienation in the workplace. How we can marry spirit and matter and so have our material and spiritual needs fully realised. How we can experience the mystic and the pragmatist and not have the one deny the other. The conference logo symbolises this tension and resolution dynamic. We have the possibility of creating something entirely new out of their integration and of becoming whole.

While I like to state that I have no investment in changing the world (outside of myself) I do feel this gathering could be pivotal and potentially serve a function that is way beyond the event itself. While I anticipate a transformative week being played to a full house, I am working hard to release any attachment as to how it might look “on the night”. I struggle to transcend the dualism of my mind with its judgment of good/bad and remind myself that beyond mind and ego is pure consciousness and the unity of spirit. At my present stage of the journey it appears I need all my mind, heart and will. When courage falters, my humanness sometimes reaches for that other kind of spirit referred to as Jameson but more often as simply “Irish”!
Johnny Brierley