“And what do you benefit if you gain the whole world but are yourself lost or destroyed?” Luke 9:25 NLT
This Guide to being Spiritually Connected in the Business World was adapted from the human resources book,Wingtips with Spurs
Years ago I discovered that our struggles in management must by guided something bigger than ourselves - I call it Spiritually. How I made this personal discovery would require another guide. Suffice to say at this point, it is a firm belief of mine. To separate your spiritual life from your professional life will certainly weaken and perhaps destroy both. While this guide is certainly not a religious tome, an atheist or agnostic might be upset by this occasional theme. If you fall into these categories, it is my sincere hope that you will read on anyway. Now would be a good time to make the point that I have no qualms with Jews, Muslims, Buddhists or those who practice the Hindu religion. In fact, I encourage all spirituality anywhere I find it. I do not ascribe to the “I’m right, you’re wrong” school of thought. Most people practice the religious beliefs of their parents or geographical region. Had I been born and raised in Syria, I would be a Muslim. If I started out in Tibet, I would be a Buddhist. However, I did not; I was born and raised by Christian parents in a region of the world where the majority is Protestant. No mystery here. It is a simple matter of the draw. All of the religious conflicts throughout history and even in the modern day have been about whose religion was right. Today’s so-called War on Terror is not about terrorism but rather a religious war being fought between Islam and Christianity with the Jews thrown in the mix. I hope that someday everyone will mature and stop the ‘my God is bigger than your God’ playground scene. It will not happen in our lifetime or our children’s or grandchildren’s but I can dream. Read Religious Perspectives on War: Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Attitudes Toward Force (Perspectives Series) for more on this subject.
As a young American nation moved westward, white Christian Protestant established most of these settlements. Therefore, these values and beliefs are engrained in the rural, western lifestyle. As a result, ranches and farms are, more often than not, spiritually based. That doesn’t mean that farmers and ranchers are super devout people. Sometimes, they are loud, cussing, hard-drinking, fist-fighting, and ring-tailed tooters. However, in the calm of the day and the quiet of night, they believe in a higher power. They realize that everyone has a divine spark and, for the most part, live their lives accordingly. The ranch also tends to weed out people with weak personalities. Weak defined as traits that would make a person think that they could get by with harassing someone weaker than them. There is too much hard work and lean times. To survive the long haul takes deep resolve and maturity. They live by the western creed that a cowboy must never shoot first, hit a smaller man, or take unfair advantage. Inner strength and maturity are not ingredients in failure recipe. Bible in pocket, gun in hand;: The story of frontier religion is a great read on religion during this era.
Spirituality is the way you find maturity and inner strength in your life. Understand that spirituality and organized religion are only somewhat connected. Religion can play an important role in your spiritual health. However, one of the most spiritual men I ever knew (his name was Tolbert) never stepped foot inside a church. However, he lived and died in a way that would make most preachers hang their heads in shame.
To start with, you really need to know who you are. Not who you used to be or who you plan to become. Who are you right now? What are your values? How do you perceive yourself? How do others think of you? Are you happy with yourself, or do you wish every morning you were someone else? Until you can answer these questions and others like them, repairing your spiritual health will be difficult. Know Thyself Psychologically: A Way to Know Yourself
Once you know who you are, you need to realize that you connect to everything in the universe. This sounds a little mystical. Well, we’ll explore this deeper in another section. Suffice it to say at this point, no man is an island, and his thoughts, actions, and behaviors act on everyone around him. To maintain your spiritual health, you have to help others. Of course, to accomplish this, you can do it in big, showy ways. However, by far the best is to try to help everyone you contact in a small but meaningful way. That is, make a positive difference in your own way. It’s almost impossible to feel sorry for yourself when you’re helping a struggling employee learn a new task, assisting a neighbor repair his storm damage, or teaching a child how to deal with a bully. The Art of Helping Others: Being Around, Being There, Being Wise is a good book on this matter.
To maintain your spiritual health, you have to commit the time and effort, just as you would with any other important endeavor. Even people who recognize the supreme importance of spirituality still fail to set aside enough time in the day for its maintenance. As the world gets wackier and more out of balance, we should be devoting more time to our spiritual health, not less. These activities may include doing volunteer work, listening to inspirational music, or, better yet, make your own music, paint a picture (who cares if you haven’t been formally trained), spend time in the woods, set aside thinking time, attend religious services, or study (not just read) the New Testament, Torah, or Koran. Making Time for God: Daily Devotions for Children and Families to Share is a short and helpful study.
I can guarantee you that the one thing you must do is to communicate with God every day. Of course, God goes by many names, but for simplicity, I use the Judeo-Christian name. If you don’t connect to God and include Him in every aspect of your daily life, you’ll never achieve the spiritual health you so desperately need. Daily Power And Prayer Devotional
We perform prayer in many ways. Whatever works for you is great. As for me, I don’t pray for material things. I don’t ask for money or riches. I don’t even ask for good physical health or that new tractor at the dealership. I believe the universe knows what I need and doesn’t put too much weight on what I want. I do ask for wisdom and understanding. Read The Prayer of Solomon: Enduring Wisdom From the World's Wisest Man
For those readers who are atheist or agnostic, I would ask you to turn to science for guidance in your belief. That’s right; I said science. You may have turned your back to a higher power based on the history of organized religion or the revelations of science. One thing you should bear in mind is that religion has had a bloody history, but religion is a fabricated, human-driven device. Just like manufactured governments, brutal power can and will run unchecked at times. Don’t blame God for the wickedness that men perpetuate. Maybe you don’t see how God can be so unjust as to allow all of the suffering in the world, and therefore you denounce God. For my part, I don’t see how God and justice have really anything to do with most of the suffering I see. In fact, I challenge the statement that the suffering is great. Even in depressed parts of the world, people can be happy and live full lives. I know this isn’t popular to say, but I’m not asking for votes. Concerning natural disasters, I would challenge this phrase also. It’s only a disaster because humankind decided to get in the way. If I choose to live below a dam or levee, I shouldn’t curse God when my house washes away. If I live in a flood plain, I don’t see the rich deposit of earth after every flood; I only see where my house used to sit. When my Gulf Coast beach house blows away, I shouldn’t sign up for Atheist International. I should, instead, be taking an IQ test to see how much help I really need. We should not blame a deity when the natural order works. For a deeper look into the atheist views, you might want to read The God Delusion and God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything. Now many people will say that these books are to be avoided. I say we must know our enemies.
Back to science. If you find spiritual beliefs contrary to science, then spiritual beliefs are viewed as measly superstitions and fallacies. This popular view is simply wrong. Science and religion operate under vastly different parameters. In spite all of the majesty and awe that the scientific world inspires, science is not designed to answer the questions that religion asks. Nor should we use religion to fill in the ‘God of the gaps.’ Religion should embrace science as it improves our ability to explain how God put things together. Indeed, elites of organized religions hate the efforts to seek a scientific context for the appreciation of spiritual phenomena. They seek to control humanity with doctrine and dogma. Science in its intellectual, methodical, peer-reviewed processes can deepen our wonder and amazement at the power of God. Instead of warring factions, the two sides should encourage each other. I saw a newspaper headline recently that read, “Darwin vs. God, Round 2007: Kansas Declares Darwin Winner.” This is wrong on many levels. Splashy headlines are one thing; gross irresponsibility is another. I cannot stress it enough. God and science are not at odds. They never have been. Francis S. Collins, the scientist who lead the Human Genome Project, stated it best when he said, “Science is not threatened by God; it is enhanced.” The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief
If one wants to glimpse God at work, instead of listening to highly compensated evangelists, you could spend your time wisely studying quantum mechanics, the uncertainty principle, and second law of thermodynamics, the Big Bang theory, and “Spooky Action at a Distance.” As Niels Bohr stated, “"Those who are not shocked when they first come across quantum theory cannot possibly have understood it." You have read the Acts of the Apostles. Now read the works of Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Stephen Hawking, Kip S. Thorne, Paul Davies, and other influential contributors to science. For me, the window through which we gaze at God is not stained glass but a microscope. I can suggest, The Mind of God: The Scientific Basis for a Rational World, Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy (Commonwealth Fund Book Program) and A Brief History of Time.
If brute intellectual power is more your cup of tea, then I suggest you read the writings of C.S. Lewis and St. Augustine. I find it beyond reason to discuss stress and anxiety without emphasizing the spirit within each of us. Don’t be a dark cutter. Turn your worries over to your Creator, then go tell that self-important, know-it-all what you really think about him. I will let famed astronomer Robert Jastrow wrap up this concluding subject with his quotation regarding the relationship between science and spirit: “It seems as though science will never be able to raise the curtain on the mystery of creation. For the scientist who has lived by his faith and the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peaks; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” My recommendations are Mere Christianity and The Screwtape Letters: With Screwtape Proposes a Toast by Lewis and The Confessions of Saint Augustine (Image Book) by St. Augustine.
CONNECTED The subject matter of this section can and will be considered by some to be somewhat ‘flaky’ or silly. If you feel this way, please keep reading. I’ll take us back to Earth before the section ends. Two, I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say or how to say it. Of course, I knew the basic idea, but I struggled with the proper way to bring it forth. In the end, I finally decided that as managerial professionals, we need exposure to this subject. Knowledge of this realm makes all the difference between good and great.
I’ve always harbored a belief that everything on this earth has value. When I was a youngster, my parents, aunts, and uncles made fun of me because I threw a fit if anyone stepped on a bug. In the summertime, I rushed ahead of everyone so I could brush the bugs off the steps leading to whatever building we were headed. To this day, I have never shot a game animal. That said, when we were created, we were told we would, “. . .reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.” If I am going to have dominion over something, I prefer it to be on my plate at suppertime, preferably medium rare.
For me, putting animals to use, whether as food, transportation, clothing, and so on, is an honorable thing to do. On the other hand, killing animals for sport is not for me though I strongly support hunters’ rights to pursue their pleasure. While I don’t hunt, when my property or my safety is at stake, I turn into a killing machine. If a dog is chasing my calf, mathematically, you can subtract that dog from the world count. I found this book to be an interesting read on the subject of animal relationships. I cannot agree with all it but it is interesting nonetheless. In the Company of Animals: A Study of Human-Animal Relationships
An idea entered my mind back in my childhood, and I’ve never been able to shake it. That something is that we are all connected. The same scoop of stardust molded humankind and the stars and planets.
Had I possessed the math skills, I would have considered a career in physics, particularly theoretical physics. I easily knocked down top grades in history, science, and other subjects, but I had to take both shoes off to count to ten. I figured a bare-footed physicist wouldn’t go over too well so I went into an area where my strength resided. In physics, one of my favorite topics is quantum mechanics—the theory used to describe the processes that take place in the micro-world. Don’t think for a second that I fully grasp the theory. Indeed, one-third of my library covers the subject, and I still can’t grasp all of the concepts. Even so, I love to read and study this field in my unrequited quest for knowledge. In my simple non-technical language, and as quickly as possible, I will attempt to explain from my perspective how physics states that everything is connected.
In quantum physics, I may have found a partial (and I do mean partial) answer to the long-ago childhood feelings I had about everything being connected, that is, one and the same. As told in The Quantum World: Quantum Physics for Everyone, you cannot separate the observer and the observed. The whole is more fundamental than the parts. The universe interconnects in much subtler ways than the mind can grasp (at least my mind). We have found that atoms are just ‘ghosts’ and cannot be defined without an observer. Even then, our definition is only partial, as we cannot determine both position and velocity. In fact, an atom sometimes acts as a wave and sometimes as a particle, depending on the observer’s perspective.
The scientific discovery of non-locality (that it’s not possible to treat widely separated systems as independent) means that everything is connected. Like a two-person sack race at a picnic in which each person, Robert and Sally, has one leg tied in the same sack, so is every particle in the universe. Even time and space (spacetime) may be composed of the same essence as matter and energy. When I was young, I liked to eat animal crackers (okay—I still do). Some were shaped like elephants and some like giraffes. Each cracker was a very different animal. However, all the crackers were from the same cookie dough. At their essence, all the animals in the box were the same. In addition, all matter and events interact with each other in the past, present, and future along with space, and all is relative to the observer and operate under the law of non-locality. Our narrow perception of reality creates an illusion that everything is separate when in fact it’s not. Our puny minds are not capable of seeing that the ‘elephant cracker’ and the ‘giraffe cracker’ are the same. Our senses don’t ‘vibrate’ at that high of a level. It is akin to the blind man feeling the elephant’s leg and thinking he is touching a tree trunk. It was a good guess on his part, but only because he could not see the entire beast. The Non-Local Universe: The New Physics and Matters of the Mind is a great place to start this journey.
For me, the strangest thing to come out of quantum physics is the EPR paradox. EPR is short for Einstein, Podolsky, and Rosen. They developed the thought experiment in a 1935 paper. They were trying to prove that quantum mechanics is not a complete physical theory. The Conscious Mind and the Material World: On Psi, the Soul and the Self and Mad About Modern Physics: Braintwisters, Paradoxes, and Curiosities are easy reads. The main point is, the things they discovered invalidated their original purpose. Simply stated, measurement performed on one part of a quantum system can have an instantaneous effect on the result of a measurement performed on another part. Take, for example, a pair of entangled protons whose quantum spin cancels out. (I am not capable of explaining how in the world you get particles to entangle even though an experimental physicist does it all the time. Maybe they have Particle Entanglement for Dummies in your local book store). Now separate them (one inch or one light-year) and measure the spin of one proton. Because they were paired, measuring the spin of one proton determines the spin of the other. A measurement in one place can have an instantaneous effect on something that may be light years away. For an analogy, go back to the aforementioned picnic sack race. Now imagine that Robert is in New York and is mugged and shoved to the sidewalk. At the same time, Sally, living in Shreveport, will also fall to the pavement. This sounds impossible and in the realm of science fiction, but in the subatomic world, this is the reality. Scientists used to think that measurement would tell what the reality was before we measured. Once the proton is measured, the spin is determined. In other words, the proton pair are not separate entities until they are measured. The “spooky action at a distance” baffled even Einstein. However, numerous experiments repeatedly validate the ‘spooky action.’ Quantum Entanglement,Spooky Action At a Distance,Teleportation and You(Including a Brief but Helpful Section on Why,Perhaps,You Should Not Try This At Home)
We are part of everything in this universe, and that includes your coworkers, bosses, subordinates, and the man who fills up the vending machines. Entangled is our natural state, even before the event that pulled the trigger firing the Big Bang. We remain so to this day. Everything is made of atoms. We know that atoms are both wave and particle, and that once connected, they affect one another forever no matter where they are. Atoms are 99.999999999999% empty space. There is not much “stuff” there to stump your toe on. Atoms are mainly an empty vacuum with particles/waves at the center. A clump of matter doesn’t pass through other matter because it is levitating on an electrostatic field. As you hold this guide, you are not touching it. The electron cloud around the atoms of this guide supplies a charge, which pushes back at the world. Nothingness: The Science Of Empty Space offers more on this strange but fun world.
Scientifically, atoms are just parcels of compressed energy, patterned according to mathematical formulae. Change the formula, and you get a cat. Mix the formula a different way, and you get an oak tree. Previously, I used the analogy of animal crackers. Another way to understand is to view our Creator as the Master Chef. The Master Chef can take beef, spices, corn, lettuce, and tomatoes and make a wonderful porterhouse steak dinner with corn and a side salad. Alternatively, he can take the very same recipe ingredients (parcels of energy), grind the meat into hamburger meat, form the corn into masa, chop the lettuce and tomatoes, and create tasty tacos. There is a big difference between a steak dinner and a taco (different price, too); still, both are made from the exact same ingredients—just mixed together in a different way.
We are simply energy that has been converted into matter (E=mc²), and to pure energy we will someday return. In the equation E=mc², mass and energy are more than equivalent, they are just different forms of the same thing—like steam and ice. Matter and energy are two poles of the same unity. Shamans and Mystics call this Oneness Oneness: Great Principles Shared by All Religions, Revised and Expanded Edition
In my childhood belief that everything was connected, I certainly was not blazing a new trail. Science is just now catching up to what every creed and faith have known for generations. Here is a sampler. • Abraham in the Bible defined God as the Unity underlying the entire natural world. God of Abraham • Chief Seattle said, “Humankind has not woven the web of life. We are but one thread within it. Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves. All things are bound together. All things connect.” Chief Seattle: Man of Vision • The Oglala Sioux spiritual teacher, Ed McGaa,remarked “Interdependence is at the center of all things. The separation between nature and us is a mirage. The perception is the result of ignorance.” Mother Earth Spirituality: Native American Paths to Healing Ourselves and Our World (Religion and Spirituality) • The Buddhist scripture Avatamsaka Sutra says: “All is one.” Every being in the universe depends on every other thing and every other being for their existence.The Evolution of Energy and Meaning: Empirical Idealism: The Notebooks of G. E. Roseberry • The Tao of Physics looks at scientific concepts paired with consciousness in the practice of Buddhism and Hinduism. This guide contains sections on the Unity of All Things, Space-Time, Quark Symmetries, and Interpenetration. The author, physicist Fritjof Capra writes, “The universe is seen as a dynamic web of interrelated events. They all follow from the properties of the other parts and the overall consistency of their mutual interrelations determines the structure of the entire web.” The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism (25th Anniversary Edition) • Kabalistic teachings state, “think well of everyone.” Kabbalah refers to the term “cycle of reciprocity”: what is going out from your mind is always coming back to you.The Royal Road: A Manual of Kabalistic Meditations on the Tarot (Quest Book)
Physicists, neuroscientists, and religious thinkers have evolved to where a paradigm shift is happening. The universe we now know is connected, therefore unifying matter, energy, and consciousness. Science is a remarkable process and much needed in this world, but science, by its nature, never asks the question of why we are here. Science can only explain how we view. Ten Questions Science Can't Answer (Yet!): A Guide to Science's Greatest Mysteries
At this point, you might be asking, “What in the world does this have to do with people? What’s all this mumbo jumbo about?” I have said all of that to say this. This matter means a great deal to me.
All of this is about our chosen profession. In the introduction, I wrote that management is a sacred profession. I fully meant what I said. As the person who handles or should handle the bulk of the people issues, we need to remind ourselves to be extra-cautious with our emotions, thoughts, and words. Just as the rest of the universe, our emotions, thoughts, and words come from our Creator, and we should be forever mindful of cause and effect, action and reaction. As we deal with that most delicate of creations, the human mind, we need to recall that everything is connected. Our forays into others’ lives will cause an emotional response—good or bad. These emotions will lead to thoughts, which transfer into action. Everything we do is consequential. There is value—good or bad—to everything we utter.
My observation of a ‘connected’ world reminds me of events that transpired only a few years ago. The following is not a perfect example, but it comes close: I had job in HR management in a beautiful part of our state. Janita and I had a large home that sat on top of a small mountain with great views from the front and the back. The job was ideal in that I had great autonomy and very few problems. I also had great relationships with the people I worked with. Then—unexpectedly—the company asked me to transfer to a new town with an operation infamous for its union, legal, and managerial issues. Out of more than twenty locations, the company wanted me to relocate to this one particular site. I told them, “No” with a capital N. I appreciated the challenge, but I was so content with my life that I did not want to change. Besides, my two youngest children lived nearby, and I didn’t want to leave them (okay, class, can anyone spell over-protective?). Over the next few months, a new vice president assumed the helm, and she took up the mantra of asking me to move to the infamous operation. After a few more rounds of arm-wrestling, I reluctantly relented. What the company did not know was that my mother-in-law lived in the new town. As my wife and her mother had always lived several hours apart, visits were infrequent. With our transfer, we would be just down the street. Our moving to this new town would give Janita the chance to visit her mother more regularly. One day in the first year of our move, Janita was visiting her mother when my wife’s youngest brother happened to stop by. She had not seen her brother in more than four years. They had a short reunion of sorts with hugs and kisses. If we had not moved to the new town, she wouldn’t have had the opportunity to see her brother. Three weeks after the happy reunion, Janita’s brother developed a rapidly progressive disorder and unexpectedly passed away. Janita’s close presence to her mother during this horrible period made a world of difference for both my wife and mother-in-law. The following year, my mother-in-law became very sick and bedridden. Since we were in the same town, Janita was able to provide care and support for her mother when she needed it the most. Juanita was with her mother the night she passed away. Read the important book Final Gifts: Understanding the Special Awareness, Needs, and Communications of the Dying if you haven't already.
Janita spent the next several months going through her mother’s personal belongings. Some of the items were sad and brought tears of sorrow. Other items were happy reminders of past events. These brought tears of joy. She read old letters and cards and, in the meantime, was able to alleviate her grief through this process. A process that was only available because we had moved to the same town as her mother. Letting Go With Love: The Grieving Process-Revised Edition
Shortly after this, an opportunity for an internal promotion was presented to me. I applied and was interviewed. During the interview, I was asked if there were any problems with having to relocate and move from my current town. I stated that I had been placed in that town for a reason and that my business there was now complete. I shared some of the brief details with the interviewers. I could tell they felt the same way I did. I got the promotion and relocation. My time in that town was finished. It was time to move on. The cosmos works in mysterious ways. Sometimes, though, it works in a very straightforward way. The connections are apparent and rather obvious.
Of all the locations available for transfer, I had that assignment in that specific town. Moreover, I had to ask, why not someone else? As I recall, the company had many managers—twenty or more—who were available for transfer. The odds of a transfer alone are astronomical as the company did very little lateral transferring in the human resources arena. One top of that, I had only a one-in-twenty shot at transferring to that particular town. So I ask, why me? What was special about that specific town? In addition, what was so special about that particular time in history? I suppose a skeptic would chalk it up to coincidence. Very well then. However, a mere coincidence seems to be quite the stretch given the odds. I took some advice years ago that stated when you hear hoof beats, don’t expect to see zebras. For me, to identify this situation as a coincidence would be assigning it to the status of zebras. In other words, look for the obvious before seeking the unusual as an explanation. The reasoning mind sees that there was an obvious intelligent connection between this series of actions and events. Understanding and Calculating the Odds: Probability Theory Basics and Calculus Guide for Beginners, with Applications in Games of Chance and Everyday Life
Until some futurist physicist develops a mathematical equation that explains human behavior, all that we have at this point is a glimpse of our connections. We have great power. Raw power that is much greater than we can grasp. Like the blind man, we just cannot see the entire beast. Use this great power wisely. Michael L. Gooch, SPHR - Author of Wingtips with Spurs. This book contains an entire chapter on being Spiritually Connected.
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Bible in pocket, gun in hand;: The story of frontier religion by Ross Phares
Making Time for God: Daily Devotions for Children and Families to Share by Susan R. Garrett
The Prayer of Solomon: Enduring Wisdom From the World's Wisest Man by Rick Killian
God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything by Christopher Hitchens
Quantum Entanglement,Spooky Action At a Distance,Teleportation and You(Including a Brief but Helpful Section on Why,Perhaps,You Should Not Try This At Home) by Jim Ottaviani
Suspended In Language : Niels Bohr's Life, Discoveries, And The Century He Shaped by Jim Ottaviani
The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism (25th Anniversary Edition) by Fritjof Capra
The Royal Road: A Manual of Kabalistic Meditations on the Tarot (Quest Book) by Stephan A. Hoeller
