Contemporary society worships at the altar of functionalism. Concepts such as process, method, model, and project have come to infiltrate our language and determine how we describe our relationship to the world. The recovery of soul means a rediscovery of Otherness; this would awaken again the sense of mystery, possibility, and compassion. The deadening force of function would diminish, and a new vitality would infuse our activities. Stated philosophically, being could find expression in doing. The recovery of the sense of Otherness is the deepest mystical task of modern society. Celtic spirituality has an immense contribution to make in fostering this sense of Otherness. In its metaphysic of friendship, there is a profound acknowledgment of the Otherness of nature, the self, and the divine. However, our modern conversation with Celtic tradition must be critical and reflective; otherwise Celtic spirituality is in danger of becoming another fashionable and exotic spiritual program in our sensate, driven culture.
In the world of negative work, where you are controlled, where power prevails and you are a mere functionary, everything is determined by an ethic of competition. In the world of creative work, where your gift is engaged, there is no competition. The soul transfigures the need for competition. In contrast, the world of quantity is always haunted by competition: If I have less, you have more. But in the world of souclass="underline" The more you have, the more everyone has. The rhythm of soul is the surprise of endless enrichment.
THE TRAP OF FALSE BELONGING
This re-imaging of the workplace would help fulfill one of the crucial needs that every individual has: the need to belong. Everyone loves to belong. We want to belong to a group, to a family, and particularly to the place in which we work. Here is the point at which an immense creativity could be released in the workplace. Imagine how lovely it would be if you could be yourself at work and express your true nature, giftedness, and imagination. There need be no separation between your home, your private life, and your actual world of work. One could flow into the other in a creative and mutually enriching way. Instead, too many people belong to the system because they are forced to and controlled.
People are often exceptionally careless in their style of belonging. Too many people belong too naively to the systems in which they are involved. When they are suddenly laid off, or the system collapses, or someone else is promoted, they feel broken, wounded, and demeaned. In nearly every corporation or workplace, you will find many disappointed individuals. Initially, they brought the energy and innocence of their belonging to their work, but they were let down, disappointed, and treated as functionaries. Their energy was claimed and used, but their souls were never engaged.
The heart of the matter: You should never belong fully to something that is outside yourself. It is very important to find a balance in your belonging. You should never belong totally to any cause or system. People frequently need to belong to an external system because they are afraid to belong to their own lives. If your soul is awakened, then you realize that this is the house of your real belonging. Your longing is safe there. Belonging is related to longing. If you hyphenate belonging, it yields a lovely axiom for spiritual growth: Be-Your-Longing. Longing is a precious instinct in the soul. Where you belong should always be worthy of your dignity. You should belong first in your own interiority. If you belong there, and if you are in rhythm with yourself and connected to that deep, unique source within, then you will never be vulnerable when your outside belonging is qualified, relativized, or taken away. You will still be able to stand on your own ground, the ground of your soul, where you are not a tenant, where you are at home. Your interiority is the ground from which nobody can distance, exclude, or exile you. This is your treasure. As the New Testament says, where your treasure is, there is your heart also.
WORK AND IMAGINATION
One of the encouraging aspects of modern work, particularly in the corporate world, is the increasing recognition of the imagination as a vital and essential force. This is not because the corporate world loves the imagination. Corporate appreciation of the imagination has happened for other reasons, namely, the markets are now so volatile and the pace of change so rapid that the old patterns of work control are unproductive. There is a recognition dawning that to have a repetitive linear system controlling the work and the worker is no longer profitable. Consequently, the presence of the soul is now welcome in the workplace. The soul is welcome because it is the place where the imagination lives.
The imagination is the creative force in the individual. It always negotiates different thresholds and releases possibilities of recognition and creativity that the linear, controlling, external mind will never even glimpse. The imagination works on the threshold that runs between light and dark, visible and invisible, quest and question, possibility and fact. The imagination is the great friend of possibility. Where the imagination is awake and alive, fact never hardens or closes but remains open, inviting you to new thresholds of possibility and creativity.
When I was doing my postgraduate work in Germany, I had the good fortune to share a house in Berlin with a wonderful philosopher of science from India who has written some amazing books on the growth of scientific knowledge. Because this man had directed many postgraduate students, I asked him what advice he could give me as I began my research on Hegel. He said that most research tries to establish a conclusion or reach verification that no one can successfully criticize or undermine. Everyone attempts that; there is nothing new in it. I should take a different approach. He said that if I try to discover a few questions in this area that no one has thought of asking, then I will have discovered something truly original and important. This advice was an invitation to novelty, an inspiration to perceive a given situation in a completely new way.
Even though much effort is put into the workplace, the actual application of fresh imagination is rare. Usually a bland sameness is allowed to dominate work. Even the patterns of criticism from workers become predictable and entrenched. Often a new person coming in can bring a new art of questioning and thinking. Suddenly a dead situation coheres itself in a fresh and exciting way. Possibilities that had slept there, under the surface of the old bland similarity, now awaken. People become empowered and engaged; the whole project of that particular workplace comes alive with a new energy. The person who can approach the workplace not with linear analysis, which is so predictable and repetitive, but with imaginative possibility can re-imagine the workplace for its participants and open it up in an engaging and inspiring way. For this reason, the poet, or the artist of soul, has become such an important presence in the contemporary corporate world. An artist can bring a freshness that it severely lacks, opening doors and windows in places that up to then had had impenetrable walls. This approach to the workplace ensures that creativity and spontaneity become major energizing forces there.