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Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Sometimes it happens. Things break. And, because they are physical, they just cannot be put back together again -- at least not in the form that they were before they broke. I remember the day -- almost two years ago now -- when I first logged on to the Internet to read some of the hearings of the U.S. House of Representative's Subcommittee on Technology on what had long been known to technology people as the "Year 2000 Computer Date Change Crisis" and which has publicly come to be known as "Y2K" or "The Millennium Bug."1 In the March 20, 1997, testimony of Bruce Hall, Research Director for the Gartner Group, what most caught my attention was a section entitled "Time Horizon to Failure (THF)." Time horizon to failure! I'd been interested in knowing more about this Year 2000 thing because I was working in an Information Systems organization that was laboring to get the company's management to pay attention. Now this testimony really had my attention! It was followed by a section entitled, "Plan Not To Finish": The year 2000 project can be likened to an old house that needs remodeling. We know it's a big job and we're trying to figure out how much it will cost and how long it will take. But we are trying to predict the cost of the job while standing on the curb across the street…. And, further, Hall says, For the year 2000, our enemy is time, not cost. At Gartner Group, our recommendation is to immediately get a crew together and immediately begin work on the first, most important, room in the house. Given that we likely will not finish, and that certain rooms must be done, we must choose carefully….2 I was stunned. Why hadn't I heard about this before? I told a couple of colleagues who independently responded with almost the same words: "No! It just can't be true." So I sent them copies of the testimony. We talked more. One said, "If you think this is really true, what are you going to do?" My instant response was, "Get myself and Michael (my son who was then six) as spiritually ready as I can." But what does that mean, to get spiritually ready? And what about our physical survival? And how come we hadn't heard about this before? I spoke with a client in another Fortune 500 company who, though now working in another function, had spent many years in Information Systems. Did she know about it? "Oh, yes, you bet I do," she said. For how long? "At least a decade now. In fact, I have a leased car and the lease expires just before the turn of the century," she told me, "and I've begun rallying my family together so that we will all be in the same place for Christmas 1999 and New Years 2000." Is your company year-2000 compliant? "Heck, no. Management just has not been willing to put in the dollars and we've -- so far -- been unsuccessful in helping them understand the ramifications of not becoming compliant in time." That, of course, was more than a year ago. You can bet they're scrambling now. Fascinating! And scary. I continued learning. And I began thinking: What about plans for Michael and me? After all, as a mother I have a responsibility to think this through -- even if nothing dire happens. What about our safety? I learned that there are entire communities of people being formed in rural areas. Should we move out of the city? Should I mobilize my neighborhood? Should I begin stockpiling? That was then. Now, just this week I came across a book entitled, The Millennium Bug: How to Survive the Coming Chaos, by Michael S. Hyatt. In it he offers checklists of what to stockpile, from water to matches; suggestions for organizing communities, where to move, proficiencies we need -- like setting bones, handling wounds. He raises the issue of self-defense and how each of us must look into ourselves as to whether or not we are willing to carry and use weapons to protect ourselves.3 This is serious stuff! And it is becoming more and more clear that while, at one level, Y2K is a technical problem, its impact is already being felt -- and will be felt more and more over the coming months -- in the social fabric of our day-to-day lives. We do not need to wait until December 31, 1999. Hyatt's individual survival approach is reinforced for me by a conversation I had with a book agent a couple of months ago. As we discussed a possible book project, she said, "Just always keep in mind that agents and publishers are very aware of what they see as the readers' mantra: 'Me, me, me. What's in it for me?'" What if everyone did as Hyatt suggests? Just consider the one recommendation that we move to small towns and rural communities: if we all moved they would no longer be small towns and rural communities. Another approach to Y2K beyond "me, me, me" is offered by writers such as Lisa Marshall and Lloyd Raines in their recent article "The Collaboration Challenge of the Millennium Bug,"4 and by John Petersen, Meg Wheatley, and Myron Kellner-Rogers in their recent article, "The Year 2000: Social Chaos or Social Transformation?" and by Wheatley and Kellner-Rogers in "Turning to One Another: The Possibilities of Y2K."5 Their messages are that we must get together, collaborate, do scenario and contingency planning -- quickly. Marshall and Raines liken the situation we face to a person who knows she or he is going to have a stroke from which some capacity will be lost. The only unknown is how severe it will be. They suggest that, through planning and preparation, we can mitigate some of the effects of the Y2K "stroke." Wheatley and Kellner-Rogers, in "Turning…," suggest that "How we respond to the Year 2000 in our communities and organizations offers us the possibility of real transformation in our relationship and capacities." All the while, these leading thinkers also remind us that we don't know what's going to actually happen: the unknown consequence with a known deadline. The event will occur -- whatever it is. What is even more critical than the event itself is our response or reaction to it between now and then. Rightly so, all of this has a tone of urgency about it. Yet, as I pick up the timbre of urgency, I keep remembering a comment Willis Harman once made to me when we were talking about working in the arena of global sustainability: "Never succumb to urgency." I know from times of urgency within myself that they are often sourced in fear. With fear comes contraction. And with contraction comes retreat -- into what I know works from the past, into myself and known safe places, habits, people. So, yes, Y2K is a technical problem and it is critical that we continue to address it at that level. And, yes, it is a social and political problem and it is also essential that we address it -- alone and together -- at that level as well. Critical and essential. But insufficient. As I look into myself and consider how I can prepare myself and Michael, I know I have none of the needed technical abilities. I cannot address the problem at that level. I have the capacity to address our physical survival but am not interested in isolating from the rest of society -- at least not as of this writing. So I lack will and motivation to make physical preparations my primary action. I have a capacity to scenario plan and collaborate but, even though I am often called too idealistic, I have great difficulty envisioning us pulling off "the collaboration challenge" except in pockets here and there. And I wonder to myself, why is that? What conditions would help me to believe that collaboration could be a viable alternative to "me, me, me"? Collaboration is an effect, a derivative of other conditions. It is not sustainable if it is forced. The question that arises for me is, in an individualistic culture like ours, what makes people want to collaborate? On one hand, in the throes of war or disaster, people collaborate heroically, whether they are "skilled" or not. And it works well -- during the immediacy of the situation. How well it works seems to correlate with the gravity of the perceived need. Will we collectively see the potential ramifications of Y2K soon enough to reach that point? There is another and almost entirely opposite condition under which people collaborate. We seem to enjoy collaborating when the experience engages our passion, our reason for being, our calling, our life purpose. And here is where the hope lies for me. As Frederic Beuchner said, "We are called to the place where our deep joy meets the world's deep hunger." When I consider working on the issues of need relative to Y2K from the perspective of having an opportunity to experience my deep joy by meeting some aspect of the world's deep hunger, I am energized. The nature of the urgency is transformed from "We have got to do this or else…" to "Here's how I can make use of my gifts; here's how I can express my legacy to the world for the gift of my life." And, hey, maybe Y2K is just smoke -- which is not likely, of course -- but so what? I will have had the pleasure of engaging in life and my life's work with a new intensity. So how do we get there? "Work in the invisible world at least as hard as you do in the visible world." -- Rumi6 In addition to addressing Y2K at the technical, social, and political levels -- the visible world -- we must also consciously and explicitly bring in the spiritual level -- the invisible world. After all, even though we claim that the cause of Y2K is technical, I think it is not. Y2K and other global issues -- both surfaced and yet to be surfaced -- no matter their magnitude, are still merely symptoms of much deeper, more profound, and more pervasive cause: errors in our thinking. Consider the mystery and miracles of the invisible world. I am currently rereading Deepak Chopra's book Quantum Healing, in which he gives example after example of situations in which people with life-threatening or life-altering illnesses have miraculously recovered. While he reminds us that it doesn't happen often and that we don't understand -- at the physical level, at least -- how it happens, it still happens. The recoveries have something to do with the connection between the physical body and the nonphysical mind coming into concert with each other.7 To extend the metaphor, we might collectively be seen as a body. Y2K is a potentially life-threatening or life-altering illness. Can we think or plan our way out of it? I doubt it. Does that mean that we should not plan and prepare? Of course not. We must plan and prepare. Even as individuals who are dying must plan and prepare for that eventuality, so must societies. But, even more, we must literally make the best of it. What does it mean "to make the best of it"? From my perspective it means to take the fullest advantage of this opportunity as we are able--to engage, alone and together, even as we act-in ways that bring forth more opportunity for the miracle, more hope, more generative creativity, more of our potential. How much we are able to do that depends on how willing we are to deliberately engage in our lives by working as least as hard in the invisible world as we do in the visible world. An intentional, conscious process or set of practices might assist. And it would be helpful if that process or set of practices was something we already know how to "do it in our sleep." What follows is one possibility. Inward, Upward, Outward, Forward In this process or set of practices -- which is a circle -- the last stage, before we spiral back to the first, is action in the world. Each stage of the four has components that are both physical and nonphysical, both practical and idealistic, both personal and impersonal, and both visible and invisible. Yet in the first two stages -- inward and upward -- the work occurs most deeply in the invisible world. The work of the other two stages-- outward and forward -- occurs most often as work in the visible world, although they also have tremendous power and impact when tended to as work in the invisible world. While this set of practices may appear linear, it is actually simultaneousand cyclical; it is an iterative spiral that echoes a nautilus shell or a galaxy. Thus, it is natural and in harmony with universal patterns. In essence, we do know how to do it in our sleep. Going Inward When we deliberately go inward we embark on a journey of becoming more self-aware -- which is very different from being self-absorbed. Increasing our self-awareness allows us to better witness our lives as we live them. As just one example, we go inward as work in the visible world when we enlist others to help us learn about ourselves. And we go inward in the visible world when we support and teach others as they traverse their inward journeys. We go inward in the invisible world when we explore and challenge our own thinking, our assumptions and judgments about truth and about what's possible. Thoughts are of the invisible world. What we do with and about them shows up in the visible world -- as results. Thoughts are cause. Actions are the effects of thoughts. It is wise to become very conscious and aware of what we think. At each moment we have a choice -- positive or negative, greedy or generous, hopeful or fearful. Thus, when we "do our work" inwardly -- and, by they way, I suspect it's never finished -- we are willing and able to take more responsibility for what we do and how we do it, for our actions and their impact. As our self-awareness grows, we gain acute familiarity with our core values. Thus, we can grow into the values so that they become more and more our ways of being; more than things we espouse, they show up in our behaviors. We come to more consistently and persistently live by them -- and live them. Some of the results we get by going inward are greater self-respect, greater self-love, and greater knowledge of our gifts and how they might be useful to the world. We come to touch the places of purpose and passion, meaning and calling. We claim the unique fingerprint of our personal power, our creativity, our deep joy. In what may seem a paradox, we develop a kind of flexible certainty. The inner core, the well of wisdom within our being, develops a certainty, but simultaneously, because of that certainty, we are able to be more flexible, more surrendered than we might have ever previously envisioned possible. This greater self-awareness and inner certainty allows and perhaps compels us toward… Going Upward Going upward means making the bigger connections, going right past personal relationships and locally known situations. Going upward is the complement to going inward. Going inward is the most personal, the most intimate, work we can do. Going upward is the most impersonal, the most detached, work we can do. As work in the visible world, when we go upward we make profound connections to that which is greater than ourselves. It includes forging a relationship with the entire global system -- both in physical space and throughout history and into the future. We come to terms with the fact that we are each tiny leaves floating on a river -- sometimes lazy, sometimes raging -- over which we have little or no control. And yet we also come to know that in our own unique ways, we have a magnificent and powerful role to play -- even if only to reflect sunlight up into the eye of some wanderer along the shore. As Helen Keller said, "I am only one; but I am still one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something. I will not refuse to do the something I can do." Yet, even with world travelers, sometimes this idea of comprehending and holding the entire global system is just overwhelming. The other day I wastalking with a colleague who has literally traveled around the world. When I began speaking about my thoughts on how we can respond to Y2K, he said, "Whew! How can you stay with a subject like that? I thought I was exhausted before you called. Now I'm really exhausted." How can we forge a meaningful connection with the whole planet without becoming overwhelmed? Through upward work in the invisible world. Through the upward work of the invisible world we come to see how mistaken we have been about our physical identities. Oh, yes, our physical identities are real in the physical world. But, as with anything in the physical world -- including technical, social, and political systems -- our physical identities are temporary. Our bodies are temporary. Like Humpty Dumpty, they too fall and break. But our true identities, the souls that we are, are eternal. Once we discover -- or remember -- our relationship with God we can become deeply involved in the awesome upward work of the invisible world. We come to know that we are not our names or genders or careers. We come to know that we are not our bodies. Our fears are all founded on our fear of death. Fear of death is the result of forgetting our eternal nature. This consciousness, this mind, this soul is different from this body, just as I am different from my car. I drive it, use it for purposes that serve my needs-but I am not my car. The relationship of soul to body is the same. My body is a useful vehicle, but I am not my body. When we do not develop into the upward work of the invisible world, we have no alternatives except to experience conditions such as fear, helplessness, exhaustion. So no wonder we choose avoidance and denial. How else can we cope? It is through a deliberate spiritual endeavor, a committed spiritual path -- and we each are called to our own -- that we develop a personal relationship with God. The important thing is to attend to the call. Just as a radio station broadcasts even if no one is tuned to it, God broadcasts ceaselessly. The world of the invisible upward journey requires us to tune in and to listen deeply, subtly, and persistently. We develop this unique and discerning ability to listen through disciplines like prayer and meditation. When we listen at that level for a while we daily come to know more about the deep wisdom and infinite power for good that we have within ourselves. Together, the visible and invisible work inwardly and upwardly prepare us for… Going Outward In going outward we develop relationships with others. And with an ongoing personal commitment to the inward and upward stages, we can develop effective relationships with others. Since we are always in relationship to each other, "effective" is a key word. In contrast to what we often think and demonstrate, effective relationships are characterized by detachment rather than dependence. With such relationships we can fearlessly put out our best without attachment to what others think about it -- or us -- and without attachment to what comes back. We come to know more and more about how to stay simultaneously stable and flexible, calm and passionate, powerful and humble, able to manifest and to surrender, able to give and to receive. It is at this point that we can talk about collaborating. With some level of inner stability and personal power plus the security of knowing who we really are and what is really at stake, we can authentically connect with the others around us and work together collaboratively. Competition may still be part of the equation, but now, rather than competing with each other in attempts to satisfy our inner insecurities and to justify our existence in our fear of death, now we can collaborate with each other and compete with the circumstance we face, like the immovable deadline of Y2K. Conscious growth inward, upward, and outward prepares us for infulentially… Going Forward To go forward is to ask the question, "How can I serve?" It is to go in the direction where service lives, where, no matter what our work may be, we do it with generosity, grace, humility, and compassion, with respect for all living beings, for the earth, and for the future. And where, no matter what our work, we feel blessed and honored to be able to do it. As we float on the river, we feel the sun using us as one more means of reflecting light into the world -- for however brief a time. The leaf might have thought its life was over when it fell from the tree, but, instead, it was the beginning of a new chapter. The forward work in the visible world is what we commonly call "action" and "results." This is, for example, scenario and contingency planning, disaster and emergency preparedness. And now, as we plan at some specific and chewable level of the global system, because we hold the knowing that we are inextricably connected to the whole, we can face into questions such as: What is the next level up that we need to attend to, and how? Because we comprehend that if we don't, it may intrude upon us and our plans in ways that don't serve. For example, if I prepare for my own survival as Hyatt suggests, what will I do when my neighbors come to me in their need, because they haven't prepared as well as I have? Or if our entire community prepares, how will we respond to the surrounding communities? What about extended family members from out of town who find their way to our community? And so on. If the entire United States is able to build a viable plan, what about the billions of other souls on the planet -- or more immediately, at our national boundaries? To what lengths will we go to "protect" what we have? At what cost to our values, dignity, self-respect? What other alternatives do we have? This is the forward work of the visible world. The work of going forward in the invisible world might be called "service through the mind." And, paradoxically, it may be the most powerful service, the most powerful "action" we can take. Simplistic as it may sound, we do create our reality through what we think. Think negatively and a resulting tendency is toward behaviors that protect, contract. Think positively and a resulting tendency is toward behaviors that create, expand. It is not simplistic. Again, I go to Chopra's work when people who were diagnosed as having terminal illnesses somehow, through changing their thinking, healed themselves. I think of Dossey's work on the power of prayer. Our thoughts are vibrations. They affect everything. At a practical level, forward work in the invisible world might be devoting some time each day to sending love, light, power, positive thoughts to all corners of the world. We never know, it just might have some impact -- even if only on those of us who do it. Periodically on the Internet I receive a message asking people all over the world to gather their energies together for "service through the mind" through prayer and meditation and silence. This is collaboration at the invisible level. Here I will elaborate on a few statements I made earlier. First, while this set of practices of going inward, upward, outward, and forward may appear linear, it is actually simultaneous and cyclical. When we engage all four stages, we always live in the presence of all four. Second, by engaging all four stages simultaneously, we deepen our relationship to each one. For example, action in the world -- the outward journey -- whether visible or invisible, will always send us back to the inward journey for evaluation. How effective was what I did? Do I like the choices I'm making? How's my level of calm, stability, generosity, creativity, and so on? We deepen our relationship to their interconnections among the four stages. For example, when I act in the world, I more effectively witness myself, consider the bigger picture, and attend to my relationships with others. Third, going inward, upward, outward, and forward is a natural process -- an iterative spiral that echoes a nautilus shell or a galaxy. Thus, through engaging in it we come more and more into harmony with universal patterns. Anxiety and fear disappear. I mean it. They literally disappear. And fourth, this process does not necessarily require spending a lot of time learning new skills. It is the journey we are all already on -- although we may have detoured unnecessarily for a time or forgotten. In essence, we know how to do it in our sleep, and through engaging in it deliberately we are merely bringing it into our awakened lives. The value of this set of practices is that it brings us hope and possibility for ensuring that we are able not only to cope with what comes our way, but also to be able to best serve ourselves and others we encounter -- no matter how easy or how difficult the times. It is a process of developing inner balance for outer action. It is based on the observation that effective collaborative processes require people to have some level of self-respect, inner calm and stability, and maturity. In other words, I'm saying that before we can develop and maintain effective relationships with all kinds of people, and before -- or at least as -- we focus on acting "out there," we have work to do "in here." And in addition to asking the question Marv Weisbord asks, "What's worth sustaining?" we now have the ability to also ask, "What sustains?" When we flip the question, we additionally find out what will nourish and replenish us as we expend whatever energy and resources are necessary in order to sustain that which we deem worthy of maintaining. "Sustaining" and "maintaining" are key words that come forth when we work in the visible world of global sustainability -- of which Y2K certainly scores a hit as one of the issues. Rather than a question of sustainability, however, I would characterize "What's worth sustaining?" as a question of one half of sustainability. In general, global sustainability has been focused primarily on saving or repairing what we currently have. We could call that "global husbandry." Husbandry means care of the home: cultivation and conservation. At this pivotal time in our history, we also must assist in bringing forth that which wants to be born. We could call it "global midwifery." Midwifery means to assist in birthing; to bring forth or bring about. Global midwifery is the aspect of global sustainability that attends to -- but does not necessarily manipulate -- natural life processes such as allowing death and assisting birth and growth. Global midwifery applies natural life processes to all systems from the individual body to the planetary life support system and all levels in between from cultures to organizations from technologies to families. There is a growing recognition that a global transformation is in progress. We happen to be the ones who are in the midst of it, have the awareness of it, and have willingly chosen to stay conscious of our awareness. Many among us have already begun midwifing and birthing even as we husband as well. As with biological birth, labor can be painful and frightening, filled with contractions, pain, and the unknown. Yet, simultaneously, it is filled with beauty and miracle, wonder and hope. In what seems like paradox, global crises -- Y2K, nuclear testing in India and Pakistan, more and more faults appearing in the global economic system, environmental deterioration, and all the others -- provide gateways for us to enter more deeply into our most personal, essential, spiritual selves, gateways into the beautiful garden of the inward, upward, outward, forward journey. An important reason that I choose to associate with the World Business Academy is because of the attention its vision pays to the inward and upward stages of the journey -- and the relationship between them. The WBA sees the relationship between individual consciousness and spirituality on one hand and global sustainability on the other. The organization has chosen to focus not on tasks out in the world but rather on our collective learning. An operating principle of the WBA is that if we focus on our learning inward and upward -- from the individual level of, What are my fundamental assumptions and how do they serve me? or, What is my responsibility to the greater whole? to the global level of, What is global sustainability? and What is the role of business in the world today? -- we will return to our places of work refreshed and invigorated. Thus, we will be motivated and energized to do some things differently at the outward and forward stages -- things that will bring changes into the world. Said in another way, the assumption is that if we come together in safe settings to look deeply into ourselves and into global issues, we will return to a powerful medium -- business -- which connects the individual to the planetary system and which serves as a conduit between them. There's no telling what wonderful creative new births might occur as a result. But we know they will occur. As most of you who read this probably know, the Chinese character for "crisis" means both danger and opportunity. One state engenders fear while the other generates hope and possibility. Where we each focus our energy is a choice. Through always holding dear all aspects of our lives' journeys -- inward, upward, outward, and forward -- and through doing so by working at least as hard in the invisible world as we do in the visible world, we have an opportunity to "put the pieces back together again." Perhaps they will come together to serve all of us and all of life in beautiful ways beyond the best we can presently imagine. I leave you with another quote from Rumi: You and I have spoken all these words, but for the way we have to go, words are no preparation. There is no getting ready other than grace.
Barbara Shipka's twenty-year organization consulting practice has focused primarily on supporting people in corporations to consider and leverage meaning and right relationship while making a profit. She is the author of Leadership in a Challenging World: A Sacred Journey (Butterworth-Heinemann, 1997). Barbara is also a Fellow of the World Business Academy. She is presently convening Global Midwifery Gatherings that focus on assisting the birth of the new during global transformation. Barbara can be reached at P.O. Box 50005, Minneapolis, MN 55405. Email: bshipka@mm.com. Website: www.willowheart.com. |