The soul of prosperity

As more people turn towards the idea of making money through meaningful work and spending it ethically, will this become a new measure of our spirituality, asks Anna Ross

The unprecedented rise in our prosperity over the past decade has been a mixed blessing. The downside includes soaring property prices, conspicuous consumption, rip-off retailers and spiralling personal debt.

A recent poll by Irishhealth.com found that financial difficulties and the pressures of work are inducing symptoms of stress in the majority (56 per cent) of Irish people. And a survey by Mintel revealed that most of us do not feel our lifestyle has improved in recent years, primarily because of escalating living costs.

Beneath all the frenetic economic activity, whispered questions may be heard: is this all worth it? Is this all there is?

Commentators, including Ombudsman Emily O'Reilly, have called for a return to traditional values and religion, but there is another option gaining momentum. Rather than harking back to a traditional worldview that denounced money, this movement asserts that what is needed now is to bring together two spheres of activity - financial and spiritual.

Global activist and fund-raiser Lynne Twist, author of The Soul of Money, and recently hailed alongside Mary Robinson as a renowned world community leader at the International Museum of Women in San Francisco, says, "There are hundreds of spiritual practices, many paths that lead people to wholeness and peace of mind. Exploring your relationship with money can lead you to that place. It may sound strange to say that money can do this but I have travelled this path myself and I've seen many others do the same."

In this worldview, your money comes to you from work you find satisfying and meaningful and goes from you in ways that make what you consider to be the best possible contribution to the world. Your bank statement becomes a record of what you most deeply value.

While that may sound very fuzzy and aspirational, there are signs that business is starting to take notice. "Spiritual capital" and "Spiritual intelligence" are becoming buzzwords in corporate circles.

Dublin-based business consultant Kay Scorah says: "A survey some time back by Amárach Consulting showed that the best and brightest people want work that offers them meaning as well as money. If you really want to motivate people and get them to give their best, you need to tap into what's meaningful and valuable to them. And when you do they are considerably more productive."

Bringing our full intelligence to bear on our financial and business endeavours, says Scorah, means applying not just our intellectual and emotional but also our spiritual capacities.

"I am always struck by how successful people see the use of 'inner-work' activities like meditation or yoga. They see how it gives them access to a greater intelligence. Access to the infinite is access to an infinite number of ideas, and ideas are what make business successful these days." The attributes that are most highly rewarded in the new information economy are qualities such as creativity, innovation and intuition, all of which are best developed by a spiritual approach.

This is esoteric stuff, far removed from the average daily grind, but its resonance with business is growing, in much the same way as EQ (Emotional Quotient or emotional intelligence), revolutionised management training in the 1990s. Microsoft, Citibank, Shell, General Motors, Nokia, Unilever, Coca-Cola, Hewlett Packard, Merck Pharmaceuticals, Starbucks and the Co-operative Bank are just some of the large, worldwide corporations that are incorporating the principles of SQ (Spiritual Quotient or spiritual capital) into their working practices. And the evidence is that it does indeed have a beneficial effect on business and profits.

Mindful that many business people come out in a rash when they hear the word "spiritual", other management consultants prefer to use terms such as "awakened intelligence", "meta-management" or "transcendent work practices". But it is the same principles that they work with: self-awareness, a sense of vocation or service, compassion, the positive use of adversity and the urge to ask fundamental questions.

Scorah says: "More and more in business I hear managers saying: 'We want people who ask the big questions'." These questions are not just for business but for everybody.

The 10 per cent of the world's population that is most affluent is consuming more than three-quarters of the planet's resources. Unnecessary consumption is now the greatest threat to human survival. The cause of this crisis is not business ethics, or corrupt politics but a value system that aims to fend off human insecurity by acquiring and accumulating, that claims the more things we have, the happier we will be. This is simply not true and more and more people are coming to realise that and to live from that realisation.

If spiritual capital were really to catch on as a concept, it would have a major effect on global economics. Factors such as environmental depletion or social breakdown would be factored into corporate costings and national GDPs, changing the picture of the economic "successes" or "failures".

For example, according to the World Resources Institute, a gallon of petrol would cost 400 per cent more if companies had to factor in the costs of pollution, waste disposal, health impact and the defence of foreign oil fields.

At an individual level, the more connected we are to a deeper sense of money values, the less likely we are to succumb to the temptations of the consumer society. For if you don't have a plan for your money, the advertisers, credit card companies, corporations and finance houses most certainly do. If you're not living to your plan, you're living to theirs.

Applying spiritual principles to money is an ongoing endeavour. "Faith in my own spiritual judgment is the guiding principle by which I live," says Scorah. "But sometimes I slip. If I'm rushing or if I'm just applying my intellectual intelligence or even my emotional intelligence - saying to myself 'I really like these people', for example - and I don't take the time to listen to my deepest inner voice, that is when things go wrong."

Anna Ross is co-author of The Woman's Way to Wealth, and co-founder of WoW (www.wealthofwomen.com). She leads a workshop in St Teresa's Pastoral Centre, Clarendon Street, Dublin, this Saturday entitled Moneyspirit. E-mail info@wealthofwomen.com or phone 086-1675272