CONFESSIONS OF A CORPORATE SHAMAN. Harrison Snow

even imagine. If the 170 billion observable galaxies are just a small fraction of our universe, where is the rest of it?

      These figures are in line with the mystical perspective of the kabbalah. It states that we only experience 1 percent of reality on the Earth dimension. The rest of reality, the 99 percent we don’t perceive, is in what is called the “Upper World.” Native Americans from the Sioux Nation use the expression “Wakan Tanka,” the Great Mystery, to refer to the vastness of creation that is more than mankind can hope to understand. Despite the immensity of all the unknown, according to the astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson, mankind does have a place. One possibility is that “We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself.”¹⁰ Our awareness and the awareness binding together the mysteries of the universe are of the same fabric.

       Everyday Mind

      Though the vastness of the zero point field is heady stuff, from day to day your conscious mind fills your head with a stream of mundane thoughts. Those thoughts are often observations, judgments, fears, and desires related to the future or the past. According to David Rock, a neuroscience expert, our everyday mind is so noisy it is difficult to hear ourselves think. When the ego is identified with the everyday mind, that constant stream of verbal thought gives it a sense of security. Quieting the mind is difficult because the ego wants to hold on to what it knows. I’ve noticed in my consulting work that the smarter and more educated a group is, the more susceptible they are to the trap of analysis paralysis. In that trap are verbal knots of convoluted logic and assertions that sound erudite but actually mean that nothing will be decided or acted on. One way out is to have the group engage for a few minutes in some physical or nonverbal activity. A quiet mind increases the capacity for holistic self-observation; noticing what is happening physically, emotionally, and spiritually. And self-observation by an individual or a group, according to Ray Bradbury, leads to change-inducing insights. Paradoxically, this kind of self-observation is possible when people are not overwhelmed by their own self-conscious and self-absorbed mental activity.

       Can an Organization Have a Soul?

      No one has proven objectively that you have a soul, so why ask such a question about a man-made construct like an organization? There is reason to ask. When a personal consciousness identifies with others, it helps form a collective consciousness. This collective does not have the traits of free will. It is more like an energetic field. This energetic field is nonphysical, yet somehow it contains information about the group, its culture and level of well-being, that can be accessed nonverbally. Think of the times you have walked into an office and sensed the mood of the people who worked there. That exchange of information can be two ways. For instance, after visiting an office where morale was either intensely low or festive your mood was affected accordingly. The emotions and mood of the group, even those unexpressed, were contagious.

      Sidestepping the issues of an afterlife, there are many secular ways to interpret the word “soul.” Bert Hellinger, who developed the constellation methodology for use with family systems, makes a distinction between a personal soul and the “greater soul.” We will discuss Hellinger’s contribution to this methodology in greater detail in chapter 5 (“Accessing Tacit Knowledge”). Till then, the soul, according to Hellinger, is not something we possess; “rather, it is something that connects us in a community with others, in ever greater circles . . . [linking] us with a shared wisdom and . . . the pursuit of a common goal.”¹¹ John Ortberg has a similar belief that “the soul is what integrates separate functions into a single, organic whole . . . ”¹² While Ortberg is referring to individuals, change facilitators know that groups have an inner drive toward integration. The role of the facilitator is clear: resolve the misperceptions that block the integration of the discordant parts into a harmonious whole. At the end of a successful meeting or off-site event, the positive energy that embraces the group is a reflection of this innate drive toward integration.