To briefly clarify right away here what this means, it’s not about being more passive in business, spending all our time meditating, “being really nice” all the time, and the like. It’s not about avoiding conflict with others (nor within ourselves) and justifying doing so “because we’re spiritual”. It’s also not about relegating responsibility and accountability to the nether worlds.

What it is about is being more present to ourselves and others, opening into coming from more integrity in our thinking and actions, engaging the inevitable conflicts inherent in business (as well as within ourselves) more authentically, openly, healthily, functionally, and maturely. Opening to that place within ourselves that is more innately secure in the world, less afraid of differences between us, less afraid of conflict (especially within ourselves, which invariably gets projected outward), more courageous about engaging the challenges of life and living particularly as it shows up in business environments, having a more integrated and balanced life with less stress yet with greater and enhanced productivity and professionalism, in a deeper well-being through it all.

The book is about making this more possible for us, which includes the macro considerations and means for such: better understanding human consciousness and how to “leverage” that understanding for the enhanced well-being of ourselves and others.

It helps us understand how we get in our own way, on several levels, how we can unduly complicate our developmental progress with notions like “ego is bad” and other developmentally dysfunctional beliefs aspects of our "self". The ideas advanced in the book go into much detail on the self-conflicting and self-inhibiting dynamic of wanting to 1) be a better person, but also how we 2) resist personal change at the same time.  Something’s got to give. This includes how we can easily see things in others that we don’t like, but not in ourselves, especially when it’s the very same thing. How we unwittingly confuse or fog ourselves so as to not see what’s really there operating in us, either as mental and emotional content or as the processes for that content. And how to do all this with greater love and genuine compassion. These are only a couple examples of how we keep ourselves from becoming more of the spiritual expressions that we’d like to be, that we sense we are in truth.

To reemphasize a very important point, know that the book is not simply about becoming a “nicer person”, avoiding conflict, shunning responsibilities, floating around in a daze, and other such self-absorbed notions of “being spiritual”. It’s not about making us more passive and withdrawn, making unhealthy compromises, and repressing our voicings of what we see, all very familiar to our postmodern mentality. It’s about more authentically engaging others in the workplace (which includes being more authentically engaged within our own self), facing what needs facing, enacting the notion that the best way out is through (not only quicker, but ultimately less painful), pointing out the elephant in the room, engaging conflict collaboratively instead of competitively or adversarially, and the like.

The book is oriented toward the "business community", or the business side of our lives.  It’s about learning to emerge transformational shifts of our paradigm—our presence, perspective, purpose, and performance—that will concurrently open us to greater capabilities, elevated advantages, and a deeper well-being. It’s about the rigors and demands of business synergistically and integrally co-emerging with the qualities and dynamics of our spiritual nature, as being not-two—not occurring as two separate streams of independent dynamics—but as one ultimately seamless expression of our human/spiritual essence…as a species that “conducts business”, participating and engaging in this “arena of exchange” we call business.

Levels of Initiative and Comfort with Change   48

Two Dimensions of Human Change   53

About The Author and This Book