I WAS SITTING in an outdoor café in Santa Barbara on a sunny afternoon, shamelessly eavesdropping on the conversation of two young women who were crafting a very clever scheme to sabotage the boss they both clearly despised. As a former turn-around consultant, now a teacher of spirit-based principles, it was a conversation that could not help but get my attention. The plot centered on a domineering boss who had apparently been dishing out a systematic program of humiliation and control, making scapegoats of these bright young workers. The boss, also a woman, was being characterized in this conversation alternately as battle-axe and a she-wolf who dined on her offspring.

I am not privy to what happened next, but I suspect that, whether or not the plot was successful, when the shooting was over, the overbearing boss certainly knew she had been in a fight. I doubt very much that the dynamics which led to this plot-over-lattes is unique to the organization. I suspect, instead, that it is rather typical. While I know very little about the company that employs these women, one thing is glaringly obvious to me: this is an organization that runs on fear.

I am a channel for a group of spirit guides who are, oddly enough, very interested in addressing subjects like these. Spotted Eagle and Grandfather White Elk have put forth some intriguing concepts that help explain why the way business is done seems to resist a transformation in consciousness. Spotted Eagle says the reason is simple: human beings are biologically predisposed to be afraid of the future, and in modern times, we have projected these fundamental survival fears onto money. He calls this predisposition the biological contract.

The biological contract, he says, reflects our stone-age roots, a species born of an ecological crisis, and designed to meet the demands of that crisis. He likes to remind us that many of the things that we once thought of as purely human, like brain size or tool making, are not what make us unique. What is unique to us - and shared by us all - is fear of the future. When the species was born into a world of threats to survival, Spotted Eagle tells us that the tribe played a crucial role in keeping individuals together in groups, and that it used very specific cultural tactics to accomplish this survival strategy. We are programmed, therefore, to garner affection in an effort to protect ourselves, to dominate the available resources, or to be subservient to those who do.

Obligation, then, is sourced in fear that the dominators of the resources will reject us, denying the love and support which might sustain us when we are no longer able to contribute much to the welfare of the group. Clearly, this stone-aged model of domination and subservience runs very deep in us as a species, and we are very much at the effect of the methods used to enforce the biological contract: shame, blame, guilt, moral outrage, and pity.

When you look at the way most of us in modern times earn a living, and the importance we place upon money, you can see the domination-subservience model at work. We find a dominator of the resources, and we obligate ourselves to be subservient to that dominator in exchange for those resources. Wherever one looks at the way money, finance, and business is run, the Neolithic model persists. The reason it does so is because domination of the resources and/or subservience to the dominator medicates our fear of the uncertain future.

Even within our own individual financial systems - our mortgaged homes, credit card debt, insurance, investments, and pension plans - we can see echoes of our stone-age origins and our obsession with trying to make the future more certain, this very human but not-so-merry chase after the illusion of security. We hear the distant call to follow our bliss, but we save this exercise for post-retirement, when we imagine that we will have the freedom, after careful domination of the resources, to look after our dreams. For many of us, this appointment with our freedom never materializes, and often because we have ground up our health and confidence in the machinery we so carefully built with the stress and misery of doing what brings us little joy.

It is easy to say that we need to break the biological contract and move fearlessly in the direction of our dreams now. When my guides suggest this to people, they are often rejoined with the complaint that there is a reality to putting bread on the table and a roof over our heads. Spotted Eagle always smiles at this. It is a rare person who does not know how to feed, clothe, and house himself. However, if you examine what a complainant means when he speaks about the realities, you will very often find that his fears of the future go well beyond fear that he will not be able to meet his basic needs. He wants money, and he wants enough to shield himself from his fears. When these fears are examined, you will find the biological contract's enforcement methods lurking in the shadows. The fear of shame, blame, guilt, and rejection runs deep in our veins.

Spotted Eagle likes to say that money has no essence, that it is purely a medium of exchange, pieces of paper painted with the faces of dead white presidents. He often jokes that he doubts that there is anyone posted at the gates of Heaven who is tallying the score, or asking new entrants, "So, just how many assets were you able to accumulate before you dropped the body?"

Spotted Eagle tells us that in our hearts, we already know that money does not really solve anything on a spiritual level. If it did, everyone we know who has more money than we do would have fewer problems and more of the spiritual qualities we have come to respect - like honesty, authenticity, compassion, generosity of spirit, and kindness. This is clearly not the case. If we have issues about money, then the more we focus on it, the more addicted we become to acquiring it, and the more fearful we are about how much of it we do or do not have. This can be so absorbing that we fail to notice what is truly troubling us: fear of the very simple truth that nothing in life is certain, no matter how much we wish that it were so.

If we take a much closer look at our thinking, it is not difficult to notice that our hearts crave the experience of joy, creativity, ease, freedom, fun, and serenity. From this place, we can then admit the truth that having more money might bring us temporary relief from fear, but it cannot guarantee any of these feeling experiences, especially if what we are doing to create money is not something we enjoy. Grandfather White Elk puts it rather bluntly: we tend think that having a lot of money will make all of our problems go away and allow the thinking that created those problems to remain unchanged.

Clearly, our neediness for the illusion of security is at the root of most of our money issues. Spotted Eagle reminds us that when we are being authentic and doing what our natural gifts inspire, we are far more likely to generate a flow of money that frees us to live joyful, essence-filled lives. He says that if we can learn to base our choices on essence, and invest in the things that bring us this essence, the life of our dreams is inevitable. To do this, an entirely new paradigm is required. If we break with the Neolithic model, what takes its place? Grandfather White Elk says the only thing that can successfully replace domination and subservience is evolving partnership.

The evolving partnership model focuses on the emotional system that governs the relationships between people. Grandfather White Elk says that a business is a structure formed by the relationships between the parties, the management, staff, funding sources, suppliers, and customers. Each party brings to the company his own emotional system, his issues, fears, and problems. If the company finds itself unable to readily solve the challenges it faces, invariably, the emotional system is dysfunctional because its members' issues, fears, and problems are preventing them from working toward a solution that will benefit all parties.

When we go back to the notorious latte plot, we can see how the Neolithic model of domination and subservience is translating directly into a dysfunctional emotional system. The perpetrating boss may or may not have been the ravening predator her subordinates described, but clearly she had enormous control issues - a deep need to dominate - and she attempted to use her power over her subordinates by shaming and blaming them when things went wrong, probably in an effort to shield herself from the same from her own superiors. In her win-lose approach to management, this boss insured that no one was truly winning, not the company, not her subordinates, and most definitely not herself.

It is obvious how everyone involved here had issues that were governing their behavior and choices. The plotters were not intending to lose their jobs and security, which they clearly saw as threatened. Instead, they had every intention of overthrowing the boss, or at least significantly undermining her authority, and becoming the new dominators following their little coups-de-estate.

The real irony here is that I have seen just as much suffering result from needy bosses who wanted to be liked as I have from the tyrannical ones. I am referring to the supervisors and managers who, out of their fears of abandonment, avoid conflicts and overlook serious problems. The power vacuum that results from this sort of weak leadership ensures that the nearest dominator is going to do just that - dominate the department - to the detriment of all. The route to the coups may be different, but the result is the same.

So, just how would the evolving partnership model work?

First, by recognizing problems in the emotional system that stem from the biological contract as the key obstacles to healthy functioning in any organization. In the evolving partnership model, emotional problems are not brushed under the carpet or ignored; instead, they are put on the table and worked like any other problem. When we find a persistent resistance to problem solving in an area of the company, we know we are going to find something broken in the emotional system. We know that this is what is driving the re-emergence of that problem despite our best efforts to resolve it on the functional and technical level.

We start asking questions. What are the leadership's fears and issues? How are these translating into decisions, directives, and even avoidance? Are frightened people more interested in avoiding blame than in doing what would be best for the company? Does the environment make it too risky for the average person to stick his neck out when he sees a problem? Are certain people publicly punished? Are sycophants rewarded? Are insecure supervisors keeping their bright subordinates smothered out of fear of losing power or status?

Is anyone minding the store?

In the evolving partnership model, these issues are addressed for what they are: the emotional problems of individuals that are having an impact on the emotional system of the company. The organization, a set of partnerships, works with the individual to make him or her responsible for the issues at play, and directs that person to resolve them within the framework of personal growth that will allow the functional level of the partnership to evolve. If you haven't figured it out by now, this strategy demands that the leadership of the company be exceptionally conscious, responsible, and evolving, dealing with their own emotional baggage and issues, and that the leadership model these characteristics of consciousness impeccably.

Okay, no one said this would be easy, but even if we were able to operate at this level ten, twenty, or even fifty percent of the time, what an enormous transformation we would see in the way business gets done. Grandfather White Elks says that a company with a healthy emotional system is able to solve its problems, grow in a sustainable way, and handsomely reward those operating within its structure.

I wonder if the latte-plotters would agree.

© Jennie Marlow, 2006

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Jennie Marlow is a conscious channel and the author of Personal Magic, Creating Life, Love, and Work That Resonate with Your Soul. A former Silicon Valley executive, she now does private readings, lectures, and teaches workshops on personal creativity, money and business, and relationship. www.jenniemarlow.com