Startup business blooms with investment in Spirit

I didn’t want to own my own business. I’d been quite happy working for large organizations, which were less prone to the stresses of the marketplace. I liked not having to worry about where my next paycheck would come from.

But in 1991, I lost my job. I was completely broke and wondering what to do next. I could’ve looked for another job, but in view of my high-profile firing in what was a small city, I figured that my best option was to start my own business. Clients of my former company encouraged me to do so. They even offered their patronage.

I had learned to trust God through my study of the Bible and the works of Mary Baker Eddy, who discovered and founded Christian Science. Her seminal work, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, was especially illuminating. In it, she wrote, “Trials are proofs of God’s care” (p. 66 ), and “Soul has infinite resources with which to bless mankind …” (p. 60 ).

I was starting a divine adventure, and was confident that God would meet my needs. But I was still somewhat bemused as to how things were going to work out. How were we going to find clients? Where would I get the resources to accomplish the work?

I realized I had to get over this, and I prayed to get a better sense of the dominion that God gave man—a generic term meaning all men, women, and children—as recorded in the first chapter of Genesis in the Bible. My prayer consisted of affirmations that God loved me, and that I wouldn’t have been put into this position without having a way to do what I needed to.

There were divine resources that would help me discharge my new responsibilities. These included intelligence, whose source is infinite Mind; the strength and energy of divine Life; the honesty of Truth; the tenderness of Love. I also affirmed that no matter what challenges I might face, God was always present, guiding me, and I could be a witness to that. I didn’t have to worry that I didn’t feel ready to take this step. Rather, I expressed divine ability and could do so in a way that would bless everyone involved in the business.

Then one morning I awoke and found the word adequate running through my head. It seemed imperative to understand what this word meant so I went straight to my dictionary. I discovered that it was taken from the Latin and meant “created equal to.” I had always thought it meant “being just sufficient for.”

At this point, it became clear that hidden within my consciousness was a feeling of inadequacy. This limited sense was being translated in my experience as insufficient clients, insufficient talent to do my job, insufficient staff to help me out. With this realization, the Bible verse from Philippians came to mind, in which St. Paul talks about Jesus as follows: “Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God” (Philippians 2:5, 6 ).

It became very clear to me that Jesus never felt inadequate. He was clear on the point that he was created by God, in His very image.

Jesus never felt separated from God, I reasoned. He understood himself to be God’s very expression, and was totally at one with Him. That sense of God’s ever-presence meant he never felt challenged or abandoned, even in situations much more dire than those I faced in my professional life.

So the solution to my work problems wasn’t about attracting business or finding competent workers. I had to get rid of that feeling of inadequacy. And once this issue was uncovered, it was easy to dispense with it.

Then something happened—an immediate result of this new understanding of spiritual adequacy. That morning, I got a call from the manager of a Swedish opera company. My wife, an opera singer for whom I acted as a business manager, had been contracted to sing Turandot for them, but now it appeared the theatre didn’t have the funds to put on the production. I listened without commenting much. Because all the insights about adequacy I had been studying that morning were still so fresh and alive to me, it was crystal clear that every object of God’s creation was adequate to the task for which it was created.

God’s creation included the opera house in Sweden. It was a divine idea and was not created to fail. I felt a solid conviction that this was the divine take on the situation. The human view was of no consequence. It didn’t even occur to me to inform my wife about the call.

Within the week I received a fax from the opera company. They’d been able to find the funds to do the production and were ready to reinstate my wife’s contract. This experience was proof that I was also on the right track as far as my business was concerned. As a spiritual idea, my business was as much a part of God’s creation as I was. It was subject to the same spiritual laws and loving care of God as every other part of that creation.

On one occasion my business partner and I received an invitation to attend a seminar in Turin, Italy. At first there seemed to be no rationale for making such a trip since the organizers were competitors of ours and we had no interest in using their services. But I experienced a spiritual impetus to attend. There seemed to be divine directive to make the trip which defied logic. And while we were there, we were befriended by a senior partner in a major law firm. He immediately began to refer business to us.

There was no apparent reason for this. We were a very small firm, with no reputation, little in the way of capital with no distinguishing talents among all other attendees. Nonetheless, it made sense to me that as we continued to nurture divine qualities such as honesty and kindness, those people best served by our talents would be attracted to us. And that proved to be true.

God’s great love and the tangible expression of it, is so interesting and instructive, and we really can experience the promise that “… it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.”