Many businesses try to change...but few succeed. At best, a few buzzwords and new reports become part of the company's structure. At worst, programs crash and burn, and everyone becomes irreparably disillusioned with the revolving door of new-mission statements. According to David Shaner--a business consultant with a 100% success rate of change at companies including Duracell, Frito-Lay, Ryobi, and Gillette--the problem is that the implemented changes don't address either individuals or the corporate culture. They're only on the surface.Combining lessons drawn from four decades of Aikido with knowledge gleaned from his 30-year consulting career, Shaner merges Eastern philosophy with Western business savvy to present his Seven Arts of Change (including the Arts of Preparation, Relaxation, and Compassion), showing how individual adjustments from CEO down can transform a company. Using exercises, strategies and real-life examples to show how to awaken the untapped potential in any organization and every person within it, Shaner shows how to create change built to last.

The primal role of art in awakening and liberating the soul of humanity • Presents a seven-stage journey of transformation moving from the darkened soul to the light of spiritual illumination • Provides a meditation practice to experience the spiritual energy embedded within art • Includes artists Alex Grey, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Walter Gaudnek, and others Art and Spiritual Transformation presents a seven-stage journey from the darkened soul to the light of spiritual illumination that is possible through the world of art. Finley Eversole introduces a meditation practice that moves beyond the visual content of an art form in order to connect with its embedded spiritual energy, allowing the viewer to tap in to the deeper consciousness inherent in the artwork and awaken dormant powers in the depths of the viewer’s soul. Examining modern and postmodern artwork from 1945 onward, Eversole reveals the influences of ancient Egypt, India, China, and alchemy on this art. He draws extensively on philosophy, myth and symbolism, literature, and metaphysics to explain the seven stages of spiritual death and rebirth of the soul possible through art: the experience of self-loss, the journey into the underworld, the experience of the dark night of the soul, the conflict with and triumph over evil, the awakening of new life in the depths of being, and the return and reintegration of consciousness on a higher plane of being, resulting finally in ecstasy, transfiguration, illumination, and liberation. To illustrate these stages, Eversole includes works by abstract expressionists Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, and Mark Rothko and modern visionary artists Alex Grey and Ernst Fuchs, among others, to reveal the powerful and liberating forces art contributes to the transformation and evolution of human consciousness.

Reading texts in relation to feminist, queer, and race theory and Buddhist philosophy, this book argues that an understanding of spirit is critical to explaining the power that social movements have to change hearts, minds, and social structures.