Some people may not think spirituality and business go together. But as David Schwerin explains in this podcast episode, building a business upon spiritual principles is a recipe for success. Schwerin is the founder and former president of DJ Investment Advisors Inc., and the author of several books, including his latest co-authored with Diana Muenz Chen, “Know Your Soul: Bring Joy to Your Life.”
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On this episode of the Live. Love. Engage. podcast:
- Schwerin discusses what led him to spend 20 years in China
- How spirituality fits into a business model
- Why it’s important for you to know your soul
- What spiritual lessons we can learn from the pandemic
Connect with David
Website: ConsciousThinking.com
Speaking Tree blog
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TRANSCRIPT
Gloria Grace Rand
namaste and welcome to live love engage. I am Gloria grace Rand. And today I am delighted as always to have a guest with me on the podcast because it’s nice to be able to talk to other people and learn different perspectives. And today I’ve got a very accomplished gentleman who has a lot of experience and I can’t wait to share his knowledge with all of you. His name is David A. Schwerin, PhD, founder and former president of DJ investment advisors, and he’s authored three books and dozens of articles published worldwide, including latest book that he co authored with Diana Muenz Chen. Hopefully I’m pronouncing her name right, called “know your soul bring joy, bring joy to your life.” That was published in late 2019 and David’s given Scores of presentations, media interviews and a variety of business and psychological topics, to academic business and government audiences in the US, China and India. And he’s actually worked in China and received numerous honors for that, as well as he’s also a regular contributor to The Times of India Speaking Tree blog, which is one of the largest spiritual blogs in the world with over 1 million subscribers. That’s That’s a lot of wonderful things. And there’s even more that I didn’t get in here, but I really want to welcome you to live love engage.
David Schwerin
Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah. Thank you. I I’m, I’m really curious. I’m trying to figure out how how I best wanted to start this today because you do have a lot of wealth of experience, but I think maybe the first place to start might be I’m actually curious to even go talk about this is what brought you to China? Because I, I, sadly have only been out of the United States once I got to Hungary last year. That’s where my grandparents were from. But China is a place that intrigues me a lot. So, what brought you there? And I understand you spent a lot of time there, not just not just one or two years, right?
David Schwerin
Well, most I’ve made nine trips to China in the last approximately 20 years. Most of them are just 2, 3, 4 week trips. And, but they’re pretty intense and cover a lot of ground when I’m there. What brought me there? My first book actually described it in a different way. But but that essentially is the reason. My first book was called Conscious Capitalism. And it was published in 1998. And in the US, and it was picked up and published in China in 2001.
Gloria Grace Rand
Oh wow.
David Schwerin
To my surprise, and I was invited as a result to come to China and speak and promote the book. And as happenstance would have probably more than half of the status quo and happenstance. My first one of my first talks over there was to what’s called the Communist Party school call, it’s a school where high level Communist Party members come back for training. And be honest with you, I had not been to China before and was a little bit nervous. Especially when I saw people walking around the campus with machine guns.
Gloria Grace Rand
Oh geez.
David Schwerin
But that the lecture I gave a lecture there about conscious capitalism. Now, I should explain what I mean by conscious capitalism.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yes. please
David Schwerin
It’s really…it can be described more as social responsible business or corporate social responsibility.
Gloria Grace Rand
right
David Schwerin
now. ESG is a term that’s popular, but it’s about treating people, all stakeholders with due consideration. And, but it was based on spiritual principles. The book I wrote was based on spiritual principles. But, but it was made very practical. And so I was nervous about speaking about capitalism and some of the principles, there.
Gloria Grace Rand
right, yes.
David Schwerin
And believe it or not, they resonated with it. The first person who, when I finished my talk to raise their hand from the audience, turned out to be a university professor because all professors are part of the Communist Party. And all presidents, I’m sorry, presidents of universities. And he raised his hand and said, You touched my heart. I was really shocked when he said that.
Gloria Grace Rand
Wow. Yeah.
David Schwerin
But anyway, they they really liked it. They liked the concept. And they put my book in their bookstore. And before I knew it, my cover of the book with my picture on it was on the largest bus line in China.
Gloria Grace Rand
Oh my goodness. Wow.
David Schwerin
And from there, things just roll a roller coastered to the point where it’s a, I won’t say every business certainly but a lot of businesses in China are now Following some version of socially responsible businesses. They have their own priorities but it’s really taken off and become, because the Communist Party got behind it. They were in favor of that’s, that’s the key. What happens in China for them…
Gloria Grace Rand
That’s true. Yeah, absolutely. I imagine it’s, I think it’s still a bit hard probably to get that point across maybe here in the United States sometimes, because I think a lot of companies are still a bit resistant to that. But is that been your experience? Or have you found that more American companies are also starting to follow these principles?
David Schwerin
Well, I think it started in the West more than in China. And when it started out, some companies started to use it, but initially, it was more of a defensive thing. good PR.
Gloria Grace Rand
Okay.
David Schwerin
But in more recent times, because it’s been shown that it is effective, it helps a company prosper. It’s profitable. It’s not most people think, well, that’s going to be it’s going to detract from profits. But it doesn’t. It not only does it not detract from profits, but there’s just been some recent studies go there’s been many years that companies have followed socially responsible business practices, their stock does better than other companies. And that that that was just a recent study, one of many, just recently updated so that anybody who wants to be practical and is interested in profits would would tend to follow this. It just makes sense. If you treat your employees well, you treat your suppliers, your customers well. They’re going to come back and they’re going to be repeat customers and your employees are going to be motivated to work harder and So it’s not rocket science. It’s amazing that we haven’t thought about it before.
Gloria Grace Rand
That’s true. But you mentioned earlier that spirituality was a part of that. So can you explain that a little bit? How does that factor into the conscious capitalism idea?
David Schwerin
Well, there are seven hermetic principles that it was based on, which are spiritual teachings from long ago, ancient wisdom. And I showed how each of these principles would help a company to improve its business. So while the principles are a little esoteric, in some respects, they can be shown to to fit into a business operation, because it’s spiritual principles work. They work for everything that happens in life. If something is not practical, It’s not spiritual and if it’s not spiritual, and if it’s spiritual, it’s got to be practical. So it’s just a logical sequence.
Gloria Grace Rand
Can you give an example of like, what would be one of the principles?
David Schwerin
remember I wrote this book 22 years ago. I do know the principles pretty well. The the principle of cause and effect is one example. What we do has an effect. And so, how we treat people effect how they react,
Gloria Grace Rand
right.
David Schwerin
The principle of… can’t think of the word now.. gender, we all have masculine and feminine aspects to ourselves,
Gloria Grace Rand
right.
David Schwerin
And by recognizing that, that, you know, and encouraging The full use of, the full range of our capabilities which include masculine meaning more of the force or consciousness is the projective versus receptive principles.
Gloria Grace Rand
Exactly.
David Schwerin
combining those two you get a more balanced and effective organization.
Gloria Grace Rand
That’s awesome. Now your latest book sounds like it’s a little bit more not necessarily business but more of a personal nature. Know your soul bring joy to your life. I love the title of that. It’s resonates with me a lot. So can you explain a little bit about maybe about what what the book’s about and why is it important for us to know our soul?
David Schwerin
Okay. Well, we are part of the soul. So it’s good to know what we’re part of. You know the whole thing, because our soul really sets the agenda for our life. We’d all have free will, we don’t have to follow it. But we don’t follow it to our detriment. So, so knowing as much as you can about your soul is going to improve your life in all aspects. So we wrote this book, at the encouragement of Archangel Michael. And he, he wrote an introduction for the, for the book, this is all channels. And and he gave us some information and we pulled information from other places, but it really it talks about the origin of the soul, which is, the soul is the first individuation from creator and it’s directly connected to creator So here the origin, the structure of the soul. The soul includes the physical body, which is us experiencing physicality, but we’re spiritual beings having a physical experience, and sometimes we forget that.
Gloria Grace Rand
Right, exactly.
David Schwerin
So in physicality, the energy field that surrounds us, and the spiritual realm is further out in our energy field. All those, those three, very, I’m talking in general terms now. Those three are part of what constitutes our soul. And one of the things everyone has when they when they decide when the soul decides to have the Incarnation is to have a task for the incarnating. So we all have a task of some sort. And obviously our light and again we have freewill. So we don’t have to follow that,
Gloria Grace Rand
right.
David Schwerin
But to the extent you do follow it, your life flows more harmoniously and you feel fulfilled. And life is just easier and better.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah.
David Schwerin
So, so, so we have the purpose of the soul is to is for movement. Sounds strange at first blush, but through movement, movement on all levels, whether it’s physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual. You can have movement on all four levels. And by doing that by constantly having some kind of chain evolution Really in all four areas, we learn and we grow. It’s the movement that creates opportunities and experiences to learn and grow from. So so we have the origin of the soul, purpose of the soul and the structure of the soul. And then the other parts of the book are personal experiences that I have had as well as my co author in communicating with our soul and following its instructions, which we can all get guidance of some sort or another.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah.
David Schwerin
And so I’ve had explained some very, a lot of people find unusual experiences. I’ve been very blessed, or fortunate to have the ability. It’s not really my ability, but it’s the ability to connect with this higher realms and get guidance and so the other part But there’s a part of the book, which Archangel Michael gives us a lot of input on how to connect to your soul.
Gloria Grace Rand
Okay, yeah.
David Schwerin
So there is there’s there’s a how to aspect to it also, that it’s a very short book, even though a lot of material. And most people find it takes a couple readings to really absorb it. But I think people will find it very helpful if they’re at all inclined to want to know about this sort of thing. And if they’re not inclined, that’s fine, but it really is helpful to life.
Gloria Grace Rand
Absolutely. Yeah, I think it’s, I like that you also include a little bit of the How to in there because I do think that learning to pay attention to like recognize those signs. Because as you say, we do have free will, but I also believe at least it’s been my experience that the universe send signs and so it’s, it’s whether you recognize them and then pay attention to them is I think where that freewill comes in. And I’ve gotten better now at being able to pay attention. And when I get those nudges to act on them right away, and it seems things to go a lot better in my life when I do that.
David Schwerin
That’s absolutely true. And that’s it. You mentioned a key item here, is when we get the sign, because we have freewill, we can either resist it,
Gloria Grace Rand
right,
David Schwerin
or we can surrender to it. The surrender part is a big lesson, lifelong lesson.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah.
David Schwerin
Because we tend to want to do what we want to do and not and sometimes what is best for us, at first does not seem that way.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah.
David Schwerin
So you have to learn that we all are learning this because it’s such a lifelong lesson is when we get that inspiration, gut feeling, go with it. Even if at first it doesn’t seem like it’s what we prefer. And Michael Singer has written some wonderful stuff around that, it’s called The Surrender Experiment.
Gloria Grace Rand
Hmm Okay, I know. I’ve read The Untethered Soul by him, but I haven’t I haven’t looked at that one. So I’ll have to check that out.
David Schwerin
Just to finish it up the to the extent that we follow our, what our soul wants, and accomplish the tasks are set out for us. There is the possibility that we may be given some other tasks and that’s fits with the circumstances, our life may be extended. So called reincarnation in the same body or same lifetime I talk about that in the book because I and my co author have gone through that so, you know, there are, quote unquote goodies for following what you’re asked to do.
Gloria Grace Rand
Okay, yeah, very interesting. I’m now I okay, now I’m going to have to like add this to my, my wish list of books to that I want to get to read it because now I definitely want to read this. I’m totally intrigued. I’m going to not exactly change course, but maybe, maybe just shift a little bit into talk a little bit about what’s going on in our world today. And, and I do think that part of well, I’ll just give you my my perception is that, I think, with the pandemic and even here in the United States, now we’ve got the black lives matter. I do think that like the universe is sort of knocking on our heads and saying, you know, hey, pay attention. It’s time to wake up and start, you know, paying attention to your soul and all of these things. So how, how is your perspective on what’s happening today? why and what we can do to maybe make things make our lives even more… have a little more ease and flow with what’s going on?
David Schwerin
Okay, well, you touched on some, some key points, right. First of all, this is a crisis it’s been building for a while. And crises are a natural phenomenon that’s happened many times through the ages, and then happen when we start to go astray. And the universe has to say, wake up. It has to shake us up because our natural or natural inclination is to stay with the status quo. So if we don’t get some shaking, we may ignore it. And to our detriment. So the universe has ways of getting our attention.
Gloria Grace Rand
Right.
David Schwerin
And it’s asking us to pause, take a look at our life and take a look at life in general. Is it? Is it flowing? Are there are things that are happening, the priorities we’ve chosen and the values that we have, are they in alignment with what we know, in our heart is the right right thing or is harmonious with with reality? So, we’re being called to look to pay attention. And what are we what’s, what’s the answer? How do we how do we respond? And the really the only thing that we can do as individuals, but not the only thing, but the most important thing is to look at ourself to say, deep introspection, introspection, what are my beliefs? What are how am I behaving? Are they? Are they in concert with reality again? So it’s to gain self knowledge. So that we can see when we’re where we have some distortions, what our beliefs are, you know, not, not really not accurate because we all have been brought up to believe things conditioned to believe things.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah.
David Schwerin
And we, off we go through life and just assume they’re accurate, and will continue. So we need to look at those. And when we do, it will most likely push us to change some of the way we do things. And so, as more and more people do that work, to gain self knowledge, the world will change because we’ll gain a critical mass of people who are looking deeply at their own beliefs and behavior, changing them slowly. And once a critical mass is formed, and so it doesn’t have to be 50% of the people, we’re talking maybe 3% or 5%.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah,
David Schwerin
everyone else will get the, get the idea and begin to make changes. Man, even this black lives matter what percentage of the people are involved in making or marching? I don’t know what percentage is but it’s fairly small, probably everybody, but it’s big, but it is bringing everybody around to think about these things and to reevaluate and make changes. So so some major changes can be made without having everybody agreeing And so that’s the surest way of fixing things that each of us work on ourselves. More and more people do that. Peace and Harmony will breakout, haven’t seen for a long time.
Gloria Grace Rand
Absolutely. And I think that’s really I think that’s a hopeful message. Because I think sometimes we think that oh, you know, it’s got to be you know, we really do have to have like even more than half and people need to do something but no, it just change does start with just one person because then one person does and then they interact with someone else. And then maybe that other person will start to do it and it really can snowball
David Schwerin
what’s that noise
Gloria Grace Rand
It’s okay. It’s it’s the things that happen when we’re trying to record live things happen and it’s all good I I used to work in live television. And, you know, things would happen and it’s okay. It’s all it’s all good.
David Schwerin
Okay, sorry.
Gloria Grace Rand
That’s, that’s all right. Um, let’s see. I’m trying to think if there’s anything else. Well, let me just because this has been a really fascinating conversation, and I’m so glad that you’re here. Is there anything else, maybe that you think would be either relevant or important point that we haven’t discussed so far that you think would be a benefit? Whether it’s business related or spiritually related, or just or even related to the times we’re living in now?
David Schwerin
Well, I guess I would go back to knowing yourself and being willing… The difficulty the why people people shy away from doing that is because we all have some shadow, some aspects of ourselves some beliefs, some values that we don’t really when we look at it, we’re not proud of it.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, that’s true.
David Schwerin
So it does take some courage to get started. And but that’s the only way through. And, and you’ll find that as you do this, and you see some things that maybe you are not real proud of, and you begin to make changes, you really feel good. It really is a wonderful experience, even though at first blush. It doesn’t seem that way.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah.
David Schwerin
And so I would encourage people to begin to look at what’s going on with them. That’s the only thing they can control. And, obviously, you can talk to others and you can encourage others, but really, you need to make the changes yourself first. So that’s what I would emphasize.
Gloria Grace Rand
Awesome. I think that’s great. And I I had To mute myself temporarily because my dog started barking. So, see, it’s not just you, because everybody wants to get their point across today, I think on our podcast and it’s all right. It’s all good. So, yeah, I do, I think it really does boil down to just beginning with yourself. And yeah, it can be sometimes challenging and even painful at times to acknowledge those parts of yourself that that are maybe not as pleasing. And, you know, just like you rip the band aid off and, you know, eventually it will feel better or even just when you jump off of the diving board, it might be scary at first, but once you’re in there, you can feel so accomplished for having done something and
David Schwerin
overcoming your initial fear is a really empowering experience. We all have fears and And the only way to get past the fear is to go through it.
Gloria Grace Rand
Yeah, absolutely.
David Schwerin
So do your best best you can.
Gloria Grace Rand
For sure, absolutely. If someone wants to be able to who’s listening or watching this on YouTube wants to be able to get in touch with you maybe read some of your articles or find out how to get your books or what’s that what’s the best way to that they can contact you?
David Schwerin
Well through my website, which is conscious thinking.com conscious thinking, I have all my articles and and a lot of other material there and you can contact me through it. And so I would recommend that also speaking tree blog, which is in India. speaking tree dot-i-n for India, has a lot of good material and people seem to resonate with. Either one is a good, good place to start.
Gloria Grace Rand
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you being on the show today. And yes I encourage everyone to check out conscious thinking-dot-com and learn more about knowing your soul and spirituality and and all of this good stuff because we have an opportunity right now to make positive change in the world and it just starts with yourself. Thank you everyone for watching and for listening, and I’m very grateful to you. And, as always, I encourage you to go out and live fully, love deeply and engage authentically.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
