Welcome

Spiritual Audacity: This is the story of my spiritual journey of becoming. Along the way I discovered and developed the six spiritual disciplines of resilience, surrender, gratitude, generosity, living in divine mystery, and awakening.

Spiritual Resilience: How we respond to the circumstances of our life is far more important than how our life began or what happened along the way.

Spiritual Surrender: Sometimes losing that which we cannot lose is key to discovering that which we truly desire. On the spiritual journey surrender opens new possibilities.

Spiritual Gratitude: Anyone can be grateful for good things, spiritual gratitude requires learning gratitude for everything, that which is, that which could be, and that which never should have been.

Divine Mystery: We often seeking answers only to discover our spiritual growth is in the questions. Living in uncertainty, neither this nor not this, is to live into the divine mystery.

Spiritual Awakening: After all our work, our trials and tribulations, we arrive where we began and know it for the first time. This is spiritual awakening to the underlying nature of reality.

Discipline Three: Gratitude

by jimsherblom

My spiritual memoir Spiritual Audacity is built around six spiritual disciplines of which the third is gratitude. Is this an important discipline in your spiritual life? Robert Emmons, PhD, in his book Thanks! says it is key to our health and well being: Grateful people experience higher levels of positive emotions such as joy, enthusiasm, love, happiness, and optimism. The practice of gratitude as a discipline protects a person from the destructive impulses of envy, resentment, greed, and bitterness. So what role does gratitude play in your happiness with life? I love the metaphor of how we see the world in The Joy of Living by Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche “Imagine spending your life in a little room with only one locked window so dirty it barely admits any light. You’d probably think the world was a pretty dim and dreary place, full of strangely shaped creatures that cast terrifying shadows against the dirty glass as they passed your room. But suppose one day you spill some water on the window. . . . A little of the dirt that...

Discipline Two

by jimsherblom

Second Discipline of Six: Surrender My spiritual memoir Spiritual Audacity is built around six spiritual disciplines of which the second is ego surrender. Is this an important discipline in your spiritual life? This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all! Even if they are a crowd of sorrows . . . —Jalaluddin Rumi (Coleman Barks translation) How and when does spiritual submission or ego surrender factor into your life today? Ego Surrender: It is in surrendering the separate ego-self to the greater good of the broader community that we grow spiritually. Each person chooses where and when he or she wishes to be involved in any intentional community. Congregations are an intentional community. But a consumer approach to community seldom meets real spiritual needs. You may not want to get involved. You may not like teaching or greeting or singing in the choir or committee work. But when asked, your spiritual discipline could...

Discipline One

by jimsherblom

Discipline One of Six: Resilience My spiritual memoir Spiritual Audacity: Six Disciplines for Human Flourishing is built around six spiritual disciplines of which the first is resilience. Is this an important discipline in your spiritual life? How has it become or not become the basis of your flourishing? Resilient people use a well-developed set of skills that help them to control their emotions, attention, and behavior. Self-regulation is important for forming intimate relationships, succeeding at work, and maintaining physical health. —The Resilience Factor by Karen Reivich and Andrew Shatté How does spiritual resilience factor into your life today? Resilience: The single most important spiritual practice in my life. Having lived with and through so many difficult circumstances in my life, I have needed to make resilience a core spiritual practice for myself. This is largely about transforming suffering. One of my teachers compares transforming suffering through resilience to feeding a family from a spoiled dead fish. A dead fish stinks. You want to keep it as far away as possible from your supper. Yet...

October 1987 Crash

by jimsherblom

I had hungered to be wealthy even when I didn’t become a millionaire before the age of thirty. So after leveraging our debt to buy Genzyme founder’s stock from Sam, then taking Genzyme public in 1986, I borrowed as much as I could on margin to buy yet more Genzyme stock. I believed by taking on margin debt, and raising the value of our Genzyme holdings, though heavily leveraged, we could better reap the fruit of all my hard work. Loretta asked me how low the stock could go before we lost it all. Genzyme had gone public at $10 per share and traded as high as $16 per share. I told her Genzyme had never traded below $7 as a public company and we could meet any margin calls as long as the stock was above $5.25 per share, which was less than half its current level, and 25% below its lowest price ever. On the other hand if Genzyme went to $30 per share as predicted by analysts we would become wealthy....

Beginning Again

by jimsherblom

Life has its ups and downs. As I was approaching age forty, having lost my job, most of our net worth, and much of my industry reputation, it was time to begin again. Fortunately Loretta’s business was doing fine, the kids were doing well in school, and I had learned much from my dozen years in international business. Yet here I was in my late 30’s, having worked 70 or 80 hours a week for most of my adult life, with no job, no clear prospects, and my life in a financial shambles. Yet this was a time for deepening my practice of spiritual generosity. This could have been a time for succumbing to a scarcity mentality, but that is not my nature, so instead I focused on the sudden abundance of time in my day, time to spend with my wife, with my children, time to read all those philosophical and spiritual books I hadn’t gotten to read, time to think and re-evaluate my life. And thanks to Loretta’s and my financial prudence...

A Disturbance in the Force

by jimsherblom

A Christian scholar pursues enlightenment through studying Chinese Taoism, meditating with Tibetan Buddhists, practicing meditation with Hindu holy men, whirling with Islamic Sufi dervishes, and finally traveling with shaman using psychotropic drugs. Huston Smith was a huge influence on my spiritual path. He died this week at age 97. I have taught “Introductions to Sacred Texts” using his book “The World’s Religions.” His studies with U U theologian Henry Nelson Wieman provided a context for much of his subsequent study of human flourishing through religion making him very relevant for U U’s. His life story became a very important exemplar for my own journey. Reading his spiritual memoir, “Tales of Wonder: Adventures Chasing the Divine” both inspired some of my more esoteric spiritual adventures but was also partly inspiration for my spiritual memoirs, “Spiritual Audacity: Six Disciplines for Human Flourishing” and “Spiritual Pilgrim: My journeys with Christian, Sufi, Taoist and Shamanic Mystics.” His calm wisdom will be missed, but the world is better for his having lived so long. Jim

New Hope

by jimsherblom

The week after the announcement of my termination as Chairman and CEO of TSI was in the WSJ a prominent Boston venture capitalist, who we pitched on numerous occasions but who had never invested, called to assure me there was life after public executions. He offered to invest $2 million from his fund in whatever I decided to do next. I began watching Steven Spielberg’s movie Hook, where Peter Pan has grown up to be a clever financier who dabbles in mergers and acquisitions, and forgets the essence of his being, until his nemesis Captain Hook steals Peter’s children and forces him to return to Never Land to remember who he is so that he can save his children. I must have watched that movie 20 or 30 times, long after my wife and children grew bored with it, but this was my situation. The movie Hook became a Delphic oracle explaining my fall from grace. Now I needed to rediscover my true identity, decide who to truly be, and find my right occupation...

Prideful Fall

by jimsherblom

My 1993 Budget presentation to TSI’s Board ended with three definitions of success. The first Ralph Waldo Emerson’s definition: “To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.” The second I called Bain’s definition: “A superior financial return for shareholders over an extended time period. Finding high growth sectors to maximize business opportunities; with a focus on relative market share, value creation, and high reward for high performance.” Finally one I called the Genzyme measure of success: “Building an important corporation faster and better than the competition; with great expectations, satisfying but not focusing on shareholders, stretching forecasts as far as you reasonably can, and then working...

Mekong Pilgrimage

by jimsherblom

My world spiritual pilgrimage will continue next week as I fly to Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam to travel with a group up the Mekong River to Ankor Wat. Our journey will include daily lectures by Yale professors on the religion, art, and culture of the peoples with whom we will interact. After a week traveling through rural parts of Vietnam we will cross over into Cambodia, where we will visit the killing fields, Phnom Penh, Angkor Ban, and Siem Reap on our way to the Buddhist temples of Ankor. I continue to work with my editor to revise and adapt my first book “Spiritual Audacity: Six Disciplines for Human Flourishing” which is currently scheduled for publication in September 2017. While I am traveling I have scheduled two additional blog posts from my website telling the story of my fall from TSI and my finding hope again. I hope those of you who are following my story which find these interesting. Upon my return from Vietnam and Cambodia I expect to begin blogging on...

Baptism in River Jordan

by jimsherblom

I came on pilgrimage to the Holy Land to walk in the footsteps of Jesus along the shores of the Sea of Galilee, to pray beneath ancient olive trees in the Garden of Gethsemane, and more fully experience the Holy Spirit in my life. The Gospel of Mark 1:9-11 recounts that “in those days Jesus came from Nazareth of Galilee and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And just as he was coming out of the water, he saw the heavens torn apart and the Spirit descending like a dove upon him.” On the twelfth day of this pilgrimage we crossed over to Bethany beyond the Jordan, to a site five miles north of the Dead Sea, where since the 5th century five Christian churches have affirmed as the site of Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist. Given my disappointing experience of baptism at the age of thirteen, when I first professed my belief, I approached this second baptism without expectations, prepared to accept whatever the Holy Spirit had to offer me. I...

Jim Sherblom

Audacious Sage