Heart centred business and healing your relationship to money with Mark Silver

There are few things in life more ephemeral than money. Those who seek an enduring happiness and freedom through a path of awakening often find themselves rich in spirit, but constantly struggling to keep the lights on, literally. This is especially true for creators, social entrepreneurs and heart based business owners who lead with their values. Survival and success requires that we first go through the fire of reconciling our relationship with money. Rather than being the root of all evil, money can be a natural expression of the inherent richness at the core of the human spirit, even in an unjust economic system.

In this episode of Awake In Relationships I speak with Mark Silver, business mentor and author of Heart centred business: Healing from a toxic business culture so your small business can thrive about the possibilities that arise when we put love and our deepest values at the center of our work and business. We also discuss some of the unconscious blocks that prevent spiritual entrepreneurs from achieving financial growth and how to re-align our heart with the income and the impact in the world we desire.

Show Notes

• To learn more about Mark Silver head over to heartofbusiness.com
• To purchase Mark’s book Heart Centered Business: Healing from toxic business cultures so your small business can thrive go here.

If you enjoyed this episode with Mark Silver on the practice of heart centred business you might also enjoy episode 049 Marketing your conscious business without selling your soul with Tad Hargrave

Episode transcripts

intro 0:09
You’re listening to Awake in Relationship, a podcast about intimacy, community and culture in a time of great change with Silas Rose.

Silas Rose 0:41
Hello friends, my name is Silas Rose and this is another instalment of Awake In Relationship. If you’ve been tuning in for a while, I hope you have, you probably have come to the realization that I cover the topic of conscious relationships broadly. To borrow a phrase from the second wave feminist movement, the personal is political. I also believe that the inverse is true, how we show up in our personal lives, and that could be intimate relationships, or community relationships, the people that we work with, or perhaps it’s our neighbours, or our spiritual community, when we acknowledge our interdependence, and attend to these relationships, with love, and mindful care, we are creating the foundation of a new society, perhaps a new earth that is rooted in justice, love, and equality. I know this sounds like a dewy eyed idealism. But I really can’t think of any other way to get there. Everything that’s going wrong in our world today is really the result of a series of broken relationships. This is especially true for economy. I know many heart based entrepreneurs, who are excellent crafts people or healers, visionaries in their field, who feel a great reluctance to participating in such an unjust economic system. Perhaps you can relate, because so many horrible things are done in pursuit of the almighty buck. Creating financial success almost seems heretical. For this reason, many conscious creators and heart based entrepreneurs are rich in spirit, but often struggle to pay the bills, success and financial freedom, let alone survival, really depends on our willingness to go through the fire, and confront our relationship with money. In this episode of Awake In Relationship, I speak with Mark Silver, business mentor, and author of a new book, Heart Centered Business, healing from a toxic business culture so your small business can thrive. In this conversation Mark shares his wisdom gleaned from over 20 years as a business coach and a devotee of the Sufi faith, We discuss the possibilities that arise when we put love and our deepest values at the heart of our work and business. We also explore some of the common unconscious blocks that many heart based entrepreneurs encounter in times of money stress, how to realign our spiritual values and purpose to the income and impact we desire in the world. If you’re wishing to have a more healthy relationship to money, this episodes for you.

Mark Silver welcome to Awake In Relationship.

Mark Silver 4:19
Thank you. I’m really delighted I’m really, really grateful for you invited me in.

Silas Rose 4:24
I was reading through in the introduction your book and it really seems like we have this kind of similar life trajectory in the sense that we both kind of came of age in the era of punk and then from there migrated into activism. And then from there into healthcare. You were a paramedic, I was an acupuncturist, and then it also seems like burnout happened for both of us. That was actually kinda in the awakening for discovering a spiritual path and you went towards Sufism, I went towards Buddhism,. It might be helpful for the listener, if you can share your, your journey to writing this book, Heart Centered Business.

Mark Silver 5:18
Yeah, I’ll try not to take up more than a few hours. There’s a lot there. You know, when I hit that burnout phase, both as a paramedic and I was running a nonprofit magazine and doing other kinds of activist stuff. The spiritual path that I was on was the, you know, I grew up Jewish and was was, was actually involved in Jewish community at that point. But Holly, who’s my wife now, we’ve been married since 1999. But she has always been involved in healing work, and really tremendous healing skills herself. And she’s the one who connected us through her own journey with Sufi healing. And I found that the teachings of Sufism, the teachings of the Judaism that we were in, were really parallel. But just so happened that the teacher that we encountered with Sufism, the the healing work was so profound, and so profound, and it was actually a really deep surrender for me, because it felt at first like I was betraying my Judaism, when, in fact, what I discovered was that it was a, it was a healing because it’s, you know, it’s the Sufism, which is, of course, the mystical aspect of Islam. And Judaism, you know, there’s, the teachings are identical, there’s not really any conflict between the teachings except for, you know, a disagreement about the nature of the Prophet Muhammad Ali Salam, but you know, the core teachings and understandings and the Quran mentions the Torah multiple times. And so I just so it was a it was a really profound journey for me and as I was integrating the teachings in Sufism, and and coming on to the Sufi path, because that’s where I was guided, it wasn’t really a choice. I think those of us who find ourselves on spiritual paths, a lot of times, it’s not really like, oh, yeah, I wanted to do that. I really, I didn’t really choose it, it just felt like that’s where I needed to be. And then I started to, I started to either see or be shown or just experience that there, there were these really esoteric Sufi teachings that I started to see reflected in business practices or, or not. And I began to experiment and realize and work with the idea that the business itself like the pride, like the nitty gritty details of the business itself could be spiritual practice could be an expression of love. And when that was absent, maybe those business practices weren’t necessary if love wasn’t available. And so began what turned into you know, since 2000 2001, really a 23 year journey of integrating and expressing the truth that every act of business can be an act of love and that we don’t have to experience spirituality and business in the sense of like Okay, let’s go fill up with spirituality and then let’s go use it up doing business and then go fill up again but instead we can take on the practice of love in every aspect of our lives, including business.

Silas Rose 9:40
So Sufism is a devotional path, but I dont really know much beyond what Ive read in Rumi’s poems. Are their certain tenants that relate specifically to business?

Mark Silver 9:51
The main concern in the main practices have to do with immersion in love, like, how do we experience that As the divine the Divine Presence God, oneness, non dual oneness, whatever language we want to use, how do we experience it in the every day? And how do we witness it and find it in the everyday? And how do we use that in service to helping the world and helping ourselves be what we could be, which is something really beautiful, the the underlying the Sufis from a Sufi perspective, the understanding is that the world was created, there’s a quote that’s attributed to the Divine, that says, I was a hidden treasure, and I yearn to be known. So I created the creation in order to be known. And that’s really, the purpose of the human, the purpose of the world is to witness the divine witness the love, experience love, and we’re not talking about, you know, it’s easy in the theistic paths, to end up in this kind of idolatry of like, oh, there’s a beard in the sky that’s watching us that there’s some kind of other beings. But the Divine is something from which we’re not separate from, you know, one of the metaphors favourite metaphors of the Sufis is the ocean, this picture back here for that. And it’s not that the drop dissolves into the ocean, although that’s what the experience starts out feeling like, but the drop becomes the ocean. And the the other metaphor that I like to use is that if we think about ourselves as like a finger on a hand on a human being, it’s not like the head, my head is sitting in judgment on my finger, but my finger is somehow a separate thing. I mean, as an individual human being, I am not everything in the universe. But I’m also not separate, I’m not a separate thing, either. It goes a little bit beyond the comprehension of the mind, these metaphors all fall apart at some point, but there’s a, the idea is to, through practices of polishing the heart of cleaning the heart, of letting the heart reflect the truth of love as deeply and as purely as possible, which, you know, is really in alignment with a lot of paths, right? All spiritual paths are trying to do some version of that there’s just different practices and approaches.

Silas Rose 12:38
What is a heart centered business? And what are some of the struggles that are unique?

Mark Silver 12:47
I think that I would not necessarily classify business, like a heart centered business as a separate kind of business. I think what I would, the way that I would talk about is that being in business in a heart centered way is a different way of being in relationship with business. And and I think, because a lot of the outer structures can look the same unless they’re unethical structures, in which case, we don’t take them on. But the idea of like, okay, we have a service or a product, and we’re trying to care for our clients, and we’re trying to also sustain and care for ourselves. I think some of the unique things that come up when you embrace that heart centered path is that you because that you come to realize, many people already realized this, how unjust, how painful, the current economic system, the current Western culture already is, like, there’s already big challenges with it. And I think in the same way that anyone existing in this culture has to, like, there’s no way for me to live completely in alignment with my values. I mean, here in the United States, the land is all stolen. And we drive cars that you know, burn fossil fuel, and we’re, like, dependent on certain systems that are inherently on you know, there’s inherent levels of injustice involved with them. And so I think that there are struggles when it when you are awake, to the reality that we’re living in that that are challenging, you know, to work walk with, and we all have to walk with it the best that we can. The thing that, for me becomes you know, non negotiable is that I’m going to do all of this with as much awareness as possible I’m going to do business with in as healthy a manner as possible, causing the least harm possible. Bringing a tent with the attempt to find love in every aspect of business. And while not taking on kind of like Savioism, you know, or like aspects of white supremacy or colonialism that I can change the world. But instead seeing that as a collective effort, and I’m going to contribute that to the, to the best extent that I can and collaborate with others in the best way I can. But I’m still also going to allow myself and we support our clients and sustaining themselves, like it’s okay to get paid, we’re in this context, it’s okay to get paid, it’s okay to support yourself. You know, it’s okay to do this and as in as honest and as healthy a manner as possible.

Silas Rose 15:49
The central issues really seems to be money. What you just described as a heart centred entrepreneur, an individual or spiritual person, going into business, is half my peer group. These are remarkably smart, hardworking, visionary and compassionate people, but it’s a constant struggle, what is the origin of that struggle?

Mark Silver 16:16
So I think that there’s a lot here. And I don’t think we can boil it down to just one thing. I think, again, that’s one of the things that we that our culture tries to do. It’s like, Oh, there’s one solution, or there’s one reason or there’s one, you know, just need a pill, to fix everything. I think that there are both, like we, anybody who has issues with money, has very legitimate reasons for it. Like I don’t the same way that people have issues with business, I don’t want people to just get over their issues with money or kind of push past it or personalize it too much. It’s a systemic issue. And everyone struggles with money, everyone struggles with money. And I will go as far to say that even the billionaires that are stashing way too much money in their pockets, more than they can spend in lifetimes and generations. That’s a mental illness, like to like, like they’re struggling to, like I don’t want to take focus away from the people that are at a survival level struggle in this culture. But I just want to point out that even the people that are materially benefiting from the system, are deeply wounded by it, I don’t think anyone is left untouched. And so I think that there is a collective healing and a personal healing. But there’s also I think, it gets tied up in other issues, issues around, you know, how we care for ourselves issues about, you know, our confidence levels, and that there are ways that we can embrace healing on a personal level, that gives us access to a lot more strength, a lot more wisdom internally, that allows us to act in a healthier way. You know, so, for instance, an example from a client is that we had a client who was really struggling to make her business work, she was struggling to charge enough she was struggling to, you know, just to invoice your clients in a timely manner, you know, and, in working with her, her own personal This is not universal to everybody, but her own personal discoveries around really, when helping her really look at that was like, Oh, she realized that she needed to allow herself to receive more love. And in receiving more love, she saw that, Oh, it’s okay, that I’m cared for to. And part of her journey with that was, you know, of course, like, you know, allowing yourself to eat in a healthier manner and allowing yourself to allowing people to care for you and to offer you know, it’s like the there’s healing there. And part of that was like, Oh, it’s okay for me to charge enough to live it’s okay for me to invoice in a timely manner. It’s okay for me to accept money from people that like that are benefited by my work and and wish nothing but good for me. And letting that love in was part of her healing around money. And I’m being very careful how I talk about this because I don’t want there to be some kind of the human tendencies to try to universalize this or at least in our culture universalized this it’s like oh, yeah, if you’re not if you don’t have money, if you don’t have enough money, you’re not receiving enough love and that’s so crap. You know, that’s all that prosperity consciousness and prosperity theology crap. That equate decree It’s a formula of like, the more money you have, the more spiritually attained you are, the more loved you are, which is just wrong. And there are these unique, like we can find in our personal stories, ways that we’re disconnecting from genuine goodwill and genuine desires to support us. In the, you know, it’s like I’m trying to be very nuanced about this, because it’s in turning away from the traumatic and wrong ideas around prosperity, consciousness, you know, prosperity, theology, kinds of approaches, I don’t want people to reject the idea that it may be on someone’s personal journey that yeah, if you let love in, you might be willing to let people pay you a living, you know, like a decent amount for your service

Silas Rose 20:53
That is a really nuanced kind of perspective. So I gather, you’re not a coach that prescribes a lot of positive affirmations, or does a lot of work around money mindset, it’s more kind of going internal to that, essentially, a kind of a wound, I think that many, many people carry not just people in business. There’s something around our self perception that’s shutting down the possibility of earning a decent living.

Mark Silver 21:34
It’s so true, you know, there’s a million ways to heal people’s path to healing is so various, and it’s, and we need different kinds of healing at different stages. And so, if personal if affirmations, are supportive to someone’s self development, and healing process, at some stage of the journey, I’m not going to, you know, I don’t want to naysay that we don’t personally work. Like that’s not what my healing training is in and how to work with affirmations. I do when I come from a Sufi perspective of one of the most important human capacities to that we need to develop, I believe, is the ability to not try to soothe or turn away from uncomfortable emotions. And I don’t mean staying in an abusive situation that’s different, or like subjecting yourself to being re traumatized. If you need to have trauma healing, dislike, you don’t want to be retriggered. I’m not saying that, you know, but I’m saying that there are times when we encounter difficult emotions, and it’s easier to sue that or to turn away from it or to try to fix it. But if we can lean in and allow ourselves to be with those emotions, one, we can often find out that they’re not actually harmful to us, they’re just uncomfortable. And then it allows us to have the spaciousness to start to ask is love available even here, is there something here that I can find that is not embracing something painful, but it’s also not turning away from it entirely, kind of like what I was talking about, and the nuanced approach to love and money that this one client walked with, we that’s when we can find the nuance, we can find our individual healing path there. And sometimes you need support from a healer from someone to hold the space and to help guide that process, because it can be a little tricky to unwind on your own. But also a lot of times a tremendous amount of the healing. And this is something I talk about in the book just comes from bringing attention to it with compassion, and spaciousness, and then it can start to unwind a lot of the healing can happen just with that attention.

Silas Rose 24:07
Is there any value in trying to figure out where the the money story comes from?

Mark Silver 24:13
I think there can be, I like to give people a lot of space in their healing. There are some times when I’ve had issues I’ve struggled with where the healing was just lifted it just like that issue just disappeared through a process of spiritual practice and work and I didn’t need to know where it came from. And other times, it seemed like it was really important for me to see like, oh, I can see how I learned this in my family lineage in this particular way from these these particular people in my lineage, and I and knowing that is really helpful and D personalizing it and realize, you know, and being able to let go to let go of it and being up being a process with that. And so, again, I think it’s I think that it can be very individualized. But there is there can very often be value in, in looking at that,

Silas Rose 25:17
When I was in my mid 20s, like you I was involved in activist communities, and there was generally a negative sense or sentiment towards people with money. You can’t help but absorb that. I feel like I’m still kind of working with my own mindset.

Mark Silver 25:40
Yeah, it is. It’s hard. I mean, it’s just when I was, in my earliest days as a EMT, when I was a volunteer before, I was a paramedic, and we would fundraise for our volunteer squad by going door to door in the district. And people who didn’t have any money who were in the poor areas, they always had five or 10 bucks for you. Oh, man, it’s the rescue squad. Yeah, of course, we got money for you. And then we go to these much wealthier neighborhoods with the gates and the intercom. And you can’t even get to the front door. And they’re like, No, thank you. And I’m like popping off a heart attack. There’s a there is a very real dynamic, that wealth isolates us like there’s a there’s when we don’t have wealth, we’re forced to depend on each other, you see, communities that have less money tend to be way more collaborative, because they need to be and that’s actually a, that’s a really healthy aspect, they more resources to those communities, please. But the collaboration is really healthy way that humans are, I believe, are supposed to exist, and wealth gives you the illusion. And this is where wealth can undermine it’s part of where it comes from. The belief that wealth is not spiritual, because wealth can undermine the spiritual process, because it makes us believe that we’re independent, we’re independent of love. We’re independent of our fellow humans, we’re independent of the world. And so I think there’s a very real dynamic there to be aware of, and I don’t think it’s inherent, I think that we, we’ve done a lot of work with clients whose businesses started to do better, and they started, you know, making 100,000 200,000 300,000 their business started bringing in, and to help them understand that that is not the same as having $100 million. And that came in through exploitation, you know, that a business that’s making two or $300,000, or $400,000, even or more than that, even a million or $2 million, like, it’s not that much money in the context of the economy. And very often those businesses require people, you know, you acquire a team. And if you’re paying your people well, and you’re being really mindful and full of heart in terms of how you care for people, and you’re not being exploitive, and then you’re being realistic about what it takes to like save up money to retire and to maintain a home. You know, when you start looking at all these numbers, it’s often much higher than we’ve, then we then a lot of folks who are in activist circles or who are aware of these conditions, it’s like the the amount of money needed, can be much higher than we acknowledged to ourselves. And it’s not the same. Like I guess I want to say it differently. Without the comparison, I just want to say that I in this economy, and here in the United States, we have way less of a safety net than many other countries do. And then if you need to take care of yourself, you need to take care of yourself. If you need to have money in savings to make sure that you can continue to feed yourself and your loved ones take care for yourself to protect yourself in case of something terrible that happens. There’s nothing wrong with that. If you’re not hurting people to accumulate that money, and that wealth and so my my Sufi teacher, my che, who passed back in 2015, was a Palestinian man from Jerusalem, he was a teacher at Al Aqsa Mosque. And, and he he spent a tremendous amount of his time caring for the poor, you know, the Palestinians are not, you know, living their best life in modern day Israel and and caring for the poor in many different places. And yet when we when we One of my fellow Sufi students here, was asking him, like, how much should I charge for healing session, he looked at him and he said, Get What You Can Get, get what you can get this cute little Palestinian man, it was like, it’s like, it’s, it’s like we exist in this in this system. Even while we’re trying to change it like it’s okay to care for ourselves. I really want that to like sink into all of the heart centered people in the activist like it’s okay to care for ourselves and to care for each other. In the system that is so painful to exist within and that isn’t currently caring. For us, if something happens to us like that can be a part of our consciousness,

Silas Rose 30:50
money stress as such. is really kind of a downward spiral. You know, when you have something that arises like an unexpected bill, and that really kind of touches that wound and then it creates a sense of paralysis or inaction, which creates more money, stress, and down and down and goes. What do you suggest to interrupt that chain reaction?

Mark Silver 31:15
I am not immune to that either. As we do spiritual practice, you know, as within the Sufi practices, remembrance, it’s literally remembering that there’s a larger reality and that, like interrupting that, when you don’t yet have a lot of spiritual practice stored up or a lot, is a little like, it’s, it’s a little, it’s challenging. It’s, it’s difficult. It’s one of the reasons I recommend spiritual practice. Because the more you do spiritual practice, at least from a Sufi perspective, and, um, you probably find the same in your own practice, it becomes a refuge becomes a place that’s more easily accessible in those times of stress. It’s like, oh, yeah, I can remember, you know, the question that we, that I offer to our students is to ask the question, is love available even here, in this painful place? Is the divine presence even here? A lot of times, it’s, it’s a function of grace, if you will, to wake up from that spiral when you’re in it. I mean, when you’re in it, unless someone else unless you have someone else that you’re in community with, who can say, Hey, can I eat? Or can I help you interrupt this? It’s just like, you know, you just hopefully come to that awareness eventually. And then when you do, there’s this process that you’re starting to witness yourself off. And you notice, like, Oh, I’m not the thing that’s happening. I’m like, I can witness this happening in me. The analogy that I use is, you know, if you go to the theater, and you’re sitting in the front row, like the story and the sound like fills your entire reality, and you lose the awareness, that there’s that you’re even in the theater. But if you sit in the back of the theater, it’s much easier to still be involved in the story. You know, you don’t want to be disconnected from the story of your life. It’s important. But you can be aware that the oh, there’s a larger reality that I’m here and I find that spiritual practice helps that. So in the moment, if you have someone that you trust that you care about, who you can call on when you’re in a spiral, who can help interrupt and can help hold space for you to just be witnessed. Because sometimes we just need to be upset and just be witnessed in the upset but then eventually coming back to the remembrance or another heart centered practice of going off just like moving back in the theater of like, like, okay, is love available even here? And asking that as a sincere question not as a oh, I should be okay. Oh, I need to find the love in this, which is often a bypass a spiritual bypassing intellectual distancing from the raw difficulty, but it’s like, Ah, this is so painful and I’m so scared. And I don’t know what’s going to happen is love available even here, Inshallah, the Sufis use the practice of remembrance which is a calling of the name of the Divine into the heart through the heart as love available even here, I can feel my whole being start to relax, I can feel my belly start to unclench. And that won’t necessary necessarily magically fix the problem but it gives me more internal resourcefulness. I can see like, oh, there’s help I can access or there’s a pathway forward or there’s there’s something, there’s something here that’s larger than just the panic in this moment. And so that’s, that’s what we recommend to our clients. And it’s generally pretty effective.

Silas Rose 35:21
It’s really about connecting the space or a sense of spaciousness, openness, you know, in those in those time moments, it’s very claustrophobic. And the more you can find space, the better. I forgot to mention this in the interview, you’re also done a Masters in Divinty and it really comes through. What role does Grace play in financial and business success?,

Mark Silver 36:05
it’s a wonderful question. You know, it’s, I’m a very practical person, I was a paramedic, I teach in business, there are things that we have to do, you know, it’s like, we live on a bit of property. And we’re trying to create a fruit forest, we have a garden and like there’s things there’s things that we you know, that you have to get your hands dirty, you know, like, there’s work that’s required that’s asked of us in being engaged. At the same time, I’ve witnessed such miracles have witnessed such miracles, I have a, I have a, I don’t, I don’t really call it faith. It’s like, unless you consider it faith, like when you sit down in a chair, you have faith that the chair is going to hold you up. Because you have the experience of the solidity of the chair, I have an experience of solidity of the Divine, of the love available in the miracles that are available. And so I think that grace, I think that miracles, I think that the presence of Love, I think that the presence of unseen help, is very real. And I think that if I, I tend to think, you know, like, Sufism is very much called the middle path. And we’re always like, I’m always encountering teachings or experiencing like, okay, like, if you’re way over on this extreme, come to this extreme. And so a lot of times, if I’m working with someone, and they are really spiritual, and they’re really been kind of, depending on the spiritual approach, I’d be like, let’s look at some of the practical aspects of your business, like, Do you have a clear message? And how’s your marketing? And how’s your sales process, like, we’ll be looking at putting in the practical pieces. But if someone’s been, like, so focused on only the practical, I’d be like, like, Can we open up a space for miracles? Can we open up a space, for heart connection and for love to be present and for something unexpected to come in? That you don’t have to try to make everything happen? From the effort of your own will? I think I don’t. I don’t like the way the word balance is often used in our culture. But I think that having a dynamic, healthy relationship between doing the actual work that’s needed, and having like being open to the unseen, being open to something coming in, that isn’t just your own effort is so important. It’s such an important part of I think life.

Silas Rose 38:45
Yeah, asking for help.

Mark Silver 38:48
Asking for help. Asking for help.

Silas Rose 38:51
In the book, you talk about the essence of business as kind of a dynamic aliveness in relationship, maybe we canend our conversation with talking about that. What does that mean to you?

Mark Silver 39:04
This was something that came up very early in was really like thinking about and people were like, what is business? Like, what is business? And the answers that people would come up with, when I’d ask in workshops, would always be something about like, well, it’s a transaction, it’s, you know, it’s a exchange of goods and services for money or it’s like, you know, like, that’s what we do in business. Like that’s an action, you know, but that’s not what it is like, what is the essence and so my explorations in Sufism and in in, in love, led me to this realization to this understanding that the essence of business is the relationships that we have around our livelihood, the relationships that we have around that dynamic The relationship that we have, and that can be the relationship with the camera and the laptop that I’m using in my headset, like, those are things that I have a relationship with, you know, I spilled coffee on my iPad, my keyboards not working, you know, like, that’s a dynamic relationship. It’s like, Oh, something needs to be cared for there. You know, there’s, you know, and it’s with our bank accounts and with our money, and it’s also with our clients, and with vendors and colleagues, and, you know, mentors and all, you know, all of these relationships, and the relationships can get the number of relationships can get overwhelming, especially for a business to be healthy, it’s going to maintain relationships with many more people than I would individually, right, my my community and my friend group, and my friends, like, I think it’s been shown that, you know, a human being can maintain about 200 relationships, some of them very distant, like somebody that you see at the supermarket, you know, or somewhere, versus people who are close in that you have a much closer relationship, but a business to be healthy is going to maintain relationship potentially with hundreds or even 1000s of people. And we need to have a way of maintaining that. And some of that has to do with the structures and systems in a business that make relationships sustainable, so can bring heart into those. But for me, at the essence of it is like, is really experiencing everything as an expression of the divine, every person, every thing, even the business itself, is an expression of divine presence. And so if I’m, if my heart if my practices are putting me in relationship with the divine, then that’s naturally going to inform my relationship with each of these individual expressions of the Divine, and it reduces my overwhelm in trying to maintain everything individually, if you will.

Silas Rose 41:52
Well, Mark, this has been such a wonderful conversation. Thank you. And I’m sure people want to know more about you and your work or get the book wanting to go.

Mark Silver 42:03
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, this is no small talk. Here we went in deep. So heart of business has lived at heartofbusiness.com. That’s where our main businesses and you can find links to the book there as well. The book has its own website, heartcenteredbusinessbook.com. And you can download to access a free chapter, an excerpt from the book, download that, as well as find places to order it and also just find a more of a description of the book.

Silas Rose 42:38
Awesome. Thanks.

Mark Silver 43:31
Thank you.