I’m not sure if it’s American, Western, or simply Human society that is so obsessed with leadership, but we are. I suppose we have good reason for it in many ways. Leadership develops naturally from the time we are infants. It just happens.
However, when as adults we clamor for others to take control, I think we have a problem, a problem of absolution. What?! Yes, many folks wish to absolve themselves from responsibility. You know the scenario — passing the buck. The ultimate statement of a leader in many folks’ eyes is “The buck stops here” (Harry Truman). Because so many people seem to desire to flee responsibility, leaders are in short supply, good leaders are even more difficult to find, and great leaders — well, they are rare indeed. If I paused here, would you take a guess as to why people don’t want responsibility for making decisions, creating excellence without observation, developing teams, or any of a thousand leadership topics? Yep, you got it. The mass of humanity lives under the domination of Ego as their primary operating system rather than choosing Heart. As adults, if many more made that choice to know who they are and create their own purpose, then we would not be scrambling for others to take responsibility and risk, because remember this, Ego hates risk if Heart has initiated it. The alternate Ego scenario, though, is Ego will urge soem people to take responsibility if they stand to profit greatly, be recognized, be significantly rewarded, be important, be powerful and in control. Then, Ego is a huge problem, for leaders motivated in that Ego mode become dangerous in one way or another, to a greater or lesser degree. Leaders who operate with Heart, though, make up a far rarer breed. However leaders process their life and make decisions, certain qualities define true leadership, which means anyone can be a great leader. I want to make a few brief and limited comments about only one aspect of leadership: trust. I appreciate the interpreted words of Lao Tzu and the analysis by various authors. John Heider is well known, and he observes and draws much from Lao Tzu’s Te Ching. Heider shares this from Lao Tzu: “The wise leader does not make a show of holiness or pass out grades for good performance. That would create a climate of success and failure. Competition and jealousy follow.” I see this as applied to teachers, primarily because I was one, am one in some ways, still. I am of the opinion that great teachers are great leaders, and they could step into almost any leadership role in business or government and function infinitely better than many leaders do now. Of course, I imply a corollary here: great teachers don’t give a shit about grades, because great teachers know that grades are meaningless in terms of measurement or in terms of mastery. Also, teachers gain no modicum of trust if they proceed to prove how wonderful and intelligent they are. Teachers must create a team, convince them that they are capable of learning and creating, and clearly communicate the objectives and goals, and ensure the skills and concepts needed to perform are modeled to students— every single day. If you are running a business and aren’t intimately acquainted with and practicing these and their corollaries and methods — every single day — then you’ve got some learning to do. Do you know how teams of classes that function well happen? Through a relationship of trust, to a large extent. Followers, workers, or students, trust the leader because the leader invests in them — invests knowledge and talents and confidence and encouragement that are appropriate to the objectives. Beyond that, such leadership investment is founded on a genuine care for and connection with individuals. A great leader values the people above all. Being a boss, preserving a reputation, garnering a profit at any expense, or putting organization before people is lousy-ass leadership. And this brings me back to where I started. A great leader knows the people must take responsibility, ultimately, by knowing themselves, their own strengths, talents, and ability to execute, i.e., the people have to accomplish the goals and fulfill the objectives. In fact, another well-known quote of Lao Tzu says, “A leader is best when people barely know that he exists, not so good when people obey and acclaim him, worst whey they despise him. Fail to honor people, and they fail to honor you. But of a good leader, who talks little, when his work is done, his aims fulfilled, they will all say ‘We did this ourselves.’” Responsibility is fulfilled based on a trust relationship with a leader who understands the value of individuals. A great leader brings followers to a place of knowing self and creating purpose. In other words, a great leader acts on the same basis as Heart. Not very many great leaders can be found. When they are, they are maligned by poor leaders or sometimes allow their egos to take over. I’m not trying to make this bleak; I’m simply pointing out the only safeguard for preserving great leadership is to walk in fellowship with one’s own Heart and with those who do that in the Fellowship of the Heart. In that sense, we choose our own leader; we show our understanding and wisdom when we choose Heart to guide, process, and filter life, to lead our ego, mind, soul, and body — our whole being — to a significant, fulfilled life. Sound good? It’s go time!
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Let’s get real about reality. If you’re a so-called pragmatist, you might as well not waste your time reading further than this if you believe you have the right take on everything — you know, because you can see things as they are.
Things are never as they seem — to a pragmatist or a realist. How ironic is that? Realists believe that facts are facts and that’s the way it is. That’s never the way it is — for anyone else. I know you know the saying that perception is truth. It is. If you say no it’s not, that’s fine, but I immediately know that you’re a pragmatist. Pragmatists classically have little idea of what their dreams are, what they want to do with their lives, or who they are. But, by damn, they know the facts. Okay, I definitely am not finding fault, just making an observation. I wouldn’t want a pragmatist to start looking at my life and start staying what that looks like. Shit! I would probably come out looking like a monster! My point is this, honestly, at least it’s the one I started with: we create our reality — plain and simple. I love you no matter what you think; I’m stating my opinion here. We create our own reality. I think I should stop there, and I would if you were students in my classroom. I would ask you to spend the next fifteen to twenty minutes and write a journal response to that prompt: We create our own reality. Agree, disagree, or somewhere in between. At least fifteen solid minutes of writing. Then, I would ask for volunteers to read their responses. No matter how many did, I would collect them all, shuffle them, and read them aloud, anonymously. What would you say? I know I would see a variety of answers, many very well reasoned, that proves my point: we create our own realities. How we feel about the facts, no matter what they are, reveals our mindset and our personal truth. I also know from education (and from television and movies) that eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable. Why? Because we create our own reality. Reality is not facts. Reality is the way we think ands feel about the “facts” based on our philosophy and personal truth, and that creates new “facts” for you or me or whoever is doing the observing, analyzing, and evaluating. This is one of the reasons I possess a quality that is not necessarily noble: I’m kind of oppositional-defiant when it comes to authorities. They don’t have all the answers or appropriate responses. Speaking of authorities, though, I love Shakespeare’s works. They have remained so relevant — still studied, still produced, still translated into movies and adaptations, because Will knew what makes us tick as human beings. In The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, Hamlet tells his friends, who are spying on him, “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so” (2.2). Too bad Hamlet didn’t decide to create a different reality for himself; the play wouldn’t have been a tragedy for him. Shakespeare got it: “thinking makes it so,” makes it true, makes it reality. What is our reality about our life circumstances, about who we are, about what we think we should be doing here? We get to choose. We can use this to great advantage, good and right advantage. We, through the now-famous law of attraction, create vibrational energy that draws the “facts,” “reality,” to us, i.e., we manifest it. Manifestation occurs through Heart or Ego. No matter what we are currently experiencing, we have created it. However, we can now choose Heart through which to generate positive energy and make the reality work for our own benefit. I have heard friends, acquaintances, and even strangers say that their current circumstances are not what they want, but it’s just life, it’s just the way it is, and they have to deal with it. That’s their reality because they said so, they live it so. It doesn’t have to be — if they want it to be different. I get back to the main thrust of my Purpose: knowing who we are and creating our own Purpose to shape our reality. Knowing Self, fellowshipping with Heart, and envisioning our reality makes a huge difference. Of course — and I hope this satisfies my pragmatic friends — we need to work our asses off towards those realities. Know what, though? Our realities should be so amazing, so wonderful, bizarre, crazy, fulfilling, significant that whatever we are doing to create our reality should be a freakin’ blast. If that’s not your reality, why isn’t it? What we think and speak often determine what we live. What we do definitely shapes our reality. I am not going any further than this tonight. I need to spend some time creating my reality. Among those who have come to discover core Self and create life purpose, differences of opinion exist about how’s and why’s and such. Things like terminology or paths or procedures may sound and actually be different. However, some things aren’t.
Like love. we either know love or we don’t. And yet with a concept so universal, each of us experiences love in different ways. This morning I unexpectedly and gratefully felt the warm, rapturous embrace of Spirit in expression of love to me. I suppose my Heart knew what I needed. It always does. As I sat writing my personal, always unpublished, morning pages, I realized almost immediately that I, my mind, was speaking to my ego. I don’t hear words like I do with Heart, but I knew the energy impulses that formed thoughts in my mind. I heard the cautions and rationales Ego proposes when we don’t choose Heart to process, filter, and transmit thoughts. I felt the tension and understood the tension between Heart and Ego helps me to create; interplay will always exist, and the contrast and roles of each give me insight. I choose Heart, but that default Ego setting will respond instantly when it has a chance, which is why the fellowship with and of the Heart remains crucial to my well-being. Then, after nearly a page of my monologue responses to Ego energy, my Heart began speaking directly to me. As anyone does, I occasionally have anxieties. Heart mediated for me with Spirit and I felt a blanket of warming love that produced emotional goosebumps. I wrote the words that Love banishes anxiety, worry, fear. I thought of the Bible verse in I John 4:18: “There is no fear in love, for perfect love drives out all fear, because fear has to do with punishment…” You needn’t claim to be some religion to know the reality of this. It represents a spiritual truth for humanity. I understand Ego uses fear and worry and anxiety because those emotions keep us in check. We fear to take risks and upset the status quo and become nonconformists because we might fail. We might get hurt. We might be laughed at. We might appear abnormal. Part of Ego’s job is to raise awareness of where we stand in relation to society, to let us know how others are viewing us. Its job, however, is pretty much limited to that because we don’t need all those auxiliary emotions of doubts, fears, guilt, and regret. We don’t need them because we live with a direct, personal connection to eternal Spirit, full of vibrational energy of pure light and love. Heart, being the personalized substance of Spirit in us, can just cut loose and let that love flow. It does all the time, but sometimes we need to specifically access it directly or indirectly, as happened with me this morning. The peace and fullness washed over me. Fellowship with my Heart created this special access I have had today. Oh, I’ve experienced this before, but it’s new and fresh and needed every single time. And as I mature spiritually, which is a continuous process not age-related, I felt this Spirit-love, the Perfect Love, this morning in relationship and application to each energy center of my being, the seven major chakras, that rainbow diffraction in my being of the pure light of Spirit flowing through me. The light and love was there; my Heart awareness allowed me to experience it more than usual today. The following list corresponds to what I felt this morning, from my root chakra up to the crown. I’m leaving it untouched except for dividing it up, clarifying the thoughts so it’s more understandable, and correcting a few errors. Allowing Perfect Love to embrace and envelop me means these things to me. 1. Perfect love for physical Self and all associated with my body sensations and experiences. 2. Perfect Love means balanced, beautiful connections with others that flow like the Waters of Life — a joy in intimate relationships of nurturing with fellow human beings. 3. Perfect love drives me to arise and move and create life each day like Sun arises; it motivates me for living my created Purpose as I see fit. 4. Perfect Love forms the foundation of relationship and feeling towards those in my world; it gives me emotional and spiritual sympathy and empathy. 5. Perfect Love energizes my Heart to write, speak, hear, and receive to fully create and communicate with my personal, powerful Voice from a foundation of love. 6. Perfect Love forms my lens of understanding all, perceiving, intuiting. 7. Perfect Love is the basis of true wisdom and Unity with all the Universe. I felt this love. I know it. I don’t always walk in the conscious thought of it. Therefore, while none of us are perfect, while some don’t agree with me or I don’t agree with them, and while relatively few walk in the fellowship of the Heart, I am free and can allow love to bless any relationship. In fact, we need to stop expecting one another to conform to our concept of perfection. Perfect love is all the perfection we need. Life really shouldn’t be as complicated as we make it. In fact, it does not have to be so.
Making life complex extrapolates to and is most fully apparent in governmental and political life. Nations are usually made up of people with shared and common geographic, ethnic, and cultural identities. Great. Still doesn’t have to be complicated. Where do complications happen? When nations, actually not the citizenry but rather duplicitous, power-mongering, manipulative leaders, believe they have to be better than others, then we should expect wars. We say individuals should not be like that. Then, neither should governments be allowed to. When they fight for superiority over others, when they do any array of things that reflect the same sort of problems that appear in individuals due to Ego having authority it should never have been given, that is wrong. Ego, ego, ego complicates life and sets up double standards. Nations should operate on the same standards as individuals: come to know Heart and live according to that identity. Any individual who does that knows our main concerns are with knowing and loving Self, which then extends to others as we determine how to live and enjoy that Self in the world. When that happens, we have created a purpose we enjoy, take pleasure in, and live, and while doing that, we are loving the world. Pretty awesome! Nations should be concerned with engendering those conditions for individuals. When a critical mass of individuals live according to Heart, then the positive energies of life and Universe will flow. When a critical mass either are resigned to living Ego as their primary operating system or they purposefully choose to ignore Heart and live Ego, then life becomes complicated — not only for individuals but also for whole nations. Nationalism, by and large, is a symptom of Ego working at a mass level. If life should be simple for individuals, it should be simple for nations. In fact, many nations probably wouldn’t exist in their current form if Heart had been employed by the leaders of those nations. Just one lousy nation can create complications affecting multiple others. Unfortunately, when egomaniacs like Hitler or Hideki engage in determined paths of ego destruction, decisions need to be made. Usually, the responses illustrate similar ego destruction. In the case of WWII, nothing was easy about response. Japanese aggression sealed the deal for the United States. Complications, like I said. Quite honestly, I can’t and don’t want to judge the leaders of Allied nations in that war. Many wars have been downright, unequivocal ego stupidity. Probably WWII was in the same category; however, Hearts do not lie down and allow eradication. They do, though, take the path of least destruction and death. Complicated. And today, when I reflect on the attack on Pearl Harbor and all it represented to America, I am conflicted. Horrible acts initiated by Ego always create personal conflict. I feel remembrances like today should not be used by leaders to extol nationalistic pride. That shit is usually ego-induced propaganda. Leaders who are Heart-principled leaders should use such days to focus on healing and opportunities for all of us to reconsider the sort of emotions that start such deadly actions. And despite what many historians, scientists, philosophers, or politicians might say, wars and conflicts emerge from human emotions, plain and simple — ego emotions, plain and simple. Or maybe I should say plain and complicated. I will say this: true leaders, including politicians, who have any merit or respect in my book, are those who lead people to know and cultivate freedom in Heart truth, who encourage others to live Heart, which means we walk in love, respect, and openness to one another. Any other sort of governance is ego-based. Am I aware of how simplistic I am making this sound? Yes. Do I know nations in my lifetime will never operate on such principles? Yes. Will I lie down, resign myself to it, and allow it to go unexposed and unchallenged? NO. Is an egoic oligarchy ruling America right now, including not only government but also power brokers in business, banking, industry? Yes. Do they do things like continue to disrespect and destroy other nations and peoples who stand in the way of their goals for power and wealth? Yes. So today, I think that we should think of how we are responding to and treating some in the Middle East. I think we should look much closer to home and stop the disrespect of the Native Americans. Cold. DAPL dead in its tracks. 85% complete? Tough shit. I think days like today should be remembered and then broader principles applied to our lives. Simple things, you know, like the relationships of individuals without racial or ethnic considerations or respect for those who try to, with good souls, enforce laws that mitigate ego and enforce peace. And I think of that watery graveyard in Hawaii and the ghostly image of the Arizona still burping steady bubbles of oil, and I remember the tragedy, death, and destruction that Ego creates when we as humans do not recognize the power and divinity in ourselves. If we did that, we would not need to resort to Ego for grasping after identity and power in the big picture of ideas like nationalism. Yes, today I remember the death wrought at Pearl Harbor. I remember how it affected the whole world. I know those actions were based on human emotions fueled by Ego. I want to live Heart and joy and the pleasure of that in love to others more than ever. For those who may say it just can’t be that simple, I would recount the words of one of my senior girls on September 11, 2001. With tears streaming down her face, she asked a question most would consider naive and maybe even disrespectful. I heard her sincerity: “Why can’t we all just get along?” Because too many ignore Heart, that’s why. Choosing Heart is simple; getting along is simple; love is simple. Many times, most times, simple is best. Many people approach life in mystery and complexity. I know to a large extent, I did.
Those big questions of life I have often given here have really simple answers. While they may contain many facets and aspects of human nature, they really are simple. Who am I? Get by yourself with no interference of any sort and with zero, nada, zilch influence of what anyone else thinks, no matter who demands consideration. You and your Heart. Talk. Ask the question. Keep asking till you feel it, sense it, know it., hear it. Yes, I and others could help you do that with some different techniques, but it doesn’t have to be so. Then, many folks really get hung up on the second big question: Why am I here? What am I supposed to be doing with my life? This one is even simpler. There is no big “out there somewhere” answer to discover. No deity holding it from us, making us jump through hoops to find it and then express undying gratitude. It’s freakin’ whatever we want to do. However, I taught for too long to know the leeway that “whatever you want” leaves for slackers, but you know what I found with students? Leave the slackers and abusers of freedom alone and they will see truth for themselves or degrade or harm themselves. (If they start harming others, then I take a stand.) So, here is the simple caveat: We do whatever we want to do that reveals, displays, shares, relates our core Self — the answer to Who Am I? — to the rest of this world. We choose, we create, and we live it. Simple as that. And simple usually boils down to action. Before I ever heard or knew Nike had the slogan, my dad’s way of teaching was simple. Now, I accept who I am and the way my mind works. I analyze and synthesize, collect and connect, and I wanted Dad to give me rationale for doing things. Not Dad. When it came to teaching me anything, he would show me the skill and hand me the ball, bat, rope, fishing pole, bike, bowling ball, paint brush, steering wheel, whatever — and expect me to know it. I would get so frustrated, especially when he would be disgusted with my attempts. I know now why he was disgusted. I didn’t see then that I was sabotaging myself and his way of teaching. It was subconscious, which he may not have realized, but it was sabotage, nonetheless. I would screw up for some bizarre reason to show him his teaching was inadequate. I guess I wanted to be mollycoddled, lovingly encouraged, or something like that. He knew what I needed more than me. So, I would get angry and tell him so. He would tell me if I didn’t want to do it to quit, leave, walk away. I would stare. He would show me again, look at me, and say (here’s the Nike reference), “Just do it.” Then, he would walk away, completely out of my range of sight or voice. I did it on my own with his brief example or I never learned it. That was best for me, and Dad got it. Simple. So many make finding the answer to their purpose so complicated. It’s not. Purpose is only to live our own core Self, our Heart and our truth, in this world. Do what we’re good at and enjoy it. Boom! You want an answer to your purpose, that’s it. The tricky part is not letting others, individuals, society, or even family, influence you, conform you. That’s why all the shouting to the heavens and all the bellowing to some deity about “Why am I here and what do you want me to do?” is ego, all ego. Stop putting that on anyone else. Do You. Just do it. That is your purpose. Now, I will say the Spirt of all, the energy working through everything, responds to our vibrational, life energy output, and when we really search self, we may receive encouragement or even magic because we draw it. I referred this morning to a little scenario. We stand atop a figurative mountain, shouting to the cosmos, “Why am I here? What is this all about?” A honeybee lands on our arm and starts picking at the fine hairs there. “Go away, Bee, I’m talking to God.” A butterfly flits and lands on our shoulder, a distracting occurrence. “Go away butterfly. I have to find my purpose.” Some stupid, noisy crow lights on the nearest perch he can find, looks directly at us, and caws insistently. “Get out of here, Crow. Can’t you see what I’m doing.” And each one of those, Bee, Butterfly, Crow, had the message of eternal Spirit. “Be who You are like Bee, Butterfly, and Crow. Do what You want as that You. It’s right here, nearer than the bee, butterfly, and crow.” It’s not in a thunderbolt or college degrees or intimate relationships. It’s in Heart. And that is a simple thing to know, but a knowledge that grows deeper, more profound, yet more distinctly simple every day we fellowship with it. That’s my simple truth. Blessings! |
Questions to consider:How many times have you asked yourself or simply thought about the following questions?
Who am I, really? What is my truth? How do my actions reveal what I really feel and believe? What would I do with my life if I could do anything? What is my passion? Why am I here? How can I discover answers to any of these questions? If you have considered any of these questions, I hope that my experiences and writing will give you some guidance. Please read my blog and comment and share your thoughts. I would love to hear from you! Archives
December 2019
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