Julian Saipe VOLUME II
LESSONS FOR LEADERSHIP & LIFE, VOL. II2
3LESSONS FOR LEADERSHIP & LIFE, VOL. II
Julian Saipe
LESSONS FOR LEADERSHIP & LIFE, VOL. II4 All literary excerpts and images have been carefully sourced and attributed, but the accuracy and legitimacy of these cannot be guaranteed, and the author apologises for any mistakes made in error. Copyright © 2022 by Julian Saipe All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without written permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, visit www.jaa.world First ebook edition: July 2022 www.jaa.world
I would like to thank all my teachers for their collective wisdom, Dylane Bellini for providing the book design, and Lucienne Mumford for her love and editing.
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Acknowledgements
I continue to post daily quotes and reflections on LinkedIn. This book is the second collection of my work, and features some of the content that I posted in the early part of 2022. The quotes themselves are sourced from our rich literary heritage, and feature business leaders, management consultants, executive coaches, psychotherapists, poets, and spiritual teachers. The golden thread to this work is the non-dual teaching that the ‘separate self’ is a construct of the mind. The attachment to this conceptual identity is the source of many of our so-called problems, in leadership, business and life. Seeing the limits of the finite mind is our gateway to freedom, joy and success.
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7LESSONS FOR LEADERSHIP & LIFE, VOL. II “ In ignorance, I am something. In understanding, I am nothing, In love, I am everything. Rupert Spira ”
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But the threat that you perceive is only made real by the idea that you are something limited that can be wiped out. A separate self whose limits can be diminished in relationship with another. In reality, being in conflict has nothing to do with the other person.
Instead of trying to work out how your ‘limited’ self can survive, go straight to who you essentially are, the one that has no agenda or need for one.
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The reason you are fighting with another person is that you imagine them to be a threat, and therefore you need to defend yourself against them. “I have to protect myself”. “I have to win back what I have lost”.
BEING IN CONFLICT
WITH ANOTHER PERSON
The defensiveness that you bring to the relationship then turns the other person into the threat that you imagine. The other person appears in conformity with your imagination. And so on.
By attributing such power to the other person you strengthen the idea of your fragility. But their ‘power’ and your ‘fragility’ don’t exist.
Your true nature, the empty vessel of consciousness through which all experience passes, knows no limits. The perception of feeling threatened is unknown to the You whose openness has no opposite.
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LESSONS FOR LEADERSHIP & LIFE, VOL. II12 Your imposter can never get rid of its syndrome. This is because there isn’t an imposter to be cured. The imposter is your attachment to a conceptual identity that is simply a construct of the mind. As with many ‘problems’, seeking a cure is not the answer. You’ll never fi nd the answer, because that which is looking is It LetAwareness.yourseeker become the sought. IMPOSTER SYNDROME
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BEING
Lao Tzu THE
EMBODIED LEADER
Leadership is not a personality contest. Leadership is not a role. Leadership is the embodiment of presence, awareness, purpose and action . Because one believes in oneself, one doesn’t try to convince others. Because one is content with oneself, one doesn’t need others’ approval. Because one accepts oneself, the whole world accepts him or her.”
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Eckhart Tolle
STOP AVOIDING
You don’t like ‘emptiness’ because you think it represents failure; your lack of enterprise, or a dull state where nothing will ever happen. Therefore you fill it with stuff including ‘problems’ that were never really there. And then, you have a-void-ed the emptiness out of which all expressions of life and creativity emerge. Become at ease with the state of ‘not knowing’. This takes you beyond mind because the mind is always trying to conclude and interpret. The mind is afraid of not knowing. So, when you can be at ease with not knowing, you have already gone beyond the mind. A deeper knowing that is non-conceptual then arises out of that state.”
THE VOID
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TUNING IN TO WHAT IS NEEDED
Being attuned to the resonance and resistance in any interpersonal system is to recognise the energetic current from which the future can Whereflow.attunement to what is real is absent, the future simply becomes a continuation of the past. This is how nature has worked for millions of years. Innovation doesn’t happen centrally, according to plan, but at the edges, all the time, when some organism senses a change in the environment and experiments to find a response. Some attempts to fail catch on; others rapidly spread to all corners of the ecosystem. Reality is the ultimate reference.”
Frederic Laloux, Reinventing Organizations
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“I am this. I am that.” (You don’t need to be anyThing.)
Stephen Fry CONCEPTUAL IDENTITY
Softening your attachment to your conceptual identity liberates You from having to keep up with the idea of your self.
.
You are the empty vessel of authenticity in which all experience arises. Embrace it all in stillness, and life will bring your best responses Oscar Wilde said that if you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it - that is your punishment, but if you never know, then you can be anything. There is a truth to that. We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing - an actor, a writer - I am a person who does things - I write, I act - and I never know what I am going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun ”
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Your future-chasing drivers might be fuelled by an old deficit: “This is not enough”, “I am not enough”.
Thomas Hübl
The mental image of ‘success’ that you are running towards is a reflection of a past loss.
Being present with this energy centre is the gateway to the creative intelligence that will take you where you need to go. What is in the way, is in the way.”
THE MOMENTUM OF YOUR OLD FREIGHT
Your true nature is trying to restore this sense of depletion.
Anxiety, imposter syndrome and dis-ease are all life’s invitation …
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The striving for success can blind us to our inner purpose - the realisation of our true nature.
Once realised, our outer purpose becomes an expression of the essential qualities of this true nature. This manifests as relationality, creativity, responsibility, and contribution. Scrabbling around to fi nd purpose is driven by a scarcity mindset. “What I have is not enough, and getting more will make things better.”
THE FRUITLESS SEARCH FOR PURPOSE
Purpose isn’t ‘out there’ to be found, Being purposeful is innate to who we are.
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Humility is about surrendering to a greater design, Rather than, Keep fighting. A breathless, ever-simmering panic that is driven by a Scarcity LetWeAbsence.mindset.cango. And flourish with the creative intelligence all around us.Presence.Humility is just as much the opposite of self-abasement as it is of self-exaltation. To be humble is not to make comparisons. Secure in its reality, the self is neither better nor worse, bigger nor smaller, than anything else in the universe. It ‘is’- is nothing, yet at the same time at one with everything. It is in this sense that humility is absolute self-effacement.” Dag Hammarskjöld, Former UN Secretary General HUMILITY
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When the content of your experience draws you into reactivity, you are led by the past and the wiring of your conditioned sensibility. An old script. Being relational invites you to bring presence and receptivity to what is, so that your responses are new and meaningful. Our greatest response-ability is the learning of relationality. People have forgotten this truth,” the fox said. “But you mustn’t forget it. You become responsible forever for what you’ve tamed. You’re responsible for your rose.”
RESPONSIBILITY PHOTO
Antoine de TheSaint-Exupéry,LittlePrince CREDIT: Karolina Grabowska
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Purposeful action that emerges from the void has power. Forcing a plan that avoids the expansive source has the opposite effect. I have often wondered whether especially those days when we are forced to remain idle are not precisely the days spent in the most profound activity. Whether our actions themselves, even if they do not take place until later, are nothing more than the last reverberations of a vast movement that occurs within us during idle days.”
Rainer MariaLettersRilke, POWER IDLENESS Martin P é chy
THE
OF
PHOTO CREDIT:
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Sensing the resonance and resistance in any interpersonal system (team, organisation or community) is leadership’s responsibility and opportunity to facilitate change and growth. Being attuned to what Is, rather than what should be, allows nature to work its corrective magic. The old ‘stuck’ dissolves into flow, and the new future emerges. This is where all the work we have done with ourselves to sense the connection between our bodily sensations and implicit memories comes to help our person. Our conviction that this is the doorway to the deeper places provides a foundation, through resonance, to slow down and attend to the body.”
Bonnie Badenoch, Interpersonal Neurobiology Vlad Chetan
RESTORING THE UNSTUCK PHOTO CREDIT:
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I, the pure light of knowing, modulate myself in the form of thinking and seem to become a mind; I modulate myself in the form of sensing and seem to become a body; I modulate myself in the form of seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling, and seem to become a world. However, I always remain myself, unmodified by any of the forms or activities that I assume.”
My client conversations are a compassionate and rich playground where the limits of the thinking mind are revealed, and perceived sensations in the body become a gateway to the life force that is our essential being. This is an extraordinary and liberating experience, and which restores an original fl ow that brings creativity, clarity and growth.
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Rupert Spira CREDIT: Alvin Sadewo
RETURNING TO THE SOURCE PHOTO
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David Hawkins ‘ME’ THE EXPERIENCE Matthew Bornhorst
”
TAKING
PHOTO CREDIT:
OUT OF
Your thoughts and the roles you enact are not essentially who you are. Recognising these characters and their melodrama is the starting point for being free of their energetic charge. One is not the victim of mentation but instead is the very originator by virtue of intention to extract projected value. With this understanding, one is free from being dominated by the false “I” of the experiencer.
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If you look within rather than only without, however, you discover that you have an inner and an outer purpose, and since you are a microcosmic reflection of the macrocosm, it follows that the universe too has an inner and outer purpose inseparable from yours. The outer purpose of the universe is to create form and experience the interaction of forms—the play, the dream, the drama, or whatever you choose to call it. Its inner purpose is to awaken to its formless essence. Then comes the reconciliation of outer and inner purpose: to bring that essence—consciousness—into the world of form and thereby transform the world. The ultimate purpose of that transformation goes far beyond anything the human mind can imagine or comprehend. And yet, on this planet at this time, that transformation is the task allotted to us.”
Eckhart Tolle
PHOTO
INNER PURPOSE VS OUTER PURPOSE CREDIT: Anastasia Stexova
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THE ESSENTIAL HEART
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Two coaching questions: … and given what you have just described, What is the question that you are asking yourself? … and when you redirect that question back to its source, What do you find? The turning of the mind away from the objective content of experience towards the source or essence from which it has arisen is the essence of meditation or prayer. ” Rupert Spira, Being Aware of Being Aware OF THINGS
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LESSONS FOR LEADERSHIP & LIFE, VOL. II42 When your Seeker’s striving is fuelled by an old deficit, your future is destined to be a mirror of the past. But when you bring presence to what is unfolding right now, a new future emerges with clarity and grace. It’s amazing how a little tomorrow can make up for a whole lot of yesterday. ” John Guare Landscape of the Body CREATING A NEW FUTURE PHOTO CREDIT: Alicia Zinn
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LESSONS FOR LEADERSHIP & LIFE, VOL. II44 Paying homage to the genius in the ‘music’ is executive leadership’s responsibility - to harvest the system’s collective wisdom in service of the greater good, rather than enacting old egoic mind patterns. I’m not interested in having an orchestra sound like itself. I want it to sound like the composer. ” Leonard Bernstein THE GENIUS WITHIN
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RUNNING AWAY FROM FULFILMENT
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Become attuned to the energy field in your body, and accept the resistance which is your non-peace in this moment. The energy of this resistance then dissolves into the energetic flow of your being. Here you reconnect with the creative intelligence that brings the timeless New. Because we demand a future, we live each moment in expectation and unfulfillment. We live each moment in passing. In just this way the real nunc stans, the timeless present, is reduced to the nunc fluens, the fleeting present, the passing present of a mere one or two seconds. We expect each moment to pass on to a future moment, for in this fashion we pretend to avoid death by always rushing toward an imagined future. We want to meet ourselves in the future. We don’t want just now—we want another now, and another, and another, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. And thus, paradoxically, our impoverished present is fleeting precisely because we demand that it end! We want it to end so that it can thereby pass on to yet another moment, a future moment, which will in turn live only to pass. ”
Ken Wilber
You resist being in the present moment because ‘what Is’ doesn’t conform with your mind’s idea of a better place to be. Chasing fulfilment in the future then becomes your distraction. But how can you fulfil your potential in a state of distraction?
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Bonnie Badenoch
Similarly, the leader’s receptivity and its resonance generates true responsiveness in others. When we talk about cultivating a non-judgemental, agendaless space between, we might easily believe this means we are passively present. Quite the contrary. We are dynamically awake in the midst of the inner stillness and receptivity, attending to and following what is emerging in our people.”
CULTIVATING PRESENCE
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In the face of authentic presence, your natural resources come to the surface: Healing, intuition, creativity, and purpose.
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Otto Scharmer ATTENTION TO IS
The power of attention is the real superpower of our age. Attention, aligned with intention, can make mountains move. ”
BRINGING
WHAT
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Bringing attention to the energy of fear is the power you have to transcend your personal or systemic ‘stuck’. The new purpose that then emerges becomes your call to action. However, when you chase ‘success’ as a fear-avoidance tactic, you are disconnected from the potential of your true nature.
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LESSONS FOR LEADERSHIP & LIFE, VOL. II54 Taking responsibility for your inner experience allows for your best responses to emerge. When it rains, we get wet. While we didn’t make it rain, we are responsible for being wet. ” Joel Latner DON’T BE A VICTIM PHOTO CREDIT: Aditya Darji
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LESSONS FOR LEADERSHIP & LIFE, VOL. II56 1. Live now. Concern yourself with the present before the past or the future. 2. Live here. Deal with what is present rather than with what is absent. 3. Stop imagining. Experience the real. 4. Stop unnecessary thinking. Rather, taste and see. 5. Express rather than manipulate, explain, justify, or judge. 6. Give in to unpleasantness and pain just as to pleasure. Do not restrict your awareness. 7. Accept no “should” or “must” other than your own. Adore no idol. 8. Take full responsibility for your actions, feelings, and thoughts. 9. Accept being as you are. ” Claudio Naranjo Chilean Psychotherapist A GESTALT TOOLKIT PHOTO CREDIT: J R Korpa
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When your Striver finally realises that what you are ultimately seeking can never be found in a conceptual identity and its associated activity, the intention loses its direction and flows back to its source to reveal the fulfilment that was there all the while. What is at the source of your striving? Happiness is gleaned from a source which can be attributed to all experiences; it can be found wherever the individual does not mind forfeiting the option for some sense of control. ”
UNSTRIVING FOR
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Justin K. McFarlane Beau HAPPINESS
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Thich
In the space between your thoughts, there is a profound stillness and presence. An empty fullness which we call consciousness. Your true nature - receptive and responsive. Divine inspiration for which you are simply the activity. If you searched for your limits there, you wouldn’t find them. Be open to that which is always here. The greatest gift we can offer anyone is our true presence. ” Nhat Hanh
EMPTY FULLNESS
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LESSONS FOR LEADERSHIP & LIFE, VOL. II62 Perhaps the biggest obstacle for the evolution of your interpersonal or business system is the assumption that the optimisation of the past is the best way to create a better future. Convergent logic asks you to come up with better answers to the questions you already know. But what if you are asking the wrong Problemsquestions?thatremain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way. ” Alan Watts NEW QUESTIONS NEEDED PHOTO CREDIT: Da Yin Photography
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LESSONS FOR LEADERSHIP & LIFE, VOL. II64 The pursuit of ‘purpose’ is the surest way to sabotage your innate purposefulness. Self-actualization is possible only as a side effect of self-transcendence. ” Viktor Frankl SELF-TRANSCENDENCE PHOTO CREDIT: Maxim Abramov
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ON THE BLANK CANVAS
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Rupert Spira Being Aware of Being Aware
You identify with the roles you play and the drama of your daily life, so much so that you believe you ARE the states of mind of these characters: the ambition, the fearfulness, the frustration, the hope, the disappointment, the striving, the restlessness. Rather, you are in essence, the ever-present, peaceful and untainted observer of all of your experience. In being aware, you have access to freedom and fulfilment in every moment. It is the self-aware screen of awareness, upon which the drama of experience is playing and out of which it is made, that becomes so intimately involved with the objective content of its experience that it seems to lose itself in it and, as a result, overlooks or forgets its own presence, just as a dreamer’s mind loses itself in its own dream at night.”
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LESSONS FOR LEADERSHIP & LIFE, VOL. II68 Your thoughts generate an impulse in the body - a familiar vibration that renews your membership to an old, limited way of Howthinking.can you ‘break the chains of your thought’ so that you can live with more freedom? Your whole body, from wingtip to wingtip,” Jonathan would say, other times, “is nothing more than your thought itself, in a form you can see. Break the chains of your thought, and you break the chains of your body, too. ” Richard Bach Jonathan Livingston Seagull: A story BEYOND THOUGHT PHOTO CREDIT: Nastyasensei
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LESSONS FOR LEADERSHIP & LIFE, VOL. II70 Recognising our learned behaviours (self and system), Unlearning that which no longer serves us well, Sitting with not knowing, Sensing and being receptive to what is, Challenging ourselves to act in response to what emerges, Is the work in hand. A culture that cannot unlearn and psychically disinvest can never be ready for the challenges of the future ” E. Ted Prince Former CEO, INSCI Corp Founder, Perth Leadership Institute UNLEARNING
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If the drivers that fuel your ambition stem from a personal loss, then your purpose may be blind to the hopes and dreams of others. You may unknowingly manipulate people for your personal gain. (Be aware, for the experience of loss will remerge somewhere down the line).
If, however, your purpose is untainted by self-interest, then you are more likely to find alignment with others, as well as the loyalty that once eluded you.
If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea. ” Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
SERVANT LEADERSHIP
Leaders who pay attention to what is present, rather than to what is absent, pave the way for a better future.
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IMAGE: Among the rarest birds in the world, the red-crowned crane is named for a patch of red bare skin on its crown, which becomes brighter during mating season. In some parts of its east Asian range, it is known as a symbol of luck, longevity, and fidelity.
On trusting one’s intuition, and making great decisions … Don’t trust your feelings, especially the not the e-motions that take over your thinking, which may rise up as a result of your false assumptions - your misinterpretation of reality. Acknowledge your feelings, yes, but don’t believe the thoughts that generated them. They are not your best guide for action. Instead, be the present observer of your experience. In the stillness generated by this presence, your inner knowing - intuition - will emerge. Intuition is your quiet strength, not the energetic charge of your emotions that takes over your thinking. Intuition is a simple and peaceful moment of just Knowing.
By challenging the conditioning of your mind and the ensuing feelings, coaching unveils the deep realisations that offer you the right course of action.
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TRUST YOUR INTUITION
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LESSONS FOR LEADERSHIP & LIFE, VOL. II76 Are you led by the noise inside and around you? Can you trust where life is taking you? Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” A.A. Winnie-the-PoohMilne NO HURRY
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TEACHER
Losing yourSelf within a conceptual identity awakens the shadow in your unconscious - the dark teacher - who brings knowledge and blessings in the guise of mental unrest and physical dis-ease. Coaching dims the glare of the dazzling footlights, and offers a safe space for you to de-role. Here you will find more peace and purpose. We’re actors — we’re the opposite of people!”
Your ‘success’ is seductive and you become more identified with these so-called strengths, as if they are who you Are. They are not. (Enter The Dark Teacher)
Tom Stoppard Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead DARK
THE
LESSONS FOR LEADERSHIP & LIFE, VOL. II78 The roles you play have made you successful. Can you name them? The Charmer? The Grafter? The Striver? The Opportunist?
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LESSONS FOR LEADERSHIP & LIFE, VOL. II80 Despite your efforts to work it all out, you do not need to know precisely what is happening, or exactly where it is all going. What you do need is to recognise the possibilities and challenges offered by the present moment, and to embrace them with courage. NOT KNOWING IS MOST INTIMATE PHOTO CREDIT: Sarah Elizabeth
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NO BOUNDARY
Ursula K. Le Guin
Most problems are related to boundaries and the opposites they create … in the mind. There was a wall. It did not look important. It was built of uncut rocks roughly mortared. An adult could look right over it, and even a child could climb it. Where it crossed the roadway, instead of having a gate it degenerated into mere geometry, a line, an idea of boundary. But the idea was real. It was important. For seven generations there had been nothing in the world more important than that wall. Like all walls it was ambiguous, two-faced. What was inside it and what was outside it depended upon which side of it you were on.”
The Dispossessed
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NATURE
David Hawkins Power vs. Force RESTORED
YOU know yourself better than you think. If your true nature becomes veiled by the content of your experience, the intricate language of the body-mind will manifest the rebalance required. Living things all react to what is life-supportive and what is not; this is the fundamental mechanism of survival. Inherent in all life forms is the capacity to detect change and react correctively - thus, trees become smaller at higher elevations as the oxygen in the atmosphere becomes scarcer. Human protoplasm is far more sensitive than that of a tree.”
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LESSONS FOR LEADERSHIP & LIFE, VOL. II86 What you know already sets limits on what you don’t know yet. Listen in stillness. Be embodied. There’s a difference between intellect and intelligence. Noise propagates the former, silence the latter. Intellect is inherited, intelligence is inherent.” Drew Gerald INTELLECT VERSUS INTELLIGENCE
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SOLIPISM AND TRUTH
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Coaching can help you find the unlimited space between ‘this’ and ‘that’, and when you are challenged to find life’s limits, you see that there are none. My imagination makes me human and makes me a fool; it gives me all the world and exiles me from it. ”
Ursula K. Le Guin
But if you reversed the same camera and took a ‘selfie’ of your true nature, the boundless field of awareness that is the emptiness in which all experience plays out, you would see that this void has no opposite and IS everything and everyone all at the same time.
A solipsistic view of the world suggests that nothing really exists outside the content of your experience; perceptions, thoughts, feelings and sensations. If you took a multi-media imprint of this ‘view’ on the ultimate camera, the image would be yours alone: a unique yet limited snapshot of your experience with detail that no-one else could see. No wonder you find yourself in separation from others, or in conflict even.
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Personality, the thing you ‘do’ and that has made you successful, is your go-to lightsaber that has allowed you to cut through your memory’s dark shadow. This personality can take the form of many archetypal behaviours; being assertive, ruthless, charming, critical etc. Psychometric testing calls these your ‘strengths’. And yet, when you become too reliant on these, your dark teacher shows up in its various forms to correct the imbalance.
DARK
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A deeper recognition of all the roles you play reveals the limits of these learned behaviours. Beyond the duality of strengths and weaknesses, your true nature shines: the empty vessel of authenticity that is both receptive and responsive to all that is ever needed. & LIGHT
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PHOTO CREDIT:
Mind and body playing cat and mouse, again. When you lose your mind and come to your senses, you become aware of sensation: an energy field in motion, not the emotion that paralyses your possibility. Feel the ‘fear’ and do it anyway. Lose your mind and come to your senses. ”
Fritz Peris FEAR Alexander Andrews
It is your resistance to the thing you call fear that leaves you feeling afraid. A separate entity that is attacking you.
But when you lean into this ‘thing’, you see that the story of fear has no shape or structure. It is unbelievable.
FEEL THE
And yet the feeling in your body is powerful, alive … “So the story must be true …?”
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MIRROR MIND PHOTO
“Being authentic”, an overused leadership hack, is less related to behaving consistently in line with your own self-concept and more to do with your true nature, which is non-conceptual. Therefore, behaviours that keep your conceptual identity alive and kicking could be said to be ‘authentic’, but they can still leave you and others with a sense of lack. As the ever-present ‘I’ (the empty vessel through which all experience passes), your receptivity and responsiveness are the truthfulness that emanates. You are the clearing, the opening, the emptiness, in which any experience comes and goes, like reflections on the mirror. And you are the mirror, the mirror mind, and not any experienced reflection. ”
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Ken Wilber No Boundary CREDIT: Craig Adderley
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LESSONS FOR LEADERSHIP & LIFE, VOL. II96 Recognising that your thoughts (assumptions, beliefs, problems, limits and more) are thoughts only, and not the Truth you ascribe them, is the starting point for a radical departure from the structures that ‘define’ you and your behaviours. What a liberation to realise that the voice in my head is not who I am. “Who am I then?” The one who sees that.” Eckhart Tolle PHOTO CREDIT: Josh Hild “I THINK , THEREFORE I AM NOT ”
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FROM NOWHERE
PHOTO CREDIT: Tomas Wiliams
Charles Eisenstein
If you have the courage to sit with the void, you will realise that all new life comes from this space. It is rich with possibility.
Where does the wisdom to act in entirely new ways come from? It comes from nowhere, from the void; it comes from inaction. When we see it, we realize it was right in front of us all along. It is never far away; yet at the same time it is in a different universe - a different Story of the World”
If you are unaware that you are driven by a fear of non-doing, then your purpose becomes to fill the void, or to a-void what is real - the empty space of existence.
This applies to you, to your people, and to the system.
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A ‘deeper level of operating’ includes: Being attuned to what IS - not governed by the past, Having the courage to lean in to what is real - not avoiding it, Sensing what needs to be said - not resorting to an old script, Creating more space for others to realise all of the above - not getting lost in egotistical ideals, Manifesting positive change together - not forcing outcomes, This Is leadership. Time and again we try to cope with situations using collective instruments that are out of tune. Rather than stopping to tune them, we increase the pace, hire consultants who want to increase productivity by further reducing the time devoted to tuning and practising, hire new conductors who promise to conduct even faster, and so forth. But the obvious thing to do - to stop and tune the instruments collectively - doesn’t come easily because it requires a shift of the mind to a deeper level of operating”
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LEVEL OF OPERATING PHOTO
Otto Scharmer Theory U: Learning from the Future as It Emerges A DEEPER CREDIT: Ricardo Esquivel
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LESSONS FOR LEADERSHIP & LIFE, VOL. II102 You are a natural-born situational leader. You have an innate ability to sense what Is, and to respond accordingly. Only ‘personality’, your collection of learned behaviours, stands in the way of what comes naturally. Getting out of your own way is the unlearning required. P = P - I (Performance = Potential minus Interference)” Timothy Gallwey The Inner Game of Tennis MINUS INTERFERENCE
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SUFFERING
PHOTO CREDIT: boy_anupong, Thailand
Pema Chödrön FROM RESOLUTION
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Pursuing something that you Are already is tiring, stressful and impossible to resolve. Let your seeker-striver de-role, and allow your purposeful Being to manifest. As human beings, not only do we seek resolution, but we also feel that we deserve resolution. However, not only do we not deserve resolution, we suffer from resolution. We don’t deserve resolution; we deserve something better than that. We deserve our birthright, which is the middle way, an open state of mind that can relax with paradox and ambiguity.”
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Can you make way for the emergence of real Knowledge that has the power to change us all? At some stage, said the Northern Star, you Must stop the pre-arranged reel, however Interesting it may be, however titillating To the Gods. Stop it and take potluck. Face your audience head on, without props, Without supporting cast, without rehearsal, Throw your soul at their feet, and make them Either to trample on it, or to embrace it into Themselves.
In the waxing and waning of your tide there Is a knowledge awaiting discovery – a knowledge never learnt, nor even sought Before because it is… too disturbing for Humankind. If you can find that knowledge, use it wisely To make your world compassionate. Use it tonight, unapologetically, before your Time runs out.”
Do you have the courage to throw your script away (even the one that has made you ‘successful’)?
Do you have the courage to face the moment without the safety net of your conditioned thinking? Can you hold this space without knowing whether you will be accepted or disregarded?
WITHOUT PROPS
Davison L. Budhoo
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Jack Kerouac
The mind creates illusions. What is really happening right now? NoThing. Being. In empty space. Enjoy. I have lots of things to teach you now, in case we ever meet, concerning the message that was transmitted to me under a pine tree in North Carolina on a cold winter moonlit night. It said that Nothing Ever Happened, so don’t worry. It’s all like a dream. Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don’t know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever. Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, which was taught in the immense milky way soft cloud innumera ble worlds long ago and not even at all. It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity. It is perfect. We were never really born, we will never really die. It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing. It’s a dream already ended. There’s nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be glad about. I know this from staring at mountains months on end. They never show any expression, they are like empty space. Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away? Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence of mind, the vast awakenerhood, empty and awake, will never crumble away because it was never born.”
A ETERNITYGOLDEN
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LESSONS FOR LEADERSHIP & LIFE, VOL. II110 … and it is your mapmaker that creates the problems you imagine. Boundary lines, of any type, are never found in the real world itself, but only in the imagination of the mapmakers.” Ken Wilber MAPMAKERS PHOTO CREDIT: Mike González
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Tsoknyi Rinpoche
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UNJOINING THE DOTS PHOTO CREDIT: Mithun Photography
Working non-stop to join the dots in your thought-stream is exhausting. Coaching helps unjoin the dots, so that the unhelpful constructs in your mind fall away to illuminate the wisdom of your true nature.
Instead of thinking of this and that, one thing after the other, let your mind recognize itself in a single moment. When the mind recognizes itself, there is no thing to see there. It’s just wide open. That’s because the essence of the mind is empty. It’s wide open and free.”
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LESSONS FOR LEADERSHIP & LIFE, VOL. II114 The seductive power of the thinking mind and its version of reality is the false certainty that governs our lives - the cause of our unrest. In knowing this, we are open and humble. Within and beyond all of this is consciousness, which shines through us all. In ignorance, I am something; In understanding, I am nothing; In love, I am everything.” Rupert Spira The Ashes of Love LOVE PHOTO CREDIT: Mithun Photography
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Julian Saipe is a former entrepreneur and business leader who came to leadership development following the acquisition of the hospitality company he founded in 2003.
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Today, Julian coaches business leaders, executive teams, and boards. He also runs leadership development programmes internationally, and is a visiting professor at IE Business School, AlongsideMadrid. his coaching practice, Julian holds board positions for a range of businesses and charities in the fields of event technology, music education, international development, as well as a shared society project in Israel. THE AUTHOR
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