I am also acutely aware that there’s something else stirring down beneath the surface. People are waking up and turning in the other direction. Real leaders are emerging, in government and in business. The purpose and passion of my own life is to find, support, protect these people— to empower and help them in their work
What I have seen is that when these people do make a commitment to living their life in a more authentic way, with more honesty, they signal something through their presence and their actions that speaks to the deep honesty inside others. Something magical occurs when people suddenly begin to trust each other.
I’m not talking about big artificial organizational change processes that take a long time. When a leader emerges and holds to a more authentic way of behaving, change happens quickly. Some of the greatest thrills I’ve had in my life have been to witness this reversal in organizations. And we will see more of it. Not everyone gets called to this, but those who do commit themselves to creating what in effect is a new tradition in business.
Business has now become the most powerful force on the planet. And for the first time in human history, the dominant institution on the planet has never had any tradition of taking responsibility for anybody or anything except itself. Of course, there are traditions within business of charity and philanthropy, but that’s not the point. Business doesn’t have any innate sense of responsibility for the environment or for society. As the late Willis Harman, co-founder of the World Business Academy, said:
“business has to develop a new tradition that involves taking responsibility for the whole”. Not many will be called to this mission, but those who are will find it extremely satisfying and a great calling. It is the call of our time.
I believe this civilization will survive. It is turning now, and during times of transformation there are always periods of chaos.
When you walk along the pavement outside, you can see places where the concrete is broken because down beneath the surface a small plant or tree has over time just kept at it and kept at it until it broke through and came up through a tiny crack. Change will happen. The truth will reveal itself. But it’s going to be chaotic and it’s going to be messy
If we see things in this perspective, we recognize this to be a very exciting time. It’s like a confluence between two epochs. When we see that it is the end of an era, we can become morose and despairing if that’s all we see. We now need a new vision of the future. My vision is to support the new enlightenment that is emerging. But we can’t permit this thinking to be confined to few spiritual institutions, it has to become part of the mainstream awareness of our society.
Without some experience that there’s something innate that wants to break through, and some faith in that, then it’s easy to feel hopeless.,But we have to be aware that there is a spiritual process that is occurring in our society as well as within ourselves – a process of deep change at the level of our consciousness.
Human change isn’t like engineering. It’s messy—more like riding a surfboard than catching a ferry or building a bridge across the river. We need to get used to a higher level of disorder in our lives than we have been used to in the past. Confusion is inevitable, but spirituality teaches us not to try to stop confusion. Instead, we need to put a full stop to worrying about being confused
The practice of being the detached observer is vitally important if we are not to lose hope. We also have to be prepared to give up some things. This is why so few people become strongly committed to a spiritual path. It’s like a very sick man covered in boils and ulcers saying to the doctor, “I want you to cure me, but look, I love my wine and rich food, don’t ask me to give those up. I don’t want anything that is going to change my lifestyle, just give me something to take.” Of course that won’t work.
We are consuming not only material poisons, but we also have to clean our minds out.
A spiritual approach to life is imperative today. It is not okay to live with hatreds and grudges and resentments and remorse. These are just as poisonous as the toxins in a cigarette. If you’re addicted to these things, it takes quite a lot of will and effort to overcome them.
What does it take for an alcoholic to wake up and come clean? It’s not an easy thing, and the tragic nature of addiction is that generally a person only pulls out of it after hitting rock bottom and they’ve lost everything.
People are addicted to their negativity and toxic patterns of thought and only seem truly prepared to change after they’ve developed a life threatening disease, their marriage has collapsed, and their kids are on drugs. Then they become open to a spiritual solution, but often it’s too late. The same thing is happening to our society and civilization. Are we going to wait for destruction to occur before we decide we have to do something? A few people have woken up and are playing their role in shifting the currents…[Read more...]
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Posted on August 23, 2011
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