SHAPERS OF DESTINY: Leaders and followers co-create each other

From:  jagbir singh <www.adishakti.org@gmail.com>
Date:  Fri Jul 16, 2004  10:08 am
Subject:  SHAPERS OF DESTINY: Leaders and followers co-create each other

—- In shriadishakti@yahoogroups.com, "jagbir singh" <adishakti_org@y...> wrote:
>
> Dear All,
>
> "The Bhagavad-gita is the famous philosophical discourse that took
> place between Lord Krishna and the warrior Arjuna, just before the
> onset of the great Bharata War (c. 3138 BC). Although widely
> published and read by itself, the Bhagavad-gita originally appears as
> an episode in the Sixth Book of the Mahabharata (Bhismaparvan, 23-
> 40). In this treatise of 700 verses, Lord Krishna systematically
> surveys the major Vedic dharmas and shows how each directs a
> person toward the ultimate conclusion, the "most confidential of all
> knowledge." He analyzes the performance of sacrifices and the
> worship of demigods; He discusses the yogas of work, meditation,
> and knowledge. In each case, Krishna shows how it leads to the "most
> secret of all secrets." (http://www.avatara.org/krishna/gita.html)
>
> i came across this post below from another SY and feel that it must
> be adopted as the foundation for spreading Sahaja Yoga. Perhaps the
> World Council can take a cue from its assured formula for success,
> given the fact that comes from Shri Krishna himself and is not liable
> to be criticized.
>
> Shri Mataji told years ago that North America needs 16,000 SYs
> before Sahaja Yoga can spread. We are still far short of this target
> and the four-digit barrier is yet to be breached despite years of
> sustained effort and financial input. Maybe we missed something
> that truthfully is the "most secret of all secrets."
>
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/adishakti_sahaja_yoga/message/2161
>

i have found another formula for success titled, "Shapers of Destiny", that our leaders would benefit.

As far as i am concerned Deepak Chopra is a great intellectual who has done much to promote Yoga in the West. Unlike false gurus like Sri Chinmoy and others, he has never claimed to be even remotely divine or abused anyone.

Deepak Chopra has legions of admirers   ......................   admirers of his simplification and clarity of very complex spiritual issues. i have taken a few quotes worth mentioning:

"Gyana. Knowledge about God is of two kinds, direct and indirect. Indirectly we can read scriptures, listen to sermons, consult authorities, and from these sources build a reasonable case that God exists. But such a God transmits no love to Earth. Therefore nothing substitutes for gyana, which is direct knowledge of the divine. Instead of having thoughts about God, you share God's own thoughts. Her thoughts can only be about Herself. This isn't cosmic self-centeredness, however. It confirms the fact that spiritual knowledge is essential; truth; trust; devotion, and love are inside our thoughts. Gyana is the mind in communion with spirit."

Deepak Chopra, The Path of Love, Random House, 1977, p. 241-42.


"
Shakti can totally transform, melting away features of our inner landscape and creating new ones in their place. Yogis report tingling energy running up the spine in meditation (its esoteric name is Kundalini, one of the thousand names of the divine mother.) The presence of this energy gives direct knowledge of God, perception of other worlds, and ecstatic fusion with the divine."

Deepak Chopra, The Path of Love, Random House, 1977, p. 2
 

"Ananda is considered the first quality of God to manifest in creation out of primordial silence. Her bliss, love, and peace are the subtlest and yet the most powerful of Shakti's creative powers. Grasping this fact is a tremendous spiritual insight. Ananda gives the solution to all suffering, for instead of having to struggle against pain, any person can go within and find a level of awareness that suffering cannot reach. Ananda is the untroubled face of God. When you realize this aspect of spirit in yourself, unconditional love comes as natural as breathing."

Deepak Chopra, The Path of Love, Random House, 1977, p. 241


i think many SYs will find Deepak Chopra's comprehension of the Divine to be what we know about Her, and meditate within daily. Maybe we will also gain from his simplification of leadership qualities in his "Shapers of Destiny".

jagbir


 

SHAPERS OF DESTINY
Deepak Chopra
 
Illustration: Peter Till

Illustration: Peter Till

Leaders and followers co-create each other.

LEADERSHIP IS A mysterious and elusive concept. What we read as history is really the creation of myths. From an ordinary person, society creates a Napoleon, Gandhi, Martin Luther King or Joan of Arc, someone who acquires mythic status as a shaper of destiny. We know the first steps of how this transformation occurs. Every group naturally gives rise to leaders who guide their followers to a shared goal. Yet some leaders fail while others succeed. Some are destroyed by a flawed strategy or by the overwhelming stress of their role. And when crisis arises, calling for great leaders, there is a constant threat that such a figure will not appear, leaving the infamous 'leadership vacuum' that has become a chronic problem in modern society... .

Let me outline the fundamental principles involved:

  1. Leaders and followers co-create each other. They form an invisible spiritual bond. Leaders exist to embody the values that followers hunger for, while followers exist to fuel the leader's vision from inside themselves.
     
  2. A leader is the symbolic soul of the group. The soul is an archetypal expression of who we are. Everything dynamic about us comes from this deeper level of spirit. Because individuals grow from the inside out, so do groups. Sometimes a group needs a parent or protector, at other times a ruler, muse, or visionary. The leader operates from the soul level to cause these shifts, which then get expressed on the surface as success.
     
  3. The outcome of any situation is defined in advance by the vision that goes into solving it. Therefore inner qualities determine all results.
     
  4. The responses shared by both leader and follower are fight, flight, ego, inner direction, intuition, creativity, higher guidance, and unity. A mixture of these responses is arising in our brains every day. One or more responses go into every situation and therefore must be known by the leader.
     
  5. Just as there is a rising hierarchy of responses built into us, there is a rising hierarchy of needs that the leader must understand. These are the needs for survival, safety, achievement, belonging, expression, self-esteem, freedom, love, and spiritual worth. All are inner needs that have evolved over time in the life of societies.
     
  6. For every need, the right response can be found. This match is not made randomly - the soul knows how to fulfil any need with the least effort and struggle. A leader who can tap directly into this knowledge gains tremendous power, far more than someone who concentrates on external goals and rewards.
     
  7. The leader who understands the hierarchies of need and response will succeed; the leader who aims for external goals (money, victory, power) will falter in the area that counts most: fulfilling the lives of his or her followers.
     
  8. Great leaders are those who can respond from the higher levels of spirit. They understand that their followers yearn for freedom, love, and spiritual worth. Therefore they respond with creativity, vision, and a sense of unity. But no-one begins at the top. A lower need like the need to feel safe must be understood first. The problem at hand can be as trivial as winning a baseball game or as profound as leading a society out of crisis. By climbing the hierarchy of need, any group can be made to feel inspired and unified. Great leaders are in touch with every level of human experience.
     
  9. Leaders give of themselves by their willingness not to hide from any response as it is needed. The leader is also 'Everyman'. It is just as important to say "I am afraid" as to say "I am strong." Leaders who protect themselves emotionally, who limit their responses to only a few, or who cling to ego, wind up being destroyed. Their success in material terms will be devoid of inner worth. Present models, which focus on ego, drive and external reward, miss how selfless an effective leader must be.
     
  10. No matter how complex and confusing a situation looks, leadership is possible from one simple attitude: being comfortable with disorder. Leaders thrive on disorder once they see the hidden spiritual order that lies beneath. This is the central idea.

THERE IS ALWAYS a jumble of needs and responses that must be sorted out. Otherwise, groups will be crippled in turmoil. Fear and survival, competition and creativity, vision and love make their own demands. They each have a voice, whether we hear them or not. Yet underneath there is only one voice, the silent whisper of spirit, which understands everything.

Although leadership looks immensely complex, the essentials can be grasped by looking at the following easily learned acronym.

L - Look and listen. Do this with your senses, being an unbiased observer who has not judged anything in advance, then with your heart, obeying your truest feelings, and finally with your soul, responding with vision and creativity.

E - Empowerment. This comes from self-referral, which is responsive to feedback but independent of the good or bad opinion of others. It is process-oriented rather than outcome-oriented. It raises the status of leader and follower together.

A - Awareness. This means being aware of the questions that underlie every challenge: Who am I? What do I want? What is my life purpose? Leaders must ask these questions of themselves and inspire their followers to ask the same questions for themselves.

D - Doing. This covers being action-oriented as a role model, being responsible for the promises one has made, being persistent, but also having the ability to celebrate and view any situation with flexibility and humour.

E - Empathy. The leader goes beyond melodrama and crisis reaction, getting rid of emotional toxicity to understand the deeper needs of the followers; cutting through fear, depression, and the noxious residues of competitiveness.

R - Responsibility. This means showing initiative, taking mature risks rather than reckless ones, walking the talk, having integrity, and living up to your inner values.

S - Synchronicity. This is a mysterious ingredient from the unconscious that all great leaders harness. Synchronicity is the ability to create good luck and find reserves of power to carry a leader beyond predicted outcomes to a higher plane. Synchronicity is the ultimate ability to connect with the needs of the soul.

This is the mental template that a leader uses. All models of leadership give the same general advice to look and listen, for example, but now the reader has learnt that L-E-A-D-E-R-S means something different at every level. Flexibility is everything. As new needs reveal themselves, there is a new level of looking and listening. Immediately the rest of the acronym also shifts, leading to new action and a higher level of responsibility.

Leaders and followers co-create each other.
http://resurgence.gn.apc.org/issues/chopra225.htm

 


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