Leading without following is sterile. Trying to become rich by accumulating more and more is a full-time career and not free at all.
Being one-sided always produces unexpected and paradoxical results. Being well-defended will not protect you; it will diminish your life and eventually kill you.
Exceptions to these examples of traditional wisdom are very hard to find.
43
Gentle interventions, if they are clear, overcome rigid resistances.
If gentleness fails, try yielding or stepping back altogether. When the leader yields, resistances relax.
Generally speaking, the leader's consciousness sheds more light on what is happening than any number of interventions or explanations.
Few leaders realize how much how little will do.
44
Are you doing this work to facilitate growth or to become famous? Which is more important: acquiring more possessions or becoming more conscious? Which works better: getting or letting go?
There is a problem with owning a lot. There is a problem with getting more and more.
The more you have and the more you get, the more you have to look after. The more you might lose. Is that owning or being owned?
But if you give up things, you can give up spending your life looking after things.
Try being still in order to discover your inner security. If you have inner security, you will have what you want anyway. Also you will be less harried, and you will last longer.
45
The best work often seems idiotically simple to group members who are unaccustomed to this sort of leadership. Yet a great deal happens.
Perhaps it looks as if the leader is only sitting there and has no idea of what to do. But it is just this lack of needless intervention that permits the group to grow and be fertile.
Perhaps some disappointed group members expected an expert who would expound freely. But what this leader says is so obvious, it often sounds simple-minded. Even this leader's honesty seems strangely perplexing.
Appearing foolish does not matter. When you are cold, flap your arms about to get warm. But when you are overheated, you keep still. That is common sense.
The leader's stillness overcomes the group's agitation. The leader's consciousness is the primary tool of this work.
46
The well-run group is not a battlefield of egos. Of course there will be conflict, but these energies become creative forces.
If the leader loses sight of how thing happen, quarrels and fear devastate the group field.
This is a matter of attitude. There is nothing to win or lose in group work. Making a point does not shed light on what is happening. Wanting to be right blinds people.
The wise leader knows that it is far more important to be content with what is actually happening than to get upset over what might be happening but isn't.
47
The wise leader knows what is happening in a group by being aware of what is happening here and now. This is more potent than wandering off into various theories or making complex interpretations of the situation at hand.
Stillness, clarity, and consciousness are more immediate than any number of expeditions into the distant lands of one's mind.
Such expeditions, however stimulating, distract both the leader and the group members from what is actually happening.
By staying present and aware of what is happening, the leader can do less yet achieve more.
48
Beginners acquire new theories and techniques until their minds are cluttered with options.
Advanced students forget their many options. They allow the theories and techniques that they have learned to recede into the background.
Learn to unclutter your mind. Learn to simplify your work.
As you rely less and less on knowing just what to do, your work will become more direct and more powerful. You will discover that the quality of your consciousness is more potent than any technique or theory or interpretation.
Learn how to be fruitful the blocked group or individual suddenly becomes when you give up trying to do just the right thing.
49
The wise leader does not impose a personal agenda or value system on the group.
The leader follows the group's lead and is open to whatever emerges. The leader judges no one and is attentive to both 'good' and 'bad' people. It does not even matter whether a person is telling the truth or lying.
Being open and attentive is more effective than being judgmental. This is because people naturally tend to be good and truthful when they are being received in a good and truthful manner.
Perhaps the leader seems na飗e and childlike in this uncritical openness to whatever emerges. But openness is simply more potent than any system of judgements ever devised.
50
Existence consists of both life and death. Favouring either life or death denies existence and creates tension. Tension causes people to make mistakes in critical situations. Mistakes are far more deadly than existence itself.
Thirty percent of the people love life and fear death.
Another thirty percent prefer death and avoid life.
Another thirty percent fear both life and death.
Ninety percent of the people suffer the tension that comes from the tension that comes from ignorance of how polarities work. Even though life and death are opposites, they are inseparable. Preferences are futile.
Only ten percent have the wisdom to accept both life and death as facts and simply enjoy the dance of existence. After all, growth and decay are everywhere, all the time.
The wise leader knows that everything comes and goes. So why grasp or cling? Why worry or cringe? Why live in a fantasy of what might happen?
The ferocious dog bites the excited person. The conscious and centered person walks by unharmed.
The wise leader exists without either loving death or fearing death. This freedom keeps the leader safe from harm.
51
Everything, every behaviour, is a vibratory pattern or process. Such process emerges, develops, and decays, according to the single principle.
People have a natural reverence for the principle, and they naturally love the vibratory energy which obeys the principle.
The vibratory energy and the principle make a partnership, which produces an infinite variety of forms. But the partnership takes no profit from its productivity. Neither does it get its power by making things happen in a coercive manner. There are simply no alternatives; there is no other way.
This partnership between principle and process is the first fact of life and of our work.
52
All creation consists of polarities. The fundamental polarity of creation is called Plus/Minus. Yin/Yang, or Feminine/Masculine.
This fundamental polarity is self-impregnating. It is an androgynous womb which produces everything.
Everything includes me. I am a process consisting of polarities, which develop according to the single principle. I am a child of God. I come from the womb of creation.
This knowledge gives me stability.
If I were to put my faith in some thing or person or creed, I would have no stability. People and things and creeds come and go and change all the time. I would live in fear that the thing I adore would be lost, or the person I obeyed would die, or the creed I followed would be altered.
So my only allegiance is to the single principle.
I can look at a person and see both principle and process in them. I can see how they work. I can see them actually working. That is the basis of my ability as a group leader.
From knowing how things work, I also know the importance of staying flexible. Everything that grows is flexible. All enduring strength is flexible.
I know too that my allegiance to principle and process means that I am not afraid of dying. I have nothing to lose. I know that I am an aspect of the Eternal. My home is the womb of creation. Dying is going home.
53
The wise leader leads a quiet and meditative life. But most people are busy getting as many possessions as they can.
The quiet path leads toward a more conscious existence. The busy path creates an exaggerated materialism.
Becoming more conscious leads toward God and a sense of the unity of all creation. But excessive consumption is only possible by exploiting someone.
The world's goods are unevenly distributed. Some have a great deal. Most have very little. We are running out of enough resources to go around. Everyone knows that.
Yet those who are already encumbered by possessions get more and more. They even brag about how much they have. Don't they know what stealing is?
Owning lots of possessions does not come from God. People get it by manipulating other people.
54
Do you want to be a positive influence in the world? First, get your own life in order. Ground yourself in the single principle so that your behaviour is wholesome and effective. If you do that, you will earn respect and be a powerful influence.
Your behaviour influences others through a ripple effect. A ripple effect works because everyone influences everyone else. Powerful people are powerful influences.
If your life works, you influence your family.
If your family works, your family influences the community.
If your community works, your community influences the nation.
If your nation works, your nation influences the world.
If your world works, the ripple effect spreads throughout the cosmos.
Remember that your influence begins with you and ripples outward. So be sure that your influence is both potent and wholesome.
How do I know all this works?
All growth spreads outward from a fertile and potent nucleus. You are a nucleus.
55
People who surrender all their blocks and conflicts experience a free flow of vital energy.
They look as radiant as a baby, and they employ a childlike immunity to injury. Bugs don't bite them. Dogs don't attack them. Trouble-makers leave them alone.
Their bodies seem relaxed and pliant, but their stamina and strength are remarkable. They are sexually moving without being overly erotic. They can sing or even yell for a long time and never get hoarse.
It is as if they were newly in love, not with one person, but with all creation, and their energies are as abundant as all creation.
It is a mistake to confuse excitement or arousal with the vital flow of enlightenment. Stimulants and emotional adventures arouse people, but such arousal does not enhance one's energies. On the contrary, excitement spends energy and exhausts vitality.
Think of excitement as tension that comes when stimulation meets resistance. The exciting experience ends when the stimulation stops or when a person wears out.
But the vitality of enlightenment is a continuous flow. It meets no resistance and goes on and on without stress.
Excitement is rooted in passing desires. Vital energy springs from the eternal.
56
The wise leader knows that the true nature of events cannot be captured in words. So why pretend?
Confusing jargon is one sure sign of a leader who does not know how things happen.
But what cannot be said can be demonstrated: be silent, be conscious. Consciousness works. It sheds light on what in happening. It clarifies conflicts and harmonizes the agitated individual or group field.
The leader also knows that all existence is a single whole. Therefore, the leader is a neutral observer who takes no sides.
The leader cannot be seduced by offers or threats. Money, love, or fame - whether gained or lost - do not sway the leader from center.
The leader's integrity is not idealistic. It rests on a pragmatic knowledge of how things work.
57
Run an honest, open group. Your job is to facilitate and illuminate what is happening. Interfere as little as possible. Interference, however brilliant, creates a dependency on the leader.
The fewer the rules the better. Rules reduce freedom and responsibility. Enforcement of rules is coercive and manipulative, which diminishes spontaneity and absorbs group energy.
The more coercive you are, the more resistant the group will become. Your manipulations will only breed evasions. Every law creates an outlaw. This is no way to run a group.
The wise leader establishes a clear and wholesome climate in the group room. In the light of awareness, the group naturally acts in a wholesome manner.
When the leader practices silence, the group remains focused. When the leader does not impose rules, the group discovers its own goodness. When the leader acts unselfishly, the group simply does what is to be done.
Good leadership consists of doing less and being more.
58
Group process evolves naturally. It is self-regulating. Do not interfere. It will work itself out.
Efforts to control process usually fail. Either they block process or make it chaotic.
Learn to trust what is happening. If there is silence, let it grow; something will emerge. If there is a storm, let it rage, it will resolve into calm.
Is the group discontented? You can't make it happy. Even if you could, your efforts might well deprive the group of a very creative struggle.
The wise leader knows how to facilitate the unfolding group process, because the leader is also a process. The group's process and the leader's process unfold in the same way, according to the same principle.
The leader knows how to have a profound influence without making things happen.
For example, facilitating what is happening is more potent than pushing for what you wish were happening. Demonstrating or modeling behaviour is more potent than imposing morality. Unbiased positions are stronger than prejudice. Radiance encourages people, but outshining everyone else inhibits them.
59
Whether you are leading a group or going about your daily life, you need to be conscious. You need to be aware of what is happening and how things happen. If you are aware of what is happening and how things happen, you can act accordingly. You can stay clear of trouble, and be both vital and effective.
Remember that you too are a natural process. Being aware of how things happen includes being aware of yourself. Your life unfolds according to the same principle that governs every other unfolding. You are rooted in the common ground of all creation.
Being like everything else means that you are ordinary. But consciously knowing that you are like everything else is extraordinary. And knowing how that universality works and having the sense to act accordingly is the source of your power, your endurance, and your excellence.
Consciousness or awareness, then, is the source of your ability. Learn to become increasingly conscious.
