Saturday, October 20, 2012
Young girls - the knights of Queendom?
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Perspective of Oneness in Queendom
Oneness...
Queendom.....
The dictionary may suggest a land ruled by a Queen.
But shall we envisage a people where the feminine in the form of inclusion, care and affection is part of the mainstream pursuit? Further it is not just the mainstream but the moving factor for growth rather than the current pursuit for profit.
This is my idea of Queendom. A nation - of man, women and all other manifestations of nature living in harmony playing the role that they understand is theirs to play, nothing more nothing less.
- There is no place for greed or profit as the perspective is always of 'us' and not of 'me'. That is inclusion.
- Growth is directed towards providing for, creating new methods for wholesomeness and happiness not pleasure. That is care and affection.
- Education and its pursuit is for wisdom not knowledge. That is wisdom.
Though it seems like an imaginary land, the emergence of this Queendom in our midst is underway. Just look around, you will see the old world crumbling away.
We dont have territorial wars any more, only with terrorists. And these terrorists are very often fanatics excluded from the mainstream. But then ways of including warring sides is not there.
Even territorial disputes are fought with publicity, arm twisting, politics rather than brute force , ex Tibet.
But they are being fought.
Economies and economics of old are crumbling, old bastions of power are destabilizing. New economies and new economics are about to emerge. But they have not yet emerged.
Old norms of relationships are shaken and booted out. Norms of fidelity, responsibility to parents, marriage are challenged, norms of gender and sexual orientations are challenged. But newer norms are not yet established.
Old Religions and rituals are preaching loudly in a last failing bid to hold the emerging generation. And then there is the new age spiritualists asking them to come to spirituality rather than religion. But then again even that is private, not mainstream.
It seems that many ways of working of the previous time seems to be coming to an end, newer ones are on the threshold of emerging. The battle for Queendom is at these thresholds. It comes on the wings of hope, faith, trust, love for humanity. It is often seemingly led by women. Women who are more naturally tuned to it but also by the great numbers of men whose presence is more invisible, but action is firm and supportive of these women.
These are the knights of Queendom and at the forefront of bringing a new consciousness for all of us.
Focus on Cauvery or on water? Limitedness in our thought
Click here for a Link to an article from The Hindu
This would be the thought with the basis as "us" in contrast to "me".
"We" receive rain, "we" have fossil fuels, "we" have diseases, "we" have the cures, "we" have poverty, "we" have resources, "we" are capable of working hard, "we" have the intelligence for making a planet better.
The consciousness shifts from me to we.
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Eco Leadership
a) make profit,
b)make the best of workers capability,
c)maximise output with less input both manpower and materials,etc.
In the name of focus we allowed limited perspective for leaders, in the of specialization, we stepped back from learning other subjects and other areas. It is not wrong to have focus and specialization, but where depth and vastness are needed, we sacrificed vastness. Where holistic thinking and focused approach are needed, we sacrificed holistic thinking. As a result we became selfish and self centred.
Nobody thought about Universal Management Theory. No one thought about Universal Leadership Model.The result is earth gets plundered, nature is abused, political strategy is meant to learn how to interfere with other nations sovernity.
For this kind of leadership, the consciousness of universal brotherhood is not a necessary perspective. Enshrined in the charter of UN, universal humanity is left for "flaky non profits", contribution to which eats into business profit, but necessary for publicity. Profit is mainstream and universal humanity is publicity.
Its time for Queendom!
We know how Kingdoms are established. The mighty king will wage a war, conquer the other king and the country and establish the kingdom. If any King does not want to fight, he bows down to the mighty King and gives up.
Friday, July 27, 2012
Shadow and Sathyam
1. Shadow is the storehouse of evil.
2. Psychology talks of being positive and nurturing the positive in us, how does Shadow which is dark, painful, unwanted part fit with this ideology?
3. There is a reason why certain behaviour cannot be accepted in society, that is why they are rejected.
My thoughts on these topics go on the lines of Sathyam Shivam Sundaram.
Shadow is not evil. It never was. It is a part of ourselves we have not learnt to integrate with our everyday lives. Parts of it might be offensive to some of our close people, parts might be immature, some parts might be so brilliant that their acknowledging might necessitate major changes in life. There might be several reasons for a part to be in shadow rather than foreground. Some parts even come to play only with age, for ex what we typically associate with spirituality. This part more often comes to play in individuals in the second half of life and is in the shadow till then.
Evil is a word most often used in context actions with immoral, malevolent or with destructive intent, deliberate actions designed to harm others. Thus often when we find a part of ourselves bearing ill will towards another person maybe out of jealousy or something else, we label this part of ourselves as 'Evil'. We believe that it is this 'Evil' that makes people do bad things. This 'Evil' is to be fought in every way.
But approaching this with a very non judgemental and incisive perspective, we see that in labelling this part of ourselves as evil, we have been hasty. We have forgotten the words 'deliberate action'. The part is only talking of what it is feeling. If you hear more deeply it till tell other things than ill will and jealousy, those are only to catch your attention.
Evil will come into existence when you - the conscious being, 'choose to act' on this feeling knowing its consequences. Till then it is only fear of a part of yourself that might be immature, repressed or something similar - i.e your shadow.
Thus shadow might be container for many of your feelings of your ill will. But it is not evil. It may be trying to tell you something else - a caution that may need you to heed it.
Evil comes into existence when you consciously act on it, impacting others negatively. You are the key, not the shadow. This is also very critical in working with shadow that we do not yield to it. We need to understand it and bring its understanding to us. From this place of knowing, our action may then flow. This is the place of Self. From here what seems to be Evil is not being in touch with this Self of ours.
For me the concept of Sathyam Shivam Sundaram talks of this. The Truth is the one that is absolute and is a reality. This reality is free of your wishes, projections, etc. When you see it thus, devoid of your projections, devoid of you shadow/persona, it just is. Everything that emanates from this space devoid of shadow is Divine - Shivam. The beauty is what is the feeling you -the conscious being are left with.
This is what I link with Positive psychology. The minute we label something as positive we are creating its opposite also. But the same search when we apply to looking for the truth devoid of projection, everything seems positive and beautiful. Action then is to grow that which is appropriate to the situation alone.
Friday, July 6, 2012
Why do I have a shadow? Could I have grown up without a shadow?
Blaming others for the shadow that I have., can we grow up without developing a shadow?
Below is a link to the flyer of our upcoming prog on Shadow
https://sites.google.com/a/partneringwithuniverse.com/home/the-programs/light-from-the-shadow
Monday, May 21, 2012
The Invisible Feminine in the Organisation
The metaphor is that of an object and its background.
From time immemorial we have admired, respected, valued a finished work like a construction project - bridges, buildings, a product of literature - poetry or novels, fiction and non fiction, theories on physics, psychology and all else. All of these come under the definition of success as we understand it. Or rather I should say production of such an entity is what we call success. Then we further had to measure it with wealth, fame and other associations that we make with success.
We naturally understand the struggle which goes behind the production of such an entity. The vision, planning, skill, knowledge, hardwork. This is what is the basis of calling it a success, of respecting it and of the sense of pride.
All is fair, so what is my point. My point is that these entities are always the fantastic object in the foreground. We never notice the background. In reality it is the background which inspires, nourishes, supports, gives a context based meaning to the foreground object. Imagine a beautiful picture of a black swan is meaningless in a black background. One of the most fascinating aspects of Monalisa is its variation of the background. The foreground is that of a woman with a slight smile, but what holds you to the painting without you becoming aware of it is the background of it. On one side near and on the other far. But for the conscious mind, we only see the foreground object of the woman with the smile.
Similarly in each of our supposed achievements, our successes, we rarely look at the background. There is a commons saying - Behind every successful man there is the hand of a woman. While we may recognise a woman as an inspiration, the credit of the success is still given to the man. Unless that unclear 'hand of a woman' is articulated more, it will remain a mystery and never credited.
In organisation setting, I see this as the culture, the values, the relationships, etc which form the context of the individuals to work in. When we assess an organisation we asses its IPs, its fixed assets, its clients, its orders, its inventories, etc. How do we value the more subtle context in which these exist? It is impossible to get the full meaning of the assets without its context. What do you think will happen to the company which asseses another company on its fixed assets, IPs, clients and orders, accordingly buys the company. But having not fully understood its context, culture, relationships, can this company integrate it into its own?
Without the right context, can creativity, ownership, commitment from employees exist?
Modern management science has put all this in the area of HR and OB and then put HR and OB into the back seat. How many people do you know who were HR VPs and gone ahead to become CEOs? This is depsite many companies declaring that our people are our assets (interestingly, the one person I know who went from being a VP HR to COO and then CEO is a woman -Anne Mulcahy of Xerox. See this link -http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_18/b4176133023904.htm).
The lack of psychology applied in organisation is indicated in this - A sound plan to deal with employee turnover is to have back-up for your key people! This is an HR practice with no application of Psychology to employees, only of Project management. What happened to creating a space where employees would like to work, building relationship with employees such that they have commitment to the company, to the project and may even help in finding, grooming replacements for themselves. Which is the strategy followed in your company?
For me personally this is how the Feminie in the context is difficult to see, value and quantify to grow. It is like the what we see in a Shiva temple. How often do you notice the Yoni around the erect Phallus?
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Invoking the Connection
We are a part of the Universe and this fact is either known to us only as Knowledge or as an Idea but not really as an experience to us.
This aspect, which is out of our experiential realm, does create great damage in our everyday life; we are totally living unconnected with the environment causing a great damage to it and thus causing damage back to us.
Many people talk to make us understand the dangers of our way of life, though such talks and writings causes some kind of awareness, it seems we are not in reality aware of it in toto and what to do to save us. We may perhaps know certain responses like reducing the use of vehicles which cause danger to atmosphere through its emission of carbon monoxide, reduced use of electricity, restriction in the use of water and so on. And we expect that such initiatives should lead to continued availability of the natural resources leading to a conducive environment for human existence. But, year after year, the deteriorations are only increasing despite our so called efforts. We have, of course reasons to defend. We can say that all such efforts are really insufficient to alter the state and we need to do more and so on.
What we really need is to understand that we are all at the moment considering our existence as something separate, individualistic and in fact inimically isolated to the environment and to the Universe. We have not yet fully realized that we are parties to the Universe and we have to partner to the universal processes. This is the process we need to take on immediately. Such an initiative from our side will create a total change in our way of living and alter our current turmoil with the environment. We will inherently know what we have to do and how we have to live which alone is the solution to the current problem we are facing. Any initiatives other than this will always be short of achieving the desired goal. If we have to do that our current belief that we are individuals, separate beings will have to change and a new belief that we are part of the Universe has to come in; and our primary task is to partner with the Universe.
Is this too far away from reality? An approach to this answer is in checking our own experiences to see if we have experienced this. We have, sometimes, in our life experienced this one-ness with the Universe.
When we have felt a kind of sadness which cannot be explained properly when we see other human beings suffer in life, when we felt indescribable joy and energy when we are in the midst of nature, when we cuddle with our pets without inhibition, when we felt the soft touch of grass and flowers, and so. All such occasions have felt for more than ourselves, we have perceived more than what the 5 objective sensed have sensed, we have felt we are a part of a larger whole. It has mildly communicated to us our reality of interconnectedness. But we have moved away from such feelings and experiences by thinking bringing rational thinking.
We are also crippled by our inducted belief that we are not one with the Universe but are one above the Universe. Evolutionally, we set out to use the environment around us for our benefit to survive and then to thrive. However, in the industrial era the heroism of humanity was thought to be in manufacturing dream machines to artificially regulate every aspect of our life. The image of the hero was the enterprising man to mine, manufacture, build sky scrapers, machines, cities, etc. With rise of our expertise in this area we have now come to see ourselves as masters of our environment; our environment existing for us to use it, people included. A reflection of this attitude is in the disdain we have for rituals for nature like worship of the rain gods. Our belief in our own ability to predict rain, get water from dams and canals has reduced our reverence for the power of nature in the form of rains. Rains are no longer to be prayed for, they are now to be forecasted. It has also changed our relationship from being connected to it and partnering with it, to using it.
So, we have to resurrect our belief of oneness, see the systemic connection, feel interconnectedness, relate with responsibility and move to an attitude called holism.
We have such connection with the Universe in us. It is natural in us. But without realizing it, we cut the links and loose the interconnectedness at several locations.