Relationships and Truth

"In a controversy, the instant we feel anger, we have already ceased striving for truth and have begun striving for ourselves". ~ Abraham J Heschel

Teachers

WHO’S ON YOUR LIST?

"Boss, coworker, spouse, roommate, mother, father, child—who are the people you really dislike and wish would simply go away? Be grateful to them: they’re your own special gurus, showing up right on time to keep you honest. It’s the troublemakers in your life who cause you to see that you’ve shut down, that you’ve armored yourself, that you’ve hidden your head in the sand. If you didn’t get angry at them, if you didn’t get fed up with them, you would never be able to cultivate patience. If you didn’t envy them, if you weren’t jealous of them, you would never think to stretch beyond your mean-spiritedness and try to rejoice in their good fortune. If you never met your match, you might think you were better than everybody else and arrogantly criticize their neurotic behavior rather than do something about your own."

(Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change)   Pema Chodron 

Swearing/Profanity

"In certain trying circumstances, urgent circumstances, desperate circumstances, profanity furnishes a relief denied even to prayer." ~Mark Twain

Feeling

"Feeling is life and death at the same time."  Hazrat Inayat Khan

Courage

" My mother told me that now that she was dying she regretted 99% of the things she was upset about in her life.  The crying, the upset, the anger.  She said, 'now that I am dying they are so silly.  They just took so much energy from me'.  Now I try to ask myself if this is worth taking energy from me.  She had Lou Gehrig's Disease and she couldn't move the muscles of her face and she told me the hardest thing was not to be able to laugh.  The hardest thing in her death, in her disease, was not being able to laugh.  Think about that."  Zalnab Salbi

New Consciousness Leaders

"While we will probably never grasp the entirety of God's thoughts or the wisdom of the universe, or whatever you call the vast organizing principle of existence, we can listen more deeply for inklings, we can pay closer attention to the cause and effect of our actions.  We can raise our own standards of behavior toward something kinder and grander. 

What might leadership look like if generated from a wise consciousness?   Here's my stab at some answers.  A New Consciousness Leader knows the difference between strength and force.  Strength comes from a deep, inner confidence; from loving and respecting and expressing one's own authentic self.   That kind of strength opens the gate to real love of others and life itself.  Force comes from a deep inner wound that spawns the urge to dominate and even the score.  A New Consciousness Leader uses her strength.  She is bold, direct and decisive.  She views terror and violence as the tactics of cowards and fools.  A New Consciousness leader also knows the difference between outrage and rage.  I think of outrage as Holy Anger.  Strong emotional responsiveness to the pain of others; to injustice, to ignorance.  Outrage is fierce but it never dehumanizes.  It fills a leaders sails with the winds of action, but it also fills her heart with discernment and compassion.  Rage, on the other hand, is like a forest fire.  It is impatient and it is vindictive and it is short sighted.  A New Consciousness Leader uses the energy of outrage to persuade and guide and include and create."

Illness and Anger

"Anger over illness is possibly the will to live expressed in a very negative way."   Rachel Naomi Remen

Teachers

"When you've met your match you've found your teacher."  Pema Chondron

Feeding the Fire

"If you aren't feeding the fire of anger or the fire of craving by talking to yourself, then the fire doesn't have anything to feed on.   It peeks and passes on.   Instead of relating directly with sorrow or loneliness or the anger, we think that the way to end it is to blame it on someone else.   We think, curiously enough, that this will make the pain go away.  Instead, acting out is what makes it last."   Pema Chondron

William James says there are two types of people:  Once-born and Twice-born. 

Once-Born:

1. Do not stray from familiar territory of who they think they are and what they think is expected of them.
2. If pushed to the edge (of Dante's dark woods) where the straight way is lost.
3. Don't want to learn something new from life's darkest lessons.
4. Stay with what feels safe and what is expected/acceptable to their family and society
5. Stick to what they already know -even if they don't necessarily want it or like it.
6. May go their whole life and never know what lies beyond the woods.
7. May question later, "Is this all there is to life?"
8. Lives as if the soul was a figment of a flighty imagination.
9. Leads to confusion, numbness, sadness, depression, anger.
10. Avoid, deny or bitterly accept the unpredictable changes of real life.

Twice-Born:

1. Always pays attention to the soul poking it's head through a half-lived life.
2. Whether through choice or calamity- goes into the woods, loses the straight way, confronts that which needs to change within himself in order to live a more genuine and radiant life.
3. The journey into the woods of change and transformation is an inner one. 
4. The most ordinary-looking lives are often being lived by the most extraordinary spiritual warriors; people who have chosen the road less traveled, of self-reflection.
5. Uses adversity for awakening.
6. Trade the safety of the known for the power of the unknown
7. Something calls them into the woods (betrayal, illness, divorce, loss, death), where the straight path vanishes, and there is no turning back, only going through. 

Love

"The desire to give and receive love underlies every emotional action and reaction, including hurt and anger, in yourself and in your partner."  David Deida

Power

"External power is located in the dominance of and control over the physical world.   This is the power of war, the power of laws and organizations.   This is the power of controlling all that is external to the self.   By contrast, the spiritual being is focused on empowering himself and others to higher and higher levels of consciousness and achievement.   The way of force over another is not a possibility.   He or she is not interested in collecting power, but in helping others to live in harmony.   This is the power of love that does not judge others.   There is no hesitancy or anger.   It is true empowerment to know that one can live in the world with others who have different points of view and have no need to control or vanquish them.   Enormous power comes with the ability to manipulate the physical world with one's mind."   Wayne Dyer

Anger

"You cannot make me angry unless I accept your humiliation, your insult."  Buddha

Shame

"Shame is a force intended to put one outside all belonging.   The one who does the forbidden thing becomes the force for all the anger of those who would love to have done it too, but are afraid of the exclusion and shame.   Now your every move draws negative attention.   All the natural support around your presence is taken from you.   All the natural imagination with which others have considered the different aspects of your presence stops.   Everything about you is telescoped into a single view of this one thing.   A kind of psychological murdering is done.   The mystery of your life is reduced to that one thing."   John O' Donahue