Spirtual Adventure

"I had been on an adventure, searching for a genuine and fearless kind of spirituality.  Id didn't want to become anything more than my most vibrant, peaceful and grateful self.  I wanted to find a sacred path through the fullness of life in the real world -a daily discipline that reached into the heavens even as it dug deeply into my psyche, helping me to overcome resistance, falseness and mistrust."  Elizabeth Lesser

Paradise

"Humans are just inches away from paradise, but that last inch is as wide as an ocean."  Elizabeth Lesser

Fearlessness

"A fearless sort of living allows us to delight in the koan of human existence.   We stop fearing the opposite of happiness, or the opposite of success, or the opposite of love, because we no longer believe in opposites.  Unity within duality reduces the sense of drama and tragedy in daily life."  Elizabeth Lesser

Contradiction

"When we discover the supreme happiness of unity within ourselves we reconcile what once seemed irreconcilable.  Opposites become partners.   Our longing for stability in a constantly changing world becomes humorous.  Our desires for connection and our troubles with intimacy become grist for the spiritual mill.  We allow diversity to flourish within the context of unity.   We understand that the unadulterated, pure, singleness of feeling we long for can be experienced only when we allow all feelings to live in peace within our hearts."  Elizabeth Lesser

Love

"Love is the fruit of spiritual labor; it is not a technique you try or a dogma you adopt.  Love is the secret you unmask yourself to find; the destination where all roads of the journey lead.  But it does no one any good to rush the process, nor enforce loving behavior.  You cannot legislate forgiveness; you cannot make hate illegal.  Just as you cannot pull a shoot out of the ground and demand that it flower then and there, love cannot be forced.  Spiritual work prepares the ground.  Love will blossom when our egos and our wounds and our fears have been worked with, tilled into the soil of our understanding."  Elizabeth Lesser

Listening

"One of the greatest steps we can make on the spiritual path is to learn to stop before we judge experience and give it a chance to tell us something about reality - to impart news about ourselves about the seeds we have sown, about the nature of life.  If we can intercept the reactive nature of the mind and the habitual defensiveness of the heart, then we will find ourselves in a world that never runs out of messages."  Elizabeth Lesser

Listening

"For every action we take, God leaves little messages about its wisdom and folly.   All we have to do is quiet down and listen closely.  Usually we are too opinionated, or defensive, or frightened to hear the message. We judge our experiences right away as situations we like or don't like, or people as being for or against  us, or ideas as being ones we can embrace or fear."  Elizabeth Lesser

New Story

"The new story we want to help birth is hidden under the louder story of our own self-doubts and the story of history.   If you want to hear a new voice you have to listen very carefully.  Another world is not only possible she is on her way. On a quiet day I can hear her breathing."  Elizabeth Lesser 

Inner Work

"Real and abiding consciousness change doesn't just happen.  We have to work for it, in our own hearts and in the world.  I am just as impressed by the inner work that each one of us does as I am by the work we do in the world.   By inner work, by spiritual work, I mean living the examined life; watering the seeds of wisdom, confronting our shadowy parts, because I'm telling you, inside each one of us is our own little mean mini-Maciavilli.   It takes work to tame our mini-Maciavilli.  It takes spiritual work that quiets the reactivity of the mind and expands the heart in wider cirlces.  It takes psychological inquiry to heal our family wounds and uncoil our unconscious ego urges to dominate and punish.  Without this kind of inner work our primal, tribal reactivity waits in the wings and it takes over when crisis' loom.  I'm not saying the point is to become some egoless saint.  I'm just asking you to consider trying to change yourself even as you try to change the world because how we do what we do is as important as what we do."  Elizabeth Lesser

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."

Heartfulness

"Heartfulness is knowing what your love and having the guts and grace to go for it.   It is a balanced blend of wisdom and passion."  Elizabeth Lesser

Darkness and Light

"Don't worry about being good.  Instead discover how both good and bad live within you.   Deeply accept the shadow even as you seek the light.  Believe in change.  Take full responsibility for  who you are and what you want.  And from such forthright wisdom your goodness with prevail and your kindness will blossom and your heart will heal."   Elizabeth Lesser

Path of the Heart

"It takes an odd combination of backbone and abandon to walk the path of the heart."  Elizabeth Lesser

Happiness

"We can find stable happiness; we can learn to have long and pleasurable relationships; we can be at peace.  If we are willing to become warriors - not against others, but against our own dishonesty and defensiveness - then we can indeed grow and change and journey into freedom.   It's not enough to aim for pain relief.  We can aim for something much more dependable and luminous than that.   If we aspire to discover the true self, the know what we love and what we want, to be honest, and to take full responsibility for our strengths and our weaknesses, then we will be on our way."   Elizabeth Lesser

Shadow Work

"Deep psychological work brings us into the shadowy world of the unconscious, where quick fixes and straight paths do not exist, but we have to go into the hidden places in the psyche before coming into the light by making the darkness conscious."  Elizabeth Lesser

Projection

"Taking back projections is the act of seeing yourself truthfully in relationship to others.  It involves taking responsibility for your difficulties instead of blaming others.  You no long3er rush to condemn another, nor do you put people on pedestals.  You see yourself and others clearly.  You are more willing to admit your own faults.  You are also better able to take credit for your talents and achievements.  Therefore, you develop an instinct  of when to give ground and when to stand firm."  Elizabeth Lesser

Heart

"We may think that by closing the heart we'll protect ourselves from feeling the pain of the world, but instead we isolate ourselves even more from joy."  Elizabeth Lesser

Open Heart

"A happy heart is one that is larger at all times than any one emotion.  An open heart feels everything and absorbs it into a bigger and wiser experience of reality."   Elizabeth Lesser

Sadness

"Sadness is not the opposite of happiness.  The opposite of happiness is a closed heart.  Happiness is a heart so open and so soft and expansive that it can hold all the emotions in a cradle of openness."  Elizabeth Lesser

Hunger and the Heart's Message

"If we risk the imaginary dangers of being hungry for a passionate life - if we allow ourselves to feel the emptiness long enough and deep enough to hear the heart's  messages - we end up loving the longing itself.  We become less apt to want to rush to fill our every desire.  We allow ourselves to feel tender and open and even lonely without having to do anything about it.   Hunger becomes a sign of being alive."  Elizabeth Lesser