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Global
Oneness: Personal Freedom and Peace
Make
changes today that benefit all people. Give up recounting the past
injustices. Stop demanding others give you power. Become powerful. Stop
being the downtrodden. Walking in suffering delays your journey and
drains your power and energy. Stop carrying the heavy cross. Jesus and
other teachers came to lighten your burden. Lift up and ease your load.
Give up judgment that holds others responsible for you. Stop lamenting
your fate. Give up your past grievances and heal ancient wounds with
forgiveness. Every time you point the finger of blame you are denying
your very power.
You are not the downtrodden; except by your own choice. To all people
everywhere, give up the past and be in the present. Own your inner
spiritual greatness. Value your heritage but don’t wear it like a banner
of suffering. Be proud of your heritage but don’t live in the battles of
the long ago past. Honor your heritage but don’t wear it as a badge of
supremacy.
Mastery of spiritual consciousness begins with giving up the ego’s false
claims of self-righteousness. It means being fully and completely
accountable for your own feelings and thoughts. It means owning that
which you self imposed and stop creating enemies to whom you can blame
your suffering.
More than anything else, this passage in time is about freedom. Now is
the time of deliverance from the chains that have bound you. Prepare the
way for a new generation. Place your fellow beings ahead of your tiny,
helpless, demanding egos. Freedom is first, a state of mind. What is not
within us cannot be found outside us.
The passing of time is inescapable. You choose your path, or you don’t
choose. And that is still a choice. Those who are politely standing by,
waiting for something to happen, will be left behind. Free will is just
that; knowing we have freedom and power that comes from within. We must
avail our inner spiritual strength and power. It can propel us forward
or we can stay locked in our own self-defined prisons.
This passage of time will bring a new beginning of reality to others;
one in which we see our fellow humans as the spiritual essences and
loving beings that they are. When we can take off the masks of our
ego-defined roles in the dramas we play, we will truly see our oneness.
We will see our brothers and sisters standing there--our beloved fellow
souls whom we had mistakenly identified as the enemy. What a holy day,
when one by one, we give up our grievances, lay down our swords and
embrace our fellow beings. We are one family, of one Source, with one
destiny. Why would we not want to see this?
It is time give up divisions of all kinds: religious, political, racial
and any positions that cause people to take sides or draw lines down the
center. It is time to move to a new global level—for that is just what
we are; one planet, one world, one family of diversity, beauty and
splendor.
We must recognize that even the slightest irritations with one another
come from the ego and weaken the progress of humanity. We must refrain
from attacking. We must seek a true armistice that comes from the
reconciliation of ideas, not from reactionary movements.
It is time to be a leader. You cannot be left behind when you are in
the front, leading others to a new level of understanding, joy and
peace. Peace is what we must choose now. We must commit relentlessly,
passionately and completely to peace.
Let us take down the walls of fear and accusation. The world “stages”
are worn and creaking. The floorboards cannot withstand this strain much
longer. The performance has played on too long. The audience and the
casts have grown weary. It is time for the performance to end.
Copyright by Danna Beal, March 3, 2001
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Oneness
The Great
Deception in Leadership
By Danna Beal
What looks like power is
often not authentic power. Leaders operating from artificial
power eventually come tumbling down, as we saw in the corporate
scandals and recent financial collapses. The ego-driven leaders
who appeared powerful were exposed. The recent debacles
demonstrate the intensity of the greed, competition and lack of
integrity occurring in companies. It appalled and shocked our
sensibilities. Yet similar dramas, in varying degrees, are
occurring in companies everywhere.
The biggest tragedy is
many organizations will deny this could happen to their own company and
cite the mega-crashes as isolated incidents. This is not true. My
audiences and clients from a wide variety of industries, from all parts
of the country, openly describe their workplaces as having the following
symptoms: dishonesty, power struggles, personal agendas, sabotage,
gossip, grandiosity, paranoia, lack of communication, lack of trust and
little or no teamwork.
Today, the workplace is a
stage for a drama of intertwined egos battling and competing for power.
Managers are dis-empowering employees; co-workers are hurting and
sabotaging one another while fear and insecurity are lurking everywhere.
Since most people work and spend three fourths of their waking hours in
the workplace, this is a critical problem striking the very fabric of
the American culture.
Unfortunately, what is
dominating management today is what I call “ego-driven” leadership. But
it is not clearly evident to most people that the ego-driven leaders are
actually operating from insecurity and fear; even those who appear
powerful.
Believing they will
insure their financial success by using dishonorable tactics, these
leaders unwittingly, give up their own authentic power and integrity.
Their desire to create wealth and power for themselves, at the expense
of others, stems from their own deep inadequacies. It is an attempt to
convince themselves and others, by grasping for external “props,” that
they are invincible. Their schemes, ultimately, will not work and the
current crisis in corporate America are visual testimony.
Most leaders and middle
managers are afraid someone else could outperform and replace them. So
they take on roles to protect their image. Some of the ego-driven roles
I see are the following: Empire Builder, Micro-manager, Fault Finding
Leader, Intimidator, Self-Righteous Leader, and Martyr. These leaders
douse the spark of creativity, rather than fan it. This kind of false
leadership creates fear among those they lead.
Employees and managers
alike participate as though they are performers on a stage. They are
drawn into the drama and find it difficult, almost impossible to be out
of step from the drama where everyone is playing out their assigned
parts. So great is the fear of losing financial and emotional security,
even in the face of dishonesty, corruption, and inequities, not many
people will speak up. A few people at the top of an organization cannot
take down a whole company. It takes a whole cast of characters, playing
out a drama, like puppets on a stage.
As leaders at the top make
decisions that primarily benefit themselves, they create an environment
where people cannot feel satisfaction and self-worth. Feeling
powerless, employees resort to the symptoms described by my audiences in
efforts to bolster their own egos and relieve their fear. This further
intensifies the drama, the pain and the suffering. This chain reaction
has been going on for decades but it is at an all time high.
What is the remedy for
this pervasive problem?
It is time to
revolutionize the way we do business in America. If we don’t heed the
opportunity to bring about change, we will continue to see collapses of
organizations and companies. Business and government leaders must look
at their own organizations and more importantly, they must take a fixed
look at their own ego and subsequent management style. It is time to
stop pointing the finger of blame and operate from personal
responsibility.
Many experts identify the
trait that is possessed by truly great leaders, to be the ability to
feel compassion and emotion for others. Enlightened leadership is when
the spirit in the leader recognizes that same spiritual essence in those
they lead. An authentic leader has the following qualities: vision,
trust, honor, commitment, affinity, non-resistance, acceptance,
integrity and compassion.
Enlightened leaders make
decisions that benefit all people. Enlightened leaders do not attempt to
be superior to others. They understand it is the participation of
everyone that creates the synergy of teamwork and elevates the
performance of the entire group.
The key to enlightened
leadership is the ability of the leader to look within and discover the
limitations and defenses of their own ego. An enlightened leader
understands that aligning with ethical principles rather than the
artificial power of the ego will lead to success and satisfaction for
all. The cost of the wasted energy in drama and organizational
dysfunction is immeasurable.
The only change that will
be long lasting is when, we, one by one, begin unraveling the drama of
reactions and counter-reactions occurring in the workplace today. It is
our ego, our self-created identity who is threatened and hooked into
reacting and blaming. But every time we blame someone else we give up
our own power and we intensify the drama.
As we restore ourselves to
our true identities, and give up casting others as the enemy, we free
others to give up their ego defenses. As leaders go through this
process, they create a safe environment where people can excel and
express their true potential. It is time to bring integrity and personal
responsibility to the workplace. It starts with each one of us. It must
start now.
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