For some time now I’ve been struggling with the idea of “just how much should we help a person in difficulties”? What is the Spiritual answer to “how should I be my brother’s keeper”?
I do know that a major natural law is: “any entitity is either growing or decaying ( going backward)”. I do know that the AA community says basically that you cannot change an addicts behavior, they have to do it themselves. We can help if they ask for it and are willing to accept responsibility for their own life changes. However, we can not do it for them.
In a Spiritual light we are told that “the Kingdom of Heaven is within” and ” as a man thinketh in his heart so is he” which shows us that Spiritually we are all capable of leading a happy. prosperous, and meaningful life if we learn to access the “Kingdom within” and master our thoughts of victimhood and bitterness at the system.
Just like learning to ride a bicycle, life requires some mistakes and failures as we learn what works and what doesn’t to get us to the goals we seek. So it appears that failure and frustration are part of the Divine process of learning what works and what doesn’t work in our approach to life. When we were learning to ride the bicycle we would have stayed in the belief that we couldn’t learn to ride it if we didn’t continue on through the rough spots and break through to “I know how to do this”. When we take failure and upset out of life lessons, it appears that we stymie the person’s ability to grow and learn how to produce their own happiness and prosperity.
Maybe “being my brother’s keeper” includes allowing them to fail and then encoraging them to try again until they succeed which is a lessson they will apply for the rest of their life. Are we making people and organizations weak by not allowing failure in our world?
“As a man (human) thinketh in his heart so is he (she)”. This is a quote that most people have heard before and a good Spiritual leader learns to incorpoate in their leadership style. This brings up the conversation of the difference between the autocratic leader’s style and the style of the facilitative/spiritual leader. In my earlier years of leadership I was criticized for not being enough ” hands on ” with people. It took me awhile to understand that I was being told by old style managers that I needed to be checking on people all the time. When you learn to trust people and work with them through coaching, you learn to draw out their best talents by pointing out their good points and dwelling on their strengths. People will then learn to operate at their best and self correct their mistakes. We are now in a transition in our business culture from old style management to new style leadership. The two styles are almost contradictory and it is difficult for the autocratic old style leader to understand. The new style leader creates a vision, clearly defines expectations, and then lets the team execute the plan. Sometimes we just need to ignore the past and move into the wonderful present.
In the book of Numbers in the Old Testament, Moses sends out 12 spies (one from each of the 12 tribes) to sneak into the Promised land and bring back a report on the the prosperity of the land and the type of people that are living there. All 12 spies return with glowing reports of the wonderful abundance in the new land; however ten of the returning spies told Moses that the people inhabiting the land were fearsome and warlike and the tribes of Israel could not defeat them. So these 10 spies advised Moses that the rewards were there but it was too risky to consider taking on the conflicts that they would encounter by moving forward into “The Promised Land”. Only two of the spies returned with reports of the land of milk and honey and also reccommended that the tribes of Israel move forward into this new land of prosperity. They reasoned that they would not have been guided to investigate the new land by Jehovah if the abilities, resources, strategies, and courage were not already available within their people to triumph in this new venture.
This is a wonderful metaphor for our lives. Intuition (Spirit) gives an idea and parts of us immediately assess the risk and take us into fear. Why would Spirit give us an idea if we didn’t have the resources and abilities to accomplish them? There are other parts of us that say: let’s go, you can do this, this is the idea you’ve been looking for, etc. and again the question comes up: who do you listen to? Do you listen to the parts of you that are tuned in to Intuition (Spirit) or do you listen to the fear programming of the world?
Moses listened to Spirit and Israel entered the land of milk and honey. They did have battles to fight and difficulties to overcome and eventually they won and settled into their new land of prosperity. What would have happened if Moses had listened to the fear reports by the spies who saw the possibilities but were afraid to take the risks they saw as insurmountable?
Leadership is seeing correctly where we need to go and holding the vision clearly until we get there.
This is a conversation that you have to be open to and willing to embrace. The conversation begins with the recent discussions that it is really the heart that makes decisions and guides intuition to truly break through ideas and ways of doing things. This is the source of creativity in our world. This is also the key that separates true leaders from the pack.
Research by the Institute of Heart Math in Seattle and others show us that the heart has an energy that affects the world around us (our Universe). To use a modern analogy, it is the heart that is the WIFI connection with the Universal knowledge data base. The heart then uses the information collected and analyzed by the brain (from our environment) and combines it with the downloaded information from Universal knowledge to create heart based action that serves the organization, the individual and the community.
There is a science behind these rather startlingly new ideas that lays out new strategies for practical application of leadership principles in your real world. (This is the world of Quantum Physics).
We will explore the Spiritual ideas that advanced leaders are using: vision, integrity, collaboration, shared leadership, and others. It begins with the basic premise that people are brilliant and endowed with God for huge success. We have allowed others to tell us that we are less than perfect and need help to even survive in life. We then create surviving strategies rather than thriving strategies and do not experience our full capabilities. A great leader knows how to break the chains of dependency and create a complete system of strategies and skills necessary to create organizations that work for the individual and society using the new energies of the 21st century.
