My work in organizations involves dropping habitual ways of perceiving in order to contact a fresh and subtle perceiving “under
surface” of what is going on. That deeper sense of perceiving allows emergence of what I call Engaging Leader, or genuine expression of myself and collective.If we want to develop a deeper, subtler, way of perceiving situations, we need to be relaxed, open, confident, not expecting or demanding anything in particular. And we need to make friends with ourselves—not just casual friends, but intimate friends. Balancing our inherent feminine and masculine. The feminine – magnetic part of self that desires to be nurtured in all areas of your life. Is committed to trusting experiences that reveal self-knowledge. Seeks clarity, truth and authenticity beyond roles, masks and defenses. Feminine in male and female is both firm and yielding, requiring a need to go inward and trust essential parts of who you are. Inherent intuition is feminine in nature. You see, brilliant people rarely take time to reflect on what they do. Reflection assists you in learning from future as it emerges. When we are not consciously aware of our evolving self, we can get stuck in an old self-image.
Often we get caught up in speed and pressures of daily life, and our mind and body become disconnected. The mind is off thinking about something and body moves towards one goal after another on auto-pilot. When we start to slow down, we might notice that mind habitually ignores body. It jumps around, wanders disembodied and ungrounded. Or mind gives body a hard time— expecting, demanding, judging, and manipulating.
The Engaging Leader has presence as a natural expression, a natural creativity. We aren’t interested in struggling to squeeze out a product that is more clever than next person’s. All we need to do is allow our innate creativity to come forth. It is a dance of discipline and openness. It is a balance of form and freedom. We create boundaries and forms that allow for most space and freedom of expression.
We journey from stiffness to ease, from skepticism to delight, from seriousness to play. This is a step-by-step approach that creates a base of trust. People learn to trust themselves and situation. They cease to be locked into a solid sense of me and them, or “othering”. With soft eyes we see field or space. Then we see that space itself is dancing. We experience each other beyond credentials, opinions, and concepts. We experience basic healthiness and integrity of our community. We are ready for genuine communication and insight.
It is an invitation to begin by letting mind’s attention simply rest, focus, on how body feels. We pay attention to sensation. We relax, slow down, become familiar with ourselves. We drop habit of judging. We feel genuine appreciation, even wonder, for simply being present in body this very moment. A deep sense of well-being comes from feeling at home. We bring mind and body back together by paying attention to sensation in a full, nonjudgmental way. We begin to feel a sense of presence, of being right on spot without an agenda. Presence of being is our home.
