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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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. The ego-driven leaders that appeared powerful were exposed.  The recent debacles demonstrate the intensity of the greed, competition and lack of integrity that can occur in companies. It appalled and shocked our sensibilities. Yet  similar dramas, in varying degrees, are occurring in companies everywhere.  

The biggest tragedy is that 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, that even in the face of dishonesty, corruption, and inequities, few 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 the collapse of companies.  Business 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. It is time for 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 that 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 that 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.